Say it ain't so, Joe!
At Plese Market, it was about chicken, service
Rosemary Plese leans on the counter at her store, Plese Grocery and Market, Tuesday, October 21. Plese, whose father-in-law opened the store in 1924, has run the market since 1946. Gallup Independent / Cable Hoover

Copyright © 2008
Gallup Independent
By Gaye Brown de Alvarez
Staff writer

GALLUP — It’s the end of an era in Gallup. The end of Plese’s chicken.Plese Market, at 400 West Maloney is closing after 84 years of business.

The one-stop shopping store, as it says on the side of the building, has been owned by the same family since it was opened by Joe A. Plese in 1924. The family is planning a get-together with all the children, relatives and longtime customers, Saturday, in the market.

Built by John Novak, the original owner of Gallup Lumber, the store has served the northside of Gallup with food, yarn, hardware, clothes, shoes, pots and pans, kerosene lamps and sundry items, not to mention its famous roasted chicken and lamb ribs.

Plese, who came to the Gallup area from Delnica, Yugoslavia, in 1906, worked in the coal mines, opened the business and for decades it was the only store on the northside.

He spoke many languages, said his daughter-in-law Rosemary Plese, in an interview from her home on Wednesday. He could speak to anybody who came into the store. He spoke Navajo, Spanish, Serbo-Croate, English, Italian, about 13 languages, she said.

Rosemary Radosevich Plese, who is also Croation, and whose parents came from LÌc, Yugoslavia, has operated the store on and off since she married into the family in 1946.

She had five children at the old St. Mary’s hospital and they moved from their home on Hill Street into the building when Joe A. Plese and his wife retired. Rosemary, a sprightly and handsome woman, said she is ready to retire at age 86, to do some “visiting,”  catch up on her scrapbooking and gardening. When her husband Joe M. Plese died in 1988, she hoped to keep the store open for another 20 years, and on Nov. 15 it will be 20 years.

What about the chicken?
Gallup and reservation residents have been buying Plese chicken since Rosemary can remember. Every morning at 8, she puts four whole chickens on each of five spits in a rotary roasting machine. The 20 chickens are rubbed with dry seasoning and salt is put inside the chicken cavity. The spits rotate slowly and at low temperature. They sell for $6.50 each and her lamb ribs, which are cooking in the oven, sell for $3.99 a pound.

People order the chickens for parties and funerals and other kinds of events, said her son Greg Plese, who lives in Gallup. In the old days, people would call the market and ask to save a chicken until they could come by and pick it up. During Ceremonial, he said, people waited in line for chickens. Often, people would ask for the chickens to be delivered. Greg remembers delivering chickens to the Silver Bell Bar on Second Street when he was about 12-years-old, where the owner would give him a glass of beer as a tip.

Debby Blossey, one of the Plese daughters who now lives at Austin, Texas, laughed during the interview, remembering her childhood on the northside. ”You know those old Slavs,”  she said. “They were drinkers.” 

Sometimes people would notice the kids name “Plese,”  and ask them “are you related to the chickens on the north side?’
The old days
All the children went to St. Francis Catholic School and worked and played on the northside, long before the Interstate Highway 40 was completed.

There was a lot of activity on the northside, Greg Plese remembered. There were a lot of bars, Milans, Sigs, Kauzlarics, and the Silver Bell, and the children delivered chickens to all the people at the bars who placed orders.

But lots of bars meant lots of drunks, and when they walked from bar to bar, they often got into fights and broke the Plese Market plate-glass windows.

“Our windows got broken every once, sometimes every week,”  Rosemary remembered. Finally the insurance wouldn’t cover the broken windows anymore, so the windows were taken out and bricked in. Even though the facility was built up to protect against flood, it has a full basement which overflowed in the 1972 flood. It had 8 feet of water inside and ruined a lot of old photos and family remembrances. Under the concrete steps in the front there is a small bomb shelter, Greg said and the walls of the building and Rosemary’s house in the back are 18-inches thick.

Because it was a neighborhood store and the owners lived in the back, people would knock on the door and ask if they could please buy a loaf of bread or milk for their children. Rosemary remembers opening up in the middle of the night to help people who needed to buy things at odd times.

Blossey said that the building, which is very noticeable from the highway, draws in people who remember the chicken, or are interested in the name “Plese.” 

“My mom has done one incredible job since Dad died,”  Blossey said.

Rosemary’s five children and 10 grandchildren have known the store since they all were born. They are not sure what they will do with the front of the building after it closes.

Rosemary wanted to thank all her customers friends and family that gave the store patronage for the past 84 years and hopes to see everyone at the store Saturday, when she will be selling her last chickens. Then, like every day, at 9 p.m., she will turn her ovens off and Gallup will see Plese’s Market close its doors.