BOWDOINHAM

When he bought the Bowdoinham Country Store 13 years ago, David Skelton signed up for a lot of hard work to make the venture a successful one.

But it hasn’t been easy and the last two years the store has been in the red. On Sunday, he announced on the store’s Facebook page it may be the end.

Not if the community has anything to do with it. Residents have left encouraging messages for Skelton and also to each other urging people to help keep the store alive.

Melissa Hackett started a GoFundMe page (www.gofundme.com/j77npg) Monday morning after seeing the idea bandied by others on Facebook.

Skelton said Saturday he felt like it was the last straw when he made a mistake and did “what I thought was impossible,” and sold beer to an underage person who reminded him of his 25-year-old son, he wrote on the store’s Facebook page Sunday. He now faces a potential hefty fine from the state for the sale.

“If I have to close my doors and sell off the real estate please know that I have done everything that I can to keep these doors open for the community,” Skelton wrote. With the store in the red for the last two years, “I am truly tired of fighting (exhausted).”

Monday afternoon as a steady stream of customers lined up at the register, he had an employee ring them up as he led a reporter through the store — first past an empty two door freezer waiting to be fixed, and there is another one-door cooler needing fixing as well. The last couple years he’s been fighting issues with the compressors and refrigeration. He’s probably put $10,000 into his meat display case in the last three years and had a new repairman finally fix it correctly this summer.

In the back of the store there used to be a 12- foot produce cooler and years ago, Skelton had a five-door freezer and “these are the things I just don’t have the money to replace.” Nothing lasts forever but “you would hope you’d be able to generate enough income to put in some capital expenses.”

He stressed he doesn’t mean to complain and this is the business he chose. His children offered to come and help him out at the store as well. The store has been there he guessed around 100 years between his years running it and the two previous owners.

“I don’t want to close it. I’m going to stay standing as long as I can. I’ve always said that,” Skelton said. Sometimes, though, he feels overwhelmed. Without the refrigeration, he can’t offer enough produce. So a customer who comes in and can’t find the lettuce he came for is a customer who stops coming, then another — and it adds up. The community wants to shop at the store, he believes, but they will go where the produce is.

The opening of Bootleggers in Topsham and the cigarette and smoke shops opening in Topsham and Brunswick have cut in on alcohol and cigarette sales — among many factors contributing to profit woes, Skelton said. The money tied up on goods stocking the shelves is money he doesn’t have in hand to pay overhead costs.

Penny White of Bowdoin grew up in Bowdoinham and said Skelton has always helped others. Even if he has no money he helps anyway. If you don’t have the $5 to buy milk at the larger grocery stores, too bad, she said.

“He has helped me,” White said, and when she’s asked how he can do that for her and others, he says the money will come back one way or the other.

It was awful to hear that Skelton is thinking of closing the country store, Hackett said, “because that store has been there since I was a kid. That was the place to buy penny candies and go sit by the river.”

Now, her son is growing up in Bowdoinham and the store is convenient and saves on trips to Hannaford. Skelton is the guy at the store they look forward to seeing, and has been kind and generous to her and her son.

The GoFundMe fund gives people an easy way to make a donation and give any amount to help, Hackett said, “and is a good way to get the word out and be able to support your community or the people in your community. I think if it’s a store we all want there, then rather than watch him sink we should help him keep it open.”

“I like the whole idea of the community pulling together to keep something going that’s important to us and I think that little store is a big part of Bowdoinham history,” Hackett told The Times Record Monday. “It’s in a lot of people’s memories of growing up and I think it’s a useful little store. If we could keep him here that would be great.”