monsoonmartin

My friends,

The time has again come for me to share with you some of my favorite things. Today I’ll be telling you about three northern Lancaster County businesses that make it a damned fine place to live.

Record Connection, 550 North Reading Road (Route 272), Ephrata, PA

Traveling south on 222 from the Reading area, Record Connection is just beyond the intersection of Garden Spot Road and Route 272 (where the gigantic Green Dragon sign is).

Hours of operation: Monday through Friday, 10 – 8; Saturday 9 – 7; Sunday 11 – 5.

Phone: 717-733-1641

Website: http://www.recordconnectionpa.com

The first thing you may notice about the store—and one of the reasons for its notoriety among residents of this area—is its rainbow-colored sign composed of large letters mounted above the overhang, advertising that it sells “TAPES RECORDS COMPACT DISCS.” But as the picture below clearly illustrates, the letters are arrayed—and their colors chosen—in a peculiar manner. Specifically, the only three yellow letters, when read top to bottom, spell out “P-O-T.”

Please understand that I am neither implying that this store sells marijuana, nor am I even suggesting that the letters were intentionally arranged to convey a subliminal message encouraging the consumption of illegal drugs by unsuspecting passers-by. All I am saying is that it is damned amusing and certainly distinguishes the establishment from the more staid, conservative businesses in the area. (Though I almost had an accident the first time I passed a neighboring antique store called Mother Tucker’s, whose old sign was in an ornate script and whose T looked at passing glance very much like an F.)

But the reason I love Record Connection goes way beyond a sophomoric visual joke about weed (hey, at least the street address isn’t 420). Record Connection is a kick-ass independent record store specializing in vinyl—at a time when there are very few stores around that exclusively carry recorded music, and even fewer that either specialize in vinyl or kick ass. I remember places like Repo Records and Plastic Fantastic on the Main Line, Record Revolution in Valley Forge and Reading. They’re all gone (though Repo Records has been reborn on South Street in Philly as an overpriced used-CD shop), but Record Connection keeps going.

You see, friends, I am a vinyl superfreak. Have been ever since I can remember, raiding my dad’s staggering collection of hundreds upon hundreds of LPs and 45s, listening to everything from Blodwyn Pig and the Mahavishnu Orchestra to The Who and Jethro Tull, from the Mothers of Invention and John Mayall to Grand Funk Railroad and Miles Davis, and every conceivable style and permutation in between. I’m a connoisseur of the crackles and pops of vinyl, the electric moment when the needle touches the record, the warmth of its tones and the richness of its timbre. And with all the advances in digital sound reproduction, the prevalence of CDs and mp3s, most music still sounds a hell of a lot better to me on vinyl. (A great illustration of this is one of the finest albums ever made, Electric Ladyland by The Jimi Hendrix Experience: on vinyl, the bass throbs and the guitar pulsates in a way that even remastered CD releases of the album can’t approach.)

So I find myself pulling into this little gem of a store and losing myself for hours on end, pawing through its overwhelming array of … stuff. Record Connection doesn’t just carry LP records and 45s—which take up three entire rooms and feature pretty much every conceivable release you might ever want—it has new and used CDs, new and used cassette tapes, used VHS and DVD, posters, and much more. Record Connection stocks over 100,000 LPs, 45s and EPs at any given time, and also purchases collections. The singles room is a wonder—boxes and boxes and boxes of records, filed alphabetically, most priced at $2-$3 apiece, including comedy, novelty, and colored-vinyl 45s. There is even a turntable with headphones so you can test out your finds before purchasing them.

Record Connection’s inventory is strong in most genres—including jazz, reggae, soul, country/bluegrass, and comedy—but has the most comprehensive holdings in classic, psychedelic, and progressive rock.

Maybe my favorite part of Record Connection is the fact that they have anywhere from 8 to 12 full crates of LPs—usually just outside the singles room—with “New Arrivals” generally priced at a mere $2 apiece. Here is where I make my most exciting finds: long-out-of-print rarities, ill-advised celebrity forays into music, K-Tel compilations, off-label bombs, hidden soul treasures, spoken-word treatises on the free market economy, children’s music, and on and on. I will sometimes buy LPs mainly because of the cover art, which I think is unique to the long-playing album and is somehow not the same on the cover of a CD booklet.

I’ve scanned in a few of my favorite finds (some for the music, some for the cover art, and some for the pure kitsch value) and picture them below, including And me…I’m Ed McMahon (you haven’t truly lived until you have heard the gravely-voiced “Tonight Show” sidekick relieve “Georgy Girl” of its kick and take “Thank Heaven for Little Girls” to creepy new depths).

Record collector Andy Kamm opened Record Connection in 1985 and, as one would expect at an independent record store, has a colorful staff—the most notable being a full-bore, 1980s-throwback, singing-along-with-the-tunes, head-banging, sometime profane, non-sequitur-spewing metalhead named Nathaniel Kinsey, who is almost too good to be true. (When I purchased several used videos last summer in the Black Belt Jones and Superfly vein, along with an Isaac Hayes LP, he said the following as he was ringing me up: “Oh yeah, gettin’ a little Blaxploitation here, huh?” and then incorporated the word into a previously unimagined death metal song called “Blaxploitation Nation” that he proceeded to sing, complete with guitar solo. It was magic.)

The ambiance of the place also adds to the experience. When you walk in, a motion detector sounds to alert the employees—who may be buried under stacks and stacks of LPs in a distant corner—that a customer has come in. The sound is disconcerting: a clear, doorbell-like chime followed by a distorted, death-throes tone, like an aural question mark. And once you’ve made your way in, you’ll find the aisles cramped and just as much merchandise in crates underneath the display bins as are in the bins themselves. It’s a down and dirty enterprise, but it adds to the mystique, the sense of adventure of the place. Record Connection has already gone through at least one expansion, and could easily fill a space twice its current size.

Record Connection is apparently a destination to which vinyl lovers flock from far and wide. Listening to patrons and reading internet chatter, it quickly becomes apparent that Record Connection is visited by folks from all across the US, Korea, Germany, and around the world. (An article on the RC website tells of a man from Korea who spent an entire day at the store and left with over 800 albums!) When I was visiting the store recently, and entire family from Alabama was there, having spent hours rummaging before making the trip back home.

They sell turntables and needles, too—so if you haven’t bought or played a vinyl record in 20 years and are looking to get back in the habit, they can hook you up!

Weaver Markets, Routes 272 and 897, Adamstown, PA

Hours of operation: Monday through Thursday and Saturday, 7am – 9pm; Friday 7am – 10pm; closed Sunday.

Phone: 717-484-4302

Website: http://www.weavermarkets.com

Mission Statement: To provide the customer with the best quality and value in regards to products and services and to help support and strengthen the surrounding community in every way possible.

I have a love for Weaver Markets (hereafter, and in local parlance, “Weaver’s”) that is sometimes belied by the actual quality of its goods and services, but over all this is a fantastic grocery store.

Founded in 1962 by Earl Weaver and now run by his sons Gene and Mike, Weaver’s has expanded several times and is now a 96,000-square-foot mecca of one-stop shopping and homemade goodness.

On the most basic level, Weaver’s is simply a very good grocery store, with a fine selection of grocery items (non-perishables), a very fancy new dairy section, a nice selection of meats and deli items at the lowest prices around, and a surprisingly broad assortment of organic and specialty foods, along with (less surprisingly) lots of local-made jams the like.

(Weaver’s also has an expanded produce section that used to be its crowning glory but has, in my opinion, fallen off in recent years. Green produce like broccoli, green beans, and zucchini tend to be consistently good, but their fruits—especially apples, bananas, and strawberries—are often aged, significantly bruised, or lack basic freshness. The tomatoes at Weaver’s have been a particularly bitter source of disappointment for me: too often the very old tomatoes are left to rot inside the pile, and more than once when foraging for a fresh one I have inadvertently poked a thumb or forefinger into the putrid guts of a rotten one. Screaming like a 9-year-old girl at a Hannah Montana concert in the middle of Weaver’s produce section does nothing for my street cred, folks.)

But the produce issue is a nitpick, and I can easily satisfy my unmet produce needs at an Amish-run produce stand on Route 272 near Ephrata called Evergreen Acres, or at Weis or Giant.

It’s the peripheral things, the specialties, the personal touches that make Weaver’s a worthwhile destination:

• Weaver’s has a full bakery on-site that makes all sorts of delectable confections.

• Weaver’s offers a dizzying array of party trays; most outstanding are their fruit and vegetable trays, which offer extreme freshness at very reasonable prices. Example: the veggie tray pictured below, which includes carrots, celery, broccoli, peppers, cauliflower, cucumbers, and choice of dip, is only $1.45 per person. If you need a tray for 8 people, you’re going to get out of there for under twelve bucks. Also, relating to the trays: when you’ve ordered a tray and want to pick it up, you go to Customer Service and pay for it, and then you drive around the building to Door 13 to pick it up. There’s something very clandestine about the whole process (and the fact that it’s Door 13 and not 12 or 14) that makes me feel like I’m on some sort of top-secret mission. Maybe it’s only me.

• Weaver’s has a full kitchen that cooks “homemade” soups, potato and macaroni salad, and lots of other hearty dishes that can be purchased and heated later. Their soups (and pepper cabbage, and deviled eggs) are so good that I tote a load of these delicacies down to Norristown whenever I go to visit my parents.

• At almost every checkout line, Weaver’s has actual baggers, actually bagging your purchases, and doing it carefully. Speaking of bagging, in addition to the traditional plastic bags, Weaver’s has brown paper bags with sturdy handles that hold plenty of food and lend themselves to myriad household uses—aside from being environmentally friendlier.

• The ladies at the Customer Service desk are happy to work with customers to order an item that is not in stock or difficult to find. A couple of years ago, the stores near my father stopped carrying cans of Musselmann’s BC Orange Apricot juice, so I worked with the Customer Service desk to order cases of it for him. When the juice suddenly became unavailable, these nice women made some phone calls and learned that the item had been discontinued, forever. When they broke the news to me and I said my father would be devastated, since he had been drinking this juice since he was a child, they seemed genuinely to share in my disappointment. Now that is customer service.

• The layout of Weaver’s is logical and pleasing—unlike what can be said of other local grocery stores. (In particular, whenever I make the mistake of entering a Redner’s, I am overwhelmed by the feeling that its layout was designed solely to confuse and frustrate the customer. I also question why, at places like Giant and Weis, peanut butter, jelly and bread products are found in the dairy aisle. Is it just me?)

• When you call Weaver’s, an actual person answers the phone. Right away. There’s no automated system, no menu of options, no circuitous “hold” purgatory. The same can’t be said of Giant, or Weis, or Wal-Mart, or nearly any other major retail establishment I can think of. It’s a rare treat.

• Weaver’s is closed on Sundays. Now, I have found this to be terribly inconvenient more than a few weekends since I’ve lived here, since it’s sometimes not until Sunday that I get my dook together and figure out what groceries we need for the coming week. But Weaver’s is run (and largely, staffed) by Mennonites, and while I don’t share their religious convictions, I have to admire their insistence on setting aside Sunday as a day of rest. I ain’t mad atcha.

• Weaver’s has a bunch of “in-store entities” that I avail myself of from time to time, especially Anderson Pharmacy. There is also an Ephrata Medical Laboratory, film developing (including a new three-terminal Fuji digital photo kiosk), and a small flower shop in-store.

In the coming two years, Weaver’s will face a new challenge in the area. Final approvals have been secured for a massive new shopping center to be built just off the Turnpike exit 286 ramp between Routes 222 and 272 in Denver. Its three anchors will be a 24-hour Giant, Lowe’s, and an as-yet unnamed large anchor (I’m hoping it’s Target), along with smaller shops and restaurants. At present, the closest major grocery stores to Weaver’s are Weis and Redner’s in Ephrata (6 miles south) and Giant in West Lawn (7 miles north). The construction of a 24-hour Giant will present a level of competition Weaver’s hasn’t yet faced. I’m convinced, though, the Weaver’s blend of personal service and homemade goods, along with reasonable prices and broad selection, will make them viable well into the future; I hope my neighbors continue to support this family-owned, locally-invested business.

Clay Book Store, 2450 West Main Street, Ephrata, PA

Take 272 South and pick up Route 322 West; follow this for about 4 miles until you see a sign for the Township of Clay. The bookstore will soon appear on your left (and is sporting a spiffy new sign, pictured below).

Hours of operation: Monday, Thursday, Friday, 8am – 9pm; Tuesday, Wednesday, Saturday, 8am – 5pm; closed Sunday.

Phone: 717-733-7253

Website: No internet presence. That is how they roll.

Mrs. Monsoon and I found this place when out on one of our Sunday drives (which have been curtailed significantly due to the high gas prices). Like Weaver’s, it’s owned and operated by Mennonites; like Record Connection, you could spend an entire day rummaging around here.

The variety of materials contained in this modest-sized store is incredible: maps (including Geological Survey and topographical maps, as well as road maps and atlases), school supplies (from scissors and glue to poster board and teacher planners), toys and puzzles and stickers, and of course, books.

To the left when you enter the Clay Book Store is a large section of new books that is dominated by fundamentalist literature. There’s some material in this section for the secular browser (books about Amish and Mennonite culture, how-to books, Pennsylvania history and coffee-table books, and so on). But it’s heavily geared toward Anabaptist theology (Mennonites and Amish fall under the Anabaptist umbrella) and Christianity in general: hymnals, bibles, bible study books, prayer books, and guides to holy living. There is also a generous helping of Christian values literature—mostly in the form of pamphlets and short volumes—that can quickly make a self-respecting progressive type feel out of place. This includes books about the evils of abortion, the unfortunate and fiery eternal bummer awaiting nonbelievers, and of course, the travesty of homosexuality. (The book pictured below considers the question, “Homosexuality: Is it Natural?” arriving rapidly at an emphatic and biblically-justified “No!”)

Looking at some of this literature, I was reminded of a George Carlin routine about religious morality, part of which went: “Catholics and other Christians are against abortions, and they're against homosexuals. Well who has less abortions than homosexuals?! … Here is an entire class of people guaranteed never to have an abortion! And the Catholics and Christians are just tossing them aside! You'd think they'd make natural allies.”

But it’s the rear portion of the Clay Book Store that has some great stuff: that’s where the used books and magazines are. In the rear on the right side are old textbooks (mostly from the 70s and 80s or earlier) that can be used for low-cost home schooling—or, in my case, for the sole purpose of nostalgia. Remember those old music and social studies books from the 1970s—the rainbows, the bell-bottoms, the wide collars, the children wearing red tees ringed with white, in motion shots in cityscapes? The vibrant, silly illustrations in children’s literature books evocative of Schoolhouse Rock? They’re all here.

(So are textbooks specifically geared toward Christian education, which are…interesting to peruse. You’re not going to find any talk about the universe being 13 billion years old, or that most species of dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago, in a children’s biology textbook called God’s Marvelous Works.)

Also on the right rear are reference books, including encyclopedia sets and lots of old dictionaries (of which I’ve purchased a few: just a couple of weeks ago, I got a massive 1940s two-volume set of the New Century Dictionary in great condition for five bucks).

Moving to the rear left, there are several stacks of used religious books (remember, folks, this is run by hardcore Mennonites) but it also has nonfiction books, repair manuals, hardcover and softcover fiction, pamphlets, field guides, old copies of Reader’s Digest and National Geographic (as well as lots of other magazines)—all for dirt cheap.

There’s even a section of foreign-language books, where I recently found a copy of the 1970s textbook we used in my late-1980s high school German class. It’s called Unsere Freunde (“Our friends”) and contains some sidesplitting pics and text.

The one that seized on our imagination was when we met the parents of the young people who were guiding us through the wonderful world of German language. Soon we met Gabi’s mother, who “managt die Tankstelle” (or “managed the gas station”). This phrase became the ultimate insult when applied to anyone else’s mother in the class. (Jeez, we were geeks.) And so, I send a shout-out to Amelia with the following allegation: Deine Mutter managt die Tankstelle!

It does not generally seem that a lot of sorting has taken place before the books (which are typically sold as collections to the store or donated) were shelved, so you should be prepared for a good, leisurely poke-around if you visit the Clay Book Store. But it can be great fun.

Enjoy!

Monsoon