Ted Reinstein

writer, speaker, journalist for WCVB-TV/Boston’s award-winning Chronicle, and playwright; former television host; author of three nonfiction books on New England topics

In the seventies, eighties, and nineties, many small towns around New England saw an influx of newcomers. Often from metropolitan and suburban New York and Boston, people transplanted to places such as Banard and Pittsfield in Vermont, Hope and Whitefield in Maine, and Harrisville and South Acworth in New Hampshire. For many, it was about finding a place that seemed healthier in which to raise families. For others, it was simply about recapturing a certain quality of life that still seemed possible in small-town New England, where it never entirely left. Where small-town greens still framed the sacred and the secular – a church, a library, a general store – and where, in each one, they still took the time and the interest to remember your name; to ask about your children, your trip to Florida, your aging mom; and to say, “Hey, we missed you at the pancake breakfast Saturday – everything okay?”

You don’t get that at the Safeway near the subdivision. But you do at the South Acworth Village Store, for example. And at a dozen or more others like it.

from New England’s General Stores: Exploring an American Classic by Ted Reinstein (Globe Pequot Press)