Aroostook County Pickers has something for everyone

By Joseph Cyr
Staff Writer
    MONTICELLO — It may be an old cliché, but there is plenty of truth to the adage “One man’s trash is another man’s treasure.”
Houlton Pioneer Times Photo/Joseph Cyr
NEW OWNERS — Dan and Ronnie Stauffer of Houlton are the new owners of Aroostook County Pickers, an  antique store on U.S. Route 1 in Monticello.
    Just ask Dan and Ronnie Stauffer of Houlton, proprietors of Aroostook County Pickers, an antique store located on U.S. Route 1 in Monticello. The Stauffers purchased the antique business from Dave Cohen in April and have spent the past few months organizing and categorizing more than 3,000 items found in the store.
    “What we are trying to do here, is represent our business as it would have looked at the turn of the century,” Dan Stauffer said. “Should you be a farmer, we have everything you’d need for your farm or household goods.”
    Rooms inside the Route 1 establishment are broken down by categories such as kitchen, bathroom, living room and bedroom items.
    “It’s all stuff people can still use,” Stauffer said. “For the most part, things are priced under $20.”
    While there certainly are plenty of bargain items, some things in the store are merely for viewing.
    “Some of the items in here are not for sale,” Stauffer said. “That has a tendency to annoy some customers. But I suppose if the price was right I would consider. It’s hard to put a price on some things. You collect them, but then you might reach a point in your life when it’s time to move on.”
    Stauffer said he was quite intimidated when he took over ownership of the store. After all, he had to become familiar with the more than thousands of items in the shop so that when a customer called or stopped by asking for some particular item, he would know if he had one or not.
Houlton Pioneer Times Photo/Joseph Cyr
RUSTIC FEEL — The “kitchen” room of Aroostook County Pickers features everything a person would need to fill their kitchen with working pieces of history.
    One of his favorite activities is to ask customers what they think an item is when they come in to the store.
    “Nomenclature is very important to antique seekers,” he said. “What has been a huge benefit for us is older people have come in and explained what some of the items were used for. We are very open to getting information from our customers.”
    Many of the items found inside are handmade from Maine residents, adding local flavor to the charm of the business.
    One of the higher-end products inside the store is a Fortress Crawford wood/coal stove in perfect working condition. Another interesting item is sign taken from Loring Air Force Base warning visitors, “Cameras are prohibited around aircraft on the base.”
    One of his prized possessions, though, is a World War I United States Army cannon heater.
    “You will probably only see others like this in a museum,” he said. “This heater actually saw battle in World War I.”
    Another item he won’t part with is a pristine Aroostook Railroad hat from the 1960s that has never been worn.
    The couple met through an online dating service while he was in California and she was in Pennsylvania. The two wanted to relocate to Maine and after looking at homes throughout the state, settled in the Shiretown in 2008.
    “We looked from Madawaska to Bar Harbor to Bethel,” he said. “We looked at about 42 properties, but when we got up here we settled right in.”
    The Stauffers chose to relocate to Maine to get away from the harsh city life in California, where natural disasters occurred on a far too frequent basis, he said.
    “We wanted to get the farthest away from L.A. that we could,” Ronnie said.
Houlton Pioneer Times Photo/Joseph Cyr
THIS AND THAT — Many of the rooms inside Aroostoook County Pickers feature items that can be either hung on a wall for history or used for practical purposes.
    She said Dan was “always in this place,” referring to the antique business they now own.
. “One day he called me up and I asked him ‘What did you buy now?’” she said. “He told me ‘I bought the whole store.’”
    Combing the County for gems is one of his favorite pastimes.
    “I like the selling aspect, but I love the hunt,” Stauffer said. “I like to think we are the largest antique dealer north of Bangor.”
    For more information on Aroostook County Pickers, call 538-1665 or stop in the shop, open Thursday to Monday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on 641 Highway One, Monticello.