Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, February 13, 1992 TAG: 9202130267
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: KEVIN KITTREDGE
DATELINE: FLOYD LENGTH: Long
THERE'S PLENTY OF VARIETY
Pity the poor fellow who wanders into Farmer's Supply Inc. looking for, say, a tape measure.Would he like the 3-, 6-, 8-, 10-, 16-, 25- or 30-foot model? In a 1/4-, 3/8-, 1/2-, 3/4- or 1-inch width?
Or maybe he'd prefer a 6-, 12-, 25-, 50- or 100-foot extension cord?
Or some red, yellow, blue, orange or green pipe insulation?
A chain for his parakeet, perhaps? His battleship? A plastic gas can? A metal one? A hammer? Claw, ball peen, or a little needle-nosed number?
How about this one, with the funny-looking head like a waffle iron? Just sprinkle with water, whap a few oats, heat hammer at 350 degrees for your waffle-ette. . . . A fold-out wood ruler, a cobalt drill bit, some wire snips, maybe? A cup hook, a screw eye? Eye bolts, U-bolts, we bolts?
In fact, about the only thing you won't find in this old hardware store in downtown Floyd is the hard sell.
Unorganized, stocked with surprises and smelling slightly of coal smoke, Farmer's Supply is a store like your grandfather knew. It sprawls over several floors - through what were once a Model T dealership, apartments and a butcher shop.
It has sold in its slow-moving 58-year history everything from wild bird seed to dynamite.
A lot of dynamite, in fact.
"They claim they used to keep enough to blow up the town," said store employee Kenny Salmons, holding up an empty Atlas Explosives box.
Nearby were some empty wine bottles. Area residents may have come closer than they knew to being part of the fun.
Farmer's Supply doesn't sell dynamite anymore.
Nor was that the only change during the half century this homey store has stood on Floyd's busiest corner, where Virginia 8 and U.S. 221 intersect.
"The store has sort of taken on a different atmosphere in the last few years," said Jack Lawson, the general manager who has run it for a decade. There is more business and twice the inventory there used to be, Lawson said. He is even thinking of putting in a computer to keep track of stock.
Also - though the store has been run de facto by the Lawson family for generations, from founder Harry Lawson down to grandson Jack - it is an actual corporation with stockholders. Sort of like IBM with a profit margin.
Yet somehow, Farmer's Supply has maintained its Sam Drucker image. Lawson runs the store in non-corporate style - dividing his time erratically between hardware and two Floyd County farms.
He chatted recently in the cozy heat of the Warm Morning Model 524 wood stove the store keeps percolating up front.
Though customers don't jaw here quite as much as they used to, employees noted, the stove is still fueled steadily from a closet full of coal in the basement.
Lawson said small-town hardware stores are holding their own in the age of the mega-market.
Though their prices can't always compete with the chain lumber yards or the discount stores, Farmer's Supply offers service, employees say.
If someone isn't sure exactly what they need, Lawson said, someone at Farmer's Supply can probably help.
Help in this place is a good thing.
Because in an age that craves quick-moving stock, Farmer's Supply - with its long accumulation of forgotten doodads - is both a gold mine and a crapshoot.
There is everything here that's anything in hardware. Nuts, nails, bolts, pails - even an antique toilet.
The trick is finding it.
Take the toilet.
At least, Salmons thinks it's a toilet. It's about half the size of a Volkswagen, with a hole in the top shaped a lot like a bottom.
The receptacle inside, meanwhile, looks suspiciously removable - as if the thing is no early flush toilet at all, but a chamber pot putting on airs. It fills a whole closet on the second floor.
The second floor is not generally open to customers.
But there, above the main room with its space heaters and sleds and drills and Buck knives and telephone cords and weatherstripping and caulk and drill stops, were once apartments and a tack shop, Salmons said.
Now there are tucked-away treasures like the wannabee toilet, an old typewriter, a file cabinet with some mysterious 1930s documents, a wagon axle and an unused - albeit cracked - Model T windshield. The windshield still has the manufacturer's driving instructions pasted on one side:
"Keep this car well under control at all times."
Also on the second floor is a canvas seed sower and assorted crockery - including a silent conclave of plaster ducks, rabbits and frogs.
In the old service bay, meanwhile, where the Model T's must have gotten their tuneups, are shovels, poultry wire, mortar mix - and a real live Edison phonograph.
Or half-live, anyway. The needle is gone - but when you turn the crank, the old turntable still spins.
In a rack below are a dozen vinyl biscuits, each one-quarter-inch thick and heavy as stone. You have to wipe off years of dust to read the titles: "New York Blues," "Here Comes Tootsie," "My Old Kentucky Home," "My Song of Songs to You."
"I think he [Lawson] told a guy he'd take like $100 for it," Salmons said of the old machine.
Let the chains top that.