New to You Furniture

In the meantime, Dad’s shop was open for just a few hours to be there for those who might peek in before the Christmas break. But it was also open just for him to be out of the house for a couple of hours while dinner was being prepared. For New to You, as I have experienced it, has been more than a simple means to earn a living; it has been much more: a happiness, a refuge, even an artistic expression.

So after pouring a couple of cups of what I affectionately call “shop coffee” and scavenging for an Ampad Steno book (the brand which has endured years of my father’s cursive notes), he and I were accompanied by used chifferobes, dining sets, quilts, and timeless knick-knacks while recording a family history that I have grown to know so well.

“My dad was an old-time food broker out of New York,” Craig began. Born in the late 1800s, my grandfather (who also served in WWI), linked food suppliers to grocery distributors and did business with men who eventually became household product names, including of Ragu’s Spaghetti Sauce, whom he put in business through his brokerage.

“While doing business in Florida,” Craig continued, “dad had much to do with Del Monte foods and introducing canned citrus in New Jersey.” Additionally, my grandfather helped George Jenkins of Publix Markets supply his shelves and thus open the first Publix store in the United States. I’ve always thought it must have been very exciting for him bustling about New York, challenging economic downturns, and helping to build the industrial fabric of the nation. Working with George Jenkins in Winter Haven, Florida, my grandfather relocated his family to Winter Park, which was only 50 miles away.

“I was born many years ago in Rochester, New York,” Craig continued, “but moved to Winter Park, Florida when I was five. Dad was 50 when I was born, so he was up in years. And though he couldn’t throw a football with me, we spent many days fishing together.”

Being forced into retirement due to health conditions, my grandfather sold his brokerage firm but according to my father, he raised my dad, my uncle and aunt off of retirement income and Kodak stock. But as a young child, dollars and cents weren’t the only fruits of retirement Craig saw first-hand; it was the vision of being your own boss and earning a living through your interests that lasted much longer in my father’s eyes.

As a young child, Craig was fairly independent. He had an older brother and an older sister who looked after him, but for the most part, all did their own thing. “I’ve always been in sales,” my Dad said. “And I got my start really early.” Living in a town with many lake fronts, boats were often shipwrecked and left abandoned for whomever thought to scavenge them.

At six-years old, Craig salvaged his first boat, fixed it up, and with help from his brother, sold it for a profit. In an age when a dime bought lots of candy for a kid, my dad’s $20 profit must have seemed like gold. So all through his adolescent years, Craig found ways to turn a dollar be it through boats, trailers, and later vehicles. I’ve always heard him say he enjoys knowing he got this thing for “x” amount and made it available to someone else for “y.”

Ironically, at that juncture of the conversation, a customer appeared at the counter inquiring about a jewelry cabinet in my father’s furniture store. As he disappeared around the corner, I heard him talk about one particular piece, introducing it to the customer by saying, “this is a neat one.” I could imagine a squeaky teenager decades back doing the same thing with an outboard motor or a two-stroke motorbike.

“I enjoyed growing up in Winter Park,” Dad told me, “because every afternoon, we swam, water skied, and fished in the lakes. For much of my life, water sports were a big part. And in a way, that was what got Cary [my brother who has always had a water-related occupation] interested in water recreation because he grew up loving the water.

Many years later, water interests washed away and for anyone who knows my father, motorcycles have been his passion away from work. Bring on a sunny Sunday afternoon and away my father will go on his Goldwing, motorcycling with other enthusiasts like a school of fish. Each year his brother comes down from North Dakota to go on a week-long biking trip and Bike Week in Daytona Beach is empty without Craig’s presence. I have to give the old man credit that one thing you could never call my dad is “boring.”

Owning a motorcycle as early as he could sit on one, Craig also found himself in the seat of vintage automobiles as a teenager growing up in the 1950s. His first car: a 1951 Black Ford Convertible which he bought for $100. Funny enough, he was the sixth teenager to purchase the vehicle which prompted a laundry list of repairs after six teenagers’ abuse to the engine and chassis.

Winter Park was once the prime example of old southern Florida. Centennial brick stone roads covered live oak thoroughfares and portioned off blocks of Spanish-influenced home structures and one-level Florida houses. Acres of citrus trees interspersed neighborhoods and the smell of fruit tree aromas breezed through the covered porches and mixed with extravagant family suppers.

My grandmother was a perfect example of this southern pleasantry as she hosted Sunday dinners after church, socialized with the musical community of Winter Park, and raised a Christ-centered family. We always said she could never hurt a bug and was a perfect complement, an easement even, to my grandfather, who had a demanding personality.

“My mother was a musician,” Craig said. “She was a violinist and played in the Florida Orchestra.” Coming from a little coal town in Pennsylvania, my grandmother’s talent in music lived on through all her children. My aunt was a flautist and a piano teacher for many years, my uncle sought advanced degrees in music and has been an opera singer and opera director for many years. Even my father sings and since he moved to Burnsville, has been in the choir of Higgins United Methodist Church and currently First Baptist Church.

In the freedom of his teenage years, Craig bought and traded cars, and after graduating from Winter Park High, contributed to water shows at the Langford Hotel through a high-dive act. Here, he shared the pool with Esther Williams, famed water ballerina, who got her start in the very heart of Park Avenue. Later, my father was a trampoline instructor at Bounce Land, a Florida business that buried trampolines in the ground until insurance companies wouldn’t insure the business due to frequency of injury. For a short spell, Craig even enlisted in the Navy.

But sales were always big part of Craig’s life and he found the most success while pursuing this old-time career. In early adulthood, my dad worked in department stores, most notably at Montgomery Ward where he ran the sporting goods department for seven years. Additionally, Craig utilized his experience in merchandising when the newly opened Walt Disney World resort opened gift stores in Fantasyland. With great pride, whenever Disney is mentioned in our household (which is often), Dad will perk up and make a reference to Tinker Bell’s Toy Shop. He later quit due to managerial conflicts; Dad has always wanted to run things his way.

As an interlude to achieving his dream of owning his own business, Craig worked for 20 years selling office supplies and furniture, a job that he often says was an arduous necessity in the hot Central Florida sun. As a child myself, I remember a Christmas Parade on Park Avenue in Winter Park where my dad drove a make-shift locomotive advertising the furniture supply company he worked for while I hung out the window waving at people passing by.

At 19, my dad met Jeanne Hahn, the woman who would later become his wife and my mother. “I first met Mom at Dinky Dock, a local swimming hole on a lake where a bunch of us got together. We were sitting on the dock talking while she peeled paint off of my boat.”

My parents dated for a couple of years until my mom, who is three years younger than my dad, graduated high school and got married. “Neither of our parents knew we were going to get married, but we ran off to Folkston, Georgia and did it anyway. That was in December, 1964 and 17 days later, we came back and had a church wedding in Winter Park.” Interestingly, the two celebrate two annual wedding anniversaries.

In the beginning, my mom and dad rented an efficiency apartment and bought their first house on Michigan Avenue six months later. My brother Cary was born in 1968 as Jeanne, barely out of her teenage years was now wife and mother of one.

The three lived a simple life in the early 1970s. Mom had long brown hair, big sunglasses, and wore brightly colored tops and trousers with wide flared legs while dad wore wide collared shirts, fat ties, and checkered pants. With my brother, they listened to Simon and Garfunkel and spent weekends out on the lakes fishing, swimming, having wonderful family fun.

By the time I came around in 1979, the carefree abandon of early adulthood seemed to have transitioned to a focus on responsibility. My brother, who is twelve years my elder, and I had very different childhoods. While he remembers the boat-wake splashes of Lake Maitland, I recall being at home throwing a football between two suburban yards and playing Legos with neighborhood friends. It seemed like my father worked a lot when I grew up and my mom, who had always found herself in secretarial and administrative assistant roles, built a foundation of independence for me at a young age. 894-1060, a phone number that’s etched in memory, was a routine I called each day after riding my bike home from school starting at age 11.

While I grew up, my mom worked for a real estate appraiser who was a very big part of our family. Due to unfavorable economic conditions, my mom had to work to help support the family to the best of her ability, but while I was young, she chose a job that she could often leave. So her presence in my life growing up was much the same as those who were able to be stay-at-home moms. There wasn’t a field trip she missed, a play where she wasn’t front row with the other mothers, or a baseball game without her in the bleachers. As much as my dad can be defined as a “supporter,” my mom could simply be defined as “mother.” It’s only now as I reach adulthood do I truly begin to understand what she means when she says, “my life is my kids.”

Chapter two to my parent’s journey together begins in Yancey County, which actually is rooted with my grandparents. “Dad had never been to the mountains,” Craig said, “and after he retired, one day he said, ‘It’s too damn hot.’ So he made his way up here and just happened to come across Burnsville.

“The first day he was in town,” he continued, “he came across a cabin on Cane Branch and bought it. That next day, he called mother and said, ‘Vera, I’ve bought a place in a town called Burnsville in North Carolina. I’ve got a plane ticket ready for you to come up.’” Ironically, the cabin my grandfather purchased was once inhabited by internationally famed jeweler Floyd “Bug-eye” Wilson whom journeyed with my dad on many early auction adventures.

That was in the 1960s and for the next 30 years, my grandparents spent six months in the summer at their Yancey County cabin. They spent ten years on Cane Branch before relocating to a small two-bedroom house in Celo. In their twilight years, my grandparents enjoyed gardening but my grandmother in particular shared her interests in music with other local musicians, most notably playing with Carolyn Cort and Judith Grennelle.

Naturally, as my grandparents spent many months in Burnsville over their lives, our family got used to the area with annual vacations. My uncle and his children, my aunt and her children, and of course my dad, my mom and brother spent many summer weeks in the creeks and streams and wooded forests, soaking up the natural beauty of the area.

“Dad lived to be 100 years old,” Craig said, “and mother was 87. We lost both of our parents within eight months of each other.” If I had been a little bit older, I think I would have had a much closer connection to them, especially my grandmother. But in the end, I remember my grandma’s last day. She was lying in the hospital, the rest of us quietly surrounding her, and I recall seeing my elderly grandfather lean over and kiss her sweetly on the cheek saying softly, “I love you.” I think it was the only time I ever saw them touch, but was a lasting testament to me to what true love really is.

“Before then,” Craig said, “we had made the decision that we wanted to move to Burnsville. We first moved up in 1980 and tried to get off on our own.” My dad had quit a high-pressure sales job in Florida and retreated to Yancey County for as much relief from health complications as withdrawal from the hot Florida sun.

“While we were in Florida,” Craig said. “I would sell a little furniture here and there, dabble a little in the flea markets and at auctions. I knew I wanted to start my own business, but selling furniture wasn’t the original plan.” Even I didn’t know this, but Craig began with gasoline and produce.

“I rented Lee Robinson’s old store,” he said, “and set up shop. But soon I realized it was going to be hard to make a living running out to Asheville for produce and selling gas, so six months later, I switched to used furniture.”

Originally located at the former Micaville Grill, my dad made frequent trips to Florida and attended area auctions to sell bedroom sets, couches, and other pieces to people in the area. Meanwhile, he built a house on a hill across from Bear Wallow road and another store that would later be New to You Furniture right off the highway; it was easily recognizable as Mimi’s Books as it has been its most recent and apparently last occupant once the road comes through.

I was only a toddler when they came up to Burnsville in the early 1980s. Mom worked second shift at Spruce Pine Hospital as the administrative assistant to Mr. Charles Aldridge, but due to the economic conditions of the time, it seemed like the Martin’s tenure in Burnsville would be short-lived. “We went back south to work for a couple of years until the economy improved,” Craig said. “But two years turned to 10 years.”

New To You Furniture (its namesake credited to my mother) enjoyed continued life, however; just a mobile life. It was a booth at Flea World in Orlando across from the air-brushed tee shirts and bingo. It was my parent’s garage in Winter Park during bi-monthly garage sales. It was a few pieces here and there through the auction on Lee Road and later Grass is Greener Auctions where I played with Ninja Turtles on the floor of the smalls depository. The dream of owning his own business continued to dwell in Craig’s heart and it wouldn’t die despite the economic climate.

“After my parents passed, I was given the opportunity to start the store again,” Craig said. Having left Yancey County in 1984, dad came back in 1993, this time with more resolve and a better plan. Using a piece of white painted plyboard, dad sticky-lettered New to You Furniture on a sign and hung it over the awning of an old to***co barn across from Ruth Banks’ house. Craig hunkered down in my grandparent’s two-bedroom cottage in Celo, bought a chocolate lab puppy named Oakley, and spent days building the shop and weekends buying inventory.

For two years, my mom and I kept home in Winter Park with my childhood dog Nugget. Even at 14 and 15 years of age, my mom, my best friend, and I awoke at dawn on Saturday mornings to be among the early bird garage sale foragers. Feeding my acquired eclectic appetite for unusual pop-culture décor, my mom’s taste was much more practical as she tag-teamed with dad to purchase quality inventory for the shop.

It seemed destined that mom and dad call a second move to Burnsville permanent after a job with her former employer fell in her lap. In 1995, Winter Park loosed itself of the Martins, later became a family vacation destination, and these days, not even close to the place where we call home.

“Jeanne started working at Spruce Pine Hospital,” Dad said, “where she credentialed many local doctors and health care workers.” Later, she became the Burnsville’s first certified town clerk, taking up where locally beloved Ruth Banks left off. And together, with Craig, my mom has helped my father achieve his dream. “She does so much for the store,” Dad said. “In buying, in decorating, she really makes the place look nice.”

But early on, though the shop helped us earn a living, it was obvious that it needed to update and expand. The barn location was drafty, inadequate for the windy winters of the mountains. Craig rented what he called the “Winter Store,” which was next to D&R Furniture. For a couple of years, New To You operated in these two locations until the lot across street on which sat a house used for local AA meetings, came available for sale.

Together, my dad, Frank Stone from Celo, Dan Macking, and my uncle built the store where New to You has enjoyed the last 13 years. With barely a sketching on the size and parameters, my father amazed me how he constructed a new building over the course of a summer while operating two other locations.

“While we were building this store,” Craig said, “I had a sign on the other shop that said if you needed something come down here and get the keys. Several times, someone would get the key, load what they bought, even sell someone who came in after them something, and come back with the key and money. And really, it just shows how honest people are here.”

And relatively speaking, things have been routine for Craig and Jeanne over the last 15 years. While both enjoy separate hobbies, they share similar interests and have become closer friends as a result. While dad might hop a motorcycle the first hint of sun or cast a line near a fishing pond on a summer’s morning at his camper, my mom is happy ironing linens or taking a trip with my wife to Asheville for shopping and nails.

But together, they can work side-by-side, eyeing pieces of furniture, taking risks on items that might sell well at the store, and decorating areas and placing pieces that might complement one another.

From my standpoint, having worked off and on at New to You, my dad is one of the hardest workers in the county. Many times he’s up in the freezing temperatures of dawn delivering furniture in the chill of morning just to work finding, cleaning, placing, selling, and loading furniture all day with customers, and spend evenings at auctions buying and loading inventory until 1 A.M. It’s exhaustive sometimes to even think about, and that’s why Dad’s Sunday afternoon motorcycle ride is the best kind of medication.

But on a larger perspective, it’s really the ability over these last 15 years to call himself his own boss that has been the greatest reward. In a way, Craig has been like his father, creatively carving a niche for himself while supporting his family and affording him the ability to pursue his passions. “I feel like the shop has been a service to the people of the county both local and visitors to provide for them furniture for their families,” Craig said.

I must admit, when I walked in the store last, I was remotely nervous about putting down a story about my parents as it might be the only one I’ll ever write. However, looking back, I’ll no more revisit this piece to draw from my memories any more than a reader would pull out notes from a loved one’s eulogy to remember their lost ones. But I realize there will be a time when he’s gone, a time I’ll have to distribute his earthly belongings, a time, even, when I’ll delete my dad’s name from my cell phone. But in a way, my father lives on through me.

Even in the toughest times, my father never denied me. He made sure I was cared for, clothed, fed, sheltered, loved. He looked after my needs and supported my own found ambitions.

Closing time had come at the shop and dad took me out to the shed to see a new piano he recently bought. A cluster of customers parked at the store and retreated inside right before closing hours while dad and I began putting away pieces from the porch. We had started the day talking about his childhood, the pilgrimage to Burnsville, and the challenges facing keeping store doors open, and we finished sitting nine around the table, and later bundling with our church family to celebrate the birth of our Christ.

And that’s as good a message as any that we could espouse this Christmas season. To let go of our differences, gather around the table to share memories and make new ones, and to view it all in the perspective of our risen Lord at the advent of his birth.