She thought bacon, apples, raisins — and a favorite was born

Dale Hoefner grew up in Newtonburg near Manitowoc in a cheese factory converted into a grocery store and residence. He never had to walk far.

His mom, Viola Hoefner, ran Keenway Grocery. His dad, Norbert’s feed mill was next door. One block to the east was his Lutheran church and school.

His mother was a very good cook, he said. Recipes back then were shared by word of mouth in person or by telephone — the latter being a party line.

“You knew you had a phone call because the number or length of rings would tell you that the call was for you,” Hoefner wrote. “Ours was trunk line 27 — two long rings and one short. If you wanted to listen in on the latest gossip or recipe, you would just pick up and join in.”

He remembers recipes shared in the store as well.

“When Edna Shwanke would come in the store for weekly supplies,” Hoefner wrote, “Mother was usually cooking in the kitchen in back of the store. Edna had to ask, ‘What you cooking, Viola?’

“The reply was ‘Norbert’s favorite’ — bacon, apples, raisins.”

Hoefner, who lives in Milwaukee, doesn’t know exactly how this unusual combination of ingredients came to be. It’s probably rooted in the frugality of country life: Whatever falls out of the refrigerator is what you use.

The story goes that one day his mother was looking for something to fix. She opened the fridge and thought, Norbert likes bacon, he’ll eat apples, he’ll eat raisins. … Well, breakfast is coming, we’ll just whip something up.

It became a favorite of his dad’s, and Hoefner likes it too. But if the heat’s too hot and the apples burn, he said, it’s ruined.

The store he grew up in opened in 1944, two years before he was born; it closed in 1963.