Late on a Friday afternoon recently, we sought refuge from a soft April rain in the Route 1 North shop known as Woods to Goods.
We'd written about the store before, but not for some years, so, when we found owner J.D. Maloney working there alone that day, we seized the chance to get caught up.
And were we impressed!
Outside the store, the "Prison Blues" sign, and the1947 gray GMC panel truck parked facing the road with "Shawshank Prison" painted in big white letters on its side, are clues to the fact that J.D.'s stock-in-trade are goods made in prisons.
But that fact may be very misleading.
Inside, J.D. (that's what he's known as, he told us, without volunteering what the initials stand for), quiet and patient and soft spoken, took time to show us through the store, aisle by aisle and item by item, revealing, at our request, a little about the origin of each, and what we came away with were a sense of wonder and appreciation at: (a) the extensive size and variety of his inventory; (b) the high quality of virtually every article there, many revealing an extraordinary level of craftsmanship, and (c) all the untold stories lingering there in the air.
Some 75 percent of his goods, J.D. said, are "prison-made or prison-related," meaning that they're made by inmates in prison, or by ex-inmates who continue to practice crafts learned in prison. The rest come from craftsmen both local and in places as far afield as North Carolina, Ohio, California and Alaska.
Before we began the tour that revealed all this, we asked J.D. to refresh our memory about the shop's origins.
David Machum of York, now deceased but known to many as the founder of the York Flower Ship, had actually begun Woods to Goods about 1993, with partner Diane Loftus, J.D. reported. J.D. himself first "stumbled across it," he said, in February of 1995, at a time just after he'd just taken early retirement from work as an engineer on the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard - and after he and his brother, then an inmate in the Maine State Prison, had been putting their heads together about ways to sell items made in prisons. Machum was having some health problems; J.D.'s interest in buying resulted in a deal, as he put it, "heaven -sent for both of us."
J.D. took over almost exactly 13 years ago, on April 5, 1995.
Since then, he's increased the shop's inventory, expanded existing lines, and focused especially on model ships. Now, in fact, he said, model ships are the store's "number one item," with furniture running a close second.
Those ships run from bathtub toys for kids to intricate models of familiar vessels like the Titanic, the Bounty and the Mayflower (with everything in between), in prices running from $3.95 to $2,000.
The range of furniture offered runs from cedar chests, cabinets, chairs and end-tables, and includes some just for kids - like a wee bench with "Time Out" carved in its back.
But J.D. is at pains to, as he put it, "touch base here with everybody - Mom, Dad, the kids, and the grandparents," and so he also offers (to cite just a random sampling among all the variety): cribbage boards, cutting boards, scented hot pads, salad bowls, lamps and lamp shades, doll houses, bird houses, jewelry boxes, jewelry, pillows, toys, artwork, books, greeting cards, clothing, Christmas ornaments, and scrimshaw.
To illustrate the uncommon character - and high quality - of J.D.'s offerings, we made a list of just a few of our favorites:
- Men's belts, fully flexible but made of wood, in finely-cut, small pieces that look like they are hinged one to another but are really held together, J.D. told us, by hidden strings of 60-pound monofilament fishing line. (We didn't ask what percentage of items in the store are made of wood, but it's clearly very high.) They come from North Carolina.
- A child's rocking motorcycle, built on a rocking platform like an old-fashioned rocking horse (which is also available). The motorcycle is made entirely of wood, but in several types corresponding to various parts of the bike, all left in their natural grains and polished silk-smooth. The rocking bike is made at the Maine State Prison.
- Seri Indian images of animals like turtles, porpoises, horses, cats and ducks carved out of a very hard, dense, dark, brittle and long-dead wood from the Sonora coast of Mexico called Olneya Tesota, or desert ironweed.
- Little nesting matryoshka dolls, brightly colored and heavily lacquered, made by Russian residents of Sitka, Alaska.
- Model golf carts, cars, trucks, tractors and heavy construction equipment, all executed in natural wood and all with tiny multiple wooden moving parts - tie rods, front-end-loader buckets, and caterpillar treads, for example. Ted Greenwood, 87, of Portsmouth makes these, and J.D. told us that Woods to Goods is the only place where Ted places them for sale.
When J. D. speaks of the clothing lines he offers, he opens a little window into prison life. He calls the program in the Oregon prison system, in which his "Prison Blues" are sewn- jeans, denim jackets, and sweat and T-shirts - "probably the best in the country," and when we ask, "How so?" he responds, "They pay minimum wage, which is good in a prison system, and the work done goes on an inmate's resume, which makes an employer much more apt to hire him when he gets out."
Hanging on J.D.'s shop's back wall (for sale) are two large landscape paintings, both well-executed. One, evoking a sense of peace, depicts an isolated cabin amid fir trees and an expanse of snow. But neither painting is signed, and J.D. explains that their Maine State Prison origin decrees that they not be - no ego or other personal rewards allowed. Now yearning towards retirement for real this time, J.D. has found a way to help both himself and a former inmate. Three years ago, the parents of a man in the New Hampshire state prison system came to J.D. requesting that he consider hiring and helping their son following his release. That man - Tom - has now been with J.D. for three years, and, with his girlfriend, works for him on Saturdays. An expert cabinet-maker who learned that craft in prison, he's also there to sell some of his own exquisite wares.
Tom may also end up buying J.D. out. He'd like to, and J.D. is ready to sell. The decision awaits Tom's getting off probation, and lawyers are working on that now.
J.D., meanwhile, has been conjuring up his own dreams.
Remember all those model sailboats?
J.D. learned sailing back in the '70s, when he ran a surf shop at Old Orchard Beach. The sons of his landlord taught him, and he's since owned two sloops, a 23-foot Pearson, and his current craft, a 30-foot C & C.
Next, he wants to get a 35-foot catamaran and sail around the world.
"I've got my eye on a few," he says, quietly.
It doesn't phase him that his wife doesn't share that dream and so, if he goes, he'll do so alone.
Probably, if there's an opposite of imprisonment, it's solo ocean sailing - and so we wish him all kinds of good luck.
A P.S. about "Shawshank Prison."
"Many people think it's real," J.D. says. Not so. It's purely a creation of Stephen King, despite the fact that "Many people also think that it's up here in Maine somewhere."
