Porinchak family has operated the market for 117 years

Mirror photo by Cherie Hicks
Kathy and Paul Porinchak stand in front of the meat counter at their mom-and-pop store in Portage. The store opened in 1900.

This combination photo shows, from left, Miranda Cosgrove, Armie Hammer, Tatiana Maslany, Kyle MacLachlan and Salma Hayek, who have shared details of their holiday traditions with The Associated Press. (AP Photo/File)

In this Aug. 15, 2017 photo, paleontologist Ashley Leger shows the skull of a young Columbian mammoth found at the construction site of the Metro Purple Line extension in Los Angeles. The Los Angeles subway system is expanding and so too are the number of prehistoric fossils being recovered as crews dig beneath the city. Since work on one extension began in 2014, workers have routinely turned up fossilized remains of rabbits, camels, bison and other creatures that roamed the region during the last Ice Age. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

PORTAGE — Paul Porinchak Jr. is a little perplexed.

He’s 78, and everybody keeps asking him when he will retire. His wife of nearly 40 years, Kathy, jokes that she isn’t sure she wants him at home full time, and Paul said he’s not sure settling down would suit him, even if he could find a buyer for his business.

“I never hunted or fished, and I quit bowling because it hurt my feet,” he said. “I didn’t do nothing but work here since I was 12.”

“Here” is Porinchak’s Food Market, founded by Paul’s ancestors in 1900 and the area’s only remaining mom-and-pop store.

It remains relevant, especially at the holidays, with customers coming from Johnstown and Altoona just for their hams and “kolbassi,” which is a variant spelling of that Polish sausage kielbasa. The holiday kolbassi has more garlic that usual, and another version has hot pepper and cheese.

“We sell 1,000 pounds of it at the holidays,” Kathy said, noting that they ship across the country. “That’s a lot for a small store.”

Another holiday favorite is poppy seeds that Paul freshly grinds.

Maxine Olshavsky of the nearby Benscreek community says she comes in every year just for the ground poppy seeds to make rolls for the holidays.

“It’s very good,” she said.

Paul said a couple drove from Kentucky to pick up 10 pounds they ordered over the phone, even though you can get it at many larger supermarkets in the baking section.

“Not too many people do this,” Paul said of his fresh-grinding operation. “It’s an ethnic thing, Polish, Slovak.”

Porinchak’s also orders a lot of pig’s feet and kishka — a Polish blood sausage that some people call black pudding — for customers, who are encouraged to call ahead and pre-order any of the meats so they can be ready for a scheduled pickup. (Or you can now go online at www.PorinchaksMarket.com and place an order).

“It’s personal,” Kathy said. “We know most of our customers by name. Our customers are so loyal. Generations of families have come here.”

Paul Simala, who lives a few blocks away on Main Street, said his late father shopped here for years, and now he comes in at least once a week.

“I get a lot of my meats here,” he said.

Kathy said some customers come in almost every day, while others come in once a month for large orders and “fill in with visits for milk and bread during the week.”

Meats might be the most popular items with Paul as the butcher cutting or grinding them daily and other employees slicing deli meats and cheeses. But you can get almost anything at Porinchak’s: Household cleaners, toiletries, wasp killer, ice melt and greeting cards.

“You can even buy copy paper here,” Kathy said. “We have a few school notebooks, a few toys, but not as many since the dollar store came in. We quit selling baby products, too.”

Frozen pizza, canned vegetables, fresh produce, a large selection of candy, as well as dog and cat food are available, as well.

“We sell cigarettes, but not as many as we used to sell since they’ve gotten expensive” causing a lot of people to quit smoking, Paul noted.

Porinchak’s even sells small appliances with a crock pot, coffee maker and toaster sitting in the front window recently.

“I just ground up 25 pounds of hamburger this morning, and now we’re waiting on the produce truck,” Paul said, explaining his morning. Kathy, who retired from Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center in Johnstown 10 years ago and started working at the store six months after that, does all the ordering.

In addition to walk-in customers, the store serves several commercial customers, including produce to the local schools.

“We’re full service I would say,” Paul said, explaining that he works about 10 hours a day.

The store is open 8:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Wednesday through Friday, and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday. It is closed on Sunday and Monday and holidays, but for years, it was open on Sundays for churchgoers who wanted to pick up groceries while they were in town.

Not just the hours have changed through the years.

During the Depression, eggs sold for 29 cents a dozen, hamburger for 17 cents a pound and pork chops for 10 cents a pound.

By the mid-20th century, when Paul went to work at the store, he had several jobs including separating the returnable soda bottles.

“You had the 2-cent ones, the 5-cent ones,” he said. “I also had to sort the eggs when the farmers brought them in. There weren’t cartons then; I’d put them in paper bags. Potatoes came in 100 pounds at the time and I had to sort them into 5-and 10-pound bags. Dad was the butcher. My mother was the counter girl. Everything was behind the counter then. Now it’s mostly self service.

“Things have changed.”

But you can still see the original tin ceiling in the original building. Paul pointed to pipes hanging from the ceiling that are the original gas lines that fed light fixtures before the switch to electricity.

Stephan, August and Adolph Oravecz opened a meat market and grocery store here in two separate buildings in 1900 after immigrating from the eastern European area formerly known as Czechoslo-vakia, today’s Czech Republic and Slovakia. They made home deliveries of their goods through the Portage area, first by horse and wagon and then by truck. Stephan acquired sole ownership in 1935.

Meanwhile, Paul Porinchak Sr. operated a grocery store in Johnstown for years. One Saturday night during the Depression, he made a large deposit, and the bank was closed by Monday, the younger Paul said.

“Someone told him to go to Portage because there’s a nice Slovak store with a nice Slovak daughter there,” Paul said, with a chuckle. “That’s how that side of my family got here.”

Paul Sr. eventually married Mary Oravecz and they bought the Portage store from her family in 1951. They expanded the business and turned it over to Paul Jr. in 1971. A year later, a fire destroyed the smokehouse and operations were merged back into the single building that remains today, and a few years after that, both of the younger Paul’s parents died.

A few years after that, he married Kathy, who had been renting an apartment over the store.

“That’s how we met,” Kathy said with a smile.

They went on to have two children, Robyn and Jack, who went to college, had their own families and followed their own career paths. She lives in Nevada; he lives in Maryland.

“We don’t have anybody to turn (the store) over to,” Kathy said.

Added Paul: “We were able to send them to college, thanks to the store, and that’s the end of that.”

Mirror Staff Writer Cherie Hicks is at 949-7030.