Street Beat: The de facto mayor of Dooms

There is no one “most interesting” person in Dooms, but the place to find a character is East Side Grocery.

The small, unassuming building sits along Route 340 at the end of a sparse row of country stores — relics of years past where solitary gas pumps were gobbled up by road expansion and shifts in commerce.

The products have changed, too. A collection of 20 or so lottery dispensers hangs in the foreground of an array of cigarettes and chewing tobaccos (even the new kind; no spitting necessary).

And sitting in the middle of it, looking over his dozen or so shelves of product, Wayne Clark cocks his head to the left as one of his regulars swings open the screen door.

The hinges creak.

“Howya doin’ there Jimbo?” Clark asks.

The man walks to the wooden counter and places a hand on his thin hip. Peering through a square pair of glasses, Jimbo points to a pack of cigarettes and makes small talk. He pays in quarters, then nods, smiles, waves and saunters back to his truck.

He’s a good man, Clark assures, “Known him a long time.”

And they’ve known Clark a long time. He may list them off as a cast of characters — the spendthrifts, the jokers — but they have their own name for him. He’s the de facto mayor of Dooms, they say. He knows everyone.

They come dressed in windbreakers, hoodies and blue jeans. Some wear ties, others stick to T-shirts.

Mike, from down the street, is the “tightest man” in Dooms. He won’t spend a cent if he doesn’t have to. Buck, who lives around the corner, is the epitome of the small-town man, Clark says. When he leaves the store, he turns around with the same goodbye: “Have a bad day!”

“Your regular customers come in here for the same thing every day,” Clark says. “And as one customer told me, ‘You’re my banker, my financial adviser, my psychiatrist and my barkeep.’ ”

There’s Cookie and Bernie one hour, The Ladies who play bingo the next. The woman who won $50,000 from lottery scratch-offs still stops by from time to time. The man who can’t be satisfied usually buys a cola.

“There’s a lot of people who come in here and they will help you with anything,” Clark says. “It’s like Ray Manning across the street — I haven’t shoveled for two years.”

It’s true. The small asphalt lot, framed by piles of snow, glistens in the afternoon sun.