has it all - literally The signs out front tell the story of a store that keeps changing. "Sheard's Grocery and Gun Shop," it says on top. If that's not a unique enough combination of items for you, there's another sign added below, "Antiques! Flea Market Items. Old Guns, Tackle, Collectibles." And then, "Ice Cream Parlor." Go in. You'll find all that and more, loosely organized into a shopping experience like no other. Sheard's, located on Route 19 in Bergen in the little stretch that's the hamlet of Stone Church, specializes in "the buying and selling of anything," said Randy Sheard, the second generation owner. "I buy what I like ... there's not necessarily a rhyme or reason to it." That's why shoppers will find Kleenex® and matches stacked on an antique oak secretary, a Teletubbie® doll displayed on top of a $500 marble-top side table, and a 400-year-old fowling piece hung above its modern counterparts. The bizarre combination of items is part of the fun of Sheard's. All of it is neatly labeled with prices, explanations, histories, and perhaps an editorial comment. "A child's fainting coach," one such label said. "I have never seen one before and I probably never will again!" Earl and Peggy Sheard built the stone in the early 1960s as a way to sell products from their dairy farm. "At that time, we were selling 1,000 gallons of milk a day," Earl said. "It was a natural thing to add a few grocery staples." So the place's first life was as local grocery store. But before long, quite a few hunters were stopping in and asking the Sheards to add shotgun shells to their inventory. The guns followed, so by the late 1960s, the store had evolved into "Grocery and Guns." Both Earl and Randy were avid hunters at the time, so the store was a way for them to indulge their own interests in guns both old and new. In the early 1980s the family added the dairy bar to serve ice cream. "We had lines out the door back then," Peggy said. "Five girls behind the counter couldn't keep up. We had to give out numbers." The dairy bar is still there; local folks and family drop in for coffee and snacks. They share the counter top with a stuffed beaver and the floor space with a few antiques, but no one seems to mind. The gun market began to get a little soft, Randy said, so the antiques were added in the late 1980s. "Times change," Randy said. "We change too." But as the cans of soup and the repelling cannon from a Spanish galleon can attest, Sheard's never drops anything from their inventory. The end result is that if you're looking for something - anything - Sheard's is the place that will have it or can get it. "I have connections that enable me to get everything from pet rocks to period antiques, from Civil and Revolutionary War artifacts to anything blaze orange," Randy said. "I'll chase anything down." Most of the business's customers are repeaters and they come from as far away as Pennsylvania. It seems that the little shop might be kind of tucked away from the action in Stone Church, but Randy disagrees. "Actually, we're in a really convenient location," he said. "Right off the Thruway, right off Route 19 - you can get here from anywhere." The next frontier for Sheard's is the world of internet auction services. Randy, who ironically finds computers to be "an evil we cannot do without," is spending two to three hours a day processing internet orders. "I'd rather be outdoors or with people, but this is the way things are going right now," he said. The family's willingness to change with the times is what has kept their business going, for sure, but it has also given this area one of its most unique novelty shops. One gets the feeling though that Sheard's will be around far into the future, selling protoplasm jet packs right off the same shelves as "antiques" such as the first editions of Harry Potter books and DVD players. |
Above: From left to right: Earl, Peggy and Randy Sheard offer a variety of items, from the unusual to the everyday, in their store on Route 19 in Bergen.