Town Helps Save Store That’s ‘Heartbeat of Community’

Just alongside California 1, a wooden sign above a tiny store beckons passersby to stop for “provisions for land and sea.” Once inside, they’ll find such necessities as milk, vegetables and barbecued oysters. Anglers can get night crawlers and a sandwich made to order.

The Marshall Store is the only shop in this Marin County hamlet of about 100 residents on the east shore of Tomales Bay, an hour’s drive north of San Francisco. The blue, one-story building jutting over the water’s edge is also, residents say, the town’s soul, a place to swap gossip and enjoy a view of the water from the back deck.

Without the Marshall Store, “people would have to be in their vehicles all the way to Point Reyes Station seven miles south or Tomales seven miles north for a cube of butter,” explained Tod Friend, an employee at a nearby oyster farm. “It would detract from the community. It’s about self-sufficiency.”

So when the store’s former owner decided to move away last summer without a buyer in sight, Marshall worried that it might lose its singular landmark.

What’s a town to do? Well, buy it. Or at least help someone buy it.

And that’s what 20 Marshall residents did, lending the new owner $26,000 in batches ranging from a few hundred dollars to $3,000 each.

There was no arm pulling, no hesitation, said Bob Kahn, who led the effort to save the store. Owner of a local bed and breakfast, Kahn put up $3,000.

“It’s just a little general store, but it’s accessible to us,” Kahn said. “It’s just a great spot to come to talk to people that live in the community, and to people that don’t live here.”

The store’s close connection to the town prompted Paul Elmore to pitch in $2,000. Elmore says he visits the store three to four times a week, sometimes lounging on the deck with a cup of mocha when weather permits.

“It’s sort of like all the little towns in the Midwest, where if you abandon that post office or that store, there’s no town then,” he said. “A town is not just a collection of houses. Without that store, we’re an animal without a belly button.”

The new owner, Kathryn Krohn, a resident of nearby Inverness, had previous experience running a food business. But her savings covered only half the cost of buying the Marshall Store’s inventory and ongoing business.

Marshall people were willing to aid Krohn even though she was a virtual stranger to most of them.

“It was quite a trust that people had, just to say, yeah, we’ll do what we can,” recalled Krohn, who took over the store shortly before Labor Day.

As part of the deal, Krohn is to pay off the five-year loan in quarterly installments at 6% interest. She says that business has been going well and she anticipates no problems in paying off the loan or making the monthly rent.

At first glance, such a humble business hardly seems capable of inspiring such largess. But the store has been a part of Marshall for 70 years, and it is one of the few landmarks that remain from a period when the town was just a whistle-stop along a coastal railway. The wireless telegraph station set up early this century has long since closed. A tavern that once hosted musicians such as Van Morrison and Merle Saunders went out of business in 1983 and now sits in disrepair.

“There’s not a lot of big businesses here, and there’s not gonna be,” said oysterman Friend, referring to the zoning laws that have discouraged growth and kept the region somewhat rural over the decades. “Preserving the store is kind of in keeping with the whole idea of preserving the bay and the way things are.”

The store was first established as a fish house by Nick Vilicich in 1928. After World War II, Vilicich’s sons took over and turned the business into a shop that at various times sold electronics, wood and sheet metal before becoming a deli in the 1970s. In 1994, John Vilicich, one of Nick’s sons, passed the store on to his daughter, Joyce Welch, who moved to Washington state this past fall.

Krohn is the first owner from outside the Vilicich family.

John Vilicich has no regrets, especially since he said he never liked working indoors. “I’d rather be out with the boats playing with the moorings,” he explained.

At 78, Vilivich still works at the Marshall Boat Works, a boat repair shop adjacent to but independent of the store, and he owns both buildings. He and his wife, Jeanne, live in a redwood house across the street from the store, giving them plenty of opportunities to drop in on their new tenant.

The store still carries much of the Vilicich spirit. There are even T-shirts available that bear the Marshall motto credited to Jeanne Vilicich: “The only town where you can subtract the elevation from the population and get the speed limit.” Jeanne said she did the math in the 1970s, when she noticed a road sign stating that the population was 50, and the elevation 15. Residents are so attached to the saying that they’ve shown no interest in correcting the road sign or the saying, even though the population of Marshall has since doubled.

Out on the back deck, Kahn reflected on the significance of the Marshall Store to this small community. “With all the stuff going on in the world, with the impeachment hearings and everything, this is the real story, right here in Marshall,” he said. “It’s a little community getting together to keep a little store viable. It’s kind of a heartbeat of our community. It’s the heartbeat of America.”