Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 5, 1993 TAG: 9309240356
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: BETH MACY STAFF WRITER|
DATELINE: ROCKY MOUNT LENGTH: Long
"I'm not near as fast as they think," the 60-year-old auctioneer says. "I've had no school."
And just how did he train himself?
"I got up one morning and put my wife's teeth in instead of mine," Pugh says.
Seriously, Pugh auctions so fast that he has to take giant breaths between sentences - kind of a cross between a used car salesman and a revival preacher.
"Russell can sell more in 20 minutes than Lester [his assistant] can sell all night," says Harry Messer of Salem, a weekend regular at Pugh's.
"Yeah, but you gotta have your hearing aid in to make out what he's saying," adds Nadine Bailey of Rocky Mount.
It's mostly the bibbed overalls and bifocals set here at Pugh's, where everything from ceramic kittens and cabbage heads to framed prints of "The Last Supper" is sold. People can bring used items for Pugh to auction, in addition to the items he picks up himself at various store close-outs and estate sales.
While Wednesday nights are reserved for the more serious antique buyers, Friday and Saturday nights is are when the real Americana comes to light. The bidding starts at 6, though some people come as early as 4 p.m. to get front-row seats.
On a recent Saturday night, the heat inside the cinderblock building was so intense that Pugh's 12 fans barely made a dent. "Used to be, he allowed smoking, but it about killed people, it was so thick," Messer recalls. "Now people get up and smoke outside.
"Of course, he still allows chewing, but you're not supposed to spit inside."
A close-knit crowd, regulars at Pugh's refer to it as "the community center."
Bidders sit on old school-bus seats and try to get a little air by fanning themselves with brown paper sacks. Topics of conversation include who died recently and what a good bargain those two-for-$1 boxes of Little Debbie Cakes were last week.
"You know those Black & Decker Mr. Coffees you get at Brendle's for 49 dollars?" asks Wilma Underwood of Rocky Mount. "I got a good used one here for four dollars. I used it a year and a half, and then something went wrong, so I came back and got another one for $5."
Pugh's wife, Starrine Pugh, handles the paperwork - figuring out who bid how much on what item - while men like Messer run up and down the center aisle, showing the items up for bid.
"You see the same people here every week; they've been coming for years," Messer says. "The feller up there with the cap on? - if he misses a night, you know something's wrong."
Some tips from auction regulars: bring your own bags and seat cushions, sign up for a number as soon as you come in, and don't miss the homemade chocolate pound cake in the concession stand.
\ CALLAWAY - Out here, you can drive six or seven miles for a hamburger - and consider it nothing more than a short jaunt up the road.
That concept is what's fueled Frank and Joyce Mills' Apple Shed restaurant since 1983, when they first opened their produce shed halfway between Callaway and Algoma.
"We moved here from Martinsville when I got to losing my eyesight," Frank says. "We opened up selling just apples and produce, but then somebody came around and wanted hot dogs and barbecue."
"Once we got that going," adds Joyce, "they said, `Why don't you have a grill and sell some hamburgers?'"
It's been years now since the Millses have even sold any apples. But the name hasn't changed, just the menu. People call in to-go orders for cheeseburgers, steak subs and seafood platters from as far away as Bent Mountain and Rocky Mount.
The Apple Shed is all the convenience of fast food - with all the taste of home-cooking. Everything is made from scratch, including Joyce's fried apple pies and walnut brownies, and her daughter Debbie's cakes.
"Friday night orders are big. People will call in an order, and it takes them 30 minutes just to get here," Joyce says. "We'll start fixing their order when they're halfway here."
The Millses' clientele is almost all "neighbor trade," they say, and rare is a customer who doesn't stop to chat with Frank on the way out. Blinded by a nerve disorder of the retina, Frank still manages to help mow grass on the five-acre lot where he was raised.
He also built a large wooden deck overlooking one of two fishing ponds next door to the business. "I can't hardly see a nail, but I drove every nail in this place," he says of the deck, which is sturdier than it is pretty.
The Apple Shed thrives during hunting season and on rainy days, when farmers aren't quite so busy. During winter, it's not unusual for neighbor Pete Guilliams to come over with his banjo and start up a jamboree by the woodstove on the enclosed side porch.
You're also likely to run into a hound dog or two by the front-porch bench, which is the only real seating in the place.
"We started with just one little old bitty 10-by-16 shed," Mills says. "And we ain't aiming to make it too much bigger.
"I just want to show people that you can still make a little business without so much fancy stuff."
\ BEDFORD - It's said that there's an old man in town who won't go anywhere near Avenel Avenue.
"On account of the ghost," explains Peggy Maupin, tapping her cane on the wood floor for emphasis.
At 94, Maupin is probably the town's authority figure on the ghost, referred to as "The White Lady of Avenel." Maupin lived in the historic Avenel house, a circa-1838 plantation mansion, between the years 1908 and 1986.
Which gave her plenty of opportunity to interact with the White Lady. "She's an old-fashioned girl. She wears an old-time hoop dress," Maupin explains.
"One time there was a whole crowd of us standing at the corner of the porch late one afternoon, and we saw the lady walking up in the yard. When she got to the oak tree, she just disappeared. People thought we were crazy."
Even Maupin's husband, Harry, who's now deceased, used to think his wife had an overactive imagination - until one night, when he spotted the White Lady himself. "He woke me up and said, `I've seen her,' and he had goose pimples all up and down his arm," Maupin recalls.
"He said that was the biggest mistake he ever made, waking me up, 'cause I couldn't wait to tell it at the drugstore the next day."
Built in 1838 by William Burwell, a representative to the Virginia General Assembly, Avenel was an antebellum treasure, entertaining the likes of Robert E. Lee and other important people. Strangely, Burwell named the house after Sir Walter Scott's novel, "The Monastery," which likewise features an airy female called "the White Lady of Avenel."
Maupin says she's not sure if the ghost was there when the Burwells lived at Avenel, or whether the ghost is really the spirit of Burwell's wife, Frances Steptoe Burwell.
Debra Frashure, a Virginia Western Community College parapsychology professor studying the house, believes there is more than one spirit inhabiting Avenel, including the ghosts of several slaves.
She took a class there last Fourth of July weekend, "and as soon as we stepped out of the car, one of the students saw a U.S. flag hanging outside. And it hit me: She [The White Lady] didn't want it there; she wanted the Confederate flag.
"It was a real rage I sensed coming from her," says Frashure, who found a Confederate flag inside and displayed it on a table. A few minutes later, she and a board member were talking in the parlor when they both heard popping and crashing sounds coming from the next room, like a lightbulb hitting the floor.
When they looked, the bulb was still hot and intact, but the light had turned itself off. "I think that was the Old Miss trying to say, `That's exactly what I wanted.'''
Annette Allen, a board member of the foundation that now owns and is restoring Avenel, has also felt some strange sensations there. One time she heard someone picking up pans and putting them down in the next room. But when she looked no one was there.
Another time she took a group photo of some friends at the house, and half of one woman's body came back transparent in the processed picture. "Every now and then you just get a feeling of cold electrical sensation," Allen says. "The hair stands up on the back of your neck."
Tours of Avenel are open to the public from 2 to 5 p.m. Sept. 19 and Oct. 17. Cost is $2 for adults, $1 for students.
\ LOWRY - The porcelain-white Toledo Scale is still there, even though there's no longer anything to weigh.
So's the original cash register, a wooden drawer with four pods for coins and a separate compartment for bills - from when the numbers were figured by hand.
There's the antique wooden wax-paper holder from way back when, showing its age by the yellow-edged paper, all curled up and dusty.
And then there's Caroline Coffey, who's somewhat of an antique herself.
She's 92 years old and manages to manage the Coffey Store just the same now as when she started - 67 years ago.
"I'm supposed to be retired and closed," Coffey says from her stool behind the lineoleum-top counter. "But I like people too well. I wanna be with 'em. It helps me to keep going." The nonagenarian still plays piano every other Sunday at the Center Point United Methodist Church.
To those unfamiliar with the area just east of Bedford, the Coffey store is a combination general store/post office - though you couldn't tell it from the outside, a white clapboard two-story with nothing but rocking chairs and an American flag out front.
"We talked about putting up a sign once, and I guess we should. But I just think everybody already knows," says Coffey.
Knows, that is, that the Coffey store is an institution, has been for 150 years, back when chickens were traded for shoes and coffee, and those bins that lie empty were full up with nails and grain.
Coffey and her husband took over the store in 1926, and then the post office in 1940 - back when it costs 2 cents to mail a letter. Retired as postmaster in 1971 (though the store still houses the P.O., enclosed in a wire-cage corner), Coffey recalls how the Norfolk and Western picked up mail five times a day along the tracks across the street. The mail was hung on a crane, and the trains would fetch the mail without even having to stop.
"They threw the [incoming] mail out the window, and we had to go out and pick it up," the widow recalls. Now the mail comes once a day, by truck.
Business isn't quite as booming as it used to be, when the railroad work crews would hang out in the Coffey Store playing at the pool tables and slot machines, both of which are long gone. But the Allen sawmill is still nearby, providing a steady lunch clientele.
Inventory, too, has died down from what it used to be. "Most people come here for their mail and when they forgot something in town," Coffey's daughter, Delia Olson, says.
Like many of the decades-old relics still taking up store space, Coffey's 1950 Cadillac sits outdoors under a carport, covered. It has 80,000 miles, and it hasn't been driven in years.
Like Caroline Coffey, it's somewhat of an antique: charming, gracious, intriguing - and definitely around for the long haul.
\ GOING TO TOWN is an occasional series highlighting some of the best features of area small towns. This story, focusing on Bedford and Franklin counties, is the last installment in the series.
by CNB