Summer sale

Sometimes, the customer's always wrong

By Max Alexander

The summer people have arrived, providing new amusement for the shopkeepers in my corner of Maine. People from away shop differently than locals. For one thing, they actually buy stuff. Locals never buy anything that isn't a necessity. They might sit around the store all day, talking about buying something, but as the actual act of purchasing is rumored to require money, not much else happens. It's amazing how many tourists will fly in and out of a store here, dipping enthusiastically into their wallets, while the same old local is still sitting there, just getting warmed up to begin talking about buying something that you know he won't buy in a season of Sundays. He's in no hurry.

Not like the summer folk, who are always in a hurry even when they're on vacation. They do, however, take time to lock their shiny cars and turn on the alarms. Car theft is non-existent in these parts. If you wanted to steal a valuable vehicle you'd take a tractor, many of which don't even have keys.

Tourists also seem to know exactly what they want to buy -- and they must have it. Some of them actually say, "I must have that!" which is probably how they got so much stuff -- and why they have to work so hard and always be in a hurry. They also take the customer/merchant roles seriously; they expect deference from shopkeepers, which leads to all sorts of fun when they meet Elmer.

Elmer's Barn is a local institution and a junk store of international renown, if such a thing is possible. I've met people in New York who swoon over the mention of this rickety Route 17 emporium and its welcoming signpost, "KEEP DOGS IN CAR NO SHIT." I myself have been buying dusty stuff from Elmer since I lived in several big cities. I carted chairs from Elmer down to an apartment in Brooklyn, moved them to Los Angeles and back to New York. Now they are in my farmhouse in Maine, eight miles from where I bought them 15 years ago. Among the hundreds of things I have bought from Elmer are an antique copper sink now in my pantry ($60) and a gasoline-powered blueberry winnower ($125). Now that I'm a local I don't buy much, of course, but I do stop in to chat, especially in the summer.

Elmer (few people know that he has a last name, which is Wilson), claims to be descended from horse traders, and he loves bargaining. But he also knows that his asking prices are far below what the fancier antique shops charge, even in Maine. Yes, you have to paw through lots of junk. But in the jungle world of junk dealers, Elmer is in fact rather selective. He loves cool old farm stuff and recently bought an abandoned mill up the road, with the intention of renovating it. Elmer doesn't do anything fast though, so I don't expect to see Elmer's Buckwheat in the grocery store anytime soon.

Always thinking of his customers, Elmer provides a brochure with tips to make their visit more enjoyable. For example, the first page says, "Children Welcome! NOT LIABLE FOR ANY ACCIDENTS OR INJURIES (not a daycare center)."

Most injuries are suffered to customer's egos. One day a neatly pressed fellow from Massachusetts (according to his Volvo plate) stopped in and inquired, "How much for those two carved lions in the yard?"

"Six thousand dollars," said Elmer.

"How much for one?"

"Sixty-five hundred," Elmer replied without cracking a smile.

The customer stood silently, processing, for a few minutes. He didn't get it. He didn't make the expected joking repast, like, "I'd hate to hear what the head costs."

"Youse a little slow, ain't ya?" Elmer eventually said, finally cracking a smile.

I guess that wasn't how Mr. Massachusetts was accustomed to being treated by a shop owner. He swiveled and marched out the door, ears pinned to his head. Elmer just shrugged at me, pointed to a sign on the wall and said, "I guess he didn't read it."

The sign said: "All prices subject to customer attitude."

Another favorite local shopkeeper is Ken Spahr, who runs an antique stove and lamp store down the road from Elmer. Ken is probably old enough to be retired, but he putters around in his shop, surrounded by mountains of cast iron stove parts and vats of lye, extolling the virtues of The Good Old Days When Stuff Was Really Made Well to anyone who will listen.

Ken has been helping me renovate the old door hardware in my house, and I always leave his shop feeling embarrassed by my metallurgical inadequacies. He's from the Popular Mechanics generation, when it was assumed that all real men had metal shops in their cellar. "How anyone can live without a belt grinder is beyond me," he once said in total seriousness. But I also leave his shop feeling able to fix a lot more stuff around the house.

Ken loves to tell the story of how he lost his finger using a joiner, a power tool that instantly gouges deep, wide holes into wood. "I drove myself to the hospital and explained what happened. The nurse said, `Did you bring in the finger?' I told her, `Honey, I guess you don't know what a joiner does, do you?' " He laments the general ignorance of the populace, but if everyone knew what a joiner does, Ken would lose his purpose -- like a John Bircher in the post-Commie era.

One day I told Ken how I was having a hard time getting propane delivered because my stove is an antique wood-and-gas model with no pilot lights. They're legal in Maine, but propane suppliers don't like them because they could be implicated in an accident. Ken shook his head in disgust, railed against lawyers, energy companies, and the government and said, "These days nobody feels comfortable unless they've got a finger up their ass."

It's not quite how (or where) I would have put it, but I understood the sentiment. Those cranky summer visitors rushing in and out of the stores do seem to have misplaced a digit somewhere, which is probably why they can't just set a spell. On the other hand, I don't care to lose a finger in a joiner either. I admit there are days this summer when I walk into Elmer's in my muddy Wellingtons and greasy dungarees, looking for a zinc hinge pin, and those beautiful summer people shopping for slate sinks seem like a tantalizing dream. But I used to be one of them, and I remember the pain. These days, I'm quite comfortable just sitting for hours.

Max Alexander lives in Washington, Maine. He can be reached at malex@midcoast.com.