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Watertown antique shop closing this month




After 26 years of operating Jim’s Antiques, on and off the Watertown Square, Maine native Jim Amero will close the doors to his shop on Jan. 31. Amero has served the smallest municipality in Wilson County as its unofficial public relations guru since the mid-1990s, including organizing the Watertown Mile Long Yard Sale.KEN BECK

After 26 years of operating Jim’s Antiques, on and off the Watertown Square, Maine native Jim Amero will close the doors to his shop on Jan. 31. Amero has served the smallest municipality in Wilson County as its unofficial public relations guru since the mid-1990s, including organizing the Watertown Mile Long Yard Sale.KEN BECK

A quarter-century-old Watertown business will shutter its doors on Tuesday, Jan. 31, its owner said, and will be missed dearly by locals and day-trippers alike.

Jim’s Antiques has been open “eight days a week” since late November 1996. However, it’s more about three-quarters-of-a-century-old shopkeeper Jim Amero than his curiosity shop.

Most of that time his store roosted inside the former Joe Scott’s Drugstore and Pharmacy. The last four years Jim has pedaled his goodies a block off the Watertown Square in a small, white house on East Main Street.

The emporium has been far more than a nook in which to find antique toys, primitives, cabin and lodge décor, kitchen collectibles, vintage furniture, trinkets, collector’s items and other assorted knickknacks. Jim’s place has been a news desk of sorts and social center as its proprietor has had a front-row seat to almost anything that goes on in this town of about 1,500.

While he holds no public relations degree, Amero also has served as village crier and unofficial ambassador of goodwill by touting the benefits of living in one of the greatest little small towns in the South. And for more than 15 years he sat in the saddle as trail boss over the twice-a-year Watertown Mile Long Yard Sale.

 

 

The Maine native found Watertown, or perhaps Watertown found him, on Thanksgiving weekend of 1996 when he drove around the town. It immediately tugged at his heart strings.

“There was a quaintness to it. A glistening frost lay on the ground, and it looked beautiful with all the lights. It gave off a vibe that got a hold of me. I just fell in love with the city and am grateful to have found it,” said Amero, who had come to visit a friend.

Now he has countless friends in the community, and, due to the enterprising Ruby Guidara, who has decorated a myriad of sets for movies, TV show, commercials and music videos in the area, Amero can tick off the names of dozens of celebrities he encountered in Watertown — Garth Brooks, Carrie Underwood, Justin Bieber, Darius Rucker, the “Duck Dynasty” guys, Tim McGraw, Gwyneth Paltrow, Lindsay Wagner, Lynn Redgrave, Olympia Dukakis, Diane Ladd and “American Pickers” Mike Wolfe and Frank Fritz.

“I’ve a hand in everything in the community since I came to town picking and grinning, and I’ve stepped up many a time to help out,” said Amero.

He said he had been mulling closing the shop for a while, but the death of an older brother late last year seemed to be a sign that it was the right time to call it a day.

“My older brother was eight years older than I, and now I’m head of the family. I’ve got a brother and sister, and with my health I’ve got to slow down a little bit. I had a stroke a year-and-a-half ago, and Mary (his mate) has a relative that is retiring and will be moving here and renting my shop as her home,” he said.

“This doesn’t mean I will sit in a corner and float away. I can still make a living out on the highway, I think. I’m gonna to get another booth in an antique mall, either in Springfield or Cross Plains, and I’m still in the Over the Hill Antiques Mall in Readyville. And I still know a bunch of old cronies that collect and hoard.”

Earlier this month he began dropping prices in his store. Every item over $5 is now half price including Watertown T-shirts and maple products that Amero brings down from Maine every year.

“Whatever doesn’t sell, I will either put into an auction or put into storage or will dissolve it sooner or later. I don’t expect to have much left,” he said.

Born in Lewiston, Me., in 1947, Amero inherited his passion for things from the past from his father.

“We used to go with our dad to dumps on Sundays and target practice on the rats, and we would find old radios and lamps which he would take down to the basement and repair for use at home,” he recollected.

A veteran of the Vietnam War, he has worked as an assistant librarian, a bookmobile driver, driver for a fruit and produce company and meat company salesman.

He and Mary Craig, his soul mate of 22 years, reside in a small, white house next to his shop, and for many summers made the annual 2,800-mile round trip to visit family in Maine, with Amero buying and selling along the way. Now they plan to take more trips south (can you say Florida) rather than north.

Dealing advice to those who may dream of opening a business in a small town like Watertown, he said, “You have your good days, your bad days, but you keep on plugging away like I did for eight days a week, and you’re gonna get a good following.

“But if you think you’re gonna come here and open up a shop and think you’re gonna make big bucks and only open when you feel like it, and when we have an event and you are not around to cater to the local folks, they will not come back. You’ve got to give it your all and you gotta keep flipping your inventory.

“I’ve been very blessed, and I want to think the Watertown community and surrounding community for what they’ve given to me all these years, especially their generosity in helping me to go to Maine this last time for my brother’s funeral.”

About buying and selling antiques, he says, “It’s still in my blood. It’s a challenge.”

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