March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Gem in Newport crown to close > Goodridges giving up jewelry business

NEWPORT — When Alan Goodridge closes the door at his Mill Street store on Tuesday night, another vestige of Maine’s once self-sufficent rural communities will be gone in Newport.

The retirement of the local jeweler will end a 100-year-old business Sebasticook Valley residents had come to depend on for watch and jewelry repairs, quality gems and metals.

While the interstate, shopping malls and department stores took away the customers, Goodridge’s, the successor to W.E. Whitney and Son, was among the few long-standing businesses in downtown Newport that remained into the 1990s and still made a living. With the end of 1996, the Goodridges, Alan and Jean, have chosen retirement as an appealing alternative to six-day workweeks, often with nine-hour days.

“This was a thriving downtown when we came here compared to what it is today,” Alan Goodridge said during a lull in his “going out of business” sale this weekend.

Several dozen ring boxes, mechanical watches and watchbands, chains and individual stones were spread throughout otherwise empty glass cases and velvet display boards. In the final two days of the sale, everything remaining is priced at 50 percent or less off its original price. Whatever jewelry or stones remain, Alan is confident can be sold to other jewelers at a later date.

An unanswered question is: What is to become of the dozens of watch and jewelry repairs people have failed to pick up over the past 29 years under Goodridge’s management?

Watch repairs were Alan’s specialty dating back to his teen-age years.

“His high school yearbook said he wanted to be a jeweler,” Jean pointed out, “and he is.”

“I’ve always enjoyed my job. Few people can say that. I like coming to work and I’ll miss it. I’ll miss the people. But being self-employed ties you down,” Alan said. “There are people I want to visit that I haven’t been able to, and now I’m going to do it.”

Although the front cases are emptying steadily, a drawer of jewelry repairs dating back more than 10, 15 and even 25 years remains. In the workroom, a large pegboard holds more than two dozen watches forgotten by their original owners. Most have little value, but a few choice pieces could be collectors’ items, Alan said. For many the names and phone numbers attached no longer exist in the local area. And Alan usually doesn’t remember the names or the circumstances that brought the repairs in.

A bad memory can help in his business, he points out. He has never given away a surprise gift planned for a regular customer. Although he admits he came close last weekend when a regular came through the door with her husband behind her.

“I was ready to tell her it [the gift] was ready for her, until I saw her husband shaking his head behind her. I just thought they were coming to pick it up,” he said.

The Goodridges purchased the jewelry store in 1968 from W.E. Whitney. The business dates back to 1895, but the building was constructed in 1916.

“We reached an agreement and I went home [to Millinocket] to sell my house and quit my job of 14 years — all on a handshake,” Alan said.

Downtown Newport was a bustling business community in the late 1960s and into the ’70s. The merchants worked together to plan holiday hours and special promotions. Today there are few businesses left to coordinate.

Watch repairs and loyal customers carried the business in the early years. Jewelry repairs developed and Goodridge created some original pieces for regular customers — and for Jean.

Several rare and well-defined pieces of Maine’s watermelon tourmaline remain in the spartan display cases as well as other Maine gemstones. In the final days, Goodridge mounted several pieces in settings to add to their appeal and value.

Repairing and inspecting railroad watches was a specialty of the shop that sits within site of what was Maine Central Railroad’s mainline. With the decline in regular train traffic and local crews and the coming of the quartz watch, watch repairs dropped from a daily, multihour task to about two days a month. Jewelry repairs became more prevalent, but even that is not what it once was.

“People used to buy things to last. Today no one seems to care,” Alan said of a society always looking for a bargain in falsely discounted jewelry in large department stores.

“People always want to know if they got a good deal, but they usually don’t like my answer. Now I just make the repairs. I’ll tell them if they ask,” he said.

Quality jewelry and watches need maintenance and care, the couple emphasized.

“People think the more they pay for something, the harder they can use it,” Jean said. “I always take my jewelry off when I’m doing something that could damage it. Some women come in here, they’ve been splitting wood, gardening and whatever and wonder why their rings are scratched up.”

The couple recalled a rash of scratched and bent rings with loose stones a few years back.

“We couldn’t figure out what was happening until we asked one what she was doing. It was basketball, ” Alan explains — not playing it, but applauding it.

Loyal mothers eagerly clapping for the success of their children were beating the daylights out of their rings when they were hit together as they clapped.

Liquidating the stock has been both enjoyable and sad, the Goodridges said as they greeted and said goodbye to many loyal customers and friends.

“We made a lot of friends who are customers and customers who became friends,” Alan said.

“In all my 29 years, I only remember two irate customers. That upset me for days. One of them thought I stole his watch and called the police,” he said. As Alan sat down to eat lunch later in the day, he spotted the watch hanging on a peg below where it should have been on the repair board. It was returned, apparently with little gratitude from the customer.

Retirement days will be split between Florida in the winter and a lake in Maine in the summer, rounded out with a little fishing, a little golf and boating in both locations, the couple said.


Have feedback? Want to know more? Send us ideas for follow-up stories.

comments for this post are closed

You may also like