BRIAR PATCH ANTIQUES TO OPEN BY FEB. 1 IN PULASKI

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, January 14, 1993                   TAG: 9301140130
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-3   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: PULASKI                                LENGTH: Medium
BRIAR PATCH ANTIQUES TO OPEN BY FEB. 1 IN PULASKI
A Carroll County man will open another antiques store in downtown Pulaski next month.
Gary Quesenberry, who lives in the Fancy Gap area, will manage Briar Patch Antiques in a store building on Jefferson Street. It will open by Feb. 1.
Quesenberry, 57, was a fire marshal for 30 years and retired in 1990. He and his wife had been involved in buying and selling antiques as a hobby for about 20 years.
"My wife and I specialize in old prisms and old general store items," he said. They will be in the store about three days a week and will do antique shows and travel the other days in a quest for more items, including buying at auctions.
"I like going to them and bidding, and coming home and kicking myself for what I bought," Quesenberry said.
Three other women will be located in Briar Patch Antiques with their wares, so someone will be in the store all week.
"I've been around antiques for a long time, and I still don't know everything," he said. There are many specialties in the antiques business, he said, such as glass antiques which he said he knows nothing about.
In his search for antiques, often he will find people who have items worth $100 or so and offering to sell them for $20, he said.
"I've lost a lot of profit by telling them that," he said. "It's out there, and it's amazing to see how many people have things they don't know they have."
It was during his travels for antiques that he came back to Virginia. He mentioned to a man in Carroll County that Southwest Virginia was pretty and he would like to buy some property there. The man happened to have three acres for sale.
"I love the South," he said. "It's nice people and it's just country."
Quesenberry has some ancestral ties with Carroll County. His great uncle was Capt. George Quesenberry, a Civil War officer, who is buried in the Quesenberry Cemetery there. There also was a Quesenberry involved in the infamous Carroll County Courthouse shootout of the early 1900s, he said.
"Then there were some Quesenberrys that rode with Jesse James," he added.
As with the other antique store operators locating in downtown Pulaski in recent months, Briar Patch Antiques stemmed from recruiting work by Roscoe Cox, director of the Pulaski Main Street downtown improvement effort.
"Mr. Cox is a real go-getter," Quesenberry said. A visitor to Quesenberry's antiques outlet in Carroll County introduced them after Quesenberry had expressed a desire to sell off his inventory at the Carroll site.
In fact, he did sell it, but it will not be far away from his new outlet. Eddie Hale, who opened space to rent to antique dealers over his drug store on Main Street in Pulaski, ended up with it.
"I have a supply that I keep, enough to get us started," Quesenberry said. "I am now stocking back."
He and his wife live in a rustic log home with antique furnishings, he said. When they find a furnishing that they like better, the one it replaces goes into their store.

by Bhavesh Jinadra by CNB