Wes is a regular at the Sheepscot General Store. He comes in for the raw cream, sold by the pint, from a small dairy down the road. It’s hard to come by the cream, and Wes usually settles for chocolate sugared donuts and occasionally, a bag of snapea crisps. Sometimes he buys a ginger beer or a six-pack, but that’s the extent of his shopping. He’s requested to be on cream alert, leaving his number, in the hopes that he can have it in his coffee every morning.

Wes loves the cream from Maine, but hates the Maine winter. He went to Key West for a few weeks, and recently returned, with a promise to move to Florida by August, and a small turquoise earring in his left ear. He told me happily he’d made his decision to go. Unhappily, “They don’t have anything like this down there, no way to get good whole milk.” I nodded, unsure of if that’s true or not, and said, “Well, probably there’ll be access soon enough.” He agreed, commenting on how between the changing times and the amount of cows in Florida, it won’t be long now for everything to come together. I nodded again, told him I’d be seeing before he left, and he laughed loudly, both of us knowing he’ll come by every few days for the cream.

Wes’s easy-to come chuckle rattles with a history of smoking and tends to catch at the back of his throat, somewhere between the past and the present. His mustache is full, but his strawberry blonde-to-white hair is almost always covered by a baseball cap. His dark wranglers and brown bomber jacket set him slightly apart from the men and women who come into the store wearing carharts and flannels. Still, in a Whitefield line-up, he doesn’t stand out.

I moved to Whitefield this month. I’ve worked at the Sheepscot General Store for roughly four months, and before that came to the store infrequently on Friday nights, when there’s always pizza and often music or someone speaking about topics relevant to living in rural Maine, such as soil health and keeping bees. Whitefield is a town of less than 2,500 people. Perhaps surprisingly, they don’t all frequent the Sheepscot General Store. The store has been open now for four years. In the time I’ve worked there, multiple people have come to counter and told me it’s their first time in the store and that they live down in the road in the same breath. I’ve yet to ask anyone why they haven’t been in before but likely it’s a range of reasons; from not having found the time, from resistance to change, from wariness of the prices, and perhaps, from truly being unaware of its existence.

Recently, a man came into the store with his family. He walked in, looked around and announced, “I can’t believe a store like this is out here, in a place like this.” He stopped at the sandwich menu, and said it again. He was astonished, a little-to-a lot condescending, but overall, genuinely surprised. He couldn’t believe a place full of diverse items- local foods, freshly baked sourdough bread, produce from the farm on the store’s property- existed in a small town, a mere thirty minutes from his own almost equally as small, small town. His town has tourists and art galleries and a number of restaurants, and a well-established co-op that jives well with the scenery and hardly surprises anyone.

The general store is not a co-op, it is not a box store, it is not exclusively a farm-stand, and it is not a restaurant. It is a place where you can buy bulk oats, batteries, farm grown carrots and get a everything house-made corned beef reuben on rye sourdough. It’s a place where you can go to inquire about finding house-sitters at lunchtime and return at dinnertime, reporting that the recommendation was spot-on and arrangements were made. A place where someone may drop off kefir grains, just hoping someone may be interested, and a few days later, someone will show up asking about kefir grains. A place where everyone knows your name.

There are places, all over this country, some that I’ve been to, like the Big Hollow Food Co-op in Laramie, Wyoming (where you can get root beer milk, in a glass jar) and The Root Cafe in Little Rock, Arkansas (sweet potato fries!!!!), and some that I’d like to go to, like The Floyd Country Store in Floyd, VA (music and snacks, music and snacks!) and Rose’s Fine Food in Detroit, MI (living wages! portions of tips donated to charities! discounts for neighborhood locals! crybaby doughnuts!), where something like that fuzzy word community exists. There are people making food and music and happiness in the nooks and crannies of cities and coastlines and hillsides and flatlands, whether we expect it to exist or not. I think Wes will find his cream in Key West. I would start here.

All photos credited to Nora P Carr.