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

DATE: FRIDAY, May 26, 1995                   TAG: 9505260052
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-1   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: ADRIANNE BEE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG                                LENGTH: Medium

MARTIN'S ANTIQUES HAD IT ALL FOR 37 YEARS

"Everybody calls me Jo," she says as she fumbles with the key to open Martin's Antiques. It is a cloudless afternoon and people are whizzing through the Hardee's drive-through only feet away. There are no customers today, however, at the antique store. The sign out front is flipped around; after 37 years of business, Martin's Antiques is closed.

Harry Martin, the store's owner and Jo's father, is seriously ill and everything inside the shop is being sold at a two-day auction beginning Saturday at 9 a.m. and resuming on Sunday at 1 p.m. in front of Martin's Antiques.

"It hurts, but it can't be helped," Briggs says as she wipes her forehead with the back of her hand. She is breaking a sweat as she and her husband put up a sign for the auction and prepare to say goodbye to her father's pastime and livelihood.

As you step inside Martin's Antiques, where the dusky smell of an attic greets you, you see that there is truth to Briggs' boast.

For the serious antique enthusiast there is a wide array of oak and walnut furniture, rocking chairs, dressers, china cabinets, washstands, even a wooden pie safe. What's a pie safe you ask? It is a large apparatus that stores pies while they cool. A sort of dessert security system.

Want a portrait of Elvis before his bloated peanut-butter-and-banana-sandwich days of the '70s? Thinking of taking up beekeeping or learning how to play the sousaphone? The Martins have what you need.

Quilts, Model-T Ford lights, issues of Life magazine from the '40s, dolls, lanterns, Coca-Cola nostalgia ("Be sure to mention the Coca-Cola items, people really like those," Norilla Martin adds), Daisy BB guns, military helmets and even an iron bulldog doorstop.

"People who come in and out comment that what we have is very rare," Briggs explains. "My father was in the real estate business, he'd buy a piece of property along with the contents of the house." That explains how they ended up with an entire building full of railroad signal lights, sausage grinders and wooden Dutch shoes.

"There's a lot of local things," Briggs adds. She points to a set of stools salvaged from the site of the former Streetcar Cafe where a First National Bank now sits. An oil can for an old sewing machine sits on a nearby table. "That came from The Blue Ridge Overall Factory, it's not here anymore."

Briggs turns from the shop and joins her mother, Norilla, who sits in a hand-carved oak rocking chair (it is also for sale) on the porch of the red brick house that sits behind their family business. In the yard below are pink and purple azaleas, wagon wheels and an iron bear with a bell around his neck. An old dinner bell sits atop a wooden post. An unlighted traffic light hangs from the wooden eaves of the shop. A plough from 1835 sits among the red geraniums.

"You be sure to come by the auction Saturday," Briggs says and waves goodbye. Oh and try to arrive early. There's only one portrait of George Washington without his teeth showing, one Holly Hobbie lunchbox and a limited number of cat figurines.

They're sure to go fast.