Ted Reinstein Presents – New England’s General Stores: Exploring an American Classic
Wednesday, November 6, 7:00 to 8:15 p.m. in the Balfour Room
Ted Reinstein, a reporter for “Chronicle,” WCVB-TV/Boston’s award-winning nightly news magazine since 1997, returns to Attleboro for a presentation on his latest book, New England’s General Stores: Exploring an American Classic!
Co-authored with Anne-Marie Dorning, an Emmy Award–winning journalist and writer, the book explores how many communities lost this neighborhood institution with the rise of chain stores, big box stores and malls. But a funny thing happened on the way to extinction: a renaissance!
Ted will share the rich and colorful history of this iconic institution, how they figured in the rise of early American commerce, why they began to fade, and why — like another New England icon, the diner — they have begun to come back and even be re-invented and re-imagined for a new era! Told with anecdotes from a variety of local landmark stores across the region, the presentation is accompanied by the award-winning photography of Art Donahue.
Books will be available for purchase and signing. Please register at the library website,
to attend this free lecture.
From the author’s website at
http://tedreinstein.com/new-englands-general-stores/:
The general store is literally as old as America itself. It harkens back to a simpler time and a more innocent and rural nation. It conjures a country-like place where kids come in to by penny candy, and adults to buy everything from swaths of fabric, to fresh vegetables, to four-penny nails. It was a place to pick up mail, the newspaper, and perhaps tarry a bit on a cold, winter’s morning to chat over a cup of coffee and a warm wood stove. Long before “Cheers,” the general store was the vital and inviting heart of a community, where everyone not only knew your name, but how you took that coffee, how many kids you had, and how’s your dad doing, anyway? And in tough times, it was a place that often treated customers like family, extending credit when no one else would.
In short, the general store was real-life Norman Rockwell—deeply woven into America’s cultural identity, an integral part of the nation’s self-portrait from its earliest days. But over the last 50 years, many of New England’s general stores, competing with behemoths like Wal-Mart and Target, began to disappear. But then a funny thing happened: people really missed them. And in many towns, decided to hold onto them.