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The truck crash that closed a section of Route 1 for half of Friday also left a typically bustling Stockton Springs general store almost completely dead.
Cutterman’s Variety sits on the stretch of Route 1 that was closed to through-traffic after the crash at 5:30 a.m., in which the truck that was carrying a wind turbine blade struck a railroad overpass.
While the busy coastal highway was finally reopened late Friday afternoon, workers at Cutterman’s said it was eerily quiet for most of the day.
The disruption was especially noticeable because of how bustling the store tends to be on summer days, when thousands of drivers head up or down Route 1. Instead, drivers had to use detours that were between six and eight miles to get around that section of road.
Employee Summer Woitko noted that the best days at Cutterman’s Variety are very busy. Instead, she spent most of Friday prepping food, cleaning her workspace, and waiting for the time to go by.
“I would say, this is really affecting the store,” Woitko said. “It’s weird.”
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Nearly all the customers who did stop into the store were firefighters helping to manage the site of the truck crash, which was about two miles up the road.
“We’ve been down all day,” said the manager of the store, who declined to give his name. “The detour starts here, and ends over there, so nobody goes by here. Hopefully it will pick up tonight once the detour gets closed.”
One of the few drivers who managed to find his way to Cutterman’s was Mike Misiak, who transports boats for a living and was delivering a Hinckley yacht from Long Island, New York to a marina in the Brooksville village of Harborside on Friday.
Misiak’s more-than-400-mile trek was disrupted when he reached Stockton Springs at around 9:30 a.m. and couldn’t take his company-leased truck — and its large cargo — on the designated detour. A police officer instead instructed him to camp out at Cutterman’s until the detour was lifted.
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Misiak had originally hoped to reach his destination by late morning, but instead was still stuck in the parking lot in the afternoon.
“I anticipate I’ll be able to move when they tell me I can,” Misiak said at around 1:30 p.m. “I’m on an oversize load. There are certain permitted routes. I can’t go off-route.”
Misiak noted that this was his fourth hours-long holdup in the past six months, though some of the others happened along Interstate 95 in the Carolinas.
“People aren’t patient and they cause crashes. They don’t want to wait for the trucks. They cut everybody off. Accidents happen. The highway gets shut down,” Misiak said.
However, Misiak and the workers at Cutterman’s recognized there was little they could do but remain patient during the closure.
“My take on it?” Misiak shrugged. “It’s part of the job.”