The Wiley Country Store
At the home of Charlotte & Aubrey Wiley in central Virginia, visitors will find this stage where life is slower and easier, as it was in our childhood and youth. An addition was added to our garage to provide an outdoor lounging area as well as a setting for Aubrey's collection of historic automotive and country store memorabilia and antiques. The majority of the collection is from the 1950's and 1960's, but the range reaches from the 1930's into the early 1970's. Several rockers and comfortable antique chairs enhance the relaxing atmosphere. An antique wooden milk crate supports a checker board and the checkers are drink bottle caps. It's a great place to sit during a rainstorm or at other times to watch wildlife grazing the yard and flower beds or listen to an old AM radio music show from October 1954 (by means of a concealed CD player).
(A primary reason for creating and publishing this blog is to provide descriptions, background and history of some of the items in the collection.)
Many things are hung in the rafters but perhaps the most descriptive one is a long wood sign found beside a county road, "Many Useful Items & a Bunch of Junk."
Entering the inside of the country store, we see shelves of household goods from scores of years ago. They range from Blue Horse notebook paper for kids, a gum ball machine, shotgun shells, to a variety of canned goods.
The serial number of the National cash register dates it to March 1931, right in the worst period of the Great Depression. The cash drawer has compartments for bills which were much larger in size than today's paper currency. Beside the National cash register is s toy, the Tom's Thumb cash register. And to the left of it is a circa 1950 R.C.Allen mechanical, lever action adding machine.
Country Story customers have a choice of vintage highway maps for their travels as well as various odds and ends such as car batteries, tire chains for winter snows, flat tire repair kits and so on. The latest news and music are being played on an old AM radio.
The center pieces of every rural country store were the soda machine and the snack machine. In the Wiley Country Store, a six and a half foot tall RC drink machine offered a choice of 14 different soda drinks in glass bottles. In addition to the 14 different brands and flavors, the side shelves held 98 more bottles, pre-chilled. This model machine was marketed as "The Master" and was made by Vendalotor Mfg. Company of Fresno, California in the early to mid 1950's. The price was 15 cents and like most other stores, if a customer returned the bottle in good condition, they got a refund of 2 cents. In this picture below, the bench was originally from a wood caboose of the Norfolk & Western Railway and was where the conductor sat as he completed his paperwork.
For a dime, hungry customers had their choice of seven different snacks in this Lance vending machine made by U-Select-It Co. of Des Moines, Iowa. The model was produced between 1954 and 1972. The machine was completely mechanical with no electricity. Stored within were 149 more snack items; various crackers, potato chips, and peanuts. In 1960, a friend overheard a Lance salesman tell that he made $10,000 a year keeping snack vending machines stocked on his route in central Virginia. Adjusting for inflation, that would be $80,450 in 2016.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
When originally built, the three bay garage was a shop for repairing and restoring Aubrey's old vehicles. Pictured are a 1966 Ford F-100 pickup, a 1969 Dodge Coronet 440 and a 1964 Plymouth Fury. Each vehicle had its own special history but the '64 Plymouth was probably the most unique since it was once a Virginia State Police Investigator's car. It had a large engine and push button transmission. Son Jim Wiley had two cars we worked on and they were a 1970 Plymouth Duster and a 1971 Plymouth 'Cuda. The 'Cuda is pictured getting a 440 cubic inch engine.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Walnut Level Texaco
The Wayne Texaco gas pump, model 505, dates from 1954. When it was given to Aubrey in 1995 by the local Texaco distributor, the price per gallon was 34.9 cents. It must have been out of service for a very long time. The ECO Air Meter Stand also dates from 1954 and was a gift from a local tire business. It is set to deliver to vehicle tires a maximum air pressure of 32 lbs. per square inch, which was standard tire pressure for the time period of the country store.
~~~~~~~~~~~~
Aubrey's interest in Texaco is a family thing. From about 1948 until his death in 1973, his father, Aubrey M. Wiley, Sr., owned a full service gas station in Lynchburg, Virginia on the corner of Oakley and Memorial Avenues. Except for the last few years, it was always leased to Texas Oil Company, Texaco, and known as "Memoak Texaco."
(These two pictures show the same 5th Street building. The lower picture has been altered to illustrate how this gas station design could have looked when it was an actual Texaco gas station.)
Memoak Texaco was located at 2911 Memorial Avenue and was demolished in the mid 1970's. With no known pictures of the Memoak station available, Aubrey is pictured above in 2016 in front of a sister station that was located less than a mile away at 1100 Fifth Street. The two stations were of the exact same design from the 1930's with the gas pumps being where a planter is shown between the two porch columns. Garage bays for auto repair work were located where display windows are now. The round Texaco logo was in the circle in the porch gable and also on the round glass dome lights on the roof line. The building was white with green trim while the roof was red. In the 1950's, the pictured station was Crist & Dodson Texaco. In 2016, it is the home of a floral business that has taken good care of the structure.
