“Do you have a rubber chicken?” the woman asked Mike Wilner,
proprietor of Brookline News and Gift in Brookline,
Massachusetts.
A beat.
“Sure,” said Mike, and went to fetch the chicken.
I recalled the conversation to Mike, speaking with him a week
later.
“Sure,” Mike smiled. “I just got some more rubber chickens. I’ve
got three sizes.”
In a yellowing local news story written years ago and laminated
to a board near the Brookline News and Gift’s cramped entrance,
Mike confessed to having a “sickness” for buying things. He has
been buying things and selling them since he bought the store in
1963. Now you can scarcely walk into the place through the cramped
front-to-back aisle from the door. There is barely room for two
people to squeeze between the cigar counter and the greeting cards.
It’s kind of like walking belowdecks into a 40-foot yacht owned by
a packrat for 40 years.
And, though Mike emphasized that “Our principal business is
cigars and pipes and tobacco,” it is the sheer profusion of
novelties, toys, games, dolls, and bric-a-brac that delights child
and man alike.
Here, see one shelf of one half of the crammed street display
window: Harley-Davidson playing cards, a granite chess set, a
selection of GBD pipes, a Victorionix Swiss Tool that seems to do
everything, a Time Out alarm clock in the shape of a football, a
cast iron cowboy bottle opener, a deck of Egyptian playing cards
marked only in hieroglyphs, several pair of Bushnell binoculars, a
collection of Beatles memorabilia Zippo lighters, a Hollywood tie
rack, a Marine Band harmonica, a mini roulette wheel, Casio
watches, a tool kit done up as a deep sea diver’s helmet, shaving
brushes, a Texas map belt buckle, a Mini-Bear Jaws (yet another
tool), a beautiful laminated cream and red Zippo lighter made by
General Motors with the Chevy logo on it, and busts of Napoleon,
Queen Elizabeth I and Shakespeare.
Once inside, your left elbow brushes the racks of greeting
cards, which trend toward what used to be called “racy.” A
proctologist examines a polar bear and announces, “You’ve got
Polaroids.” Three Hassidic rabbis share a hookah under the words,
“The High Holidays.” “It’s about my penis, Doc,” a man complains to
his psychiatrist, who replies, “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about a little
thing like that.”
A nod to Mike’s concerns here for his core business. He claims
to try to carry every brand of cigar made, and he comes close. He
acknowledges that he can’t compete with the mail order biggies in
South Carolina and Florida — “not when a Democratic controlled
legislature puts a 30 percent tax on tobacco.” But his prices stay
competitive, anyway. Punch Rothschilds are offered for $3.62,
comparable to the cost north of the border in tax-free New
Hampshire, at Two Guys. Mike has a back room filled to the ceiling
with cigars. While I was there, he pulled out a gigantic box of
Makers Mark tubos and knelt on the crowded floor, displaying them
for a young woman buying for her husband.
Just past the cigars, the cash register hides behind more
novelty displays. There is no open counter space anywhere, nowhere
to sign a credit card slip except on your knee or on the back of a
book. You can hardly see anything for the sheer abundance of
merchandise, clinging like barnacles to every surface. Just ask
Mike. He’s the man who has everything. And he works at it. He’s
probably in his sixties, trim and fit from working on his feet all
day, lifting, carrying, stretching, and stocking.
This day, two items tempted me: a refrigerator magnet fully the
size of a piece of typing paper displaying “Guitars of the Gods”
(all Gibsons, ES-335, Les Paul, SG, Flying V, and so forth; I’m a
Fender man, so I resisted) and a panoramic puzzle of the nighttime
Boston skyline (where wisdom won out when I thought of a
four-year-old and 750 jigsaw pieces). Behind the guitar magnet
rises the news stand, with — if one can say it — a rather
innocent, if wide-ranging, collection of pornography (Juggs,
Gazonga Goddess) and virtually any newspaper. Barron’s is
tucked between the Nikkei Times and a Greek
broadsheet.
Little boys love the gags, as Mike evidently does, too (“Whopper
Hand,” “The Growing Brain,” “My Precious Nosehair,” “Whoops — The
Most Disgusting Laugh Getter,” and a fart machine; action figures
of Jesus, Einstein, and Freud). My little boy Joe has a china bank
in the shape of a piece of Swiss cheese, labeled (what else?)
“Swiss Bank,” which we bought from Mike. The jammed center aisle
splits in two to run around the toy, game, doll, and novelty
section in the back — this in a store no more than four man-sized
paces wide. Board games you’ve never heard of (“Guesstures,”
“Beyond Balderdash,” “Sexual Secrets”) jam against Revell models,
new and old (Hummer, Jeep, ‘64 Olds 442, ‘56 Chevy Del Ray). My
older son Bud and I used to buy caps and cap pistols from Mike, the
kinds of things chain toy stores no longer carry. Dolls include
Baby Ann and Her Care Set and Little Orphan Annie. There are
Lincoln Logs from the old days in big barrels. There is a
boomerang. And I may just go back to buy a Chinese Checker set with
a steel board — just the indestructible thing for my little
ruffians.
I eventually bought a pipe, as I have done periodically
throughout the years. Mike has made a point of buying out the
stocks of old briars from 30 years ago or more when the quality of
briar burls was really good. Under the beaming gaze of a statue of
young Theodore Roosevelt as a cowpuncher, I asked Mike to “Show me
something good,” and he pulled out a Savinelli Titan,
straight-grain, for $85.
That’s a very good price for a very good pipe, in case you
didn’t know. I’m smoking it right now.
