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Hardware Store in Oxford County to Close After 114 Years of Doing Business

John Longley (r.) removes sign on the eve of the store's closure.
Susan Sharon/MPBN

NORWAY, Maine — L. M. Longley and Son has been a mainstay on Main Street in Norway, Maine for 114 years; the hardware and plumbing business spanned three family generations, survived a fire that wiped out most of the downtown in 1894, served customers who couldn't always afford to pay their bills and stocked its shelves with items that couldn't be found anywhere else.

But as 2015 draws to a close, L. M. Longley and Son is closing its doors for good.
 

There's an old saying around Norway, If you can't find it at Longley's, forget it, you probably don't need it. But now loyal customers will have to look elsewhere. Owner John Longley, now in his late 80s, retired last month because of health problems. And his son, Jonathan, is not interested in taking over an old-fashioned business that can no longer compete with big box stores.

"I guess one of the most prohibitive factors here is that we couldn't purchase say a water heater, for example, for less than what they're selling it for on the floor of a box store," Longley says. "So, it wasn't lucrative to stay in business that way."

Longley's was known for selling everything under the sun: cast iron bathtubs, stoves, lumber, farming implements, even dynamite. During the brief time he worked in the store, Jon Longley remembers a farmer coming in and asking him for a Number two bull ring.

"It took me awhile to figure out what he was getting at — if he wanted something for a toilet, if it was something for a kitchen or if it was livestock."

Longley says another employee explained that it was a nose ring for a bull and told him exactly where to find it up in the third- floor attic. Dependable, personable service was an important value for the business. And Longley says if the store didn't have an item you needed someone would make it for you in the metal shop. downstairs in the basement is the plumbing shop managed by Oran Donald.

Oran Donald  managed the plumbing shop.
Credit Susan Sharon/MPBN
Oran Donald, 71, managed the plumbing shop. Worked at store for 48 years.

Susan Sharon: "So where would you normally stand?"
Oran Donald: "I would normally stand right here. There's my cash register here. My add machine. This is where I'd be."

Donald KL worked at Longley's for 48 years and says his mother got him the job while he still had several months left to serve in the Navy.

"She saw the help wanted ad and she knew I was getting out and she wanted me to have a job, you know?" says Donald. "And they waited until I got out of the Navy and then I came to work right here."

Donald says over the years he made lasting friendships with employees and customers. He loved his job and the work ethic which was conveyed to employees in unconventional ways. Take the dead rat that Jon's grandfather, Forest Longley suspended from the ceiling in the basement.

"He hung it up there to remind the workers that if they didn't keep their nose to the grindstone they would look like that, you know," Donald says.

SS: "A dead rat?"
OD: "A dead rat. (laughs) They would not survive."

This week about two dozen current and former employees got together at the store to share what they affectionately called their last supper. Stan Bumpus stopped by to thank Longley's for giving him a career. Bumpus was a high school apprentice in the metal shop back in the 1960s and went on to start his own auto restoration business.
 

Vintage photo of the L.M. Longley and Sons Exterior.
Credit Susan Sharon/MPBN
Vintage photo of the L.M. Longley and Sons Exterior.

"What I learned that I could do with a piece of sheet metal and what I learned in work ethic and what I learned in life skills was all affected by here," Bumpus says. "So, thank you very much for that opportunity and for the life skills that this place has given me."

In going through his father's ledgers, Jon Longley says he came across outstanding customer debts from the 70s, long since forgiven. His father, he said, liked to give people the benefit of the doubt. And that's something that likely won't be forgotten.