But move fast. After 132 years, what has been called the North Country's last real general store is up for sale. (Real, as in not yet offering gourmet coffee, as the general store in neighboring New Bremen now proclaims.)
Outside on the front porch sits owner Jim Marilley, turning his head to watch each truck boom by. This village of about 600 is a blink on busy Main Street, the road toward the Canadian border.
His store once played the role of a rural Wal-Mart between cow farms and the Adirondacks' western edge: Long hours (even until midnight), convenient location, two creaking wooden floors of goods. ''If We Don't Have it, You Don't Need it!" the sign says.
Marilley's grandfather opened the store in 1874. The grandson is 81 now, and slowed by some recent minor strokes. The children don't want the place, so he plans to sell it all in one go. ''The whole shebang," he said. And if the last corset was any clue, he seems quite willing to wait.
No one knows how many general stores are left in America. Some went touristy. Most have closed. Census figures from 2003 indicate there are 1,623 of the smallest general merchandise stores, but the number gives no hint of age or character.
''The one thing they're losing, of course, is a sense of place," said Ray Oldenburg, a retired professor in Florida who wrote ''The Great Good Place," which warned of America's disappearing community hangouts. ''You can't get that back."
But people in Croghan don't need experts to tell them.
''You can . . . put a bank in there, it could be a completely viable business, but you've just lost part of the character of the town," said Mayor Glen Gagnier, who calls a stroll through the store a walk through history.
''You selling oil or giving it away?" Marilley asked Ronnie Vogt, of Copenhagen, N.Y., who pulled up in a tanker truck. Vogt has been making deliveries for about 15 years.
He's still impressed by the 1937 oil invoice Marilley has, somewhere.
Inside, Vogt chats with Maria Largett, who joined the store 26 years ago as a high school student. Her grandmother worked for Marilley's mother.
