A sad goodbye

The Gildford Mercantile, after a long and varied history, closed its doors Friday, just before its 100-year birthday.

Laura Hauser has owned the store for seven years, and said she is forced to close the doors of the business for multiple reasons, mostly rising bills and a declining number of customers.

"There's a lot of fun history with this," Hauser said.

Many customers came to say good-bye Friday.

Shane Hanson left Gildford in 1957 and has recently come back to her old stomping ground. She said in that time, the town has gone through a major downfall of closing business and declining population.

As she looked at paintings of what Gildford used to look like, she could still name the businesses of the buildings depicted. She ran her finger down the old main street and identified a diner, a pool hall, a Masonic Lodge, general goods store and others that are now gone.

Many of the buildings have burned down and the rest long ago petered out.

Lowell Miller has been in Gildford his entire life and added some other old businesses to Hanson's list. He pointed to the building he and his family lived in in 1947 and and recounted his days in the better days of his home town.

"This," he said, gesturing to the Mercantile. "This is it."

He said his parents owned the Mercantile for a few years while he was in high school. His mother stocked shoes and clothing when she owned it in 1951. Now, it's mostly a grocery and general goods store.

"We had more hardware and clothing," he said, adding that below the building, they kept meat in freezers for people in the town before the time where in was common for people to have their own.

He said he is not happy about the store closing down.

"We'd hate to see that," Miller said. "But, we can't blame them either."

Shorty Stewart, sitting at a table with other women, reminiscing about the past, said she worked at the Gildford Mercantile in 1947 and 1948, back when a man named F.M. Wilson owned it. She said the difference in the town from then is "day and night" and she was sad to see the store go.

"It's very sad, but that's the way of the world now," Stewart said. "I hate box stores. I don't care for Walmart or those stores one iota."

She said many of the people in Gildford do their shopping in Havre.

There is an insurance appraisal business left in Gildford, but as far as a place in town where the citizens can go and meet, the Mercantile was it.

The store's last day of business, Friday, saw many of the townspeople come in and buy out some of the remaining stock, the rest of which Hauser said she will donate or use herself.

The store doubles as the town cafe, and a handful of people sat at the tables in the back of the store, drinking coffee and talking like they have done for many years.

Hauser said the store has served many purposes to the town as it changed hands through owners. The building has been part of the town's culture for some time. Back when they had rodeos in an area behind the store, people would go to the second floor, which used to be a dance hall.

"Wooden floors and tin ceilings," Hauser said. "It's pretty cool."

She said one of her customers said that when the rodeo was over, the building shook with dancers. That was in the 1930s and 1940s.

Hauser said she bought the building at a time of some strife in her life. Her husband had some medical troubles, but pulled through. In addition, she had to sell her house in California for a loss. She said they decided to move out here after visiting family and decided to buy the building.

Hauser said that the electricity bill for the store recently shot up over $500, and she was unable to keep up with that.

She and others speculated the buying up and consolidation of small farms and ranches contributed to the problems Gildford faces today. The ranches and farms of the Hi-Line were smaller and required more people to work in time past. Many of the towns along the railroad were forged and made solid by these farmers, ranchers, railwaymen and their families. Now, towns like Turner, Kremlin and Rudyard have experienced a 180-degree turn in their histories, as advancements in the railroad, farming and ranching and other factors rendered them less important than the towns used to be.

"I did it as long as I could," Hauser said. " ... I just can't do it anymore."

In any case, the people of Gildford seem to have stayed true to their town, and remain faithful still.