“Some people call it junk, but we make a living at it,” Lola Taylor said, as the smile deepened her wrinkles.
The spry 78-year old store owner is the driving force behind the Wagon Wheel Furniture Store, located on Highway 100 in Scottsville.
The store sells more antiques and “brick-a-brack” than furniture. “We sell everything,” Lola said, “have to, to make a dollar.”
Inventory at the Wagon Wheel is overwhelming and seemingly endless. Shelves are crammed full. Boxes line the walls, are stacked along walls and stuffed under tables.
Glassware—salt and pepper shakers, china tea cups, and porcelain birds line shelves. Rusted stirrups, old trophies, women’s lace-up boots, antique muskets and jarfulls of old soda pop caps sprawl along the counters.
Tables are laden with more items, and a barn out back holds the overflow. And Lola is queen of it all.
Her son Glen runs the financial end. Granddaughter-in-law Joan Taylor compares Glen’s and Lola’s relationship to a marriage: “What he says is OK, but what she says goes.”
Lola’s son Bugs, 54, explains Wagon Wheel this way, “We but junk and sell antiques.”
Lola enjoys Scottsville. “It’s just a wide place in the road, but I like it.”
“I never been nowhere else, but I don’t know that I’d like nowhere else, no way.”
And even after 27 years with the store Lola can’t slow down. “She’s like a worm in hot ashes,” Joan said. “She can’t ever be still.
