When Tanzi's Closed

Remembering Hanover'shonorarymayorand hisemporiumon 48½Main Street.

BEFORE THERE WAS A HOPKINS Center, a Baker Library, or a Webster Hall, there was Tanzi's grocery. Founded in 1897 by Angelo Tanzi, an Italian stonecutter, the single story, green-clapboard store stood at 48½ South Main Street. Its one room was 14 feet wide by 42 feet long. Accessories included a storage basement, crates for decor and repose, six front windows, and an awning to protect the sidewalk display stands. It was so right in all dimensions, it never changed an iota throughout the tenure of four Dartmouth presidents.

Angelo created the Tanzi style of doing business: know everyone in town; like everyone you know; trust everyone, until proven otherwise; carry the finest vegetables and fruit the region has to offer; deliver to the doorstep in all weathers; forget about sleep; and entice the younger generation with ice cream (hand crariked), peanuts (store-roasted), and irresistible penny candy. This was his creed. He worked at it mightily. The grocery flourished.

In his off-time (one wonders when that was), Angelo became a renowned fox and deer hunting man. And with his bride Delia Woodward, from Bridgewater, Vermont a renowned family man also. Their marriage produced nine children: six sons and three daughters. All of the sons cut their teeth on apples and corn in the store. When Angelo retired in 1927, three of them Harry, Leon, and Charlie took over.

The three brothers shared their father's credo and added some twists of their own. As the store had become a town meeting place and news center, a second phone was installed. The first was HANOVER 48, the second HANOVER 49.The numbers were superfluous. One had only to ask the operator, "Give me Tanzi's, please," and she would. On busy days, if the brothers couldn't locate a specific item, customers were directed to the basement, where with luck they might find what they sought themselves. To expedite sales, some regulars manned the cash register and made their own change. No breaches of faith occurred. Occasionally, however, a boy overcome by the sight of candy would sample a piece, before payment. If caught in the act, the offender was sentenced to operate the peanut roaster until proper amends were made. "It was like a Marx Brothers movie," recalls Dartmouth Alumni Affairs Director Mike Choukas '51, who grew up in Hanover and worked for the Tanzis for a while. "If I ever write a novel, it will be about Tanzi's."

The year 1933 kicked off a bonanza. Prohibition was repealed and the brothers acquired the only license in town to sell beer. All 25 fraternities became Tanzi patrons. The store carried bottled beer for individual customers; the fraternities ordered kegs for their celebrations.

In 1944, Charlie was in the army overseas. His replacement in the store was his wife, Harriet. All of five feet tall, Harriet was a true keeper of the flame and remained so for 25 years. She knew groceries and her towns people by heart. If a customer's spirits were low, she lifted them. During the halcyon years the fifties and sixties Harriet's brother, Dick Hutchins, and Francis Trachier joined the staff. Both were native sons, high-speed deliverymen, and as handy with a shelfgrabber as Charlie himself. They would hook a can off the top shelf with the grabber and catch the falling can one handed like a ballplayer fielding a fly If you can't have a little fun in business, why be in business at all?

In the final days of the Dickey administration, the Tanzis "pending further decisions" suspended deliveries. But the big decision had been made. On Sunday June 30, 1969, Harry, Charlie, and Harriet served their customers (some in tears; two of them had written poems for the occasion) for the last time.

It wasn't high-tech merchandising in the offing that closed the emporium. It was exhaustion. For decades, Tanzi's was open 80 hours a week or more. Time to go fishing.

For Harry and Charlie, retirement from business was one thing; from Hanover, unthinkable. The next 20 years they took tickets at every home football game and hockey match, always cheerfully predicting a Dartmouth victory.

For Harry, appointed Hanover's Honorary Mayor by the town commissioners in 1959, ceremonial duties kept him in the limelight. Perhaps his greatest moment was in October, 1961, when he bestowed the key to the city upon a delighted old customer: Nelson Rockefeller '30, governor of New York. There were other great moments. On Dartmouth Nights, Harry stood next to the football coach on the steps of Dartmouth Hall. During the annual Shriner's extravaganza, the two-hour parade around the Green was led for 30 years by the governor of Vermont, the governor of New Hampshire, the president of Dartmouth College, and Harry in that order. With or without his topper, smiling, waving, joking, his honor the mayor added flourish wherever he appeared.

Harry hasn't made the parade lately. Family and friends laid him to rest in January 1989, on a day when blowing snow covered the flowers.

How many people gave their name to an era? The Tanzis did for genial service, longer than anyone can remember.

Harry, Leon, and Charlie made the place seem like a Marx Brothers movie.

Laurel and vine, that shall we twine Meet for her brow who sits under the pine Far from the mad town's jarring?

A retired Pan American pilot, Ev Wood hasmanned the visitor's booth on the Green for 11years. Readers who were fond of Tanzi's mightwant to make a contribution to the Harry TanziScholarship, care of the Hanover High School.

if caught inthe act, theoffender wassentencedto operatethe peanutroaster