PORTLAND, Maine — In its November issue, Down East magazine poses a couple of questions that Mainers will appreciate.
"Need a sandwich and a screwdriver? A gallon of milk and a dose of local scuttlebutt?"
The place to go to fill those needs is, unsurprisingly, an old-school general store, where you’ll find bait worms in the back and pickled eggs on the front counter, where, as Down East notes, "the shelves are densely packed and loosely organized."
Writer Jesse Ellison and photographer Dave Waddell toured around Maine to find general stores, from New Sweden in Aroostook County to Isle au Haut on the outer edge of Penobscot Bay, that remain the heartbeat of their small communities.
Watch our conversation to learn more about the stores as well as about the people who save seals in Maine and about our current state of beer.