No doubt you have heard about the six degrees of separation – how everyone on the planet is separated by just six people. Here in Newburyport there are still lots of people with zero degrees of separation. Take Michael Taranda, for instance.
As he will tell you,back in “the day” everybody knew everybody, and a lot of that was because everybody in one way or another patronized Fowle’s News and Soda Shop.
And for 50 years, Taranda worked at Fowle’s.
In fact, it’s the only place he ever worked.
With the possible exception of his wife, the former Margaret “Peggy” Fuller (who claims to never have been a “regular”), people of all ages and gender went to Fowle’s in its nearly 150 years as a vendor of newspapers, magazines, and food.
“I started at Fowle’s (in 1941) as a 12-year-old paper boy,” Taranda said.
A couple of years later, owner Nicholas Arakelian asked young Mike if he would give up the paper route and help with washing up and general chores.
Taranda opened the store every morning, before going to school, with permission from his mother – who had said he could try it for a couple of weeks.
“I walked out of there in 1991,” he said with a chuckle. “Two weeks!”
After graduating from Newburyport High School in 1947, he went to work full-time for the wholesale part of the business.
In 1957, Arakelian sold the whole kit and caboodle to Fred Schaake and Sam Waterhouse, who owned it until the mid-1990s.
All the newspapers and magazines that were sold in Newburyport, in Amesbury, in Newbury “in the whole area” came out of that business.
Not to mention that the place was open from 6 a.m. to 10:30 p.m. for the convenience of “well, everyone.”
“I go in there to see Ruthie (Ruth Sullivan, longtime clerk),” he said. “The wholesale operation is not what it used to be; it used to be a meeting house, everybody knew everybody who came in, we knew all the merchants, and State Street was two-way.”
Fowle’s celebrated 150 years in business in 2001, seven years after the news dealer side, the Waverly News Co. on Middle Street, had been sold to North Shore News in Lynn.
