Littleton, New Hampshire - Joe Lahout sleeps in the bedroom where he was born in 1922 above his father's grocery and dry-goods store on the corner of Union and Pine streets in the gristmill village of Littleton, New Hampshire.
“I'm still here,” Lahout said on a brisk November morning. So is the family business, which is now known as America's oldest ski shop, thanks to the 93-year-old World War II veteran with glacier-blue eyes.
“I had to fight like hell to maintain our prestige and our name,” he said.
Today, the Lahout's shop remains a sacred waypoint among skiers who journey to the White Mountains and a New Hampshire institution for politicians on the early-state campaign trail. Jeb Bush dropped by in July, as did Mitt Romney during his first presidential run. Both Republican candidates signed the shop's door frame near the Sharpie scrawl left by gold medal Olympian Bode Miller, who grew up local to Lahout's.
In the age of chain stores and Internet commerce, the bricks-and-mortar shop has lasted for nine decades and four generations of Lahout stewardship, a testament to the family's North Country grit and good fortune. Now the Lahout name is instantly recognisable among skiers nationwide.
“I'm in Newport Beach, California, and a cop pulls me over,” said Ron Lahout, one of Joe's three sons.
“He goes, 'Lahout? My God, I bought my first pair of skis there,'“ he said, noting that the police officer let him go.
The store was founded in 1920 by Herbert Lahout, who arrived in the United States from the northeastern mountains of Lebanon in 1898, unable to speak English - or read or write. Yet he rose from grime-stained railway worker to prosperous shop owner in the span of two decades. When Herbert died in 1935 at the height of the Great Depression, his only son, Joseph, inherited the store.
As a boy, Joe Lahout learned to sky by hiking nearby Cannon Mountain - elevation 4 080 feet - and careering down the steeps. After Army service in World War II, Lahout returned to Littleton to run the family business and decided to use savings from his military paychecks to expand the shop inventory to include Northland skis made of maple.
For years Lahout's had served as an outfitter for locals who skied, selling sweaters, flannel shirts and rubber boots. Under Joe Lahout, the store's focus on winter sports spurred the business to flourish, partly because of his marketing ingenuity, sales acumen and customer service.
Joe's son Herb said it was his father's idea to stock the shop like a Middle Eastern bazaar, piling the shelves high with outerwear and retaining the building's rustic character, down to the weather-beaten floorboards that still creak underfoot. Joe said that - to the chagrin of other local retailers - he sold his goods at a discount and with a smile. Loyal Lahout's skiers often showed up at the store after lifts shut down at 4pm and the shop floor became a makeshift watering hole. Joe kept a wheel of cheese in the back and served cold Budweiser and Schlitz.
According to family lore, a customer once asked Joe Lahout whether he was worried that the town's liquor commissioner might find out he sold beers without a proper license. “No,” Joe replied. “He owes me money. I don't have to worry.”
Good fortune played a part in the store's success as well. Beginning in the mid-1950s, road crews began construction on Interstate 93, which brought traffic north from Boston to Littleton. The 2 1/2-hour drive is a picturesque trek past stands of furs and birch trees clutching the steep mountainsides, which loom above like white-capped granite tidal waves.
Beginning in the 1960s, ski resorts opened along the interstate corridor, such as Loon Mountain and Bretton Woods near Mount Washington, which brought more business to the store. Lahout's also forged partnerships with two young inventors who had created prototype equipment that allowed riders to “surf” on snow. They were Tom Sims and Jake Burton, pioneers of snowboarding. Ron said that in his early days, Burton made deliveries to the shop himself.
In the 1980s Joe handed the day-to-day running of the store over to his sons, Joe Jr., Ron and Herb. (A daughter, Nina, is a Harvard- and Penn-educated United Nations lawyer.) The three brothers, the third generation of Lahouts to run the shop, expanded the business by opening seven new locations in Littleton and nearby Lincoln. A fourth-generation Littleton Lahout, Anthony, age 27, has helped modernise the shop's brand and served as a producer for a recent short documentary about his grandfather.
“Running a ski shop is in our DNA,” Herb Lahout said. “This is what we do.”
The original location is still thriving partly as a quaint family shrine and ski history museum, bedecked with Lahout-clan mementos and skiing memorabilia. There are Joe's old wooden skis and the singlet with a burn hole in the shoulder worn by Miller when he crashed in a race in St. Anton, Austria, and skidded across the snow at velocity. While the shop retains its country-store charm, upgraded wares now include such 21st-century gadgets as GoPro cameras.
Joe Lahout surveys the progress from his second-story porch over the shop's front door. Inside the apartment where he was born, the family patriarch recalls his earlier days on the slopes.
“Well, I like to ski, period,” he said. “The speed about it. The technique about it. You know? I skied all my life.”
Hip replacement surgery has left him diminished physically. He has not skied in some time. “I miss it,” he said.
A T-shirt on the racks below at Lahout's celebrates the man whose passion for the sport still burns, captured in his motto emblazoned on the front: “Put the damn skis on and go like hell.”
If you go
Lahout's
245 Union St., Littleton, N.H.
lahouts.com
The original shop, established in 1920, is in Littleton just off Interstate 93. There are seven additional stores in the general vicinity, including the ski and snowboard outfitter location in nearby Lincoln, New Hampshire, at the foot of Loon Mountain. Experts on hand can help with fittings, and skilled technicians can tune equipment for sharp turns on the slopes. Shoppers may note that there is no sales tax in New Hampshire.
The Washington Post