Scaglione indulged his early love of architecture to participate in designing and building these spaces-each of which has its own distinct style. Their success allowed Scaglione and Heacock to move to a larger store in Boothbay Harbor, and eventually expand to locations in Portland, Freeport, and Kennebunkport. Customers bought them not only for themselves, but also as gifts for weddings, birthdays, and baby showers. That was it.”Ībacus became known for high-quality products-jewelry, glass lamps, and handcrafted wooden boxes-many of which were made by local artisans.
If the water was cold, it didn’t matter, because we only allotted one quarter for the day. “Every morning we’d take our quarters and go down. “We used to take our showers down at the local marina, at the outdoor pay showers, because we didn’t have those facilities in our building,” says Scaglione. For several years, they lived in the 150-square- foot stockroom in the back of the store. Scaglione and Heacock soon opened their first Maine store in Boothbay Harbor. “As we left Boothbay Harbor, I said, ‘I really did love it, and I’ll be back again, I’m sure,’” says Scaglione. They drove around in the car all night, in order to stay warm.
Unfortunately, it was boarded up, and the key was nowhere to be found. Heacock thought they could sleep at his grandparents’ house.
Heacock and Scaglione borrowed a Volkswagen Beetle that belonged to their classmate’s boyfriend, and headed up the coast on a bitter February day. Born at Portland General Hospital (now Maine Medical Center), Heacock grew up summering at his grandparents’ house on Ocean Point in Boothbay Harbor. “People walking by would hear the phone ringing and answer it, and somebody would say, ‘You see that little door over there, could you go in and ask the two guys in there if they could come out to the phone?’”īack at RISD, Heacock convinced Scaglione to accompany him on a visit to his home state. “There was a phone booth outside our door, and we gave people that number,” says Scaglione. “We joked about it, because it began with an A and a B, and I said we can always be first in the phone book.” Ironically, Abacus did not have a listing in the telephone directory, because they could not afford a phone. “We liked the idea of the texture and the visuals of an abacus,” says Scaglione. “We cobbled together the interior by taking out a staircase, and our landlady gave us permission to take down her chicken coop-we used the boards to cover the walls.” To stock it, they convinced their fellow RISD students to sell their art on consignment. There they opened their first store, in an eight- foot-wide space that had previously been a taxi-dispatch stand. On a break from school in 1971, the pair travelled to Bennington, Vermont Heacock’s family had moved there from Farmington. Until I went to RISD, where I found people who thought like I did.” “Putting things together and building things mentally and physically with little parts-thinking there must be something wrong with me. “I used to lie on my stomach in the living room and pretend I was designing things with undersides of furniture,” says Scaglione. Scaglione, who grew up in Ohio, was studying architecture. Heacock and Scaglione met in 1969 as first-year students at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence. They now have stores in five Maine locations. Abacus cofounders Dana Heacock and Sal Scaglione have provided a home for art and handcrafted items for more than four decades.
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