The Vermont Country Store Beckons With a Nostalgic Catalog The Vermont Country Store Top, Necco Wafers and an archival picture of the Vermont Country Store. Above, images from the store's catalog. For the last year I've been trying unsuccessfully to visit the Vermont Country Store's flagship, in Weston, Vt. Initially I chalked up my repeated failure to logistics; there was simply never a good time to break away from the city for a weekend. The company's folksy catalog has been a staple of my mailbox for possibly my entire life, though it took a mid-aughts job in Times Square, replete with screeching subway commute and high heels, for me to truly appreciate its countrified appeal. Flipping through its frumpy, matte pages, so unlike those of its glossy retail cousins, has the soothing effect of donning a flannel Lanz Playful Kittens Gown for Moms and Daughters Alike ($34.95 to $59.95, sizes toddler to 3X) and curling up with a Santa Winking Mug ($19.95 for a set of two) of warm Ovaltine ($9.95). I'm transported to the lace curtains and plaid sofa cushions of my New England childhood, not excluding the kitchen "junk drawer," where every last thingamabob, no matter how ingenious, invariably met its fate. A poor relation to the box labeled String Too Short to Be Saved that the poet Donald Hall found in his grandparents" New Hampshire attic and subsequently titled a book after. Here in this age of contrived "heritage" brands like Hendrick's Gin (b. 1999) and Madewell (b. 1989, resurrected 2006), these self-titled Purveyors of the Practical and Hard-to-Find own authenticity like few others. In 1897, Gardner Lyman Orton, a 12th-generation American, opened a general store in Calais, Vt., the same year his son, Vrest, was born. In 1945, after serving in World War II, graduating from Harvard, working in New York publishing and writing speeches for the Pentagon, Vrest Orton returned to Vermont, where he and his wife, Ellen, also a native, set up a printing press in their garage and entered the mail-order business. Their inaugural catalog, 24 pages of 36 "durable, practical" products, went out to the people on their Christmas card list. The next year the Ortons bought an 1827 building (formerly a country inn) on Main Street in Weston; today the entire village (pop. 566) is on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1967 they opened a second store in Rockingham, Vt., about an hour southeast. Mr. Orton died in 1986; Mrs. Orton in 2010. Today the enterprise is owned and run by their son Lyman and his sons Cabot, Gardner and Eliot - who, if I'm not mistaken, occasionally stands in as a model. At least I think that's Eliot in a pair of Hunter Green Men's Jersey Knit 100% Cotton Ski Pajamas ($34.95). The catalog has 100-odd pages of 1,000-odd products, an any-era-goes museum of Yankee consumerism holding everything from personal-remedy potions with names like Old Goat and Vim & Vigor to slip-on ice cleats for boots or sneakers to flannel any way you like it. Who doesn't need an Adjustable Nail Polish Holder - Helps You Paint Your Nails With Ease ($9.95)? Who doesn't want to chomp their way through a tin of Boston's beloved Necco Wafers ($11.95), a sack of Baltimore's Goetze's Caramel Creams ($14.95), a box of freshly made Vermont Cider Doughnuts ($21.95 for 12)? The manufacturing team has resuscitated more than a few long-gone items, now sold as Vermont Country Store exclusives. Tangee Lipstick ($14.95), which changes color to complement your skin tone, was gracing pouts in 1928, went out of production in the 1960s, and came back from the dead in 2002. From the 1960s: the Original Mood-Changing Lipstick Is Back at Your Request ($19.95 for a set of six). Remember Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific ($14.95) shampoo? Now your hair can smell like the 1970s. It's a trip down memory lane so masterfully paved I don't even care whose memories I'm remembering. I get as much pleasure reading the blessedly straightforward, jargon-free copy as I do the use of hand-drawn illustrations to depict, for instance, a psoriasis-ravaged forearm before and after an application of Medicated Coal Tar Ointment ($19.95). Surely by merely exposing myself to such thrifty practicality I'm saving money.