Midcoast towns are known for their classic Maine landscapes. White church steeples rise above leafy oak trees. Window boxes of impatiens line brick-fronted stores. Lobster boats swerve through wide harbors.
But there is more to Wiscasset and Damariscotta than these postcard scenes. Once you dig around in their historic and not-so-historic shops, you begin to recognize something startling and impressive. You begin to see bargains.
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Staff photo by John Patriquin
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Bargain hunters will be pleasantly overwhelmed at Big Al's, the Odd Lot Outlet, in Wiscasset. It feels like a cross between a church-hall garage sale and a big-box discount store. |
The great buys range from the mundane to the inspired. You can snag boxes of eight greeting cards for $1.88. Cotton socks go for $1 a pair. And for $8.50 you can bring home a nice bottle of French chardonnay. As every tightwad knows, the thrill of the hunt is vastly more important than the end product of a shopping trip. In this lovely coastal region, browsing is a joy even if you don't buy a thing.
The birthplace of Renys
Shopping in Damariscotta is hardly a trip to the mall. Beside the municipal parking lot, wooden benches offer southerly views of the wide, slow-moving Damariscotta River. Skiffs bounce on the current and pansies bloom in small riverside gardens.
It's easy to spot the blue awnings of Renys stores on either side of Main Street. We start out at Renys Underground in search of toys, gardening supplies, and whatever else looks like a good deal.
This wasn't my first trip to Renys, of course. With five decades in business, 12 Maine locations and TV commercials, the store is familiar to most of us. But I hadn't realized that Damariscotta is the birthplace of Renys, the town where Robert Reny started selling merchandise out of his car more than 50 years ago.
I notice several items that seem low-priced. Spices, children's pain reliever, Rubbermaid containers, bath towels. But I'm not impressed enough to pull out my checkbook until we reach the garden department. I pore over the rack of seeds and finally settle on packages of nasturtium, snapdragons, morning glories and watermelon, each for 59 cents. But then the cashier informs me they're on sale for 10 cents each. As I gush over my good fortune at the bargain, my friend Jolene deadpans that we'll just have to wait and see if the seeds will grow.
But she finds her own good buys - butterfly garden ornaments for $1 each. At the Renys clothing store across the street, we buy cotton socks for $1 a pair and browse through the "famous catalog" T-shirts at 2 for $10. Prices seem reasonable on all the basic items - shorts, jeans, sweat shirts, bathing suits.
The store has carved a niche in the clothing retail business, says co-owner Robert Reny Jr. Though it started out as a traditional small-town department store, the emergence of malls and national discount chains such as Ames, Kmart, and later Wal-Mart forced Renys to change over the past 25 years.
"Everything affects the small-town department store. We either had to change or go out," says Reny, who looks relaxed in khakis at the store's corporate office. "You want to have things that the working people need - basic, good value, down-to-earth merchandise."
The store is able to offer goods at competitive prices because it buys from vendors that supply "famous catalog" retailers. The items may be off-price because they're irregular or were produced for an order that was later canceled. Renys cuts the cataloger's label off the garments and sells them at a reduced price.
I like the prices at Renys - but I find the women's clothes a little too baggy and outdated. I prefer the little black dresses in a nearby clothing store called Slick's. In this specialty shop there are eye-catching striped tops in pinks and deep lavender, and sweaters in vibrant shades of coral. But the prices are staggering, at least to my bargain-hunting eyes. So we pack away our purchases and head south along Route 1 toward Wiscasset.
Buys on luxury items
After our satisfying, low-budget morning, we decide to stop for a snack at a European-style eatery in Wiscasset called Treats. The store sells French bread, pastry, espresso coffee, wine, cheese and other continental specialties.
The cashier, Crystal Gareau, tells us about the store's plans for expanding into the adjoining store. The new space will be the "fast-food" section for buying sandwiches, soup, salads and espresso, says store owner Paul Mrozinski. The other half of the retail space will become a wine and cheese shop, where customers can linger a bit longer over their purchases.
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Staff photo by John Patriquin
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Maine Country Store in Wiscasset features a collection of about 200 Wyeth prints, which generally sell for $32 unframed and about $225 framed. |
"Whenever I have an opportunity to buy discontinued items from my (wine) distributor, I pass those savings on to my customers," says Mrozinski. "There are bottles in my store that (are priced at) 45 percent savings. It just happens - when it's available, I buy it."
In the store's bargain bin, I spot a Sonoma Creek 1999 Chardonnay for $8.50. A sign says the wine is "buttery with vanilla tones to the nose . . . its toasty finish is appealing and soft." I think the description alone is worth $8.50. Any customer may preorder a case of 12 bottles of wine and receive a 15 percent discount, adds Mrozinski.
Wine isn't the only luxury item that's available at affordable prices in this midcoast area. For the art lover, there's the Maine Country Store on Route 1 about three miles south of Wiscasset village.
The owner, Peter Nicoll, has been selling fine art reproductions at the store for about 10 years. The collection has grown to about 200 Wyeth prints, which generally sell for $32 unframed and about $225 framed. It's a large collection by any standard - but there are other shops, such as Huston Tuttle & Gallery One in Rockland, that have nearly as many.
At the Maine Country Store, the artworks are displayed in a huge basement gallery. Like a well-informed museum docent, Nicoll traces the painting history of three generations of Wyeths. He points out children's book illustrations and seacoast Maine paintings done by N.C. Wyeth in the '20s and '30s.
N.C. Wyeth's son, Andrew Wyeth, is a dominant figure in American painting, known for his subdued color palette and bare-boned scenes of Maine. Nicoll points out reproductions of such works as "Christina's World," one of the best known of all American paintings, according to the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland.
The store also features a large collection of the paintings of Jamie Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth's son, a part-time Maine resident. His works are done in more vibrant colors and sometimes include more surreal elements than those of his father or grandfather, says Nicoll.
"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Not everyone feels about the Wyeths as we do," says Nicoll, who also sells reproductions of paintings by other artists. "Other Maine artists combine very nicely with the theme."
Of the dozens of other artists represented in the gallery, I enjoy the works of Fairfield Porter. His im- pressionist-style paintings of coastal Maine are exhibited in museums all over the world. A large unframed print sells for $32; the framed print was $225, which sounds quite reasonable to me.
But I'm not prepared to shell out 200 bucks. That's the sort of purchase I have to mull over for months or even years. In the meantime, I'm after more immediate gratification - from items in the $1 to $2 range. I know just where to go.
Deals in Big Al's
Big Al's, the Odd Lot Outlet, feels like a cross between a church-hall garage sale and a big-box discount store. Located on Route 1 about 1.5 miles south of Wiscasset center, the store features refrigerator magnets, dish towels, greeting cards and bouncy balls. In pleasantly haphazard order, you'll find steak knives, T-shirts, dog bones and gardening tools. One of my favorite items is a can of Conceal - a spray-on hair substitute that sells for $2.88.
"It's merchandise that's affordable. When we came to the coast of Maine, we felt that there weren't enough of these," says Big Al's wife, Melissa, who operates the business with her husband and prefers staying on a first-name basis. "(We started the business) just to have affordable bargains. (Al) aims to buy it cheap and sell it cheap. Everybody loves a bargain."
I love more than that about the store. It's delightfully different from the national-chain discount stores. The background music ranges from Irish folk ballads to calypso. As I pore over the toy section, a salesperson surprises me with a friendly offer of assistance. I then notice a sign offering free coffee and tea to customers.
Melissa greets customers by their first names, inquiring about hospital stays or family members. She invites each customer to choose an item from the "free gift" counter before leaving the store. It's stocked with party-favor-style items such as erasers, pencils and small toys. The atmosphere reminds me of a bean supper at the local Grange.
The owners buy merchandise through closeouts and odd lot. Over the past few years, they've taken advantage of going-out-of-business sales of doomed local competitors such as Bradlee's. Big Al's warehouse is full and about 3,600 square feet of retail space will be added this summer.
"This is a great place. Honestly, you can always find something," says Nancy Schmehl, a Bremen resident who's been shopping at the store for years. "When I shop at the mall, there are no surprises - it's the same stores and you know what they'll have. At Big Al's, there are always surprises, just little things."
It may be a few months before I'm back in that corner of Maine hunting for little surprises. But it's a pleasant prospect.
By the time I return, the sun will be high in the sky and we'll be carrying sunscreen everywhere we go. We'll pack a picnic lunch to enjoy on the wide boardwalk along the Sheepscot River in Wiscasset. After lunch, maybe we'll stop for coffee at Treats.
Then we'll be ready for some shopping. We'll hit Big Al's and Renys. I'll go back and linger over the Andrew Wyeth and Fairfield Porter prints. And maybe, if I get lucky, one of those little black dresses at Slick's will be on sale.
Michele Pavitt is a free-lance writer who lives in Brunswick.
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