Back Up and Running: Ken’s Tackle Shop is welcomed back by the community

It was only a couple of weeks ago that Dottie Streeter, the owner of Ken’s Tackle Shop, started to have a good night’s sleep again or could take a Sunday afternoon to herself and shop in the grocery stores without people constantly asking, “When is the store reopening?”

In the cold of January, Ken’s Tackle Shop on Thames Street, a local fishing tackle store owned by the Streeter family for more than 50 years, was surrounded by black smoke as it burnt down. For Streeter, it was almost a miracle to see the shop reopen six months later on July 19 just a couple of doors down from its previous location on Thames Street, but it was only last week that Streeter was finally able to calmly sit and look out at the water.

“I was devastated,” she said of the fire.

She said she is still thankful that she didn’t bring her 13-year-old Shih Tzu, Chantilly, to the shop on the day of the fire, because she knew she would have crawled back in the shop to retrieve her.

“They wouldn’t let you back in the building,” she explained, “but on instinct I would have crawled back in there on my belly.”

Streeter said at first she wasn’t sure if she wanted to open up another store. After all, she knew after trying to find a place, she would have to build up the business all over again, starting from scratch.

Her father, Kenneth Streeter, opened the tackle store in 1951, and it had been in her hands since 1972. Streeter’s life surrounded a routine she had developed over the years, beginning each morning at 6 a.m. After weeks of dealing with the insurance company and trying to remember what she had lost in the fire, Streeter said one morning, she woke up at 6 a.m. and realized she had nothing to do. She also realized that with the loss of her shop, she had lost her retirement fund.

When selling a business, Streeter explained, one sells the name of the business and the clientele, and she had lost both. Eventually, Streeter decided to find a new location and start again.

“All of this is brand-spanking new!” she said, looking around the new store.

“It was fun, in a way, if I wasn’t so stressed out trying to get it going,” she added, smiling.

Streeter, a stickler for details, spent three months making minor repairs to the building, pricing and placing new inventory, finding items to fill her windows, and worrying about how her customers would adjust to the new store. The new store, a brighter, wider space, has gone over well thus far.

“I’m glad to be back,” Streeter said.

But she still remembers the fire like it was yesterday. She said the fire burned for quite some time, and she recalls as she looked at the building as the fire continued to burn, her 69-cent American flag still waved from an old wine barrel she kept in front of the store.

“The flag was still flying,” she said, and as soon as she saw it and looked away, she looked back and it was gone. A vet in the neighborhood saw the same flag and had taken it to be refurbished.  

“This is the flag,” Streeter said, pointing to it, now hanging from the wall in the store. “To go through that for a 69-cent flag is just amazing.”