Recalling Joe Discatio
The big empty space on Congress Street where Joe’s Smoke Shop used to be feels like the village square after the old oak has fallen. Soon there’ll be a high-rise apartment building that will tower over everything else in Longfellow Square and add a lot of upscale residents to the neighborhood. Such is the shape of the new Portland.
Joe’s will reopen on the ground floor of this imposing structure as Joe’s Super Variety. The name was changed a couple years ago, after Papa Joe’s passing. His family knew he wouldn’t have liked that snazzy name and thought it best not to rile him. Riling Papa Joe never worked out very well for anyone.
Joe Discatio could perform a beautiful, romantic wedding ceremony for a neighborhood couple in his wine department — with stems of plastic flowers woven through the wooden latticework — and, later that same day, hop over the counter to chase a guy down the street who he’d spotted shoplifting a can of tuna, and tackle him. The worst part for the shoplifter was probably the lecture Joe gave him while he was sitting on him, waiting for the police to arrive.
Old school all the way, Joe was the first-born son of Italian immigrants who raised six children in some very lean times, including the Great Depression. Called upon to work at an early age to help support the family, Joe shined shoes and sold newspapers on the street before he landed a steady job at the South Portland Naval Shipyard. He worked there until 1945, by which time, at the age of 30, he had put aside enough money to buy the shoe-shine-and-newspaper stand in Longfellow Square that would eventually become Joe’s Smoke Shop.
Joe arrived at the store every day at precisely 4:20 a.m., raring to go, stacking newspapers and greeting customers hours before most of us were even out of bed. Some of Joe’s early-morning customers had been up all night carousing, of course, but that kind of thing didn’t matter to Joe. He took on all comers with equal enthusiasm. His store was a crossroads that people from all segments of society passed through at one time or another, and the rich and famous waited in line just like everyone else.
Well, there was one exception: former governor Percival Baxter, who, after his retirement from public life, kept an office on the top floor of the Trelawny Building, just down the block. Joe personally delivered the daily paper to Percy, as he called him, every morning without fail. They became the best of buddies, Joe said, despite their radically different backgrounds and personalities. Percival Baxter and Joe Discatio — who would’ve thought?
Likewise, Senators William Cohen and George Mitchell, both of whom would stop into Joe’s when they were home from Washington. The senators always got an earful, but they kept coming back because they knew Joe gave them the unadorned truth, a blunt assessment that said more about how their constituents viewed the issues than any poll could convey.
And then there was Gary Merrill and Bette Davis. Joe said Gary would come into the shop wearing the skirt he liked to wear around town, but Joe didn’t bat an eye over it. He made small talk with the actor just as he would with any other customer, which was why Gary kept coming back, Joe said. Same thing with Bette. She was a toughie all the way, according to Joe, with her raspy voice and trademark kerchief and sunglasses, but if you weren’t intimidated by her she’d soften up and chat with you all day long if you let her.
Actually, Joe became something of a star himself at one point. His shop used to sell more lottery tickets than any other location in Maine, and Joe appeared in a long-running series of television commercials for the state lottery commission. His enthusiasm on camera was unabashed. The way he went on about it, you’d think the lottery was the best thing to hit Maine since the Atlantic Ocean.
Of course, Joe’s Smoke Shop was never about celebrities or stardom. It stood for the neighborhood people, the regulars Joe appreciated so much. They’d come in for whatever — many just to get out of the house, actually — and Joe would greet them by name and ask them about their news. How did their knee operation go? What were their plans for Thanksgiving dinner? If he sensed any hesitation in the way a regular answered that question, they might be invited to the Discatio home for the holiday.
Everyone’s got a Joe Discatio story. One of the people who’d show up at Joe’s at 4:20 a.m., having been up all night, is my friend and fellow columnist Billy Kelley. Billy said he and Joe would lean over the counter most mornings, after Joe finished stacking newspapers, and do the Jumble puzzle in the local daily together. Joe wouldn’t tolerate interruption during this time from visitors like vendors trying to persuade him to carry their products. One morning, according to Billy, a real estate broker showed up with a briefcase stuffed with cash and offered to buy Joe’s parking lot, but Joe wouldn’t give him any airtime until he and Billy finished the puzzle.
Joe didn’t sell the parking lot, by the way. After the guy left, Joe told Billy that he really enjoyed being out there with his flashlight on nights when there was an event going on downtown, trying to get people to park in his parking lot. The satisfaction he got doing that was evidently worth more than the money in that briefcase.
The new store won’t match the character of the original, but the owners will still be family, so the spirit of the place will live on. Joe and his wife, the former Mary Fantasia — one could fall in love with a woman over that name alone — raised seven children in the Little Italy section of lower Munjoy Hill, and taught them the value of hard work and the importance of service to others.
Still, I don’t think we’ll be seeing any wedding ceremonies in the wine department of Joe’s Super Variety.
