A New Portland Haunt

Last Saturday afternoon Howard and I were out tootling about in Portland. We were on a mission to find a particular Radio Shack in North Portland, but weren’t going the most direct route, which was to our advantage. As we were driving down N. Denver Avenue, both Howard and I spied a little shop, Kenton Antiques and Collectibles. “Want to stop?” Howard generously offered. “You bet,” I replied. He circled around the block and parked, joining me in the adventure of discovery by going into the store with me. “Yowsa!” I mentally cried upon entering the store. It was one of those winding, intriguing stores with fingers going in all directions. Howard was asking the store’s owner, Susan, about the architecture of some of the local houses we had seen in the neighborhood as I began to roam around, my eyes wide (and my mouth probably open a bit – but no drooling, at least I don’t think I was drooling). Howard eventually settled into the bookstore portion of the store with a book on the local history of Kenton. A side note: my grandfather was a mailman in Portland for over 30 years and many of those years he worked out of the Kenton Post Office, so there were some sweet memories tied up in the area we were visiting.

I’m making this blog post not only because the antique store was clean, nicely organized, lots of kitsch, and not too expensive, but also because it had a fabulous collection of ephemera in the back portion of the store. I told Susan upon emerging from the back room that I could spend a day there. Her reply was, “Some people do.” I can see why. There were not only magazines arranged topically, but also photographs, bins of ephemera by topic, letters, post cards - you get the idea. My kind of store.

A special note for Laura: they had vintage Cub and Boy Scout magazines in the back room!

Here is a little photo walking tour of the store, the “back room,” and the bookstore portion of the shop.