Dunstable Village: The General Store and Post Office

I remember when the "store" in Dunstable was in the building that is Pete Day's house now. It was owned and operated by B.H. Brow. He was known by almost everybody as "B.H." I think even his children called him that. He invariably wore a tan colored frock and chewed a toothpick.

The Post Office was also in this building. The Post Office window, for conducting business, was to the left as you entered the store. Two big windows were in the Post Office. Viola Brow was postmaster.

The driveway went all the way around the building. Various signs advertising different products were nailed on the building. One that I can see in my "mind's eye" was "Blackstone Cigars." The gasoline pump was at the corner of the property next to the street. So far as I know, that was the first commercial gasoline pump in Dunstable. Hazel Brow remembers pumping gasoline from it, the brand of gasoline sold was Tydol-Veedol. I wish I could remember the price per gallon.

Then the town scales were between the front of the store and the street. So far as I remember, the most commonly weighed material was a load of loose hay, although I suppose bark might also have been weighed. Bark was sold to tanneries to be used in the leather tanning process. One of the appointed offices annually filled by the selectmen was that of Measurers of Wood and Bark.

Grain was sold, and to get grain you drove around to the west side of the building to a big sliding door, where the bags of grain were kept. The grain had come to the Dunstable freight station by train.

Inside the store was a big pot-bellied stove which burned wood -- this kept the whole building pretty cozy. In cold weather, seats around the stove were at a premium on the basis of "first come, first served." Some of the men who would sit here and play checkers, were Fred Fletcher and John Blodgett and Herm Parker.

"Herm" Parker married the daughter of Isaac Kendall. She was born in the same house that I was born in on High Street.

Beside the pot-bellied stove was a big molasses barrel. This was so that a molasses jug could be filled as quickly in the winter time as in the summer time.

A cash register was on the counter, in back of which shelves filled with groceries awaited purchase. Overhead hung cured hams of various sizes, and in back, on the floor was a barrel of salt pork, soaking in brine. Shoes and rubbers and overshoes could also be purchased.

In the summer time on a Saturday night, a high point for me, was to go to the store for a cone of ice cream, which had been made up at the farm by the Brow girls. Frances, Beatrice, Viola, Maude and Hazel, all helped.

One time a man named Elsworth was walking by the store, and one or more of the girls said something to tease him. He picked up a rock and threw it, smashing the Post Office window. His fear of the law, Constable Charles D. Glover, was so great that he ran all the way home and hid. He lived at the big farm on the curve on Mill Street.