It’s hard to tell how fitting it is that we lose two local icons within days of each other this past week, but our losses are certainly in keeping with the tone of the current times.
Just about any wag you come across on TV, in print, on the street, these days is repeating the refrain, “It’s going to get worse before its gets better.”
This week it’s worse.
In their own separate ways, both Muriel Havenstein and Big Dave’s convenience store were connections to earlier times; Muriel to the time when jazz was truly America’s music, and Big Dave’s to the time when the local store was equal parts newsstand and unofficial community center.
It’s painful knowing that we are never going to see Muriel again, holding court in the Maine Coast Book Shop Café on Damariscotta’s Main Street.
She may have come for the coffee, but really, she came for the company, and she took obvious pleasure in being out in the public; smiling at friendly faces, greeting friends and fans, or just being nodded to across the crowded room.
It’s hard to imagine the Healthy Kids! Chocolate Fest, or a spring Sunday on the Schooner Landing patio without her providing the live soundtrack. For years to come, those of us who did see her perform will be able to recall the experience for those who didn’t, a touchstone for us, the way the memories of the original Skidompha Library building or Belknap’s Hardware is for others.
If Muriel was a living, breathing connection to the Jazz Age, Big Dave’s was a throwback to an even earlier time; when the local country store was the center of the social scene as much as the local Grange hall.
On any given day you could attend an informal town meeting near the hotdog steamer, where the unofficial, sometimes uninformed, and sometimes the very informed, business of the town was dissected, discussed and sometimes disagreed upon.
Big Dave’s probably should have put in a giant pickle barrel so the older men could have something to sit around and play cribbage on while they swapped stories. It was like a Norman Rockwell painting with fluorescent lighting.
Maybe because he had been there so long and had served us so well and so reliably, it was hard to imagine the store would close. Big Dave’s was as much a local landmark as the currently-under-renovation Damariscotta Baptist Church Clock Tower.
While the man, Dave Page, thankfully remains among us, Big Dave’s closing quietly leaves a large void in the community that the store filled so well, that the full scope of its presence may only come to light now that the business is no longer here to fill it. The people Page helped, without publicity or applause, know.
Here’s hoping Dave Page moves on to something that makes him happy, the way Danny Dolloff was pained/relieved to move on when he sold Newcastle’s last remaining service station.
Here’s hoping it gets better soon, because this week, for the rest of us, it officially grew worse.
