In the summer of 2022, I sat in the 1912 Café at the flagship store of L.L. Bean in Freeport, Maine. I ordered a cup of coffee while I waited for my retired Army son and his friend to finish their research shopping for kayaks, fishing lures, and shirts. Most of the customers were sitting on the patio outside, but I enjoyed the quiet of the empty room.

To pass the time, I looked at the collection of old company photographs on a nearby wall depicting the history of the store. I remembered when my husband and I had first set foot in Mr. Bean’s modest store long ago, in 1966, two years before this same son of mine, Sam, had been born. We were captivated as newcomers to New England by the rustic charm of Mr. Bean’s store—the bare wooden floors, the warm flannel shirts and fishing rods, and of course his sturdy hunting boots. I can’t remember what we came looking for that day, but it was probably something to do with camping, perhaps a spare mantle for our new Coleman lantern.

Camping memories came back to me as I sipped my coffee. Our young sons were frightened in our remote campsite in Vermont when we first took them to the dark woods with raccoons snarling and fighting in the darkness over scraps of meat we foolishly tossed in the garbage cans. The luscious taste of ordinary hash cooked in the frosty morning on our camp stove. Warm beverages. Other strange noises in the night. And through all those years, the trusty, sturdy, and dependable equipment from L.L. Bean. And for both of us, clothing: Dockers slacks and flannel shirts for Charles, and the warm fleece vests and turtlenecks I still love to wear.

Little did we dream that in the passing years we would return to L.L. Bean many times. On each visit, we discovered that the store had expanded while a shopping mecca grew up around it. Their success turned this small Maine town into an expanded but still relatively quaint shopping destination.

I examined the photographs to see if the building we had visited long ago was included in the photographs on display. Some buildings were too small and some too large, so I could not find a photo that I recognized as the exact one we visited long ago.

Before long, I finished my good coffee and my men returned. “Sorry we took so long,” Sam said. “We found the fishing lures we wanted.” Little did they know that fond memories had visited me while they wandered the aisles. I had not been alone.