Milford History Online

In the Internet Age, we have instant access to virtually every song, movie, or book ever released. What we no longer have is the pleasure of the hunt. Some Milford residents may remember poking around the “Red Truk” Record Shop in the 1970s, Movie Scene Video Rental in the ‘90s or Toadstool Books in the 21st Century, but for someone who has never owned a record or gotten lost in a dusty old bookshop, having whatever you want — whenever you want it — can sometimes be too much of a good thing.

Back in the days when “Apple Music” referred to the Beatles’ production company, not an app to download $1.29 songs, Milford had a procession of record shops that catered to local rock lovers. Finding that “lost ‘45” was the perfect Saturday afternoon quest and even the Top 40 was far less attainable. In the mid-70s, if you dug the latest radio hit, you could wait for the DJ to get around to it again or you could run down to Milford’s Red Truk Record Shop at 14 South Street. 

Owned and operated by Peace Corps well-drilling expert Kurt Corbin, the store featured a decor of burlap bags and barn boards. The “red truck” in question was Corbin’s own — a 1951 International Harvester pickup he had driven in from California. Why “Truk”? Well, it was “Kurt” spelled backwards, of course.  Unfortunately, once Corbin recovered from surgery for a leg injury sustained drilling wells in India, he was back overseas and the record shop became a grocery.

Milford’s music scene then moved to Elaine Rudd’s Record Rack in Union Square. While the store had the drawback of sharing space with her secretarial and copy services, it could still boast of “the latest albums, cassettes, tapes, record needles, and posters along with special order services.” A Milford Cabinet photo of the store’s interior in 1980 features a life-sized poster of Michael Jackson, ready to boogie with his disco-era afro.  Sadly, in March 1980, just when the store was “reaching full stride” according to the Cabinet, 49-year-old Elaine Rudd collapsed and died at Town Hall shortly after making public comments to the board of selectmen. 

Before anyone could imagine Netflix or Hulu streaming its infinite content, owners of VHS or Betamax VCRs in Milford were on the hunt at local video rental stores. These included Cecile Desruisseaux’s Video Village (later Video Scene) in Granite Town Plaza, Video Update in Lorden Plaza and Cinema Scope (featuring previously viewed movies — “Perfect Stocking Stuffers!”). Of course, the big boy on the block was Blockbuster Video in West Milford.. At the national chain you could get “two Cokes, two movies, and a bag of microwavable popcorn for $6.99,” while seven bucks got you three movies for three nights at Cinema Scope — as long as you remembered to “be kind and rewind,” of course.

The quest for the evening’s entertainment was part of the fun as the video store patron wandered through Horror, Musical, Drama, or even —  behind the mandatory partition — what Video Village called “adult entertainment.” But by the early 2000s, as DVD mail service caught on, times got tough fast for rental stores all over the country. In 2010, Blockbuster reached its final reel in Milford while Video Update soldiered on for a few more years. Owner Lee Gentile told the Cabinet in 2010 that it was hard to compete with “Red Box and its self-service kiosks,” as well as the rent-by-mail company “Netflicks” — as the paper referred to it.

Meanwhile, with readers still preferring to hold the real McCoy in their hands, Milford’s bookstore of choice was Toadstool. Willard Williams opened the original Toadstool Bookshop in 1972 in Peterborough and a branch came to Milford’s Lorden Plaza in 1989. Featuring the “earthy and magical” logo of an elf reading under a toadstool, the store was generally the antithesis of the mega-mall style of Barnes & Noble or Borders. Although it carried an impressive 40,000 titles, Toadstool was perhaps epitomized by the “Infamous Toadstool Book Trivia Quiz” that employees were required to pass. With such a well-read workforce, the store became not only a place to browse but a kind of local literary center, featuring bookreads by authors such as Jodi Picoult, Robert Jordan, Tomie DePaulo, and of course, New Hampshire native and Da Vinci Code author Dan Brown. Unfortunately, after three decades in Milford, Toadstool was squeezed out by “aggressive leasing tactics” and found itself next door to a Market Basket in Nashua.

Today, anyone with working WIFI can probably access virtually the entire inventory of Red Truk, Video Village, or Toadstool in minutes — and yet without a single bookseller, video store, or record shop in town, any entertainment hunting these days is probably done strictly with your remote.