Old Mystic General Store Brings Community Together To Recover From Flooding

The majority of Connecticut residents were untouched by the great floods of March 30th this year. And even many of those who were affected in the state’s southeastern corner are now back on their feet and getting on with their lives. But the recovery has been much slower for some businesses. A few, hit hard by weeks of lost of income, have folded. Others, like the General Store in Old Mystic still hope to be able to reopen their doors. WNPR’s Harriet Jones reports.

The Old Mystic General Store is a hive of activity, despite the fact that it’s been closed for more than 6 weeks ever since it was inundated by the Whitford Brook, which runs through the middle of the village. The crowd here now are not customers, but clean-up volunteers. This building has been the village General Store since the 1820s - Anne Page, President of the Old Mystic Community Association says it’s more than a landmark.

“The General Store is the heart and soul of Old Mystic. If you want to know what’s going on, you go to the General Store and talk to Fini, the proprietor. If you want to put up a notice that you’ve lost your dog, you put it up in the window of the general store. The community relies on walking down to the General Store for maybe a grinder, maybe a pizza, maybe you’re out of peanut butter. It really provides a lot of basic needs, heart and soul and tummy.”

Fini is Fini McGlinchey, who with her husband has run the store for 13 years. She says what happened here on March 30th was unprecendented.

“There was this rushing white water rapid river going down Rt. 27, and we couldn’t even get to the store., There was emergency vehicles only being allowed, there was dumpsters floating by – it was just like something you would see in a disaster movie – you couldn’t believe it was actually happening to you.”

And the next morning, it looked as if a giant arm had swept everything from the shelves.

“Everything from 12 inches down was just covered with river bottom slime – it was just disgusting.”

The first time the community came to her rescue was that morning, when a couple of her teenage part-time employees turned up.

“They came in here and they scraped mud. They got their friends together – all their skateboarding friends, they showed up with their cigarettes and their skateboards and their ripped jeans, and they cleaned – for days. And I wanted to say thank you to them, because I never expected that from these guys.”

But the clean up went beyond washing away the mud. All the sheet rock in the building had to be taken down, the walls dried out, and thousands of dollars worth of equipment and inventory was ruined. McGlinchey says when it came time to bring in contractors to put things back together, another local business, RAD Works, stepped up.

“He goes – ah, you’re the General Store – you guys make great sandwiches – I’ll help you!”

The building is owned by Sofia Giotis – she says she’s shocked that individuals and businesses in Connecticut have been denied emergency aid from FEMA and the Small Business Administration.

“I feel devastated. Because I pay taxes for this property for 27 years, and high taxes, and nobody help us – nobody help me at all.”

Now, in the absence of government help, the community has stepped in again. Barnes Moving and Storage, another Mystic business, donated the use of a moving van and a crew, to take all of the equipment and furniture out of the store so that the final restoration work can move more quickly. Community Association President Anne Page says neighbors stopped by to help load up when they saw they were needed.

“As somebody who volunteered this morning said – they’ve been serving us, now it’s time for us to serve them.”

There’s no date yet for the General Store to reopen for business but most of Old Mystic is hoping it will be soon.

For WNPR, I'm Harriet Jones.