BBB Destination - Thorndike

This time of year it's easy to appreciate a good hot stove. And there's no better place to find vintage stoves than in this central Maine hamlet of some 700 people. Folks come from all over to see Joe and Bea Bryant's incredible cache because, with all due respect, why else would they come? "It's pretty much the post office, the Grange [hall], and us," 72-year-old Joe Bryant says of downtown Thorndike.

But Bryant's Stove & Music, Inc., a small cluster of disparate buildings, is worth the trek. Bryant and his 73-year-old wife, Bea, oversee what is probably the largest antique-stove restoration and sales business in the country. At any given moment, you can admire about 100 pristine vintage kitchen stoves and parlor stoves on their showroom floor, another 40 or so in their adjoining "museum," and a pasture of rusted hulks waiting outside to be rejuvenated or used for parts.

But there is also all this other old stuff here, collections the Bryants have amassed during their 53 years of marriage and now display for visitors: their remarkable accumulation of mechanical music devices, their dozen or so antique cars, their doll circus, which springs to life at the flick of a switch. There is also Bea Bryant's thimble collection and her most recent devotion, old buttons, both of which impress her husband with their practicality. "They're a hell of a lot lighter than stoves," he points out.

"We collect everything but money," her father banters back. "We keep that in circulation."

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