November 4-10, 2004

Ask Penny Beebe what she likes most about her role as proprietress of Landlubber Mercantile and watch her blue eyes widen and sparkle like a child's on Christmas morning. "When we get a new line of merchandise at the store, I cannot wait. I just about hyperventilate. Getting packages every day is so fun--I absolutely love it."

For twenty-seven years, this bustling redhead has taken her eclectic taste, her knack for arranging and rearranging furniture, and a seemingly endless supply of energy and used it to create a luxurious retreat for busy shoppers longing for a place to rejuvenate while making progress on their holiday lists. Customers come from as far away as Seattle and Vancouver, B.C. to browse classy, colorful collections of the latest country styles, ranging from clocks to clothing, bath lotions to bedding, and framed prints to greeting cards. But customers closest to home are the ones Penny really values, as she is a lifelong Whatcom County resident with a rich family history.

A Legacy of Entrepreneurial Spirit

Penny's great-grandfather was Charles Vogt, a homesteader who came to Birch Bay from Germany via boat from San Francisco. The land he squatted on and claimed was handed down to his children, Penny's grandparents, and became Bay Center Resort, a seaside summer destination for vacationing Washingtonians. Growing up in a family business introduced Penny to the rigors of entrepreneurship from a young age. She remembers her father delivering ice to guests in the forty-seven vacation cottages, which were rented by the week. During summers, she remembers her parents moving the family down from the main house to live above the grocery store in order to be on call for guests day and night. But most of all, she remembers sneaking downstairs in the middle of the night to spruce up metal grocery shelving with fabric, building pyramids out of canned goods, and practicing her fledgling design skills.

Today Penny knows that creating rich display "stories" with merchandise makes the difference between products sitting in the store season after season or flying out the door in complimentary gift-wrapping. But her decorating inspirations were not always welcomed by the rest of the family, especially her mother. To this day Blanche Vogt prefers to store her housewares out of sight and mind in cabinets and closets. At one point during Penny's childhood, her mother had a carpenter install built-in cabinetry in her daughter's bedroom. Penny couldn't stand it--she found a screwdriver, and got to work moving the offensive cupboards out of her space. As a young woman, however, Penny's handiness paid off when she landed a job as window dresser for the old JC Penny's in downtown Bellingham.

In 1974, Penny married high school classmate, Blair Beebe, and like her parents before them, the couple took their turn overseeing the summer cottages but with a new twist: the Beebes started a souvenir shop in the downstairs of the shingled two-and-a-half story building that also served as their home. This "mostly seashell and seagull" shop was the first of five Landlubber incarnations. "Landlubber" refers to a person better off on shore than sailing the seas. It's also a perfect word to describe Penny, who grew up by the shore but feels more at home in her own indoor garden of earthly delights. After the birth of the Beebe's two daughters, Erika and Andrea, Penny craved year-round clientele, so the couple spun off a gift shop version of Landlubber in nearby Lynden.

A Memorable Evening

On Christmas Eve, 1985, just fifteen minutes before closing their Lynden store for the holiday, several tall men wearing cowboy hats sauntered in. Not recognizing them as locals and having a lot of money in the till from last-minute gift buyers, Penny called Blair up front from the back of the store. At the same moment, the four-year-old Andrea emerged from the back, covered in packing pellets, and began performing an impromptu "Snowman Dance" around the store.

The tallest of the group told Penny he was looking for a gift for his girlfriend. After a bit of perusing he found some silver barrettes at the jewelry counter, but when he brought them up to the register to pay, Penny noticed that they were dull. She offered to run next door to the drugstore, because she had recently read in a magazine that jewelry could be polished with toothpaste. Unfortunately, she didn't know that gel toothpaste wouldn't work and had to run back out again for the right kind.

"So I'm polishing the barrettes and Andrea is still doing her snowman dance," says Penny laughing. "I mean we are just the total ma and pa store. And when the man leaves, he says, 'I gotta tell you, I've been to a lot of places and I've never had service like this. This was really great.' "

After they left, the shopkeeper from the sporting clothes store next door came over and said, "Well, what did you think of that?"

Penny said, "Who were those guys?"

"Those were the Beach Boys," the shopkeeper said.

Penny had just given lead singer, Mike Love, some of the best customer service he'd ever had.

Treasuring Family History

These days, Penny's mother Blanche lives with the Beebes in their Craftsman-style bungalow in Blaine, where she prefers to leave the past in the past and not clutter her apartment with what she perceives as "old stuff." Not so, for the flamboyant Penny. Her penchant for the past has earned her home the title, "The History House" from friends and neighbors. A walk through the Beebe home is a tribute to a by-gone era with family heirlooms like the green Hamilton Beach milkshake mixer from the old resort snack bar on display in the kitchen. Penny's grandmother's and mother's wedding dresses hang upstairs next to sepia photographs of the brides themselves. A weathered Hires Root Beer billboard is on display in the combination dining room/living room. Even the sole surviving cottage of the original forty-seven resort cabins has been carefully reclaimed and transported into the back yard by Blair, where it now serves as a garden shed as well as a merry herald to visitors rounding the gravel drive.

The story of Landlubber Mercantile's steady success would not be complete without a nod to Blair, who has indulged, encouraged, and sometimes tolerated Penny's decorative whims over thirty years, but you’ll never hear him complaining. Like Penny, he is as industrious as two people and often brings a much-needed male perspective to the Landlubber purchasing table. For thirty years Blair has juggled a full-time job as Water Manager for Birch Bay Water and Sewer District with installing the shop's electrical fixtures, traveling to market with Penny, and generally doing whatever hands-on work needs to be done at both shop and home. In 1999, in their spare time, the Beebes served as general contractors in the building of their Blaine home, with Blair doing much of the construction and landscaping himself.

Still A "Ma and Pa Store"

Meanwhile, back at 1322 Cornwall Avenue, the time is rapidly approaching when Penny and her small staff will shut down for a day, no doubt with some help from Blair and Blanche, in order to transform the store into the holiday wonderland of shopping delights they create every year. This year that monumental task falls right on the heels of Blair's thirty-year mark with Birch Bay W&S. Might this mean the Beebes will be slowing down in the near future?

It's not likely. There are only a few more weeks until the store's invitation-only Christmas Open House. Penny has taken her design expertise on the road and into her customer's homes. And after the New Year, it's time once again for the couple to head to Atlanta and get a jump on the latest trends for 2005. And despite all of the extra hours, hard work, and festivities, you'll still find Penny Beebe staying up late, with visions of merchandise deliveries dancing in her head, long after the rest of us have settled down for a long winter's nap.