One of the perks of living in a seasonal town is watching the variety that the ever-changing seasons bring, including the relative peace and quiet of winter's cold, snowy, slowed activity. The summer months bring the new or returning faces and increased, sometimes frenetic, energy of nature and commerce. The shuttered gift shops reopen along with the seasonal restaurants, and the quiet is replaced with bustle. I'm partial to the local shops that do their best to stay open in the quiet months, like The Mung Bean.

Gift shops, with their bright and shiny merchandise, can be magnetic for children, though not so much for those beyond the acquisitive stage, as I have been for decades. But I associate some wonderful and memorable local gift shops with my childhood and young adulthood: Nute's 5 & 10, the Smiling Cow with its beautiful mineral collection, and the Red Dragon.

I've been meaning to write about That Red Dragon Gift Shop for about a year now. In the 1950s and 1960s, it was one of my favorite places in the Harbor for potential toy purchases or just to roam its aisles looking at its huge stock. In my years it was on the By-Way on the location of the Boathouse Bistro. It was a charming building, sided with logs and with an inviting porch lined with rustic log railings. The number of photos we have of it at its two locations testifies to its popularity.

Its Origins

A man named Pettingill started the shop in Portland in the 1880s. He sold to Sarah E. Bell before 1931, though I don't know when. The boom times of the 1920s seems like a likely time before the Depression. She opened her Red Dragon shop on Boothbay Harbor's Commercial Street at the north corner of Boothbay House Hill Road, a location that allowed her to have entrances on two sides. A wooden red dragon on its exterior was an identifying and attractive feature. Sarah was a region summer resident, wintering in New Hampshire and later Florida. When here she lived above the gift shop as long as it was on Commercial Street.

Sarah Bell's ads in the 1930s directories show that her wares included handmade jewelry, rugs, linens and pottery. But there was far, far more. Jean Huskins Chenoweth, who was good enough to write up her late 1930s and 1940s childhood in Boothbay Harbor, said, "It always smelled of fir balsam pillows. I bought maple sugar candy there for my mother and I loved to look at all the many colored yarns although I didn't knit then." Jean's memories will run as articles in this column eventually. Lester Barter, born 1906, loved the smell too; he and his plumber father Miles did all the shop's plumbing. The accompanying photo shows the shop's mesmerizing and wide-ranging display on the sidewalk—gourds, brooms, baskets, toy boats, toy trucks, dolls, glassware, large ceramic pots, and more — sure to draw people in. It was truly an eclectic mecca in this small tourist town.

To The By-Way

The January 1945 waterfront fire in the broad vicinity of Fisherman's Wharf badly gutted the inside of the Red Dragon shop on Commercial and burnt the roof off. The fire started in the bowling alley at its former site further south and also destroyed the Boothbay Register, Poole's Cash Market, Campbell-Built Products Sail Loft, and Ralph Scott's boat storage. That disastrous fire prompted Sarah Bell to move the shop to the By-Way.

The By-Way's log buildings, the bowling alley and the building west across from it, were built by O. P. Swope, the developer of Appalachee, about 1927 or 1928. Charlie Rowe and Leslie Marr, burnt out at the bowling alley further south, bought the building we've known as the bowling alley for 70 years. Sarah took over the west building for her business, both business refugees from the Commercial Street fire.

Next time: the Red Dragon on the By-Way.