By GEORGE ROGERS
of The Gazette
On Stevens Point's Public Square, produce sellers come and go. John Laskowski came and stayed.
Laskowski, born and raised in Plover, first sold on the Square in 1931, when he was 10, going there with his mother, Agnes. He's back again this year at the age of 80, selling vegetables he grows himself in the town of Dewey, four miles north of the Municipal Airport.
Have things changed on the Public Square? You bet. Because it was still Prohibition, the Square had no taverns in 1931 (not that you couldn't get a drink in Stevens Point!). After repeal, the Square became famous, or notorious, for its numerous bars. The northwest corner was called the Devil's Elbow because it was all taverns, except for Stephen Bogaczyk Sr.'s harness shop.
The saloons have thinned out but the produce vendors still come, though what they sell has changed. Now it's almost exclusively vegetables and flowers. Back then, Laskowski said, hay, wood, pigs and calves were also sold. Sometimes the pigs got away, he said, and everyone chased them. Even horses were sold.
A lot of people, including the Laskowskis, spoke Polish. "If you didn't know Polish you were out of town," said Laskowski. Even now, he said, it helps to know the language because some of his older customers speak it. And they still ask about his mother, who kept on selling until the early 1960s.
Although Laskowski is the senior vendor on the Square, his younger sister, Agnes Tetzlaff of Plover, is close behind. She, too, used to go there with her mother.
Laskowski said selling on the Square was a lifesaver for the family in the 1930s, the years of the Great Depression. Produce sold cheap - carrots, three bunches for a dime, corn, 25 cents a dozen ears, and tomatoes, a dollar a bushel. But it helped pull the Laskowskis through those tough times. Vendors arrived at 3 in the morning to get a good spot. Some, with bigger stands, still come that early to get a corner location.
People used to come from Hancock, Montello and Portage to sell. Laskowski remembers a man from Oshkosh who sold 125 bushels of tomatoes on the Square. That gave him an idea. The following year he planted 4,000 tomatoes. The tomatoes sold well because World War II was on and people did a lot of home canning, since canned goods in stores were rationed.
Laskowski used to raise chickens, geese and ducks. "The chickens were raised the way chickens ought to be raised - on the ground," he said. They were turned loose in an oat field and did their own harvesting. They, too, sold well during the war because, unlike other meats, chicken wasn't rationed.
Now he just sells vegetables - beans, potatoes, sweet corn, onions and the like. He grows them with nearly all-natural fertilizers "and no more pesticides than I have to."
Selling on the Square is, of course, seasonal, and Laskowski has done other things, like plumbing and dairy farming. His son, Tom, now has the farm but John helps, doing the plowing, cultivating and corn planting, in spite of a corn-picker accident in 1978 that almost cost him his right leg. It took multiple operations, and he wears a built-up shoe, but the leg was saved. He gives the credit to Dr. Mike Klasinski, an orthopedic surgeon.
Laskowski's not planning to quit the Square any time soon. "I enjoy the people," he said.