Once
I learned who he was, I had to go back inside and shake the president’s hand.
He seemed to get a kick out of it. He grinned and, not having as many teeth as
some folks, each that remained stood in sharp relief to the space beside it.
I
took this encounter and the fact that it happened during our first stop as a
sign that this day trip, on a sunlit winter Friday, would be worth the while.
 |
| Antique picking, but not Fly's Store |
During
one foray last winter, as falling snow made the road increasingly
treacherous, we rounded a bend in the woods and were startled to see an
enormous, majestic Texas longhorn steer balefully glaring down from atop a
knoll, breath steaming from his saucer-sized nostrils, wet snow clinging to the namesake
horns. We were already used to seeing cattle near and away from our farm, but
none before or since like this old guy. He was a far piece from Texas and clearly not taking this insulting weather very happily.
On
another more temperate day, we followed as much of the Natchez Trace as time
allowed. An ancient trade route used by Native Americans, notorious
Kentucky traders known as “Kaintucks,” and other travelers, The Trace covers 444 miles
between Natchez, Mississippi and Nashville. A meticulously tended National Parkway now roughly
follows the original trail and connects many sites on the National Register of
Historic Places.
 |
| Meriwether Lewis. Murder? Suicide? |
The
same day we stopped several other times and followed footpaths back into the trees to see several
waterfalls pinpointed on a tourist map of The Trace. We were disappointed not
in their loveliness but in the fact that they were so much smaller than expected.
One
entry point for The Trace is only about 10 miles from our farm down Highway 7, where
the two routes cross at a place called Fly. We’d stopped there just once before
to check out a new antiques (that doesn’t sound right, does it?) shop that
shares a moldering building with Fly’s Store. The rusted sign over the front
stoop just says Fly’s, and sun-bleached flags of Tennessee, the U.S., and the
Confederacy are tacked below. On that first visit the proprietor was out doing
something or other and the door was locked.
But
this day he was in, working behind a cluttered counter. An assortment of graybeards sat around a wood stove at the
back chewing things over, and another visitor or two poked around as
the boss made them bologna and cheese sandwiches. There are no aisles to speak
of and a wondrous assortment of stuff is piled throughout, some dust-covered
and long untouched on shelves and pegboards – fishing lures and plastic kites and laundry soap and
nuts and bolts and Slim Jims and Fly souvenir T-shirts and cooking staples and sodas and bottled sweet tea and
ammo and man-shaped targets and gunstocks and more than you can take in during
one stop. He greeted us quickly in a drawl that was hard to decipher while the graybeards eyed us suspiciously.
The
community of Fly is unincorporated, so its addresses are listed in adjacent
Santa Fe, local pronunciation Santa FEE, which occupies a beautiful little
valley. It’s one of several towns with names we’ve learned to say differently,
including LaFAYette, Tennessee. Fly’s Store is pretty much the only thing in
Fly, except for the antique store next door and tiny old Fly Cemetery across
the way. Our loose mission on this outing was to hit a few antique shops in
Columbia further south after stopping here, at Leipers Creek Antiques and
Primitives.
 |
| The Hamilton printer's tray and Stanley drill |
I’d
had a notion, as my Indiana relatives used to say, that here I just might find
what I’d been pricing on eBay the night before. One of the few things Vicki has
ever asked of me is to build a jewelry case for her earrings and
pendants and other baubles, so she could organize the small collection and more easily find whatever she fancied to adorn her pretty ears and graceful neck. After considering several designs, it seemed to me
that an antique printer’s tray, once used to organize type, might be perfect,
and she agreed.
Judging
by the online listings, it appears that most of these trays were manufactured
by “Hamilton,” the name embossed on their drawer pulls. Turns out that Hamilton
Manufacturing Co., of Two Rivers, Wisconsin – nicknamed “Trivers” – was once
the largest manufacturer of wood type in the country. It was founded in 1880 as
the J. E. Hamilton Holly Wood Type
Company, which used holly as its preferred material because it was half the
cost of the more commonly used rock maple.
My notion was prescient.
When we walked into Leipers Creek Antiques, run by Eddie Miller and his wife,
Sue, I asked Eddie if he had any printer’s trays. “Had two,” he said. “Sold one
the other day. The other is over there.” Bingo. It was solid and, except for a
light layer of grime and some chipped white paint on the front edge, perfect. I
flicked a tiny mud dauber’s nest from the corner of one cubby, picked it up and
saw it was tagged for $15, less than half the cheapest I’d found online.
(This turned out to be the
find of the day, although I now treasure one from another shop – a pristine Stanley No. 1220 hand drill that turns as smoothly as the day it was new and,
curiously, also cost only $15. I didn't haggle.)
After paying the man, we
chatted for a while with Eddie, a retired philosophy and communications
instructor who’s found his own peace in Fly after a divorce that left him morbidly introspective and living like a hermit in a trailer parked on a land parcel in a holler less than
a mile from the store. “My wife didn’t like me,” he said simply. “I left the trailer just once or twice a week to get supplies.” But then he met Sue, a
divorcée whose “husband didn’t like her either.” They liked each other fine. In time he asked if she’d marry him
and move into the small house near his trailer. I believe he said it was built
in 1902 and that it’s a work in progress.
I asked him about Fly's Store and the man who kept it. “His name is Wilson Fly,” he said. “Really it’s
Benjamin Wilson Fly, but he goes by Wilson. He’s quite a character. The store
was run by his father, and his father before him, and now he has it.”
Turns out Wilson Fly is
something of a social director, organizing an annual flea market that stretches
for miles along Highway 7 and other roads before looping back to Fly. He also
stages an annual arts-and-crafts fair at the store and, judging by the old boys
who I’m told are a fixture around his wood stove, I’m certain he’s information
central for Fly and its country environs.
Eddie told us one more thing
about Wilson. “He’s the president of Fly. I’m the chaplain.” There are no other
“civic” positions in Fly, and when I asked if he and the president were elected, Eddie said, “Nope,” and laughed the kind of quiet, warm laugh that we’ve
encountered often in our southern explorations.
So I went back
next door, walked in and offered my hand to the character behind the counter. He
took it, we shook, and he looked puzzled. “I had to come back and shake the
hand of the president of Fly, Tennessee,” I explained.
And the president laughed,
that same kind of laugh, then went back to punching in a sale on his hand-cranked adding machine.
