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Aug 30, 2023

Rich local history for popcorn wagons

James “Tony” Golias was a Greek immigrant who operated Tony’s Popcorn Wagon in

James "Tony" Golias was a Greek immigrant who operated Tony's Popcorn Wagon in downtown Mankato for nearly 40 years.

The town of Hutchinson has a classic town square, along the downtown Main Street, with a classic library building surrounded by a square of lawn and a water feature, shaded by a canopy of mature trees.

Every time we drive by it on the way up north, it stirs nostalgic feelings of what made rural communities feel homey, inviting and vibrant.

The square has events on many weekends that draw crowds.

One fixture on the corner of the square always has a line of people — an old-fashioned popcorn wagon.

With all of the new technologies and latest food and drink concoctions, the popcorn wagon is as plain and simple as it gets — a paper bag filled with popped corn and salt — but yet it attracts customers of any age.

New Ulm just opened its popcorn wagon for the summer, located outside the Brown County Historical Society.

It was operated in New Ulm by a few different owners up until the 1990s, after which the Historical Society bought it. The popcorn wagon, a part of local history since 1914, was purchased by the society in 2002 and restored to its original appearance.

There are a few other communities in the state that still regularly have popcorn wagons, including Northfield and at Duluth's Canal Park.

Mankato had a long history of popcorn wagons during the heydays of the downtown, where people flocked to shop at Brett's and other stores and for entertainment.

There were as many as three wagons operating, some for many years.

Shelley Harrison, curator/archivist at the Blue Earth County Historical Society, said the best known in Mankato was Tony's Popcorn Wagon, and Jeanne's Popcorn Wagon was also a fixture in the downtown.

James "Tony" Golias was a Greek immigrant who built his own wagon, which was first horse-drawn, in 1910 and he operated the same wagon for nearly 40 years in Mankato until the mid-1960s. A 1967 Free Press story said it was a profitable business with a dedicated following that came for the tasty popcorn that was topped with a mixture of olive oil and butter, and to be entertained by the jovial Golias.

He had a colorful life, living in the Twin Cities and then returning to Greece to fight in World War I. He later decided to return to the U.S. but no longer had a visa so he immigrated under a different name. The ruse was discovered and he faced deportation, but local attorney C.A. Gus Johnson successfully lobbied Congress and got Tony his citizenship papers.

Sharon and Al Schaller bought a popcorn wagon in 1966 and got a permit from Mankato to set it up.

"We pulled it behind our car and had a generator to run it," Sharon recalls. She still has the Sharon's Craft-N-Floral store on Belgrade Avenue in North Mankato.

But, she said, the popcorn wagon venture wasn't successful. "We had trouble finding places to set up in and we sold it."

With the Mankato-North Mankato city centers revived and increasingly vibrant, an old-fashioned popcorn wagon as a fixture would be a treat for many.

Unlike Hutchinson, neither of the local cities has a real town square to locate a wagon. But the Old Town area would be an obvious choice with a wagon maybe rotating to lower North Mankato at times.

I’m not sure if a standalone popcorn wagon is a viable business today, but a wagon could be bought and donated to a local charity or charities that could operate it with volunteers and use the funds raised for their nonprofit.

If they could track down Tony's olive oil/butter mixture recipe, they’d have throngs of customers to keep them busy.

Tim Krohn can be contacted at [email protected] or 507-720-1300.

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