The General Store

Tom has sold the Fly Creek General Store.  We first met Tom in 2019 when Mike Heustis, who was working for us, suggested we try the deli there for sandwiches. From our house on Gulf Road the General Store was just under 10 miles away, a beautiful drive through mostly open country.  We were still in the relatively early stages of adapting to county roads rather than freeways, and hamlets separated by hills and farms rather than cities and towns bleeding directly into one another.  The General store with its two gas pumps out front sat at the intersection of County Highway 28 and County Road 26, where the flashing yellow traffic signal marked the center of Fly Creek.

The store is small and densely packed; refrigerator cases for sodas, beer and milk, shelves of canned goods with something you could make into dinner, a long row of shelves of candy and snacks, the best rack of greeting cards for miles around, and a surprisingly good tiny deli. For nine months of the year it serves locals, but there is shelf space for things tourists will want in the summer.  There are four small tables inside, seating for 12 in all, 16 if folks squeeze together on the benches.  In the warm months there are tables outside too. The aisles are minimal, just big enough to get through.  Tom mans the cash register.

Jay, who has a great gift for making friends, got to know Tom immediately.  He told Tom we had moved from California, from the Bay Area.  Tom had studied art there in the 60’s. He had lived in Santa Cruz, and his daughter was born at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto, home turf for us.  Tom and Jay swapped stories of bars and places to hear music in Santa Cruz, and the bond was made.  Tom was warm and open and made us feel like we’d been friends for years.  The deli served a fine western omelette breakfast sandwich and good coffee.  The General Store became a regular stop for us.

The towns and hamlets in this rural country are varied. Some, like Leesville, seem to still exist only because they have a few houses that haven’t fallen down yet.  Some, like Fly Creek, have a heart and a full life.  It depends a lot on the presence of a gathering place, and there are few better at sustaining community than the Fly Creek General Store.  It’s a place to share a meal, to share news and gossip, to share weather predictions and complaints.  You will find out who bought a tractor or sold one, who was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, whose niece was visiting.  Trading these bits of information is part of what turns a collection of homes into a community, and you need a place to do it, especially in the long cold months of winter.  The choice Tom made to devote precious floor space to those few tables, and the sense of hospitality he nurtures with friendly greeting and conversation, make the General Store an excellent hub. In a purple hamlet in a purple county, political discussions are non-existent or discrete.  Everyone is welcome.  Everyone is, first and foremost, a neighbor.

Tom had a stroke during the two years we were back in California, and by the time we moved into Cooperstown he was navigating those narrow aisles in a motorized wheelchair.  He stayed cheerful, but he had started looking for a buyer for the store. Some three years later, he made the sale which will close in a couple of months.  Tom is upbeat about the new owner and thinks he will maintain the character of the store. I’m pretty sure that everyone shares that hope. 

Unlike Leesville, Fly Creek is substantial – a post office, a firehouse, the offices of the Town of Otsego with its courtroom, a new restaurant, and a second hand clothing store in the space that Kim’s Cuts left vacant when Kim moved away.  The Methodist Church was started in 1835, when the hamlet still had its own school.  There’s the Fly Creek Cider Mill, now a bona fide tourist attraction and still making very good cider.  Fork Shop Road and a historic marker in front of what was once the Tin Shop tell a story of lost local industry.  There’s a vibrant historical society that meets in the old Grange Hall, with monthly speakers, often quite good and regularly drawing an audience of 20 or more on the fourth Wednesday night of the month for learning, conversation and snacks. Because Fly Creek is less than four miles from Cooperstown it has a thriving summer rental business, and it’s a good place for staff from Bassett Hospital to live year round. So even if the character of the General Store changes with the new owner, Fly Creek is a long way from the fate of Leesville.  We wish Tom well, of course, and he has certainly earned a rest. But we hope the General Store will keep knitting our neighbors together and that we’ll still be able to get a funny birthday card and a good breakfast sandwich from time to time.