Anyone looking to walk down memory lane this weekend can head over to the old Penny Store, welcoming visitors for the first time in seven years Saturday, for an RC Cola and a Moon Pie.
The Penny Grocery Store operated just off Airport Road in Kentucky for a little over half a century. A simple shotgun style building with a wood stove in the middle of the room, it served as the grocery and community hangout for locals from the time it was built in 1909 till its closure in the late 1970’s.
“A lot of good times were had there,” said Terry Lee, 73, of Kirksey, who remembers going to the store from as young as five years old. “All the neighborhood people would stop by and talk.”
Lee explained that when you wanted to know something you went to the store where some of the older men would sit around the wood stove gossiping for three to four hours a day.
“Chewing tobacco and telling stories - mostly lies,” he said.
In 2008, John “Johnny” Gingles moved the store from Airport Road, around the corner to where it sits now on Poor Farm Road. Working with his sons Rob and Hunter, Johnny fixed the building and began working towards making it a museum filled with antiques he collected over the years.
“My father and I bonded over collecting and antiques more than anything,” said Hunter Gingles.”He called me Lamont and I called him Freddie G, from the show Sanford and Son.”
The small one room building is a testament to their love of collecting old things. The walls are lined with vintage toys, old signs, bottles and even antique seasoning containers. There are vintage boxes that once held candy bars - or even pampers. A perfect miniature replica of the store sits on a glass display case filled with more antiques.
“I get my collecting addiction from him,” said Hunter. “I may be worse than him though.”
Johnny passed away in January of this year, but Hunter has continued to repair the old grocery store in hopes of making it the operational museum his father envisioned.
“The museum, to me, is a living memory I get to cherish related to my father,” Hunter said. “I hope it can last in the Gingles family forever.”
The store is set up as it might have looked in its prime, the way those like Lee and other regular customers would remember it. Hunter has worked hard for several months, preparing to open for the public to see this piece of Calloway County history.
Saturday, July 11, Hunter is opening the store up to the public for the first time in seven years. Admission to the museum will be free and it will be open rain or shine.
Concessions will include RC Cola and Moon Pies as well as other drinks and snacks for sale. Gingles also plans to sell a few antiques and has limited copies of his father’s book “Growing Up in Calloway County in the 50s and 60s” for sale.
All sales and donations will go to preservation and improvement of the museum and to keep it operational as his father wanted.
“It’s gonna be a blast from the past for some and, to others, a history lesson on how simple life was back in the day, especially small community life,” Hunter said.
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