Today, Shutesbury is largely a bedroom community, with its residents commuting outside of town to go grocery shopping or get gas for their cars. But I remember a time when people rarely left town. Instead, just about everything they needed could be found at Dihlmann’s General Store.
My grandparents, Herman Dihlmann and Fanny Rehorka, opened the store long before I was born in 1957. After purchasing the corner lot on Wendell Road in 1925, where the post office is today, they moved a building across the Town Common and transformed it into a general store. Though I never got a chance to meet them, I often think about the lasting impact they had on our small town, creating what was the community center for many years.
My earliest memories of the store are from when I was 4 years old. By that time, my mother, Mary Fisher Dihlmann, had taken over running the store. Though my father, Karl Dihlmann, would help, especially on weekends, he was also a schoolteacher. It wasn’t possible to make a living just by running a general store.
Day after day, from 7 in the morning until 9 o’clock at night, customers would walk through the door, triggering the gentle clanging of the metal rectangle that hung on top. My mother would always be the first to greet them with, “How can I help you today?”
Life was much about routine back then. Chicopee Provision regularly stopped in to bring us meat, and I remember watching my mother saw through huge chunks of it. She was sort of a woman of all trades. She was also the postmaster, and took great pride in her work, stamping every letter by hand and making a point to call households individually when their packages arrived at Christmastime.
Each weekend, my father and I would travel to see “Stan the vegetable man” in Hadley, bringing back wooden flats of vegetables. Everyone in town knew Saturday was pick-up day, and would come out to get the produce while it was fresh.
I had the very important job on Saturdays of calling every senior in town for their grocery order. I’d pack the food into cardboard boxes, deliver them, come back with their money and provide them with change. They needed help, and I felt very privileged to do that job.
Dihlmann’s General Store was really the hub of the community. The fire department once produced a calendar with the birthdays of Shutesbury’s residents, and my mother would make up a card for each one. She’d carefully draw lines so that there would be enough room for each customer who came in to sign the birthday cards, as well as sympathy cards for more somber occasions.
The tide of customers ebbed and flowed with the seasons. Memorial Day was sort of like Christmas, when you’d welcome the town’s part-time residents back after not seeing them for months. Even in the winter, though, people knew the general store would always be open. Those who had cross-country skis or snowshoes would make the trek to gather with friends. What else was there to do during a snowstorm?
On a day-to-day basis, my two sisters and I would stamp all the cans with silver stampers, invariably getting black ink all over the place. We helped check customers out, bag groceries, rotate the milk and egg deliveries, remove perished food and stock the shelves with fresh food, and scoop ice cream.
The ice cream bar, with its big yellow and black booths, was a huge attraction in the summer. I remember the hard work it took to make a banana split, which cost less than a dollar. Our three-scoop ice cream cones only cost a quarter.
Outside, there was a bicycle rack for the children who would ride up, sit in the ice cream booths and enjoy penny candy. The general store was a great place for children, and there were all sorts of things for children to do in town, especially through 4-H, where they’d learn how to sew or emboss leather with stamps.
Since the store was entirely family-run, with the exception of Ruth Weaver, who was my mother’s postal assistant, we worked hard. In between everything she did inside the store, my mother would run outside to operate the two gas pumps, and would hurry over to our attached house to start dinner. I think my parents invented the word “multitasking.”
But we also played hard. My building blocks were canned goods, and there was much more emphasis on imaginative play. My girlfriends and I would often put a blanket on the roof and watch people go in and out of the store and post office.
Once a month, Mr. Drumbeck would deliver a load of candy, but he’d also come especially for our birthday parties. All the children would be able to take one of the largest bars, or sometimes even two.
The store flourished in the 1960s, but eventually closed in the late 1970s. The structure of the building, now just the post office, has changed significantly. The post office used to represent just a small sliver in comparison to the store.
Dihlmann’s General Store certainly taught my family the value of hard work, and of being an integral part of the community. Looking back, I cherish the memories of the people I met by delivering groceries most of all.
Like Maude and Lydia Johnson, whose home still had a dirt floor in 1962. Lydia was incredibly talented. She made fabulous homemade bows to put on packages, and tiny rosettes. They were just masterpieces, her own kind of artwork. I can still remember her tiny, delicate hands.
And then there were the Bigelows, who were only about 4 feet tall. Their home was set up almost like a child’s house, with all the fixtures being lower. To walk into a house like that as a 5-year-old was amazing.
All of those people had a great impact on me. They were all different than who I was, and I appreciated learning about their talents, lives and history. As I think about it, that’s what’s missing in town today. At almost 61, those are the jewels of my life.