Ode to Janet and the rest of the magic makers at Nearly New Shoppe

“Have you talked to Janet?” The text message popped up mid-afternoon dog walk on a delightful early fall day. I didn’t know anyone named Janet. 

“Did Janet find you?” Different sender this time. What the heck is going on? 

“???,” was my response. 

“Janet has your typewriter,” the message dinged. 

“Wait, What?” Earlier that day I had taken my daily walk through Nearly New Shoppe, the thrift store on Main street in Ennis. I picked up something small that I needed for the cabin. That’s where most of the small things that I need come from, be it dog leashes, cooking utensils, small appliances, interesting decorations or even nearly all of my shoes and well over half my wardrobe. I’d mentioned to the volunteer (there are no employees, only volunteers from the Madison Valley Woman’s Club0 that I was looking for an old fashioned pre-electric type writer to write letters to my friends with. That was less than three hours before the first text. 

Within a few moments I had secured the dog and walked through the front door of what must be the favorite store in all of Ennis. No disrespect to the other wonderful places along mainstreet, they have a great selection of unique and interesting items, but nowhere else can you buy a coffee maker, board game, suit jacket and two books and have the total bill be less than $15. 

On the counter just to the left of the door was a bright blue box that screamed 1970 something. 

“You made it,” smiled the woman who I now know as Janet. There was a yellow $20 price tag on the blue box. “I saved this for you.” 

I curiously pushed the white buttons on the front of the box and the cover slid off to reveal a bright and shiny, like new, Achiever typewriter. 

I was gobsmacked, starry eyed and totally in love. She was sleek, clean, beautiful, from Barcelona (the typewriter not Janet) and ready to go home with me (also the typewriter and not Janet.)  I handed over my $20 in a haze, blabbered profuse thanks to Janet and took my new love home. Jack Kerouac eat your heart out. It was my turn to turn out a masterpiece, or at least a few creative letters to friends who I don’t speak with nearly enough. 

I had put it out into the universe that I needed a typewriter and the universe had chosen Janet to deliver it to me.  Janet is one of 171 members of the Madison Valley Woman’s Club. Roughly 65% of those women help out with Nearly New Shoppe according to the club president Vurnie Barnett. 

According to Barnett, the club donated over $258,000 to community organizations last year helping fund projects that ranged from a digital wall at the senior center to the fundraising efforts for the Ennis Skate Park. Barnett is quick to point out that $98,000 of that sum went to scholarships. Within that number is an amount that is used to fund “other educational opportunities,” or OAEs that include continuing education programs that regular scholarship programs can’t or won’t cover. 

While this small army of female do-gooders take great pride in the money they have raised and donated to help their community, they speak less about the very real and potentially far greater impact the store has on the people from all walks of life who shop locally. 

Over the course of the last year I’ve managed to completely outfit myself with quality ski gear for less than the price of one pair of ski pants. I’ve outfitted my new kitchen with a strong array of name brand working kitchen appliances for half the cost of a microwave from Kohl’s. I’ve bought games to play with my friends at the brewery and put together a complete quality wardrobe full of name brands for less than the cost of two pairs of pants and an off brand shirt. 

Thanks to Nearly New, I have become accustomed to a life filled with quality goods that would otherwise be beyond my means. On any given Monday morning (Monday being the day that many of the service industry establishments in Ennis are closed) you will find a collection of cooks, servers, room attendants and just about every other worker who make this town work perusing the isles and looking for their next treasure too. All of us are benefitting from the generosity of the volunteers who staff the store and the better healed residents and visitors of Ennis who feel comfortable donating their gently or sometimes not at all used goods to make a difference in the community. 

The store has a rarely seen and fantastic upstairs that they call the Vintage Attic. It holds  an impressive collection of vintage clothing preserved in exceptional condition and organized by time period. It is also where they keep an extensive collection of prom dresses and tuxedos that they loan to students who need them at no cost. Just another way these incredible women are finding to make a difference.

Enough about all these do-gooders though, Janet’s story is not done yet. 

A week after fate had Janet bring me my typewriter, I was back taking my morning stroll through the store. It was a Tuesday and I was working through the final throws of caffeine and deadline adrenaline in my system. I walked the store and like most days I didn’t see anything I couldn’t live without. Then I saw Janet. We chatted and I thanked her again for connecting me with Blue Belle, the name I have given my typewriter, then, on a whim, I turned and decided to take a quick peek at what the ladies had displayed in the front windows of the store. 

There it was. A black pork pie hat complete with a green hat band that matched my glasses. After 20 years of being given direction by one woman or another, I have decided that now that I was free this is my Tom Waits phase. Waits is a musician who unapologetically creates the art he wants to create at the expense of whatever critics and advisors opinions might be. He also is known to wear and sing the virtues of a pork pie style hat. I had been looking for this subtle symbol of personal freedom. 

I picked the hat off the holder it adorned in the window. I admired it, then looked at Janet. Certainly it wouldn’t fit. I have a rather large head and have seen similar hats in thrift stores over the past months. Janet smiled across the room, the hat slid onto my head like it belonged there. I handed Janet my $5 and ventured off into the world to accept compliments on my new hat. 

A few days later I thought Janet’s spell had broken. I had been telling a friend about my friend Bernice Ende and how I had hosted her first reading for her book “Lady Longrider” at my coffee shop in Libby in 2017. He expressed interest in her stories that came from riding her horse 

thousands of miles across the United States and Europe and living off the land and generosity of the people she came across. Unfortunately, my signed copy of her book had taken on a life of its own and went walkabout a number of years ago to one borrower or another. 

The next morning, I found a copy of the book at Nearly New. I looked and looked, but Janet was nowhere to be found. Just as I resigned myself to the fact that the entire team at the store is magic, I learned that they have two Janets and one of them was working that day. 

Next time you are in Ennis between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m. any day besides Sunday or Thursday stop by Nearly New and tell Janet that Mati sent you. You never know what magic you might find.