Beroth Tour and Trip to Spring Valley General Store
What began as a simple trip to Mt. Pilot soon grew into an all day affair. George Spangler had arranged for Triad Corvette members to tour Thornton Beroth's oil memorabilia museum. What a great place to visit. Mr. Beroth and his 3 brothers have been in the oil business for decades... literally. The collection in the museum covers almost the entire 20th century. There was signage from the teens and 20's, old gasoline pumps, kerosene oil containers and a lot of stuff that I had never even seen before. The museum is located in an old bank building in downtown Mt. Pilot. The building is two stories tall and filled from top to bottom with "stuff".... an entire lifetime of it!
Mr. Beroth does these tours by appointment only. When we arrived, he had a 1920 something oil truck parked out front. He greeted us at the door and after some brief chit chat, he began his guided tour. The downstairs houses much of his memorabilia and his work shop which is full of all kinds of antiques just waiting for his loving care. Since he doesn't charge anything to visit his museum, all of his work is from his pure love of the business.
The second floor of the building has toys, signs, neon, pump globes, oil cans, hats (remember when the service station attendant wore one of those?), tools and just about anything and everything that has ever been associated with a service station in the last 100 years. It was quite an impressive collection.
After we had poked around in the museum for an hour or so, it was time for lunch. Sonic's Drive In was the cafe de jour. After lunch we were heading for Spring Valley General Store in Fries, VA. The store was constructed by Bob Smith to house his extensive collection of old hardware and general store memorabilia. The trip to Fries (pronounced "frees") gave us the opportunity to drive one of the curviest roads east of Deals Gap. The road known as Piper's Gap runs from just off Hwy 52 to Galax, VA. It goes straight up the mountain... well, there is nothing straight about it but it does go UP rather quickly. Next time you see Todd Tourville, George Spangler or Mike Lewis you might want to ask them what took them so long to get up that mountain. The story we got sounded sort of fishy!
Photo by Todd Tourville
A quick stop at Deborah's parents house on the way to Fries, VA. How would you like to look out your window and see this site?
The onboard GPS finally delivered us to Spring Valley General Store via every backroad it could find in southern Virginia. One of these days I am going to learn how to use that thing. The collection of old hardware and general store merchandise housed in Spring Valley General Store was nothing short of amazing. It was like stepping back in time when you walked thru it's door. Bob was a good host, but a very shrewed business man. I think we decided that either nothing was for sale or none of us looked like we could afford it. Mickie will tell you, it wasn't for lack of trying that we didn't buy anything.
All this sounds like a full day, huh? Well, we weren't done yet! There was a cruise in in Mt Airy beginning at 5PM. We boogied back down I-77 and arrived just in time to get prime parking spots. Within 45 minutes, the lot was full to overflowing. There must have been 300 cars there and some very nice cars too.
After dinner at a nearby cafeteria, some more tire kicking and staying long enough to see if any one of us won the 50/50, it was time to head home. But not before one more stop in King, NC for ice cream. What a day! I think we covered almost 200 miles, made 3 events and spent about 11 hours driving, site seeing, eating and socializing.