CARIBOU, Maine — Joseph Sleeper came to North America in 1910 with the dream of making a better life for himself. Peddling wares around the area in a backpack, he founded Sleeper’s Market four years later, and 100 years after that, the business he began is still a thriving community landmark.
Joseph Sleeper passed away in 1959 at the age of 67, but his grandchildren Joseph Sleeper Jr. II, David Sleeper and Mark Sleeper take pride in the family business and try to uphold the values it stood for 100 years ago.
“This was a neighborhood store,” emphasized Joseph Sleeper II, mentioning that there were several stores in the neighborhood. Right around the corner from where the market was erected were the potato houses that lined Limestone Street, and Sleeper’s catered to the hard workers.
“We had products that the working people needed,” David Sleeper added, and that hasn’t changed even as the store celebrates its triple-digit milestone.
The Sleeper’s founder is renowned locally for his own hard work; before the original storefront was erected, right next to where the current building resides, Joseph would travel up to New Sweden, Stockholm and Woodland with his products in a backpack before saving up enough money to purchase a horse and wagon.
His product lines included pins, needles, sewing accessories, shoe laces, shoe shine items, buttons, fabric, ladies hosiery, hats, mittens and other small housewares.
One Sleeper’s history described that during the bitter cold weather that northern Maine is known for, local farmers would invite Joseph into their homes for shelter for the night.
The second generation of owners, Nelson (better known as Ike) and Joseph Jr. took over the family business in 1957 — just in time for a major advancement in technology.
“Major advancements included the first frozen food case in the early 1960s,” one of the documented histories of Sleeper’s described. “Prior to that advancement, no ice cream was ever sold in grocery stores in the area.”
While Ike and Joseph Jr. worked to expand the products offered in the store, they maintained the traditional items folks from The County enjoy — things like smelts in the winter and even Creton.
“Creton was always a huge thing — home-made Creton,” David recalled. “I always remember my father (Ike) making it in this great big pot,” he described.
The French pork spread is one of many items that have historic roots in Caribou, hailing back to the community’s farm days. Joseph Sleeper Jr. II described that Creton was one of the many dishes created to make sure nothing on the family farm was wasted, “So as people grew away from their farms and those food traditions, they relied on the stores to carry it — and you can still find it,” he said, mentioning that blood sausage is another one of those historic food items, along with lard.
“The key is we’ve always tried to carry what our local customers want,” David said. “A lot of the population up here loves frozen smelts but this year, our smelt supplier couldn’t bring them,” he explained. Knowing that customers wanted the product, the Sleepers went out and found somebody in northern Canada to provide the frozen fish this winter.
“It’s not really the money — we might make $200 on the whole thing, but we try to carry the products that mean something,” David said. “There are a lot of food traditions up here and we try to cater to those — making sure we have what they need and keeping those traditions going as much as we can.”
Maintaining the business and its cultural heritage is one thing, but the current owners were also once just boys growing up around the store — and that brings to mind one of their first “jobs.”
“Clothespins,” David recalled with a smile. “We use to pick pins off the floor.”
Years ago, as many will remember, clothing came pinned in place, which meant all those fasteners had to be removed in order to try on the apparel — and many times, those pins ended up on the floor.
A longtime employee at Sleeper’s found a good way to make sure all those pins ended up in the pin cushion where they belonged — David says that “she used to give us a penny for every pin that we found.”
There are lots of sights the current owners recall from back in the day — like when whole sides of beef would be delivered to the store, hanging on railings in the back.
“It was always a treat to go get eggs on the weekends, to go visit the farmer and get eggs and go into a chicken coop,” Joseph II remembered.
As the sides of beef and chicken coop imagery accurately depicts, Ike and Joseph Jr. used to deal directly with the food vendors — no middle men involved. Back in 2005, Ike told the Aroostook Republican that “We had direct accounts with many of the same manufacturers our father used,” he said. “This was unheard of during the ‘70s and ‘80s, but the better buying allowed us to offer discount prices to our customers.”
Ike and Joseph Jr. ran the business for four decades until 1996, when they passed it to their progeny, but the current owners learned well from their parents and grandparents.
“You read articles that ‘businesses don’t make it in the third generation,’ and you try to prove them wrong, and ‘family businesses are tough’ and you try to prove them wrong — you kind of thrive on being the underdog and proving that it can work,” David said thoughtfully, as Joseph II nodded in agreement. They both understand that their fathers had such respect for one another, worked so well together, trusted relied on one another — “and they’re still friends,” David said. “No matter what was going on at the store, we were together a lot on the weekends for dinner — and we weren’t going to be talking about it because his mother (Doris) and my mother (Jeanne) made sure of it.”
“They always taught us that in the end, we’re still family and you move on,” he added, and that’s the same spirit that the cousins have embodied even in the most hectic times — like harvest.
Not only is Sleeper’s still connected to food traditions, they’ve been a clothing staple of the community for a century.
But even 20 or 30 years ago, clothing shopping traditions were different.
“It was a different time,” David said. “People didn’t buy clothes all year.”
Instead, major purchases came during harvest time, when family members of all ages would work to bring in the potato crop — and often they’d use those funds to basically buy their clothes for the year.
With Sleeper’s being one of the few stores open on the Sabbath, from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Sundays, the store was particularly hopping during harvest.
“We remember setting up temporary dressing rooms out of boxes downstairs,” David remembered with a chuckle. “It was crazy.”
They may not have to construct makeshift dressing rooms anymore, but the store still bustles.
During the days of Christmas Eve, Joseph II never leaves the store — but this year he had to run to the bank, and in doing so, he encountered a touching experience.
“The cars around this place … we’re not the fanciest store, and yet people still choose to shop here; it’s a choice to come here, and fortunately people still choose to shop at Sleeper’s — which is gratifying for us, and we’re proud of that,” he added.
Drawing folks to Sleeper’s is still their fresh foods and carefully selected clothing lines, and it’s the hard work of the third-generation owners that’s keeping the store a part of the local landscape in its hundredth year.
They’re even marketing the store in a way their grandfather couldn’t have dreamed — through social media.
Sleeper’s weekly emails not only connect the local community to deals at the store and area happenings — they’re read across the nation by folks who want to keep in touch with the community store; their Facebook page is speckled with messages from folks highlighting how special Sleeper’s is — and David says those messages encourage him to work even harder.
Whether through email or Facebook, folk have commented that while Caribou has changed a lot over the past century, Sleeper’s is still here — and David, Mark and Joseph II hope that their grandfather would be proud of the store’s success.
“I guess the only perspective we have is our fathers’, and we hear what they say; they’re pleased that it’s kept going and modernized where we need to,” David said. “They’re pleased that their father’s hard work paid off and kept going.”
But work for the Sleeper’s has changed over the years, as running the store is anything but a job.
“It’s become a tribute to the family, working to preserve the history of the hard work that our grandfather and our fathers put in,” Joseph II described. “You do it for tradition.”
With a business that’s as much Caribou’s history as their family history, the Sleepers are planning for a community celebration.
“With any 100th anniversary, there should be a celebration and we want to celebrate the event with the community,” Joseph II said,
“And thank everyone who got us here,” David added.
