I Want a General Store, Too

The village of North Hero, Vermont lies on the Eastern shore of Grand Isle, looking out over the broad expanse of Lake Champlain. On a warm August day, the lake is alive with boaters, swimmers, and water-skiers. Sun-baked piers stretch out from the shore. And in the village the cottages and farmhouses all boast rows of Adirondack chairs lined up on the lawns, waiting for the diurnal spectacles of sunrise and sunset. The gardens are alarmingly well-kept; they spill over with black-eyed susans and tall white phlox.

At the heart of this little village on an island in the middle of a lake is a general store. It is a very impressive general store. There are nice things to buy there. I want one.

Some might covet the New Englandy wonder of the tumbled-shale beaches, perfect for strolling upon with linen suits, skipping stones into the lake at sunset. Some might covet the tidy colonial houses with their cottage gardens and covered porches.

They can have it. I want the general store.

Vermont has a knack for fancy, well-groomed general stores; one of the ways you can sniff out the influx of New York- New England tourist money is by poking through the merchandise in these local stores. Wine, designer cookware, imported cheese, freshly baked breads and pastries, local crafts, and, of course, the myriad permutations of maple syrup.

In central Pennsylvania, by contrast, most the country stores I've seen look like they're holding their breath. Cluttered, depressed, and out-of-date, they're waiting to let go and follow the light, beckoned up to heaven as the last of their customers head off to Wal-Mart. In the meantime, they're stocked with nonperishable pantry items, and with chips.

In Vermont, though, the general stores don't compete with Wal-Mart. This is largely due to the fact that there aren't any Wal-Marts in Vermont. But it's also because Vermont general stores have tourists to entertain, and not just a loose handful of cigarette-buyers and lottery-players to sustain.

But here's my question: which comes first? Must the tourists preceed the store-- or might it be precisely the general store that makes passers-by feel, suddenly, like tourists?

And thus I ask: might it be possible to transplant a Vermont general store to a state that isn't Vermont, and to have it thrive?

Can I have one, please?

The general store in North Hero, named "Hero's Welcome," seems to have found both a niche and an expert store buyer. Sited in a keenly-refurbished historic building, the general store bears all the qualities of the well-rounded generalist. A generalist, that is, in the strong sense-- not in the sense of dilettante.

The store opens first into a small café, with a few wooden tables, lots of newspapers, and an array of freshly-baked pastries-- savory as well as sweet. Further down is a sandwich counter and a wall of bottled-drink coolers; on the facing wall is a scaled-down wine store, and, adjacent to it, a sweet-shop display of penny candy displayed in wide-mouthed jars (we bought some horehound candies, lemon drops, and molasses mints. Straight out of the nineteenth century... but more on nostalgic sweets anon, I hope).

After that, the room widens, and to one side lie shelves bearing the standard provisions (canned goods, ketchup and mustard, medicine, and the like). To the other side is a clothing shop, with a standard array of regionally-themed t-shirts, fleeces, windbreakers, and cowboy hats. Beyond that the store becomes truly particular. The next room boasts a cathedral ceiling and a loft. In the loft are a few shelves of whimsical toys and games, as well as local maps and a small but meticulously-chosen selection of books. With a substantial collection of books by Vermont authors and plenty of titles on Vermont history and the geography of Lake Champlain, the bookstore's real standout is the cooking section. Lots of books about canning and preserving; on garden-to-table cuisine; the L.L. Bean book of game and fish cookery; and so forth. I bought a book about Prairie food there.

Beneath the loft is a wide selection of cookware and tableware, similar to what you might find at a small but upscale cookware boutique. One wall of the store featured strange forms of cutlery, including dental equipment and an assortment of scissors, magnifying glasses, and binoculars. Then, out back in an outbuilding, there's an outdoor outfitters, with fishing gear and various boating equipment for sale or rent. Out! Out!

The point is not that these types of displays don't exist anywhere else (although the petite-yet- competent bookstore is becoming rarer and rarer). What's remarkable is that each element of this general store represented its genre well: no part of the store could claim to be exhaustive, but what you found was singular enough to seem almost unique. Of course, nothing was particularly cheap. But herein lies the store's genius: you don't go there for cheap things. You go there for good things.

Yes, a little Martha Stewart. And given the locale, the idiom fits.

But I hardly think that the inverse mode of general store-keeping is any more proletarian. Just because a store's depleted stock looks like it dates from the era of Stalinism doesn't mean that the store is somehow keeping it real.

So can I have one? Can I? Pleeeeeeeeease?

CODA:

As we were driving home from Vermont yesterday we stopped at another general store near the Grand Isle Ferry. Coincidentally, in the Burlington free city newspaper, Seven Days, was a cover story on General Stores. The article is a review of a new book by Dennis Bathory-Kitsz entitled Country Stores of Vermont: A History and Guide. One key feature of this book-- which makes it especially worthy of purchase-- is its discussion of the business plans of a number of successful stores. The article, like the book, aims to dispel the mythology of the stores as nostalgic curiosities, and instead to focus on the economic realities they face-- How and why they survive; the challenges they face; and so forth.

I will gladly this book for anyone who wants to open a proper general store in my town.