This week, we usher in the season of lights with our holiday show from 2022. James Beard-nominated West Virginia chefs Mike Costello and Amy Dawson serve up special dishes with stories behind them. We visit an old-fashioned toy shop whose future was uncertain after its owners died – but there’s a twist. We also share a few memories of Christmas past, which may or may not resemble yours. You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
This week, we usher in the season of lights with our holiday show from 2022.
James Beard-nominated West Virginia chefs Mike Costello and Amy Dawson serve up special dishes with stories behind them. We visit an old-fashioned toy shop whose future was uncertain after its owners died – but there’s a twist.
We also share a few memories of Christmas past, which may or may not resemble yours.
You’ll hear these stories and more this week, Inside Appalachia.
Mike Costello and Amy Dawson are the husband and wife duo behind Lost Creek Farm in Harrison County, West Virginia. The couple hosts farm-to-table suppers and were recently semi-finalists for the James Beard Award.
Mike and Amy serve dishes rooted in Appalachia’s rich food traditions, along with stories behind the recipes.
To open their dinners, Mike and Amy typically kick things off with an appetizer mashing up two food traditions from their childhoods.
Folkways Reporter Margaret Leef brings us the story.
A Toy Story, Too
Steve Conlon demonstrates a traditional “limber jack” dancing toy in his workshop.
Credit: Zack Harold/West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Last year, we did a follow-up to our 2019 story about Mountain Craft Shop Company, then run by Steve and Ellie Conlon, who made Appalachian folk toys.
Since that visit, Steve and Ellie died, leaving the future of the business in question. But after a twist of fate, the next chapter of the Mountain Craft Shop Co. is starting to take shape.
Folkways Reporter Zack Harold had the story.
Fasting Cookies
Recipes for the Christmas feast, like pecan pie, get handed down for generations, but what about recipes for a Christmas fast?
At St. Mary’s Orthodox Church in Bluefield, West Virginia, parishioners spend the 40 days before Christmas abstaining from eggs, meat and dairy – but that doesn’t mean they still can’t enjoy something a little sweet.
Folkways Reporter Connie Bailey Kitts had this story about a Greek-Appalachian cookie recipe.
The Gingerbread Of Knott County, Kentucky
Fresh baked gingerbread usually conjures up thoughts of Christmas and maybe little frosted houses, but in southeast Kentucky, when people of a certain age hear “gingerbread,” they think of Election Day.
Folklorist and Folkways Reporter Nicole Musgrave traced the surprising history of gingerbread in Knott County, Kentucky from everyday treat, to election time tradition, to fundraising champion.
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Our theme music is by Matt Jackfert. Other music this week was provided by The Sycomores, Landau Eugene Murphy, Jr., Jim Hendricks, Tammy Wynette, Dolly Parton and Bob Thompson.
Bill Lynch is our producer. Our executive producer is Eric Douglas. Kelley Libby is our editor. Our audio mixer is Patrick Stephens. Zander Aloi also helped produce this episode.
You can send us an email: InsideAppalachia@wvpublic.org.
With new owners, the Mountain Craft Shop Co. will bring traditional folk toys to a new generation of kids.
This story originally aired in the Dec. 23, 2022 episode of Inside Appalachia.
Steve Conlon knew everything about the traditional Appalachian folk toys he and his wife Ellie manufactured at the Mountain Craft Shop Co. in Proctor, West Virginia.
He knew the history, the principle of physics that made them work, and the right technique to make that ball on a string float up into the air and come down perfectly inside the wooden cup.
There was one thing Steve didn’t know, though. He didn’t know who would make these traditional toys once he and his wife were gone.
“How will it play out? We don’t know yet,” he said in a 2019 interview with Inside Appalachia. “The reality of the situation is we are manufacturing in America. Look around you. There’s a lot of competition.”
A year after that interview, Ellie died of lung cancer. A year after her death, Steve died from leukemia. That left the business in the hands of their son Terra.
Zack Harold
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Steve and Ellie Conlon purchased the Mountain Craft Shop Co. in 2002 from its founder Dick Schnake.
“Terra — it’s Latin for ‘earth,’” he said. “I was an earth child, born on the living room floor.”
Terra lives in San Francisco now, where he’s a computer programmer. He tried to run the business from afar since his parents’ passing but it hasn’t really worked. The company lost money last year. So he decided to try and sell — but that didn’t work out either. At least, not the way Terra wanted.
“I had buyers that were interested in the businesses in Pennsylvania or New York. And ideally I wanted to keep it in the location,” he said.
Mountain Craft Shop Co. is so tied to Wetzel County — so tied to West Virginia — that even the wood used to make the toys comes from local trees that Terra’s dad would cut, mill and dry himself.
One day, while Terra was back in the Mountain State trying to wrap up his parents’ affairs, Fred Goddard stopped by. Goddard is a minister who lives just a few miles up the road.
“I saw some things for sale and I thought, ‘That would be handy on the farm,’” he said. “So I pulled in and [Terra] began to talk about the toy store and I began to share my memories with him.”
It turns out Goddard’s relationship with these toys goes back even farther than Terra’s — and even farther than Terra’s parents. Steve and Ellie Conlon were not the Mountain Craft Shop Co.’s original owners. They bought it in 2002 from its founder, Dick Schnake. He started the company in the mid-1960s. He was a mechanical engineer by trade but didn’t manufacture the toys himself. Schnake handled research and development and farmed out manufacturing to a staff of artisans.
But Schnake displayed his toys in a little showroom near his home, where shoppers could take them for a test drive. Goddard’s mother used to take him to that toy store when he was a little boy.
“Dick would stand and talk for hours,” Goddard said. “He would explain how the toys were made. He wanted us to see every toy in the store, not just what we were interested in. He wanted to show us everything.”
Zack Harold
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Traditional wooden folk toys manufactured at the Mountain Craft Shop Co. in Proctor, West Virginia. The toys can be found at craft fairs and gift shops all over Appalachia.
Goddard doesn’t only have memories — he still has some of the toys his mother purchased from Schnake.
“I have a rubber band gun. And that one, of course, tended to get me in some trouble around the house,” he said.
As Goddard walked around the Conlons’ shop, Terra floated an idea.
“All of a sudden he said ‘I could sell you this business.’ And I’m thinking ‘No, I could never own this,’” Goddard said. “And he made an offer and I realized, I can’t pass this up.”
The timing was almost too perfect. Goddard lost his wife of 33 years to COVID-19 last December. Since then, he found love again with a widow who lost her husband to COVID-19. They’re engaged now and Goddard’s fiancé, as fate should have it, is an amateur woodworker.
Goddard plans to keep any current employees who want to stay. He also plans to recruit some additional elves to help build toys. The company won’t be able to stay in its current facility but Goddard plans to find a storefront where he can display the toys just like Dick Schnake once did.
Terra says it’s what his parents would’ve wanted.
Zack Harold
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
These marble runs are among the many traditional folk toys manufactured by the Mountain Craft Shop Co. They are sold with marbles manufactured by Marble King in nearby Paden City.
“I’m super pumped that not only is it someone in West Virginia, but it’s someone in Wetzel County,” he said. “My mom spent so much time, so much effort, developing the ‘West Virginia grown’ and Mountain State marketing. I like that.”
Fred’s just happy he’ll be able to give kids the same kinds of toys — and the same kinds of memories — he has.
“This area, this state, this country, this world, needs this store,” he said.
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This story is part of the Inside Appalachia Folkways Reporting Project, a partnership with West Virginia Public Broadcasting’s Inside Appalachia and the Folklife Program of the West Virginia Humanities Council.
The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virginia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stories of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
The holiday shopping season was a far cry from the experience of parents 30 years ago, waiting in line for hours and hours, forging through the crowds, down the aisles to get the hot new toys.
Not many people who lived in Appalachia over the past several decades could forget Hills Department Stores around Christmas time.
Hills is where the toys are WWF Hasbro (clips from the dead)
Those days are gone. Many department stores that carried toys have closed after years of pressure from super-stores like Wal-Mart. Hills filed for bankruptcy and was bought out by Ames in 1999. KB Toys closed in 2008 – while K-Mart held on in the region until 2018.
Jessica Lilly
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The storefront of the business called, 80’s Toys of Princeton, WV, displays a Christmas tree and toys in 2020. The store is located on Mercer Street in the Grassroots District.
But on Mercer Street in Princeton, where Matthew Collins opened the 80’s Toy Store in 2019, it’s a little bit like visiting Christmases past.
Inside, you’ll find toys like a 16-inch talking Beetlejuice doll modeled after Michael Keaton’s character in the blockbuster hit.
Jessica Lilly
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Toys in the 80’s Store of Princeton, WV, December 2020.
The store is also filled with vintage and replica toys from the 1980’s, including Ninja Turtles, Power Rangers, Strawberry Shortcake and more, sure to take anyone older than 30 back in time.
Jessica Lilly
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Care Bears and My Little Pony Toys
There’s even an entire room filled with wrestling toys like Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, Kurt Angle, and Bobby Roode,
Jessica Lilly
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Andre the Giant toy
“Wrestling is king around here,” Collins said. “It’s probably my biggest-seller in the whole store, the wrestling toys, whether they’re from, you know, old classic wrestlers or the new stuff that comes out.”
The 80’s Toy Store is part of the Mercer Street Grassroots District. In 2006, the street was 80% vacant with boarded up storefronts and a bad reputation. Today, there’s only a few vacant storefronts left.
Jessica Lilly
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Matthew Collins restocks a toy in the 80’s Store of Princeton, WV.
Collins grew up in this area and like so many of his generation, his childhood memories are connected to toys — that experience of walking into a store and carefully choosing your favorite one.
Jessica Lilly
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Boy shopping for toys in the 80’s Toys of Princeton, WV store in Mercer County.
“I miss some of those stores,” Collins said. “I remember as a kid going to Hills. Hills had the best selection of toys. I can still smell the popcorn. We loved to eat popcorn from Hills.”
Collins was adopted, or as his parents would tell him, he was “chosen.” He grew up in Mercer County with a stay-at-home mom. His dad worked second shift at a mining equipment company called Ingersoll Rand in Beckley, about 40 miles north in Raleigh County.
Transformers G1 1984-1986 Toy Commercials [In Order]
“I would do whatever chores I had to do and then we would go usually to town on Saturday,” Collins said. “I would take my allowance and go buy a toy.”
“At the time, the biggest toy line I collected was Transformers so I was always looking for Transformers,” Collins said. “I watched the cartoon. I had the comic books. We would play like we were Transformers.”
In fact, Collins still has the first Transformer of his collection. He keeps it in the store, at his computer.
Jessica Lilly
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Matthew Collins holds the first of his Transformer toy collection.
“Kind of a reminder of where I came from,” Collins said. “You know, our family, we didn’t have a lot of money, but you know, they obviously tried to spoil me because I was chosen, I was adopted. It really set the direction for my life.”
Jessica Lilly
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Toy store owner, Matthew Collins keeps the first Transformer he bought as a kid on his keyboard in the toy store. He says it reminds him of where he came from.
In his day job, Collins works with the Department of Health and Human Resources so he’s familiar with the needs of children in the region.
“The Toy Store is my fun job,” Collins said. “My 9-5 job, I’m a CPS worker so I know the importance of families having the items that they need.”
Jessica Lilly
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Matthew Collins stands by a wall of wrestling toys in his toy shop in Princeton, WV.
One day, Collins took a look around and realized, there weren’t a lot of options for kids, young and old, to go into a store and pick out a toy.
“So I decided that I was going to open up a toy store and have a place where the shelves will be stocked,” Collins said, “Just to kind of create some excitement in the community.”
So far, it’s working.Shoppers might not find the popcorn, but they’ll find many of the toys that were available in Hills during the 1980’s.
“Business is pretty good overall,” Collins said. “Even though we are in a pandemic, the community has rallied around my store, and they’ve shopped here.”
Jessica Lilly
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The 80’s Toys of Princeton, WV storefront in December 2020.
Collins has met customers half-way during the pandemic, even making trips from the curbside to the store shelves, selecting a toy and taking it to the door for the customer’s approval — several times.
Jessica Lilly
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Marie Collins helps to prackage wrestling toys that were sold online.
He said eBay has also helped when he needed to make ends meet or to clear out some inventory, but there’s nothing quite like the experience of selecting your own toy. So he’s opening the doors to a special section of the store, not just to paying customers, but families in need, by hosting a toy drive, this holiday season. Collins was determined to make it happen so he came up with a plan.
Jessica Lilly
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Matthew Collins boxes up toys after selling them online.
“So we started in November and we asked people if they would like to round up and donate to the toy drive,” Collins said. “We’ve had people round up and give extra, like, you know, $1, $5, $10. I don’t carry everything here at my toy shop, unfortunately, things like basketballs and things like that. So we’re going to go and use that money and spend so we can have a lot of toys for the actual toy drive whenever we let the parents come in and, and pick out their toys.”
Jessica Lilly
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Strawberry Shortcake vintage remake dolls sit on a shelf in the 80’s Toys of Princeton, WV store.
Many in-person holiday parties were cancelled this year because of COVID and the cut-off time for other toy drives has passed. But anyone who comes into the 80’s Toy Store in Princeton between now and Christmas Eve and simply says they are there for the toy drive, will get a toy.
Jessica Lilly
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Pound Puppies sit in the 80’s Toys of Princeton, WV store.
“If for some reason I get a phone call on Christmas Eve at 10 o’clock at night that says, ‘Can you open the store?’ I’ll be here,” Collins said. “We’ll let somebody in here to make sure that when the kids get up on Christmas morning they have something.”
Jessica Lilly
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The 80’s Toys of Princeton, WV store also sells modern toys like Fortnite figures.
When the coronavirus pandemic threatened the annual Wyoming County Toy Fund, organizers partnered with eight local fire departments to collect and distribute toys to families in need.
Nathan England is captain of the Mullens Fire Department, one of the departments that helped out with the Toy Fund this year.
“It’s always hard to come and ask for help,” England said. “It’s not an easy task for any human to do, especially if you know you’re trying your hardest, but you can’t seem to get over the hump. We’ve all been there. More times than not we’ve all been there.”
About 23% of Wyoming County residents live in poverty, according to the latest data from the U.S. Census Bureau. England says that statistic makes it all the more important for local fire departments to lend a hand.
“It just makes you realize really what Christmas is about,” England said. You it’s a humbling experience, to say the least. It’s about all I can say on that. It’s a humbling experience.”
This year, the Toy Fund partnered with the local fire departments to make sure they could meet COVID safety guidelines while distributing toys.
“Well, the bottom line, everybody needs Christmas, it doesn’t matter what age you are, it’s always nice to have a gift,” England said. “I think we as a fire department, we’re always in tragedies, we very rarely get to see the good things in life, and being able to see that smile on kids’ faces, that’s something that’s irreplaceable.”
The idea was to host the distribution sites at well-ventilated locations around the county in hopes to cut back on crowds and keep things safe.
Jessica Lilly
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Volunteers setup toys and monitored toy distribution for the Wyoming County Toy Fund on Saturday, December 12, 2020.
“We have a table set up in the front to allow two families in at a time, we’re trying to keep the social-distancing, asking people to wear their masks,” England said. “We’re actually picking up the toys and loading them in a box or something along those lines.”
After the initial line in the morning, there was a slow trickle of parents who came to the fire stations and carefully selected one toy per child. Todd Norris is a Mullens police officer.
“People in this area are not immune to financial struggles,” Norris said. “Being in the coalfields, it’s something that you expect or it’s just, I mean, it’s it’s just kind of a way of life.”
This time, he’s not in town for work.
“It’s been a tough year, tough year and a half, I guess,” Norris said. “I got laid off from the railroad back in 2019. And so yeah, it’s been rough.”
Norris has known about the Toy Fund, but this is the first time he’s stopped by to pick out toys.
“It means a lot to be able to come down and get a gift and and know that you’re going to have have something,” Norris said.
Organizers hope that the additional locations made it easier on families who didn’t have to travel as far.
“As of right now, I can honestly say one way or another, I believe definitely it would reach more families this way because of the ease of access to the fire station versus having to go to Wyoming East or Westside,” England said.
Families with a child 12 or younger — who have received assistance from the Department of Health and Human Resources — were eligible to pick up a toy.
The DHHR will tally the numbers to find out how many families participated this year.
Jessica Lilly
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Volunteers with the Mullens Fire Department stand behind a table of toys for the Wyoming County Toy Fund 2020.
Holiday charities look different this year because of Coronavirus safety concerns. Some organizations have reimagined holiday toy drives while several events have been canceled. A Wyoming County organization that hasn’t missed a year since 1999 is actually hoping to serve more families this holiday season.
The Wyoming County Toy Fund is partnering with fire departments in 2020 to pass out gifts to the community. The organization serves children 12 years old and younger. Traditionally, organizers and volunteers gather at Wyoming East High School to distribute toys to families with tickets. Tickets are distributed to families identified through the county Department of Health and Human Resources.
This year, organizers wanted to find a way to spread out their distribution in an effort to prevent large crowds. Eight fire departments agreed to help.
Fire departments passing out toys include:
Mullens
Pineville
Oceana
Cyclone
Upper Laurel
Brenton
Coal Mountain
Hanover
Toys will be passed out on Saturday, Dec. 12. Social distancing will be monitored. About 30% of families with tickets usually show up, according to organizers. They’re hoping this year, with increased accessibility throughout the county, more families will be able to participate.
When I was a kid, the thing that intrigued me most about Santa wasn’t the beard, or the flying reindeer, or the repeated breaking and entering. No — I was fascinated by his workshop. I loved to imagine the elves working tirelessly to make toys that would end up under Christmas trees around the world.
But you know, I never once imagined the elves making the season’s hottest toys.
Instead, I pictured Santa’s little helpers building toys with good old-fashioned wood and glue. I imagined a shop filled with the smell of sawdust and the sound of popguns.
Credit Zack Harold / For Inside Appalachia
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In addition to wooden toys, the Mountain Craft Shop Co. also sells metal puzzles and cloth dolls.
Turns out, my visions looked a lot like what I found in Proctor, West Virginia; headquarters of Mountain Craft Shop Company, which has been turning out traditional handmade Appalachian toys since the early 1960s.
The tree-shaded workshop used to be an elementary school. Now, one side of the building is filled with power saws and a wood lathe, bottles of Elmer’s Glue and slabs of locally sourced hardwood. The other side, the shop’s showroom, is filled with toys your great-grandparents probably would recognize.
“I like to tell the kids, can you remember before Walmart and plastics. There wasn’t necessarily a store to go to to buy toys, so grandmom or granddad or dad or mom made the toys from what was readily available: sticks that they found out back, little pieces of wood, pieces of string, little bits of leather,” says Steve Conlon, who runs the business with his wife Ellie.
Credit Zack Harold / For Inside Appalachia
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Steve and Ellie Conlon outside the headquarters of their Mountain Craft Shop Co. in Proctor, W.Va., which manufactures traditional Appalachian folk toys.
A few months back, Conlon gave me a tour of the property, which he calls “Wetzel County’s Only Amusement Park.” Putting down his popgun, Conlon picked up what looked like a capital letter L.
He held it by the short end and whipped it around in the air, creating an ear-splitting ratcheting sound.
“We call this a rattletrap. All this noise is generated from a tongue depressor and this little cogged wheel here. I tell ‘em, it sounds better in a van,” Conlon said.
Then he picked up that old toy where you try to catch a ball on a string in a cup. Conlon tried twice before landing the ball perfectly on his third attempt.
“This actually dates back to 1580 in England,” Conlon said. “Good for eye-hand coordination.”
Next, he moved over to a low table and palmed a handful of marbles — manufactured about 20 miles away at the Marble King factory, in Paden City.
“We make a variety of marble toys. This one is interesting. We call it a musical marble tree. It’s about 30 inches tall and it has pieces of wood — leaves — that stick out on either side. We drop a marble and a marble goes from one leaf to another,” Conlon said.
He dropped the marbles and they began bounced down the wooden fronds, sounding like Animal from The Muppet Show going nuts on a marimba.
“Makes a wonderful noise, don’t you think?” Conlon said.
The Conlons manufacture all these toys and dozens more models in their tiny shop, which they open to visitors. They also sell their toys in gift shops around West Virginia and surrounding states and at Tamarack, in Beckley. But they did not come to West Virginia to be toymakers. They wanted to be farmers.
“We moved here in 1974 from Philadelphia and we brought with us a couple beehives in the back of the U-Haul truck. I was just fascinated with bees. We tried chickens and cows and every other agricultural pursuit and bees kept kind of rising to the top. So it evolved into us owning a lot of beehives and needing other locations to keep them,” Conlon said.
They placed some of their hives on the property of a neighbor named Dick Schnacke. He was a mechanical engineer by trade and worked at the aluminum plant in nearby New Martinsville. But he also taught himself to make traditional folk toys. But researching how to do it wasn’t easy.
“Very little was really recorded,” Dick Schnacke told the West Virginia Division of Culture and History in 1978. “You see, toys were not considered to be anything but trifles, all through the ages, until just the last few years. So nothing was recorded.”
Credit Zack Harold / For Inside Appalachia
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A portrait of Dick Schnacke, founder of the Mountain Craft Shop Co., still hangs in the company’s Proctor, W.Va., headquarters.
Still, Schnacke forged ahead. He eventually compiled two books on folk toys. He also spun his passion into a small business, the Mountain Craft Shop Company. Schnacke handled all the research, development, marketing, and sales. But, kind of like Kris Kringle himself, turned manufacturing over to a team of elves.
Credit Zack Harold / For Inside Appalachia
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Dick Schnacke compiled his research on traditional toys into two books.
“He actually didn’t make any of the toys himself. He had probably 10 people who were making the different toys at home. People who were buying their farm by making toys to be sold,” Conlon said.
Through the years, Schnacke grew the company’s inventory to include some 200 traditional toys. But by 2002, he was getting older and looking to get out of the toy business. So he offered to sell it to an enterprising couple who could keep his legacy alive — his friends the Conlons.
Along with the business, the Conlons also got Schnacke’s expertise on building folk toys.
“It was a manufacturing business. We had to learn how to manufacture those toys and had to accumulate a lot of power tools, which wasn’t painful for a man to do,” Conlon said.
To keep manufacturing costs low, they decided to start making most of the toys in-house. The Conlons, who still raise bees and sell honey, get the wood from trees they harvest on their own property or from logs their neighbors give them. They mill the logs themselves and air dry the lumber in the shop.
“Some woods do a lot better at certain things. We pick out the woods for their adaptability of the product and also the beauty. If you use a piece of walnut, it really makes a toy stand out. If I’m turning things on the lathe, cherry is a very nice wood for turning,” Conlon said.
Credit Zack Harold / For Inside Appalachia
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Steve Conlon demonstrates the traditional “limber jack” dancing toy in his workshop.
Many of the toys are incredibly labor intensive to produce. Take the Jacob’s Ladder, for instance. This classic, deceptively simple-looking toy creates the illusion that pieces are click-clacking to the bottom of a string of wooden tiles.
“The Jacob’s Ladder has 8 different pieces of wood. So I make the pieces of wood in here, plane them down, sand them,” Conlon said.
Conlon’s wife, Ellie, then cuts 24 pieces of fabric and glues them to the wooden tiles to bring the jacob’s ladder together.
“We make about a thousand a year. Not too many people want to work for pennies on the hour. If you own your own business, you do that,” Ellie Conlon said.
That level of commitment — and sacrifice — is one reason the Conlons are not yet sure who will take over Mountain Craft Shop Company when they decide to retire.
“How will it play out? We don’t know yet. The reality of the situation is, we are manufacturing in America. Look around you. Manufacturing in America — there’s a lot of competition,” Steve Conlon said.
One thing remains certain, though. The traditional toys they make have not lost their ability to captivate children. They see it every time they set up a booth at a craft fair.
“Kids will just spend minutes, half an hour, there as long as parents are willing to stay. And then of course there’s crying and screaming when it’s time to leave,” Steve Conlon said.
When Conlon says this, it reminds me of something that happened a few months ago, when my wife and I took our five-year-old little girl to Babcock State Park in southern West Virginia. We told her she could pick out one thing from the gift shop. She perused the whole store but ultimately gravitated toward a shelf near the window — where she picked up a Jacob’s Ladder made by the Conlons.
As we cruised down the interstate headed for home, I noticed I couldn’t hear any noise coming from her tablet.
Instead, I heard the clacking of the Jacob’s Ladder.
Even in this age of screens, toys made with wood and glue still possess magic. And Steve and Ellie Conlon are keeping that magic alive.
If you’re interested in picking up some toys from the Mountain Craft Shop Company before Christmas, their Proctor, W.Va. will be open 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 20; 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday, Dec. 21-22; and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 23. They will be closed on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. Their toys are also available at Tamarack and many state park gift shops.
The Folkways Reporting Project is made possible in part with support from Margaret A. Cargill Philanthropies to the West Virignia Public Broadcasting Foundation. Subscribe to the podcast to hear more stores of Appalachian folklife, arts, and culture.
