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sat10AM - 8PM
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mon10AM - 6PM
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sat10AM - 7PM
sun11AM - 6PM
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If it’s true, as they say, that seeing is believing, then we at Mast Store would like to propose another entry to your quip collection: Doing is moving. “Doing” not only requires movement - “doing” moves you both physically and emotionally. ...read more
Local Flavor | Mast Family Favorites | Travel
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What is a library? It’s a big building with lots of books in it. But wait, it’s so much more. The library is a gateway to your wildest dreams, a place to learn, a place to imagine, a place to make friends. Today’s libraries are repositories of books, but they also are places to get help to learn to read or improve your reading, to improve your math skills, to listen to a performance by a string quartet, to watch a movie, to refine your crafting skills, and to gather with fellow writers. Yes, libraries are SO much more. ...read more
Adventure | Inspiration | Mast Family Favorites
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What “spells” success on any outdoor adventure? R-E-S-P-E-C-T.
Leave No Trace is a set of seven principles that guide and remind all outdoor lovers to leave nature as they found it. These tips help explorers of all skill levels to plan ahead for their trip, be considerate of wildlife as well as other hikers and campers, and enjoy their excursion safely and responsibly all with the goal of minimizing their impact on the environment. Basically, it boils down to respecting the outdoors so that others – including future generations – can enjoy it, too!
...read more
Adventure | Inspiration
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... Our favorite foods! Food is universal because everybody’s got ta eat! And the last two months of the year are filled with more than their fair share of family meals, work gatherings, special outings to favorite restaurants, tins filled with homemade cookies and fudge, and the anticipation of food traditions handed down from generation to generation ...read more
At Home | Recipes
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Even before we bought the Mast General Store, we were taken by the beauty of Valle Crucis. We’ve heard people describe the drive out Broadstone Road as traveling through a time portal. In the 1970s, fields in the river bottoms would be filled with tobacco, cabbage, or high with hay to feed cattle that were grazing in the summer pasture. ...read more
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The lucky few who have seen the Earth from a different perspective – astronauts - all echo the same viewpoint upon their return. Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut and the first human to go to space, commented, “Orbiting Earth in the spaceship, I saw how beautiful our planet is. People, let us preserve and increase this beauty, not destroy it.”
Behind the Scenes | Inspiration
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When a 31-year-old John Cooper first laid eyes on the Mast General Store back in 1976, he had a vision for his family’s future that involved going back into the past. “I fell in love with the store as soon as I stepped inside,” says Cooper, who had traveled from his home in Florida with a friend to scout out potential real estate. “They literally had to carry me out.”
When you first meet him, Cooper, now 68, seems like he always has a smile on his face. Clean-shaven and gray on top, his ruddy face has a welcoming warmth all of its own. He’s also exceptionally good with names. When you walk with him through the original Mast store, which was opened by Henry Taylor in 1883 and later bought by W.W. Mast, it’s impressive to see him greet everyone from staff to customers by first name, some of whom have been shopping at the store for 33 years.
Cooper can point out the trap door in the floor behind the knife display. Underneath is a dark pit that used to serve as a chicken coop. Since chickens were used as currency to barter, shop-keeps of the past used to drop them down into the pen to keep them from being stolen. Cooper will also show you how the original floors slope at crazy angles and where they’re patched with old license plates nailed into the wood. Look up and you’ll see rows and rows of hooks that used to hold merchandise or cured hams. Over there is the ancient, yet operational, post office the Coopers petitioned the government to re-open inside the store. Make sure to heed the signs warning tourists not to open the mailboxes; that would be a federal offense.
When you head up the staircase—watch your head, the ceiling is low—Cooper can show you where his family lived after they moved into the building: living and dining room on the second floor; bedrooms on the third. Today, instead of a couch or TV, there are Amish-style wooden rocking chairs for sale in front of an old coffin, a remnant from the store’s earlier days when it’s slogan was: “Cradles to Caskets—if you can’t buy it here, you don’t need it.”
Mast founders, John and Faye Cooper, were the Featured Capitalists in the February 2014 issue of Capital at Play Magazine . The article is a beautiful portrait of the Mast family of stores and especially the Cooper Family. To read the article, Mast General Store: Looks to the Past to Build its Future, click HERE.