Welcome to a new platform and a new direction for ImpoliticEye. Unfortunately, this first blast doesn't come with as much multimedia as I'd like, but such is life.
This year, Dunbar's General Store in Sullivan, Maine closed. To those of you who have never spent any time up here, the closing will seem trivial. To those of us who have spent our summers (or whole lives) up here, it is earth-shattering news.
Years ago, Dunbar's was both a gas station and grocery store. In the late seventies, they dug the tanks out, dealt with the pollution, and focused on the grocery. They cut and ground their own meat. They stocked wine, liquor, and beer to satisfy the quirky mix of summer folk and salt-of-the-earth locals. If you needed lobster or crab or local produce, they usually had it. If you were a kid like me in the seventies and wanted a frozen candy bar, they had it — and they didn't care if you didn't have money; they knew you were good for it.
When Phil took over from his father Emory, this mantra continued. You'd rarely find anything special at Dunbar's, but you'd usually find what you needed. And if you needed something special, they'd do what they could to accommodate. When the New York Times started making its way Downeast, they carried it out of the gate; there were enough of us to support the need. When times were tough in the winter and a neighbor couldn't pay for his groceries, Phil kept a tab — and from what I've heard, sometimes those tabs just went away.
But in recent years, the store seemed to struggle. There were winter break-ins. The stock wasn't kept up the way it had been. And then this winter, the store closed entirely.
There are plenty of rumors why... Family troubles. Embezzlement. Debt. Pride. Without enough details, I'm not going to risk reporting what I've heard. Suffice it to say, the problems were a while in coming and could have been headed off at the pass long before, but we're all humans and flawed. Right?
The sad part of this story is that a small corner of Maine that very much needed this store — this community center, this heart, this lifeline, this place that had been part of the fabric of the region for decades — lost a vital lifeline. Instead of heading up the road a half mile, people now have to trek 15 miles to get what they need. Beyond that, the people who needed that place that would give them eggs, milk, and whatever else until they could pay for it in tough times are just one more thread away from nothing.
The community has lost more than a store. It has lost a vital organ.
