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Saving Vermont鈥檚 general stores
Clayton Collins
Why was there once a general store about every seven miles in Vermont?
That might sound like the start of a joke from The Old Farmer鈥檚 Almanac. But it鈥檚 a question that Kendra Nordin Beato got to address in reporting on the decline of those rural institutions. (It has to do with horse range between stops, the EV-range equivalent of old-time transportation.)
Time was, every town in the Green Mountain State had a town hall, a church, and two country stores, Kendra learned 鈥� one for food, one for hardware. Many merged. Over time, many closed. How many remain? Hard to say.
鈥淭he Vermont Retail & Grocers Association doesn鈥檛 track those numbers because it鈥檚 hard to define what a 鈥榞eneral store鈥� is today,鈥� Kendra says. 鈥淚s it a gas station that also sells Pop-Tarts?鈥� One historian鈥檚 definition: It鈥檚 a non-corporate one-off, with its owner living inside or nearby. Some towns, Kendra writes, are finding new ways to keep those open.
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