Baldingers

Baldingers is a landmark near our home....it has been featured on the Food Network and the CBS morning show...when friends and family come to visit from out of town we always try to fit in a visit here....it has been in business since 1933 when Allan Baldinger sold his stamp collection to open a fruit stand...he added a restaurant and was famous for his pies....His wife Dorothy helped him out and they lived behind the store....a friend told me how she remembered her sitting at the card table when you came in the door and how she had sewed her mother's prom dress for her!!!.....in time a lot more restaurants opened in the area and Allan turned it into a general store that sold bulk candy...


There are tables full of penny candy....bulk candy.....novelty items you can't find anywhere else.....you put things in your basket and when you go to check out they dump everything into a pan and either weigh it or count each piece out by hand....these totals then get written on a little white notepad and are added up by hand with a pencil....no electronics involved here!!!....the cash register is more than a hundred years old , the kind you crank by hand.....

...well over the summer the building and its 10 acres were sold to a real estate development company who plans to develop the site....and Monday all that remains is this pile of rubble and two dumpsters full of junk.....fortunately a local businessman is giving Baldingers a new chapter in it's 75 year legacy....after petitions were circulated by email last year begging them not to close Pat Boylan stepped in and bought the store and has erected a replica of it!!...there are some improvements, but the store has wooden floors and they have tried to make it as much the same inside as they could...all of the old cash registers, Coke case and tables have been moved....everyone is truly happy they are moving and the traditions will continue.....and for the record...even though much of the candy is just a penny.....you can rarely get out of there for under $20!!!!!