Once upon a time I carried a camera, an ancient device for taking photographs that did not contain a telephone or connect to the Internet or do my taxes. Inside my camera was a roll of transparent light-sensitive plastic film that, when processed by a lab, produced strips of “negatives” that, when projected onto light-sensitive paper and run through a chemical bath created photographs. Ah, those were the days.
Poking through files, I came upon a black and white negative strip from the early 1980s. It seems I was taking photos of Dick Gallant, owner of the Oar House for a story in the long defunct Rockingham Gazette. Apparently I bumped into David Edelstein sitting outside his Trunk Shop and snapped this now iconic image.
David was a fascinating and resourceful guy who, in my view, rarely gets credit for his role in the Portsmouth Renaissance of arts and culture. His ground floor shop, initially his apartment, opened in 1979 across from the Moran tugboats at 39 Ceres Street. David liked old things and began restoring early lamps and trunks and making funky mirrors. One day he just opened the door to his apartment, people wandered in, and “The Trunk Shop” was born. He also ran a toy shop called Little Dickens.
Edelstein was born in Nashua. He was no fan of high school, and had lived plenty before he landed in Portsmouth in the 1970s. He was, legend says, New Hampshire’s first official conscientious objector to the Vietnam War. He arrived here just as the city’s cultural revival was gaining momentum.
By the time I took this photograph, Theatre by the Sea had moved from the refurbished grain warehouse at the top of Ceres Street to its new home at the bottom of Bow Street, where it evolved into Seacoast Rep. “Buddy” Haller’s creative Blue Strawbery restaurant, another pillar in the city’s cultural revival, was still there, I believe. We had not quite saved Prescott Park Arts Festival or pulled the USS Albacore onto dry land. This was the heady era when the survival of both Theatre by the Sea and and The Music Hall were on the table and the first fleet of tall ships were, fingers crossed, on their way into Portsmouth Harbor.
Like Macro Polo, Salamandra Glass, Ceres Bakery and Clarence’s Chowder House, all nestled in the same part of town, the Trunk Shop was fresh, intimate and unique. David cleverly branded his small business on restoring old wooden trunks, of which there were still zillions languishing in attics across the nation. He added value and turned junk into collectible antique furniture. America was built on families who had immigrated here or traveled west with everything they owned in these trunks. Brilliant.
David married Annie Blanchard in 1986 and they moved to North Berwick where their daughter Molly was born the following year. His sister Linda and her husband Pat Morse took over the Trunk Shop and moved it to Barrington. Today, it is owned by Kimry Corrette and located in North Yarmouth, Maine. (See thetrunkshop.com online.)
Even as his body was being taken over by multiple sclerosis, David Edelstein was, well, good ol’ Dave. His 2014 obituary in this newspaper described him as “a talented guitarist, a peace activist, and an iconoclast, continually questioning the wisdom of the world.”
David was, in his uniqueness and independence, exactly the kind of person Portsmouth needed to re-invent itself back then. I can even imagine him as one of the original Strawbery Banke settlers, getting the hell out of stuffy old England and onto a little boat in 1630. Stepping off that boat and gazing at an endless forest, David would scratch his head and light his pipe. Then after sitting for a while, he’d roll up his sleeves and make something beautiful out of whatever he could find.
(Photo by J. Dennis Robinson/ processed by Bill Roy)
Hamilton Smith, We Hardly Knew Ye