The Country Store in West Mansfield, Mass.
The Country Store
Owner: The Zecher family
Location: School and Balcom streets, West Mansfield, Mass.
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Type of Business: Variety Store
Employees: 25, including part-time positions
Annual Sales: $2 million
If you’re convinced, as some comedian might say, that nostalgia ain’t what
it used to be, you haven’t visited The Country Store. If you had, you’d realize
that early Americana is alive and well and living comfortably in the tiny village
of West Mansfield, Mass.
Among its other assets, The Country Store is a time machine. Step inside and
you’re transported back to another century, complete with artifacts like penny
candy, sturdy old cash registers and signs that advertise items like “towels
and soap: 5 cents per night per guest.”
And it’s all bathed in a faint, woodsy aroma that evokes days gone by. Owner
Don Zecher smiles at the thought while agreeing that there’s something in the
air that bespeaks early, rural America, even to younger folks whose memories
don’t carry them much further back than the Reagan era.
“Whatever it is, you know exactly where you are. Maybe it’s a combination
of fresh coffee and spices,” Zecher said, citing just two of the myriad products
that attract shoppers and browsers to the store complex from throughout southeastern
New England.
And a complex it is: one main building, containing a series of additions the
Zecher family has appended over the past 40 years; plus a separate candle shop
and another building across the street that houses the store’s line of furniture
and grandfather clocks.
And it’s all authentic. The front section of the store was built in 1849,
and served as a variety store and village post office through generations of
owners. The original, two-story building was ravished by fire in 1911, and rebuilt
as a single-story structure.
It stayed that way until 1960. It seems that Don Zecher’s dad, Paul, was in
charge of leasing operations for the post office department back in those days.
As such, he was familiar with the tiny West Mansfield office-cum-variety store,
and he purchased the property that year with an eye toward restoring its original
19th-century ambience.
Everyone was doubtful about the wisdom of running a variety store in so remote
a locale, Don Zecher recalled.
But Paul Zecher persisted, The Country Store was born, and people have been
getting there from all over the landscape ever since. The post office remained
in business for another five years until the postmistress retired and moved
across the street into the Balcom House, now part of The Country Store property.
In his youth, Don Zecher had no plans for a mercantile life. He majored in
biology and minored in chemistry at Brown University, earning his degree in
1953. After college, he joined the Army and served as a laboratory technician,
receiving his discharge in 1956. He spent eight years in the pharmaceutical
industry before joining the family business in the early 1960s.
“I was interested in hands-on work, and felt this was a good opportunity,”
he said.
And hands on was what he got. Over the years, the Zechers have erected “five
or six” additions, doing much of the work themselves. As a result, the present
building seems to wander to and fro, and it’s not hard to get lost among a series
of charming nooks and crannies, all filled with intriguing items – from mailboxes
to china to postcards and hardware and gourmet foods.
The appointments sustain the old-time flavor of the place. One wall is lined
with drawers and display cases salvaged from an old pharmacy. Around the corner
stands a vintage soda fountain, also transplanted from an old drug store. A
stained glass window stares down piously from above.
In the early years, the store was open 12 hours a day.
“The only vacation we took in the ’60s was the time when everyone closed down
(for summer vacation),” Zecher recalled. “But that didn’t last. We’ve been open
seven days a week for nearly 20 years.”
And they have been eventful years. In the early ’60s, the store netted $90
a day. Now, The Country Store grosses about $2 million a year.
It’s still very much a family venture. Besides Don, still president but working
an abbreviated week, there are sons Eric and Bret and daughter Joanne who handle
most of the operational details. In the early years, the Zechers picked up inventory
ideas by attending trade shows and visiting gift shops – “the kind we wanted
to emulate,” Zecher said. Now, “the salesmen find us.”
Zecher recalled that his father fretted in those early years about cultivating
new customers.
“The old people would come in, and Dad wondered what would happen when they
were gone.”
He needn’t have fretted.
“Lots of people came here with their children,” he said. “Now those youngsters
are bringing in their children.”
The Country Store is still pleasantly remote, but not so isolated as in its
formative years.
Routes 95 and 495 roll past a few miles away, and several times a day an Acela
train goes roaring by on tracks adjacent to the parking lot. The train, of course,
poses no problem. All you need to do is blink and you’ll miss it. Then you can
slide comfortably back into a gentle era that remains alive and well in this
quiet corner of New England.
Dick Sherman is a contributing writer to PBN.
