The General Store

Blog Buddy, Marie, has a great photo of the Mast General Store down in Boone County, NC.
It reminds us of Ira Miller's General Store over in Milton Mills, NH and both are the kind of general stores that we'd like to own (Ira Miller's was for sale back in August, and boy did that give us something to consider).

But in the end we decided that the location wasn't right. We'd like ours in a small town in northern Maine. It would be in the town center. It would have to have a pot bellied stove, a huge pickle jar filled with huge pickles and we'd make fresh popcorn most days. We'd have the best penny candy (it would cost a nickle though). Our store would have wide pine floorboards and a small porch out front with a bench or maybe a even a porch swing for those warm summer days. In the winter, we'd be open even in the worst of snow storms (getting there wouldn't be a problem because we'd live in the cozy apartment on the second floor) and we'd have dark, rich great tasting coffee. Steaming hot in winter, iced in the summer.

We'd sell local cheeses and local vegetables (in season); we might even sell some local organically raised lamb. We'd carry beautiful hand spun alpaca yarn, made by the slightly daft woman who lived just outside of town.

We'd have a lunch counter and would serve a good, hearty breakfast and the best sandwiches in town. We'd have the best pizza for 20 miles, but no delivery. Mostly because our only car would look like this one but also because we don't do delivery.

I'd be there most days from very early until very late, but I wouldn't mind because everyone in town would stop in for one thing or another and to share the news. No one in town would ever forget that we're from away, but eventually they'd stop reminding us every day. I would be working on The Great American Novel. I'd be writing it for years.....I'd still be writing it when I died and my children would read it and think "what drivel." But they'd admire my intestinal fortitude for sticking with it.