Neighbors

Snowman’s Is Orland’s Always-Open Store
By Katherine Williams

By one very short measure, Snowman’s Grocery is the one business in town that has operated with the same owners the longest.

Doug and Charlotte Snowman, owners of Snowman’s Grocery the last 32 years, stand with the store help: son Allan Snowman, far right, and 20-year employee Holly Burk, sitting. Staff Photo by Katherine Williams

That short measure is the distance from the front door out to the middle of Route 46, technically putting Snowman’s Grocery on the Orland side of the Orland-Bucksport line—just.

A longer aspect of the owners’ commitment to the community is the 32 years that Doug and Charlotte Snowman have had it. Other businesses may have been open for longer, but not under continuous ownership.

Not a day has passed in the 32 years, Charlotte Snowman points out, that the store has been closed.

Not for Christmases, not for the ice storm of 1998, not for the day four years ago when Doug Snowman had a heart attack.

From 6:30 in the morning until 10 at night, Snowman’s Grocery serves hot food and sells everything else typical of a country store.

“I wish we would close earlier in the evening,” Charlotte Snowman said. “But Doug said that the previous owner was always open until 10, so we will always be open until 10, too.”

The Snowmans, who live next door to the store, have stayed in business 32 years because they do business the way the local people like.

Customers come from near and far. They are as close as across Route 46, Wardwell Contracting’s maintenance garage (“I can have on the grill what the men want before they walk in the door,” Charlotte said of the store’s take-out lunch traffic). And they come from as far as Penobscot.

Jean Gross does, at least. Close to once a week, she stops in for a slice a pizza that she takes home to husband James.

“Since 1970, at least,” Gross said as she paid for her pizza last week. “Once I brought it home, more than 30 years ago, and he said how good it was. He always says, ‘When did I have my last pizza?’ so I come here.”

Those who wait on customers are always the same: Doug, Charlotte, their grown son Allan and the hired help, Holly Burk. She has been working with the Snowmans for 20 years.

The Snowmans bought the store in 1970 after Esther Johnson, the previous owner, pressed Doug for a long time to buy it. Doug had been working in the St. Regis paper mill in Bucksport for 11 years, and knew he didn’t want a career in that industry.

Besides, his father had been owner of the Orland Market, at the center of the village along Castine Road, since before he was born. The Orland Market first opened in 1860.

Living above the store allowed him to see what having the store closed on Sundays did to a shopkeeper.

“I’d watch my father go up and down the stairs 500 times on a Sunday, because someone always came knocking on the door for something,” he said. “I would just rather keep our store open, all the time.”

Sundays, the Snowmans open at 9 a.m.—just as the Johnsons before them had.

Both Charlotte and Doug grew up in Orland, knowing each other through school. They married in Orland’s Methodist church 41 years ago.

They bought the store the first week of September, 32 years ago.

“We’ve made a living and raised our family through this,” Charlotte said. “Two boys, Terry and Allan. Our boys used to run around and get sodas and candy, and now our grandchildren (ages 12, 11 and 7) are doing the same thing.”

Two more reasons why the Snowmans are acquainted with most of the families in town are because Doug drove a schoolbus for 15 years, and Charlotte was the town clerk for seven years, into the early ‘80s.

Before the store was Johnson’s Grocery, it was a barroom in the 1930s. When the Snowmans added on one of three additions, they found a 1929 penny in the floor and an empty whiskey bottle tucked into a wall they replaced.

The Snowmans have lodged thousands upon thousands of hours in the store, which has retained its hardwood floors and wainscoting on the walls and ceilings.

“We had one tourist come in this summer, who said that the store smelled like his grandmother’s old house, that we should never change.”

They haven’t changed the hours in 32 years, and it’s unlikely anything else will change.

After all, from Charlotte’s perspective, every day is different, she says.

“There is always something that needs fixing,” she said.

Then she added: “We enjoy the customers. That’s why Doug really doesn’t want to retire. He still wants to be here two or three hours a day.

“For one thing, he’d miss the Wardwell boys coming down.”