MADAWASKA LAKE, Maine — Stan’s Grocery in Madawaska Lake Township transcended the mundane qualities of a small town general store. Its ramshackle charm and 10 cent coffee drew in customers, and owner Stan Thomas’ generous, humorous personality kept them coming back.
So it’s no surprise that Thomas’ death on Sept. 29 shook longtime patrons in Madawaska Lake and beyond.
Even for this small township in rural Maine, his store was an anachronism. As Dorothy Boone Kidney put it in her Echoes magazine article titled, Rubbing Elbows, “When you walk into Stan’s, you are walking back in time about 100 years.”
Kidney described the store’s exterior as an accurate reflection of the inside, appearing weathered, dim, shadowy, and restful. Moss, she wrote, grew on the roof and the building seemed to tilt as though it was “tired from sitting for so many generations.”
Stan’s Grocery, as seem in a photo from Echoes magazine, was a staple in Madawaska Lake from 1964 to 2005. (Courtesy of Kathryn Olmstead)
Kathryn Olmstead, editor and publisher of Echoes, described Thomas recently as “probably the most generous person you could hope to know,” someone who was “warm, friendly, and generous with a twinkle in his eye.”
She said he also was “very unassuming, authentic, and genuine,” and that his store’s diverse variety contained everything a person could need.
“He would say, ‘If we don’t have it, you don’t need it,’” Olmstead recalled with a laugh as she shared an anecdote of one particularly muddy spring day when Thomas happened to have exactly what she needed.
Dressed in her Sunday best, Olmstead arrived at her Caribou home after church to find that her driveway had turned to mud and, not wanting to ruin her attire, she decided to take a trip to Stan’s Grocery and see if he could help.
“I found exactly what I wanted — some old black galoshes with zippers,” she said. “I put those on and was able to walk through the spring mud.”
The eclectic inventory and rustic charm, however, were only part of the store’s appeal, according to Olmstead. The regular customers also were part of its allure.
Kidney, in her 1992 Echoes article, described several groups of regulars who came at various times of the day: “There are early breakfast people, then morning mail people, then cribbage people.”
Brenda Jepson of the neighboring community of Stockholm, also has several fond memories about the store and Stan Thomas. She recalled one night in which she and her husband lost power in their log cabin while baking two loaves of bread.
“The yeast keeps rising, so we couldn’t wait,” she said. “So I called Stan and asked if we could bake some bread over there. He said, ‘Bring the bread right over, we’ll bake it right here.”
“Of course,” she added, choking up, “we gave him one loaf and brought the other one home.”
Jepson taught television production courses at the Caribou Tech Center for 15 years and, from 1999 to 2000, filmed a half hour documentary about Stan’s Grocery with her class.
“We spent a whole year going to Stan’s,” she said. “I thought it would be a fun thing for the students to make a film like that, because it really was a part of our local culture.”
Her students “had a blast” working on the film, “Stan’s: A Jewel in the Crown of Maine,” which was dedicated to Stan’s father Allen Thomas, who died during the year-long filming process.
Through her students, Jepson was able to once again experience the joy of discovering Stan and his store.
Stan Thomas and his father Allen Thomas pose for a photo that accompanied a 1992 Echoes magazine article about Stan’s Grocery in Madawaska Lake. (Courtesy of Kathryn Olmstead)
The youngsters learned that the locals would hold elections in a booth at the end of the diner, resulting in what Jepson said is likely one of the only places one can sit down to vote.
She recalled how an old piano sat among the vast variety of disparate goods in the store, and and how this became a focal point for Saturday night singalongs.
“All the good ‘ol boys would come with guitars and sing along,” Jepson said. “When I showed the film at the Midsommar [Festival] last year, the audience was watching them sing, ‘You Are My Sunshine,” and everyone watching actually joined in.”
Jepson, who owns a production company, has many award-winning films under her belt and learned the craft in London under a BBC director and producer. But she said that was the first screening of a film she ever attended where the audience actually joined in with the people on-screen.
Whenever relatives came to visit, Jepson would encourage them to go to Stan’s and tell them not to be put off by “the fact that the store looks like it must’ve been closed years ago.” However, she was able to catch one of the store’s few renovations while filming.
Thomas had an affinity for cats, which he fed in the back of the store, and one of the cats gave birth to kittens that found their way into the space above the ceiling in the one-story structure. Thanks to holes in the ceiling, parts of that attic space were visible from the floor below.
One morning when Jepson and her students arrived at Stan’s, two young girls working behind the counter giggled and warned them that it was “raining kittens.” Jepson and the students soon learned that what the girls meant was kittens were falling through the holes in the ceiling onto customers’ tables.
“All of a sudden a kitten would plonk onto the table,” Jepson said, “and as soon as the girls would take it back, another one would fall.”
Around this time, Thomas had to leave for gallbladder surgery, and the girls decided to patch up the roof while he was away, Jepson said.
“He came out of the hospital and was pretty amazed to see that,” she said, adding that she is overjoyed to have been able to make this film with her students “because so many memories were captured there.”
Just a few years after the documentary was filmed, Thomas sold the store and 2.5-acre property on the shore of Madawaska lake to CSS Development in Caribou (Sam Collins, Carl Soderberg, and Steve Scott). So, at the age of 69, he retired and closed Stan’s Grocery in January of 2005.
“A lot of people were very sad that Stan retired and the store closed,” said Jepson, “but I’m so glad the poor man had about 10 years to enjoy his retirement; he worked seven days a week for 40 years.”
She said people would always ask him why he didn’t get married, and his response would always be that he was married — to the store.
Olmstead recalled how Thomas kept bees at his home and made honey.
“I’d been saving one of the bottles in hopes that they would get refilled,” said Olmstead, “and I’m sorry that that won’t be possible now.”
Olmstead said there was a “sadness” amongst community members when the store closed.
“It was a tradition for people over years to gather there,” she said. “It was such an important place, and Stan really created a community hub for that whole area. It drew on communities both north and south and especially with people who came up to camp during the summer.”
Jepson said she grew accustomed to seeing Stan at church and “giving him a big hug every Sunday.”
“It will be awful not to be able to give him a big hug next Sunday,” she said. “It’s bittersweet because I have so many happy memories and was so privileged to know Stan. He was wonderful, he really was.”
Jepson laughed about how Kathy Mazzucchelli, former Caribou Rec Center Director, once gave an astronaut a copy of her documentary while he was visiting the local school.
“You need this in the space station,’” Mazzucchelli told him. “‘This is what you need to watch if you need to get back down to Earth in a hurry.”
