ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, March 11, 1997 TAG: 9703110128
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: FLOYD
SOURCE: MARGARET BROWN
THE OWNER Of School House Fabrics is from Floyd. "Don't it show?" asks Jerry Duncan with a smile behind his Fu Manchu moustache.
Duncan, 41, is staffing the "pound goods," a collection of camouflage, leather scraps, piles of comforters, towels, lace, discontinued patterns of upholstery, mounds of foam rubber, heaps of used clothing and blankets in a no-nonsense building behind School House Fabrics.
Everything is sold by the pound, weighed on a white scale just like the ones grocery stores used a long time ago. "NO SPRINGS HONEST WEIGHT," it says.
Near the scale sits a battered old red Coca-Cola cooler, minus its top, filled with buttons. That's buttons piled 3 feet tall and 2 feet wide and 8 feet long. Buttons at a penny each.
How many buttons does he have?
Duncan shakes his head but tells a story about a special-education teacher, Kathy Dalton, who took a load of buttons away for her students to sort by color and size.
"She told her students they was working for School House Fabrics," Duncan says. "When she brought the buttons back, they was all sorted and stuck in Ziploc bags. I think she wanted her students to work on dexterity, things like that."
Duncan smiles impishly and shrugs. He took all the sorted buttons and dumped them back into the cooler.
Duncan says he's not much of a businessman. "I have 'sucker' wrote on my forehead," he says earnestly. "One gentleman offered me tender corduroy for 50 cents a yard. Sounds like a good deal, so I get the goods and they're rotten as cotton."
Another smile, a chuckle. "I guess me and him had a disagreement over definition. I was meaning tender like soft, and I don't know what he was meaning. I took the whole lot to the landfill. You can't have stuff like that in your store."
Duncan must have a feel for business, even if he denies it. The loyalty of his customers shows in the knickknacks they have made and brought in to honor their favorite store. Out by the parking lot is a birdhouse modeled on the old schoolhouse building.
Inside the front door is another depiction of the schoolhouse, this one burned into wood. Behind it is a painting of the building. And on the floor is a big painted rock with another portrait.
A lot of somebodies love this place.
Once upon a time, this fabric store really was an old schoolhouse. It's up on a small hill in downtown Floyd on Virginia 8, and it has lots of windows to mark where the classrooms were.
School House Fabrics started in 1971 with just one room. Duncan's mother, Clester, 85 and retired, started it after the family decided dairy farming was just too tough a way to make a living. The rest of the space in the old schoolhouse was storage for several of Floyd's furniture stores.
"That was too bad," Duncan says. "They used those metal dollies to move the furniture, and it cut up the floor awful bad. That's why we had to use carpet." He shakes his head. "I'd much rather have tongue-and-groove."
Eventually, School House Fabrics pushed the furniture stores out. Now the sign outside says simply, "A Sewing Paradise." And it's true.
The main floor contains four showrooms, each with its own specialty.
One has more gadgets than you can imagine: quilting pins; silk pins; leather thimbles; plain and fancy scissors; magnetic pincushions; needle threaders; appliques of anchors, stars, unicorns and cowboy boots; lace in a dozen colors; rows of zippers, tassels, buckles, shoulder pads, charms; and racks of hand-painted buttons of Paddington Bear, Beatrix Potter characters and school buses
Another is the quilting room, with quilt batting, quilters' labels ("Quilted with Love by Grandma") and fabrics, fabrics, fabrics. Way up high are sample quilting patterns: "Cathedral," with its interlocking circles, "Dresden Plate," like a camellia with an abstract star laid on it, and "Bear's Paw," which looks like a city intersection with pointed wings springing from each of the four corners.
"We can't compete with the big chain stores," Duncan says. "So we offer personal service, instead. That's about the best way to market a small store. We're supposed to be able to help you complete a project. If we can't do that, what are we doing here?"
Then there's the baby room with its wall of fabrics in pastels, prints with cute animals, building blocks and dolls. Stuffed floppy-eared rabbits and green turtles with ribbons around their necks decorate the tops of shelves. You can buy the kit to make the rabbits for $2.98.
Behind the baby room is the notion room. Racks of beads in any color you can name, pom-poms, star flakes in neon pink, tiny pigs you can sew on clothing, musical instruments, cats, hearts and mice (with or without cheese).
This is where you can buy the old-fashioned straight clothespins used by a lot of crafters to make dolls. Also, ribbons (plain, striped, plaid, gold, paisley, printed with fruit), fabric glues, T-shirt paints and 432 colors of wool embroidery floss.
Up the wide, wooden, creaky stairs is the window room and more fabrics for draperies and tablecloths.
Across the hall from this room is the old auditorium/cafeteria, where a couple dozen quilts for sale hang above the old stage. One spectacular one, marked at $450, is rows of trees.
"The kitchen was in the basement, and cooks used to have to climb the steps to bring the food in," Duncan says.
Also in this room are polar fleece odds and ends, flannel remnants and fabrics printed with football team logos. A blanket featuring the Winston Cup hangs over the flannel.
The basement features more creaky stairs. A grandfather clock stands sentry by the steps. A picture of Jesus hangs over it.
Another four rooms are for brides. One has soft gloves, bouquets and white fabrics in many textures. A wedding dress on a mannequin.
Another is filled with lace, sequined decorations, beads strung on thread and pearl trim.
The next room has bridal satins and taffeta from deep green and pale yellow to magenta.
The last room contains single flowers arranged by color and stacked on shelves eight feet high. Put together your own wedding bouquet, or make table decorations from the hundreds of silk roses, camellias, lilies and greenery.
Duncan says his customers come from all over: Roanoke, the New River Valley, and Patrick, Wythe, Pulaski and Franklin counties.
"And the Blue Ridge Parkway," he says. "We advertise on this brochure the parkway puts out. We get a lot of tour buses. But we've got lots of loyal customers. I appreciate them more than anything. I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for them."
The store is open Monday through Saturday, 9 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. Duncan says he's there whenever the store is open.
"I work just like everybody else," he says. "Even when I'm sick. You know, you can come in and feel bad, and then somebody cheers you up."
Duncan employs a staff of eight, including store manager Lois Akers; her three daughters, Joanna Shelor, Carolyn Akers and Glenda Woollums; Woollums' husband, Mark; and his mother, Arnedia.
Duncan says Lois Akers does all the books and the decision making.
"Lois is the heart of the operations," Duncan says. "I'm just a hillbilly running a rag store in the middle of nowhere."
LENGTH: Long : 140 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: GENE DALTON. 1. A mannequin checks out the many colorfulby CNBbolts of cloth in one of the rooms at School House Fabrics in Floyd.
2. After a sale, owner Jerry Duncan enjoys chatting with customers
(above). 3. The School House Fabrics sign beckons passers-by: "A
Sewing Paradise" (right). 4. Assorted buttons fill an old Coca-Cola
cooler. You can buy them by the pound, or for a penny each. color.