Embracing the memories and tears of The Salmon Stop

Lori Ralph grew verklempt picking at memories.

Seemed the perfect response to watching virtually all her adult life flash by at The Salmon Stop last Saturday.

Friends and family rang up marked down tackle, took down and carried out dusty fish mounts, lugged away other fishing memorabilia, shared memories and hugged.

On Feb. 9, Ralph closed the sale of The Salmon Stop, one of the area’s most venerable bait and tackle shops, at 1019 Belvidere Road in Waukegan.

Upon reflection, she texted, “We spent more time there in the summer than the house or boat, 1019 was home and always will be.”

In 1983, Lori Vander Vere graduated high school, then married her high school sweetheart, William August “Augie” Ralph, in ’84. His parents and partners opened The Salmon Stop in April 1972.

Dale Bowman

Lori and Augie bought their first boat, a perch boat, in ’85. Capt. Augie Ralph, the first in Waukegan Harbor to get his captain’s license at 18, passed away Aug. 19, 2021. His spirit was much in the shop Saturday, down to a big photo of him in a corner chair.

The Salmon Stop was a place for the circle of life. That came through big time Saturday.

“My diapers were on that counter here,” Rick Verenski said.

Ralph said they got to know him when his late dad, Dennis, brought him in the store.

“All the babies get set there,” Ralph said. “It’s the same glass. There has to be 40 years of babies on that glass.”

When I walked in, Chris “Oz” Hahn (he was born while his Dad watched “Wizard of Oz”) directed traffic and manned the door.

Grainy black-and-white photos on the blue entry door and walls stoked the connection to days of yore.

That sense of history also came with friends and family taking down the fish mounts hanging high.

“She’s happy and sad,” Hahn said. “Augie told her, `If I die first, dump it,’ ”

Daniel Styden climbed a stepladder to take down the dusty big walleye mount, saying, “I’m hanging it up as a memory.”

He is the youngest son of Eugene Styden.

"[Daniel] likes fishing for walleye,” Eugene said. “I grew up in here since I was 6.”

A couple carried out an Eagle Claw rod stand.

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Chris Youngren took down the coho and northern pike mounts.

“He started when he was 15 and probably stayed about four years,” Ralph said. “Chris was always there. Everyone thought he was our kid.”

Ralph rang out a highly reduced sale of items for her neighbor’s two young daughters, then tossed in more bounty.

Dale Bowman

All spans of life mattered here.

When Jessica Wynn, the Ralphs’ goddaughter, came in with a baby boy, calls went up for buckethead. That’s when a kid is lifted, then head bumped through the string of white Styrofoam minnow buckets hanging on a line above the counter.

“When [Wynn] got cranky, Augie would lift her and bump her down the buckets,” Ralph said.

Wynn stayed the tradition as she bumped through her baby.

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Tim Bullard, in his full beard and smile, helped Lori behind the counter.

“I started working here when I was 15 and for 44 years off and on,” he said. “I worked all the boats they owned.”

He caught the essence of the shop as he reminisced.

“I watched a lot of kids growing up,” said Bullard, who said he was taking the last fish mount, a yellow perch. “And people you knew for 30 years who died.”

The building will be torn down and is expected to be replaced by an L-shaped set of small shops.

“It’s bittersweet,” Lori said. “It’s what Augie wanted me to do. I feel good about it because I had Augie’s word. I will miss the people.”

It was the kind of morning where memories went back and forth over whether it was a keg of Red Dog or Red Wolf that was kept in the fridge for after hours or when a customer came in with a heartache.

Someone remembered the cockatoo, Mick E Byrd, who Lori said, “Hated me” and latched his beak into her several times.

“If these walls could talk, it would be good things and bad things,” she said.

There will be a close-out sale for the public, probably in April.

Dale Bowman