You may not find this terribly rewarding unless you're included here, so this is a good time for casual and
random browsers to turn back before they get too caught up in the sweep and majesty of the proceedings
and can't let go.
26 November 2021
A certain member of our party and several family members are expert hunters after antiques and objets d'art, whereas the rest of our party know nothing whatsoever but have come along for the ride. Some recent local forays into the world of 'antiques' were disappointing, but the Tuckahoe Antique Mall (on the Rockfish Valley Hwy [Rte 151], Nellysford VA, on the east side of the Blue Ridge) is clearly a step up.
They've got the nasty invasive vine problem, too, and badly.
The Rockfish Valley Hwy, or Rte 151, is a beautiful north-south rural road replete with fine breweries, wineries, cideries, churches, and B&Bs, and it features Paulie's Pig Out. The Wintergreen Resort area, famous (but perhaps way overrated), is just up the Blue Ridge slopes from the road.
The Tuckahoe establishment is enormous, with individual booths packed in like tenements in Dickensian London. What seems to make this place a bit of a cut above (at least to a neophyte) is that a lot of the goods appear to be genuinely old and interesting stuff, collectibles as it were, and not just potentially useful junk trying to find a new home if possible.
The word 'Tuckahoe' is said to be derived from an Eastern Alqonquian term for a kind of toxic root, which if cooked for a day or more could be dried and ground into flour. Yum.
To admire everything here would take a month, but our antiquer-in-chief has come with a specific object in mind and can scan jumbled collections quickly with a practiced eye.
Each 'booth', so to speak, is owned and maintained by its own dealer, who needs not be present; the store manager records the purchases for them and either rents the space or takes an administrative cut of the sale or both. The manager's not empowered to negotiate prices, but nearly everything has already been discounted on the tags, and there are a couple of store-wide discounts, perhaps seasonally.
Lots of interesting things to look at, something for everyone's aesthetic or historical tastes, probably
Like this chilling print of the Confederate authorities' Andersonville Prison Camp in southwestern Georgia, 1864-65, home to 45,000 Union prisoners during the latter 14 months of the Civil War, of whom 13,000 died of disease, malnutrition, and exposure. Henry Wirz, the camp commander, was 'the only Confederate officer executed as a war criminal'.
And on a lighter note
Folk art, perhaps, or afterthought art
Stacks and stacks of collectibles, waiting for the right collectors to stop in
And there's still more in the attic
Like these, lined up like many schoolrooms during the covid-19 pandemic, waiting for kids
The national flag of The Netherlands with some kind of odd printing on it
Striding purposefully -- apparently we're homing in on our prey.
One could be happy and proud to have this lithograph thing stuck up on one's wall, but who's got $250 for a whim nowadays.
Somewhere there must be someone for whom this would be the perfect gift.
We knew a chap once who looked very like this, but nobody liked him. (For $850 it's yours.)
Some artisanal delicacies, too
Time well spent, and back northward on the Rockfish Valley Hwy
And the master antiquer among us did in fact succeed in the quest -- for a small end table with a touch of class . . .
. . . and there it is.
Some Staunton odds and ends from a few more walks about town
N. Central Ave, with the forever-roadwork, intended to lay on beautiful brick sidewalks (mostly completed) and resurface the road, with (we've been told) flood warning sensors included. That huge office building has had a banner announcing office vacancies continuously planted outside since we moved here 2½ years ago.
Newly renovated buildings at 11 N. Central . . .
. . . featuring the newly opened Staunton Innovation Hub, a 'coworking community', offering common working spaces, private offices, conference rooms, internet and A/V facilities, and the offices of the Staunton News Leader local newspaper.
This is the newly attractive back end of the Innovation Hub, facing our Old Y condo on N. Augusta St.
Along Johnson St. facing the big city carpark
The Wharf Parking Lot, the city's main outdoor lot, looking across at the row of buildings facing the rail
station on the other side
One of the two indoor parking garages, the Johnson St Garage, attached to the back of the city police station
The Byers St Bistro, on . . . Byers St, in a building that also houses the Gibson's Warehouse boutique hotel facing the rail station on the other side
The Wharf Parking Lot, looking uptown at the Clock Tower and the former Masonic Building
The Lewis Creek, fed by tributaries on the way in, flows along underneath the parking lot, heading for that white building in the centre of the photo . . .
. . . where it briefly gets a breath of fresh air before plunging onward, under the District Courts Building and the Classic Automobiles showroom
This is the Augusta County Courthouse, designed by T. J. Collins and completed in 1901, placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, and a temporarily red tree.
The Lewis Creek, emerging from Elder's Antique and Classic Automobiles on S. New Street, and . . .
. . . burbling past the elegant New Street Garage.
Christmas in the Old YMCA
What's next, then? The mysterious sign at Sherando Lake, and other bits and bobs
Dwight Peck's personal website
Feedback
and suggestions are welcome if positive, resented if negative, 
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All rights reserved, all wrongs avenged. Posted 11 December 2021. 
