Cooler weather, no tornadoes and elbow room drew an Oklahoma couple to northern Maine three years ago.
Entrepreneurs Ashley and Andrew Sheets, who have owned restaurants and left a thriving real estate business in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, put an offer on a home along Route 2 in Dyer Brook before seeing it or making the two-thousand-mile trek to Maine.
“Broken Bow had become a tourist town and had gotten so crowded, it went from 3,000 people to 20,000,” Ashley said. “It was good for me because I was in real estate, but it also became not what we moved there for, we got to the point that we wanted to slow down. “
As things evolved far beyond what they could have imagined in Maine, the Sheets are now the temporary keepers of historic Maine tales surrounding the items in their shop, The Rummage.
These rescuers of treasures, destined for landfills by families no longer interested in items dating back a century or more, have fallen in love with winter, the people and the stories the collections hold.
On Friday, Andrew popped into the store with lunch he had prepared for Ashley. He had good news: the old home they recently bought right next door to The Rummage had water flowing through the new heating system.
Now, just the way it was meant to be, the 1947 store, the 1937 filling station and the 1898 home have been reunited with one owner, Ashley said
“I slept in my own bedroom for the first time last night,” she said, adding that some of the vintage art from the shop might just end up on her own walls.
When they first moved to Maine, they had no idea they would buy the iconic Dyer Brook General Store, closed since 1969. But the rustic building, still packed with treasures and local memories of penny candy and beloved owner Jiggs McNally, caught their attention.
They bought it not knowing what they would do with the store.
The vacant store had been used as storage and at first they thought they would donate the contents. But when they started digging through everything, they found antiques buried in all of the household treasures, Ashley said.
“I said, ‘We could do an antique shop. It’s already got the shelving and I love antiques,’” she said.
They opened during the 2024 total solar eclipse with the inventory that was already in the shop. At first, Ashley thought she would be spending a lot of time on the road going to estate sales, but discovered that many older Mainers have vast collections that their children don’t want, and they don’t know what to do with them.
“They come to me and ask if I will buy it and a lot of times I do because they have interesting things,” she said. “Most of the stuff walks through the front door. It feels good to save things from going to the trash.”
The Rummage regularly holds “name your own price, a dime or a dollar” sales, especially for books and vinyl records.
“Whenever I buy one book or one vinyl record, I buy 100,” she said. “I end up with way more than I can handle.”
Last year, they bought the entire contents of a three-story home that had been in a family for 100 years.
“Andrew looked at me — ‘What?’ — when I said, ‘Let’s buy it all,’” she said.
On any given day a steady stream of people visits the store. Some are there to reminisce and be reminded of another time in their life, like those excited to find a bowl full of potato basket tickets for $1 each. Browsers find china, silver, art, books, old typewriters, furniture, yarn and even handcrafted rings Andrew makes out of antique silverware.
Others come looking for rustic things like tools, and others love Pyrex which seems to sell as fast as it comes in. The nearby Smyrna Amish are often looking for luggage, boat oars and dishes, Ashley said.
On Friday, a woman was looking for an old interior baluster.
“I’ll put you in my book,” Ashley said.
She keeps a list of what people are looking for and often connects people to the item, like her neighbor who wanted an antique dress form.
While at someone’s house to buy some books, she saw a dress form in the corner.
“I have somebody looking for one,” she told the woman who had been hoping to sell it and she connected the two.
Then there’s the Pickin Shed inside the old filling station out behind the shop that holds the “rusty dusty stuff” that’s priced as “just make an offer.”
“It gives people that true picking experience and they find treasures all the time,” she said. “I’ll even look surprised, ‘You found that out there?’”
Best of all, they have found a home, friends and a life they hadn’t known previously.
On Friday, when Ashley stepped out of the shop for a minute, Andrew smiled.
“She’s really something, isn’t she?”
