DuluthCommunityNews

“Oh, I used to have something just like this!� Charlotte Fields says. She is looking at a pale-green wicker stroller. The knee-high stroller is filled with shabby/chic bedding and a porcelain doll. Fields is from Isanti, Minn., but had always wanted to stop into the shop when she visited Duluth.

Today, Fields doesn’t buy the stroller.

This is true of most of the items in the store. People stop in off the street and poke around. Someone may find a small treasure to buy but the store looks almost completely unchanged. Nothing moves.

Old remnants of memories are forgotten about. Nobody wants them anymore.

Someone’s lumpy davenport is left behind. A stack of yellowed postcards had been addressed to somebody and those were discarded too.

Fields makes her way to the cash register with a 99-cent scarf. It’s sheer with small patterns across it, perfect to put under old-fashioned radios, she says.

“It’s going to be $1.08,� Ron Garatz says to Fields. Garatz is the vendor who is running the register. The transaction is completed, another item gone.

Garatz says that each vendor takes a turn running the shop a couple times a month as a part of renting the space.

A few days later, Shirley Duke stops into the store. She is a regular in the shop and today she is buying some fabric to make curtains.

“Four bucks,� Duke says, waving the crimson-colored fabric. “I don’t always buy things but it’s fun to look. You never know what you’re going to find.�

Aside from Dukes there are not customers in the store. Today, Rosemary Bjornaas is working the register. She rings Duke up for her purchases.

In this store, people can pick and choose leftovers from someone’s life. But mostly, the stuff just sits on the shelves.

“Unless you have the right person at the right time at the right price, [the items] mostly stay put,� Bjornaas says, shifting her stance behind the counter. Bjornaas says that most of the stuff in her booth had been there since the store opened in March 2007.

Bjornaas sells mostly antique jewelry and linens, but ladies gloves, little green dishes and matchbooks are arranged among dozens of other items. An old-time can of Sherwin Williams Flaxosoap sits high on the shelf.

The antique store isn’t run like a usual business. The goods don’t come from a manufacturer. Instead, the inventory is collected from estate sales after a death or from people who want their things sold.

Dealers rent spaces in the shop creating a bazaar under one roof. There are 15 different booths in More than Memories.

Maybe Duke’s newfound curtains were used as curtains before or maybe they were just scraps from a leftover bolt of fabric.

In this quiet shop, most people who stop in don’t buy anything at all. Old memories are long forgotten in this store. Previous owners may never know where their things ended up.

But here, at this antique emporium of drifters and shoppers, the items are slowly being made into new memories.