General Store

HANA, Hawaii - About 3:30 every afternoon, the Hertzes, Avises, and Budgets - a veritable red and white wave of compacts, convertibles, SUVs, and generic four-doors - surge out of town carrying thousands of day-trippers back to their glittering resorts in central and western Maui. They have experienced one of the highlights of any Hawaiian vacation - the drive along the Hana Highway, a 55-mile serpent of a road that runs past mountains half-hidden by mist, lava rocks pummeled by surf, slopes of giant green ferns, gardens of tropical plants in vibrant colors, and waterfalls tumbling out of rain forests.

Spend 45 years in retail and you'll see just about everything. And over the years, Reba Weiner and the General Store have seen the likes of performers Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Liberace, and Tony Curtis. Whether window-shopping or sent by a local concierge, they came to the store on 20th Street near Rittenhouse Square for the same reason as thousands of schoolchildren, harried parents and passersby: a kooky, eclectic inventory that is part five-and-dime, part antiques and jewelry, part boardwalk, and all neighborhood institution.

Fine food, fabulous wines and flickering candlelight - for decades, the venerable Dilworthtown Inn has been one of Chester County's premier dining destinations. Now, with the opening of the Blue Pear Bistro next door last month - a general store turned casual 75-seat restaurant - the famed colonial-era inn has a dressed-down yet stylish younger sibling. "One is absolutely fine dining," says Jim Barnes. "The other, the Blue Pear, has a menu that's affordable and reads simple but with components that are quite complex.

There are a few things folks can count on when they walk into the town's general store. The wind chimes will tinkle when the air pushes through the mesh door. The floorboards will creak at even the most cautious footstep. And Gerald Gordon, Lumberville's part-time postmaster, will be sorting the mail - just as he has done for all of the 28 years that he has owned the store. Since 1835, the Lumberville Store has been the home of the local post office, which serves residents of the hamlet along the Delaware Canal in Solebury.

Dale Frens enjoys a moment of reflection as he rocks on the veranda of the general store in the historic village of Sugartown. A quiet man with a shock of strawberry-blond curls, Frens has designed rehabilitation plans for dilapidated old gristmills, historic homes and museums, and National Register sites such as Sugartown. Frens, 52, a restoration architect, said the little crossroads village in Willistown Township has occupied much of the last 20 years of his life. Although he is "leery" of saying which project he is most proud of, "we're sitting on one of them right now," he says, speaking of the veranda.

In Somers Point, a summer breeze whistles off the bay across an open-air counter laden with cold littlenecks on the half-shell and bowls of creamy chowder brimming over, much as it has for 29 years at "Smitty's" Clam Bar. In Cape May Point, not far from the watchful gaze of the old WWII Lookout Tower, good things are perking again at the recently revived 1930s-era general store — now called The Red Store — thanks to Deanna Ebner and her...

For weeks - against odds even greater than those of winning the record lottery drawing - everyone in Birchrunville kept the secret. So when Anna May Day officially arrived April 29, the guest of honor was so in the dark that even the arrival of a four-horse-team carriage in her driveway did not fuel her suspicions. By the time she had been transported in the carriage, owned by resident Clarkson Addis, to downtown Birchrunville and realized she had a Vincent Township police escort, thank you, it dawned on Anna May Houck (nee Slemmer)

This is not a story about a new policy, a new trend or a radical change. On the contrary, little has changed in this tiny village of maybe 400 people. There are still more 300-year-old stone farmhouses here than condos or developments of vinyl-sided homes. Nor is this a story about how the little post office here - the center of life for 130 years - was shut down without a second glance. Nor is it a story about how the residents lost their zip code, 18913, and had to drive 10 minutes to Doylestown to buy stamps from a postmaster who doesn't know their names or want to chat about his grandchildren as Barney Byrne does.

In this village on the Delaware River, the tiny post office in the general store is a hub of the community. It's a place to pick up the mail, bump into the neighbors, grab a cup of coffee, and chat. So when the U.S. Postal Service threatened to close the place, residents rallied to save it. And won. The post office, which has run out of the Lumberville Store since 1835, will stay open, and the man who sorts the mail will get a raise. Gerald Gordon, the part-time postmaster for 28 years, had threatened to resign his $10,000-a-year post if he did not get a raise.

William E. West, 68, of West Philadelphia, a former post office worker who owned two Philadelphia shops before opening a janitorial firm, died Tuesday, July 26, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania after a car accident earlier in the month. Mr. West was president and general manager of New Life Service Inc., which he began as Associated Services Co. 31 years ago, a son, William E. II, said. The firm now employs 68 workers, who clean mostly medical offices, the son said.

HANA, Hawaii - About 3:30 every afternoon, the Hertzes, Avises, and Budgets - a veritable red and white wave of compacts, convertibles, SUVs, and generic four-doors - surge out of town carrying thousands of day-trippers back to their glittering resorts in central and western Maui. They have experienced one of the highlights of any Hawaiian vacation - the drive along the Hana Highway, a 55-mile serpent of a road that runs past mountains half-hidden by mist, lava rocks pummeled by surf, slopes of giant green ferns, gardens of tropical plants in vibrant colors, and waterfalls tumbling out of rain forests.

Ruth Kilmer, living without electricity in her cold, dark house in Solebury Township, Bucks County, since Sandy hit Monday, has resorted to melting ice on her outdoor gas grill for drinking water. She uses bottles of well water filled before the storm to flush her toilet. And she fires up the grill to heat milk, boil water for coffee, and warm up a bagel for breakfast. "Thank God I can shower and clean up" at work, Kilmer, a nurse at St. Mary Medical Center and Abington Memorial Hospital, said outside her home Thursday.

In Somers Point, a summer breeze whistles off the bay across an open-air counter laden with cold littlenecks on the half-shell and bowls of creamy chowder brimming over, much as it has for 29 years at "Smitty's" Clam Bar. In Cape May Point, not far from the watchful gaze of the old WWII Lookout Tower, good things are perking again at the recently revived 1930s-era general store — now called The Red Store — thanks to Deanna Ebner and her...

WEST DANVILLE, Vt. - At Hussey's General Store in Windsor, Maine, offbeat merchandise is a specialty. The sign out front says so, in no uncertain terms: "Guns, Wedding Gowns, Cold Beer. " At the Mansfield General Store in Connecticut, it's not just basic groceries, take-out sandwiches, and antiques. They have live music twice a week, including flamenco guitarists on Friday afternoons. At Hastings Store in West Danville, Vt., co-owner Garey Larrabee is also the postmaster and cook, running a full-service post office and cooking up doughnuts for the regulars who come in to catch up on gossip and pick up mail, lingering around the wall of boxes with the three-digit dial combination locks.

William E. West, 68, of West Philadelphia, a former post office worker who owned two Philadelphia shops before opening a janitorial firm, died Tuesday, July 26, at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania after a car accident earlier in the month. Mr. West was president and general manager of New Life Service Inc., which he began as Associated Services Co. 31 years ago, a son, William E. II, said. The firm now employs 68 workers, who clean mostly medical offices, the son said.

Ann Bolles Johnson, 80, who operated Johnson's General Store in Florence with her husband for 35 years, died of cancer Wednesday, May 11, at Samaritan Hospice in Mount Holly. Mrs. Johnson grew up in Teaneck, N.J. After earning a bachelor's degree from Beloit (Wis.) College, she was a flight attendant for American Airlines. In 1953, she married Harry K. Adcock. He died in February 1960, leaving her with four sons younger than 6. She met Nils Johnson when a friend asked him and other members of his barbershop quartet to serenade her to cheer her up. They married in July 1960.

Ruth Brander, 97, of Haddon Township, longtime co-owner of the former South Jersey fabric shop Sewitorium and an area artist, died Saturday, Jan. 1, at her home. While her husband handled the finances at Sewitorium, the couple's fabric store on Haddon Avenue in Camden, Mrs. Brander was the "idea person," their daughter Gylda Bernstein said. Mrs. Brander handled the store's displays, layout, and advertising. She was usually at the front of the store, greeting customers and ringing them up. After she retired in 1975, her husband and daughter continued to run the store and a year later moved to a larger space in Cherry Hill.

Want to buy a historic general store in the quaint little village of Guthriesville in East Brandywine Township, near Downingtown? Do they have a deal for you. And the price is right, but there's a catch. The Guthriesville General Store, built in 1869, went on sale on June 26 for a mere $10, but buyers really need another $1.3 million or a letter of credit in that amount. The general store, which has actually been closed for some years, is on the market as the result of a long dispute between the Wawa convenience store chain and local preservationists.

Everyone who cares about the fate of the historic Guthriesville General Store seems to be moving slowly, tentatively, toward an agreement to put the building up for sale for eight weeks at most to see if anyone wants to take it over, preserve it, and restore it. That was the consensus of some of those who attended a five-hour closed meeting on Feb. 5 in Guthriesville. The meeting was conducted by the Army Corps of Engineers, in an attempt to resolve the conflicting claims of residents and preservation groups on one hand and the Wawa chain, which wants to demolish the building and put up a super Wawa with 12 gas pumps, on the other.

Built in 1869, the former Guthriesville General Store, an off-white building adorned with teal shutters and decorative trim, predates the era of strip malls and convenience stores. The fate of the store, once a post office and a restaurant but closed for several years, has been the subject of a long-running dispute between the Wawa chain and some neighbors and preservationists because Wawa wants to build a 12-pump gas station and store on the site. Wawa has been trying to build on the site since 2001, but nothing has happened because of local opposition and environmental concerns over a stream there that brought the Army Corps of Engineers into the dispute.