Older readers may remember when neighborhood grocery stores delivered your order to your door. For some Penobscot Bay islanders, that service is still available.
Residents of Matinicus, North Haven and Vinalhaven regularly place orders to Shaw’s Supermarket at Harbor Plaza in Rockland, and their food is boxed, put on a flight at the county airport in Owls Head, and dropped off at island air fields. That’s if weather permits, which it often doesn’t because of summer fog.
The person who makes it happen is Judy Robinson, who for the past decade has held the Shaw’s post of island food packer. So far she knows, no one else is providing this service to the islands, although other markets may pack orders for boats. At first, islanders phoned in orders; that took up so much time that most offshore customers now fax a shopping list.
One recent faxed order sheet from Vinalhaven said, “Judy, I know this is a big one. Thanks, Sylvia.” Robinson, a grandmother who graduated from high school in Union, said she has met a number of her customers – they sometimes have her paged when visiting the store in person – but Robinson has never been to any of the islands she serves. “Maybe someday,” she said, acknowledging that she gets seasick, and she isn’t a big fan of flying.
She thoroughly enjoys her contact with island people. “I get along with almost everybody.” Some customers have died, others moved to the mainland. She has watched the year-round populations decline. Vinalhaven and North Haven still have their own grocery stores. Brown’s Store on North Haven’s waterfront closed a year ago, leaving The Islander, a store near the school. The one grocery on Matinicus, a former ship’s chandler and for generations known as Young’s Store, closed several years ago, as the year-round population dipped below 50 people.
Robinson’s service is popular with many islanders, although no one says they are happy to see a local store go out of business. She has few complaints. Once a customer chewed her out for forgetting beer, but in that particular case, the customer had ordered enough other drinks that Robinson wondered how she even missed the beer. Robinson has learned a lot about different kinds of foods by filling offshore orders, including a Durkee’s dressing she described as “mustard and mayonnaise mixed together.” She wrinkled her nose.
Her customers vary from year-round Matinicus lobsterman Clayton Philbrook, who sometimes picks up his groceries with his own boat, to Mrs. Pierre S. Dupont IV of North Haven and Delaware. Her orders are flown to the island for a fee of about $8 per box airfare, plus a modest surcharge for Robinson’s personal shopping service.
Robinson recently searched the store for “preemie” diapers for a very small baby, a request from Natalie Ames of Matinicus for her son, Gardner (WWF Aug. 04). Many island shoppers use Shaw’s flyers for sale items. Bill Hoadley, proprietor of Tuckanuck Lodge Bed-and-Breakfast on Matinicus, orders a lot of bananas. “He must have a monkey out there,” Robinson joked. She selects both ripe and green ones for Hoadley. She is very selective about quality of fruits and vegetables. “If I wouldn’t buy it, it doesn’t go,” she declared. Some orders are $25 or $50, others are much more. A Georgia man building a home on Vinalhaven requested $2,000 worth of groceries. It took her hours to fill the order.
Robinson used to work Monday-Saturday, sometimes from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. She has cut back to five days per week, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. At first, she drove all the packed groceries to the Knox County Regional Airport; now the flight service picks orders up at Shaw’s. When she agreed to take the job, she said, “I’ll try, but I don’t know how good I’ll do.” She must have done well: “When I go on vacation, it takes three to do it.”