EFG's One More Again Thrift Store

New thrift shop in Hopkinsville, KY

Keely and I enjoy second-hand stores, so we were excited when we saw a sign on a Virginia Street corner  for a new thrift in downtown Hopkinsville. We checked it out as soon as we had a chance.

The EFG One More Again store is located on the corner of 6th Street and Virginia, with an entrance on 6th Street (next to Young's Hardware.) This business place (actually two side-by-side buildings) was formerly a furniture store. I don't know the rest of the history of the structures, but to me, they appear to be at least a century old.

"EFG" stands for Evangelical Free Gospel, the church group that runs this thrift shop. They meet at the store for worship. I think the lady tending the store told me that they meet on Saturday nights. She said that the group had previously met in a different location, but they lost their pastor and had to take a new direction. So, they rented this business place and opened the thrift shop.

The inside of the store is spacious so I didn't get that "too-close" feeling that some over-crowded, high-piled junk stores give me. These photos were both taken downstairs. A wide doorway connects the two buildings. As you can see, EFG offers the typical thrift shop selection of merchandise -- totally random!

We climbed an extremely worn stairway in the corner building to the second floor of the shop. (The other building of the shop has stairs to the second floor that are wider and in much better repair.)

The upstairs is divided into a number of rooms. Keely and I spent most of our time in the book room, where we found some good, ex-library children's books. We both left with our arms loaded. I was relieved to discover that we wouldn't have to go back down the same stairs we came up, as my bifocals sometimes bother me on stairways. Keely speculated that there might be a freight elevator somewhere in the building that they used to bring the books and other merchandise upstairs.

The second-floor windows of the corner building have interesting embellishments. The photo above was taken from the sidewalk. I used a graphics procedure on that photo to make the image below. It shows the details at the top of the building better, although I think the windows are longer than the altered perspective suggests.

I picked up a business card at the check-out counter, and here is some of the information from it:

One More Again Thrift Store
118 E. 6th St.
Hopkinsville, KY
Operated by members of EFG Church to give back to the local community.

The card also notes that they will pick up garage sale leftovers.

Deals by the Pound!

Goodwill Outlet Store in Indianapolis

Keely and I made a fast trip to Indianapolis last week to pick up a car we bought for Isaac on eBay. (If you keep up with the ongoing drama here, you know that our son Isaac wrecked his car in June.) The "new" vehicle is a 2001 Toyota Corolla. It seems to be a pretty good little car, and we hope it will serve him well.

We drove up after work and spent the night in Indianapolis. The next morning, we had a few hours to kill before we could pick up the car, so we decided to visit a Goodwill Outlet Store that we had spotted in the area.

The outlet store occupies one end of a huge warehouse. Goodwill trailers were parked in a line along the wall. When we got out of the car, we saw a sign that made our bargain-loving hearts go thumpity-thump:  "Deals by the Pound!"

Inside, we learned the prices:
$.69/lb. for clothing, housewares, books,  toys, DVDs, and CDs
$.49/lb. for glass
$.99/lb. for paired shoes

(I suppose if you wanted unpaired shoes, they would be $.69/lb!)

The store was a very large room with a very high ceiling. Several dozen shoppers were digging through a jumble of merchandise that was piled in long rows of bins. The bins -- or maybe they should be called tables -- were made of blue plastic, and they were about 4 feet wide, 8 feet long, and 18 inches deep.

Several rows of tables contained heaps of housewares and toys. Tables in another area had piles of  mostly clothing. Against the back wall, I found several tables of  books and magazines. Furniture was arranged in long rows in one corner of the room. I don't think I saw any piece of furniture that was priced over $25, and many items were $10 or less.

As we shopped, Goodwill employees were bringing out new furniture, rolling out new bins, and removing old bins to the back to be refilled. When I saw the process, I understood another sign on the wall: "Please do not shop from rolling bins!" A fellow shopper told us that they change the bins every 2 hours, and for best pickings, you need to be there at changing time.

I didn't have enough patience to dig through the clothing, but Keely found several pairs of work pants for Taurus and some cute toddler outfits for her friend's little girl. I investigated the book bins and was horrified at the way they were tossed in and scrambled around. I rescued a couple of old geography books, a cookbook, a Richard Scarry book of nursery rhymes, a biography of Will Rogers for Dennis, and several others.

We chatted with the lady behind us as we waited to weigh our merchandise at the cash register. She was about 40 years old, and she had a stack of neatly folded clothing in her cart. She said that she lives an hour away, but she likes to come to the outlet every week on her day off. She looks for clothing for her entire family, and she always checks them carefully for stains and other damage before she buys them. She described herself as "addicted."

At the checkout, we pushed our cart onto the scales. We didn't have to sort out any glass or shoes to be weighted separately. Our pile of $.69/lb merchandise, plus the tax, came to about $30. Our heaviest items were the books and a little wooden stepladder. We also had a couple of big wicker baskets, a metal tray, the cloth items that Keely found, some video games -- and more.

The Goodwill Outlet is not for sissies. It's hard-core junk shopping! It would be a good idea to wear gloves or bring hand sanitizer. But I'm sure amazing treasures are found there every day. As we left, a man saw me fiddling with my camera and said, "You found that in here, didn't you?!"  I'm not sure he believed me when I said, "No."


 On the web:
Goodwill Outlet Stores in Indianapolis. (We visited the one on Shadeland Ave.)
Goodwill Outlet Store in Nashville (One of these days!)
Ms Cheap Visits the Goodwill Outlet (Visit the Nashville store via You-Tube.)

Indignities Endured

Victim of excessive crafting

I saw this little angel, kneeling on a shelf at Goodwill in Hopkinsville. His huge ruff looks very uncomfortable.

There's something vaguely creepy about this little fellow. Sad to say, he would fit right into the set of a scary movie. In his current costume, he certainly could serve as a symbol of suffering!

Flea Market in Clarksville, TN

Rainy afternoon at the junk store

This Old Place is located on College Street in Clarksville, TN. The large brick building with full-front dock looks like it was once a feed and seed store.

An amusing summary of the flea market biz is posted near the door:  "We buy junk & sell antiques." It's amazing how junk is improved by a price sticker!

After Isaac and I looked at the antiques, collectibles, and junk on the first floor, we climbed the stairs to the loft and wandered through even more booths. The photo at the end of this post was taken from the loft, looking down onto the first floor.

While we were upstairs, the skies opened, and rain pounded down onto the building's metal roof. It reminded me of being in a barn. It was a pleasant place to wait out the storm .

I didn't find anything to buy, though. Knick-knacks and dust-catchers don't really tempt me. I don't need any more of them -- I have plenty already. My main weakness is books, but I didn't happen to find any that I liked, despite searching high and low.

Isaac is on spring break from college this week, so I have been running around with him. This was just one of our stops on Thursday afternoon. We visited several flea markets, thrifts, and antique shops in Clarksville and then went to the mall. I did find a good old book at another antique shop -- a history of Cairo, Illinois.

Picking and Stealing

Collectors compared

Isaac and I visited Hopkinsville's recently re-opened Peddler's Mall this afternoon. It's an indoor flea market, located in part of the old WalMart building. I've shopped there several times in the last couple of months, and I've purchased something each time. I'm trying to help the Peddler's Mall vendors and owners pay their rent.

Today, Isaac found a movie and a cache of Harry Turtledove hardbacks, and I found a little concrete statue for my flowerbed.

Soon I was standing in line behind a talkative, 60-ish woman at the checkout. She mentioned that she was paying $8 for a little glass candelabra that was worth quite a bit more. "What's it worth?" I asked her. "Twenty dollars?"

"More like fifty or sixty," she opined.

I asked if she watches the "American Pickers" show on History Channel. (In this show, Mike and Frank drive across the U.S., visiting people's hordes of old junk and collectible stuff. Whenever they like some object, they try to buy it at a cheap price.)

"Oh, yes!" she cried. "I love that show!"

Then she told me that when she was younger, she guessed she had done some picking. Back then, she said, farmers didn't care if you went into an abandoned house or barn and took what you liked. Nowadays, farmers were likely to shoot you if they caught you.

I was reminded of a yard sale I attended some years ago. Dozens of old wooden and cast iron tools, horseshoes, and other odd pieces were arrayed on the walls of the patio. When I commented on the collection,  the owner told me where it came from. When her kids were little, she drove out to the countryside with them on Sunday afternoons, and they went into old barns. The display on her wall was what they brought home from their raids.

I cringe when the "American Pickers" get great deals from people who don't know the value of their own junk. However, I give Mike and Frank (and their producer) credit for finding the owner, asking permission to look, and then making a cash offer. They are paragons of virtue, compared to the old heifer I met today and her kindred spirit with the cast iron collection. 

There's picking and there's stealing, and it's not hard to tell the difference.

Six Snapshots of Strangers

Photos that have lost their families

At an antique store recently, I saw a big box of old snapshots, priced three for a dollar. I invested $2 and chose six photos that interested me.

"Time Out" has the most information of any of the photos, In addition to the caption on the front side, someone wrote, "July 12, 1936. Richfield County Park," on the back side.

I thought "Time Out" was a great title, so I took the challenge and gave the other photos two-word names, too. The captions are strictly from my imagination, based on what I saw in the pictures. I would love to hear your titles, too -- two-word, or otherwise.

It's a shame that these photos are orphans -- and worse than that, unidentified. I'm going to assume the people in the photos had families or friends that cared about them. After all, someone took their pictures.

"Time Out"
July 12, 1936. Richfield County Park

Day's end

Sunday shoes
(stamped July 16, 1937, on the back)

Parlor games

Windy wait

Uncle Eddie

Old Pump Organ

Thrift shop treasure

This lovely old pump organ is currently for sale at the Goodwill in Hopkinsville for just $600. It made me think of Miss Wilma Jean Mengers, who had a similar pump organ in her home when I was a child. She even let me play it once, which was very kind of her.

Pointy Shoes

The pair of beaded, denim shoes above, left, are probably the most pointed shoes I've ever seen in my life. (They certainly wouldn't fit my toes!) Their heels aren't visible, but they were about 2 inches high and also very pointed. These shoes were on the shelves of a Hopkinsville thrift shop, yesterday.

Fourteen Great Quotations About Home

And What I Think About It...

I chose these quotations because they answer the question, "What is a home?" in a thought-worthy, positive way.

• Home is where the heart is. ~Pliny the Elder
• Home is where one starts from. ~T. S. Eliot
• Where thou art - that - is Home. ~Emily Dickinson
• Home is the nicest word there is. ~Laura Ingalls Wilder
• Home is where we tie one end of the thread of life. ~Martin Buxbaum

• Home is a shelter from storms - all sorts of storms. ~William J. Bennett
• "Home" is any four walls that enclose the right person. ~Helen Rowland
• Home is not where you live but where they understand you. ~Christian Morgenstern
• Home is where the heart can laugh without shyness. Home is where the heart's tears can dry at their own pace. ~Vernon Baker
• The home is not the one tame place in the world of adventure. It is the one wild place in the world of rules and set tasks. ~Gilbert K. Chesterton

• Home is a place not only of strong affections, but of entire unreserve; it is life's undress rehearsal, its backroom, its dressing room. ~Harriet Beecher Stowe
• Home is a name, a word, it is a strong one; stronger than magician ever spoke, or spirit ever answered to, in the strongest conjuration. ~Charles Dickens

• The home is the bottom line of life, the anvil upon which attitudes and convictions are hammered out. [It is]... the single most influential force in our earthly existence. No price tag can adequately reflect its value. No gauge can measure its ultimate influence ... for good or ill. It is at home, among family members that we come to terms with circumstances. It is here life makes up its mind. ~Chuck Swindoll

• Home is the one place in all this world where hearts are sure of each other. It is the place of confidence. It is the place where we tear off that mask of guarded and suspicious coldness which the world forces us to wear in self-defense, and where we pour out the unreserved communications of full and confiding hearts. It is the spot where expressions of tenderness gush out without any sensation of awkwardness and without any dread of ridicule. ~Frederick W. Robertson

Flea market booth that inspired this post

Technorati tags: home, happy home, quotations about homes, great quotes, what is a home

Amazing Antiques

Cadiz, KY's antique shops

Cadiz, KY Main Street

Antiques, collectibles, and junk

When my brother Dwight was here last weekend, we did some sightseeing, including a visit to Cadiz, KY. Cadiz is the county seat of Trigg County, just west of Christian County where I live.

Cadiz was a great place to take Dwight because he and I enjoy antique stores, second-hand shops, flea markets, pawnshops, etc. (My sister likes them too. I don't know if it's our genes or our upbringing.)

Cadiz has at least half a dozen antique stores on Main Street in the old store buildings. Many tourists pass through Cadiz because it is near the Land Between the Lakes, and that extra traffic helps support the antique business, I imagine.

Collectible soda bottles

Paint-by-number, nicely done

We spent several hours wandering through an amazing assortment of stuff -- old furniture, dishes, books, clothing, tools, knickknacks, gadgets, everything you can imagine, and more. Several of the stores in Cadiz have three floors that extend across adjoining buildings.

I note that antique stores are, more and more, a museum of my time, as well as times before me. Things from not-so-long-ago --like the soda bottles pictured above -- are displayed right along with the true antiques.

I think the Mountain Dew bottles in the photo might be from the 1980's. They don't have the picture of the hillbilly which was on earlier bottles. Also, the early Mountain Dew bottles were smaller.

My brother bought a pocket knife at one of the stores and I bought an old book and a few postcards. All that entertainment didn't cost us much.

My new old book is a world geography from 1920. I'll probably be posting a few things from it.

Old "Log Cabin" quilt

This quilt pattern probably has a name, but I don't know it.

I remember in the mid-1960s, my dad brought home a 6-pack of Mountain Dew in bottles from Iowa. We all liked it, but it wasn't sold in Nebraska.

Technorati tags: antiques, antique stores, collectibles, Mountain Dew, Cadiz KY, Cadiz Kentucky

Seen at the Thrift Shop: Rustic Wall Plaques

History and Old Stuff...

Remember when these wooden wall plaques were very popular, back in the 1950's and 1960's? It would be impossible to estimate the number of art prints that were glued to slices of tree trunks. And it can't be denied that some did have a rustic charm.

I remember larger plaques with "The Lord's Supper" or "Jesus at Gethsemane" pictures on them. I think I can remember one hanging in our church -- or somewhere?!

Soon after I made this photo, I saw these plaques at the cash register. A lady had them and dozens more items piled in her cart. She had such an excess of merchandise for checkout that I wondered if she might be a compulsive shopper. Or maybe she just happened to hit the jackpot at the Goodwill yesterday.



On the web:
Retro Housewife
Google Directory: 1950's Memorabilia

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retro

Crazy Quilt

Life in Christian County, Kentucky...

I bought this old photograph for 25¢ at the Peddler's Mall in Hopkinsville a few days ago. I found it in a stack of old family photos, and I have no idea who the baby was or why anyone would sell its photograph.

Maybe the photograph documents two of the most precious things the parents of this baby possessed -- the baby in its christening gown and an exquisitely embellished crazy quilt.

Or then again, maybe the crazy quilt was a prop that the photographer used with all the babies.

Either way, the quilt is beautiful. I notice that on the right side below the baby's hand, there seems to be a vine with appliqued flowers.

Just as a guess, I'd say the photo might have been taken in the 1920's. I say that because it reminds me a little of my mother's baby picture.

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quilt
crazy quilt

Fall at the Flea Market

Life in Christian County,
Kentucky...

Mums, melons, and squash
outside the flea market
on East 7th Street in
Hopkinsville, KY.

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mums
squash
Hopkinsville, KY

Seen in Cave City, Kentucky

Life in the Upper South...

These photos were taken near Mammoth Cave State Park east of Bowling Green, Kentucky, in the little village of Cave City.









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Mammoth Cave
tourist trap
Cave City, KY
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