SEARSPORT -  Selling handmade Christmas wreaths for $5 a pop out of the back of a truck parked alongside Route 1 could be a real grind, but for Larry Carrozzo of Searsport it's relaxing — fun, even — and it turns a decent profit.

Carrozzo used to contract with the big wreath companies, getting around $35 for a dozen wreaths that might retail at a supermarket for $20 apiece. They were good wreaths — double-sided and of a certain weight — but as Carrozzo came to realize, a lot of people weren't looking for an heirloom. They just wanted a wreath for the holiday season.

A few years back, he struck out on his own. The matrials cost about 20 cents per wreath, he said, plus whatever time it takes to collect the boughs and berries, and selling them himself cut out the middleman. But Carrozzo's stroke of genius, or maybe just common sense, was to make the wreaths one-sided.

"When you hang it up, you never see the other side," he said. "So people love it."

On the Monday after Thanksgiving, Carrozzo's pick-up truck was parked by the highway, clad in wreaths. In front of the truck was a simple wooden sign advertising the price. In back Carrozzo was keeping busy binding boughs to the twisted wire hoops that serve as armatures for the wreaths. His was the only vehicle in the dirt pull-off. But for the most part, he said, he's been selling the wreaths as quickly as he can tie them.

It's the make-or-break variable in Carrozzo's cost equation: how fast can he tie a wreath?

"I can make one in three minutes flat," he said, with a hint of a self-deprecating smile. "But I've been doing it for 30 years."

Sales Manager Josh Treat said the dealership took up General Motors on an offer of sorts that would allow Dutch to revamp its facade and renovate portions of the building's interior. Though he didn't say how GM was contributing, Treat and one other employee of the dealership each spoke of the renovations in the optimistic but slightly resigned tones of someone who's been made an offer he can't refuse.

"They're pretty stringent and strict about it, down to the tables and chairs," Treat said, referring to what will eventually be a redesigned sales floor at the front of the building. "It's not a mandatory thing but it was a chance to give the dealership a face lift."

A closer look by the blog GM Authority seems to confirm the quasi-voluntary nature of the GM's nationwide program and the tight guidelines, which are intended to give the dealerships a uniform look. The article also makes a case for why many GM dealerships are due for an overhaul, giving some context to the company's tough love tactics.

The renovations in Belfast will ultimately mask Dutch Chevrolet's pitched roof with a squared off facade featuring a thick blue arch over the entrance. The rest of the building will be clad in silver panels with large windows running from end to end. Treat said the work could be done by March or April, weather permitting.

"It's not an ideal time," he said, noting that the economy is still iffy. "But it's one of those things where you either get in or you lose out. It's an investment for the dealership."

On the positive side, Treat said he and his fellow salesmen who were relocated to the trailer outside the main building have seen an unexpected bump in business since construction started.

"We've actually been a little bit busier out here just because of the curiosity factor," he said.

BELMONT - Peggy Palmer's yard is covered in white things this time of year. Some light up at night like the light-encrusted armatures of deer and Christmas trees, the icicles that appear to drip, and the plastic enclosures made to look like a snowman's head covering the lamps at the foot of the driveway. Others, like the dozens of seagulls that appear twice a day are just there for the food.

To hear Palmer speak, the birds, the lights, all of it makes the place feel a little more like home.

The seagulls have been coming for about five years, she said. They show up twice a day and stand at a distance on the lawn between the house and the highway, waiting. Palmer upends a bag of bakery cast offs on the driveway and the birds fly into a frenzy for several minutes then amble back out to the lawn or find a perch along the ridge of her roof, or on one of the snowman heads.

On a slope to one side of house between 40 and 80 wild turkeys also show up for food. Palmer said her house has become somewhat known as the one with the seagulls and turkeys in the yard. There are also deer that come around and at least one cat and Palmer invites them all, chalking it up to her love of animals.

The routine recently got a little trickier to keep up.

Palmer used to get the bread from the Hostess-affiliated  J. J. Nissen outlet in Augusta, but with the closing of the parent company so went her supply. A bakery in Brewer gave her a large amount of bread and friends have pitched in. The birds, for their part, seem as worried about the supply of food as ever. Which is to say, they show up early and when the bread hits the ground all bets are off.

That's the daytime.

At night, when the gulls have left and the turkeys are roosting in the trees, the lights come on. 

Drive from Belfast to Augusta in December and Palmer's is among the more impressive holiday displays. She also does Halloween and said that's even more work because she adds extra decorations closer to the house for trick-or-treaters. But she's not complaining. Not about any of it.

"We moved around a lot when I was growing up," she said. "So I guess I got a little carried away."


Previous Contact Sheets:

Built, broken, fixed and reimagined 

Sweet Annie rides the bus and other things familiar and new

A school lockout, a bike (tricked out), a porcupine and a pear tree

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