Wrenching Tales by Cindy Ladage 

 

Larry Pankey and his wife, Diane, opened the America’s Cup antique store by default. “I am a retired shop teacher from Pleasant Plains,” Larry explained. “I worked there for 33 years and remodeled several houses.”

While doing this, he started collecting tools he would find, and, he said, “People (also) brought them to me.” The store where Larry’s tools are now on display in Pleasant Plains, Ill., was Harry Hartman’s grocery store and was open until the early 1970s. Originally the store started out as the John Lehmann General Store, established in 1896.

What made the store come alive was when Larry found a ledger that listed wholesale dealers Lehmann owed for his goods, with the discount he received from each. It is part of the Sangamon County Collection, which listed items purchased at the store at the time. The ledgers are living history documents: “It shows items like lye, soap, barrels, oysters and bananas,” he said.

Before the Pankeys purchased it, the store was owned by businessman Bill Kelso, who Larry said used it for storage. After he died, the family asked if Larry would clear it out. “I cleaned out the place and the family asked if I wanted to buy the building; I said no.”

But Bill’s daughter, Kim Leonard, and her husband, Pat, were persuasive and talked Larry and Diane into making the plunge. They opened their antique store after establishing an apartment upstairs. “Since then, we have booths that people can rent,” Larry explained.

One of the people who has antiques at the store is Gary Fraase and his wife, Sue. Gary was an athletic director and coach and worked with Larry for years. Gary pointed to a John Deere pedal tractor as one of the farm-related items that belonged to him.

 Larry has a story about each of the tools on the wall above the newly finished bar he made himself. The bar is a cedar base with doors he and Diane found in the basement of the property: “We repurpose everything,” he noted.

The mirror above the bar is unique. It came from Jimmy Connors’ casino, the Alystra, in Henderson, outside Las Vegas. “Jimmy Connors, the tennis player, and his brother, John, had this casino with 295 slots, two restaurants and a bar. After it closed, Bill Kelso bought this and we repurposed it. The pillars in front of the store were from out there, too.”

America’s Cup just acquired a liquor license and is now offering wine and beer for shoppers. The owners plan to use local products, with many of the wines coming from nearby Prairie Hill Winery.

“We were thinking it would be fun to have wine and beer,” Larry said, laughing. “Today (Sept. 19), the first shipment arrived.”

Above the bar he has a bucksaw, a meat saw and a two-man hand saw that came from Diane’s grandfather, Jim Coldin, who lived in Gibson City, Ill. “He cleared hedges for $1 a day in Kentucky,” Larry said.

The store is in great condition, with a Warner Electric rope elevator still intact. Near the elevator is an antique cheese cutter built by the Superior Co. “You got a round cheese, then this cut it into pie shapes. This was probably from a factory,” Larry said.

Other ag-related antiques included the license plates above the bar that he calls cow plates or goat plates, because around World War II there was no metal so manufacturers made them out of soybeans between 1943-48. “When farmers would go out to the fields, the cows or goats would eat the plates right off the cars,” he explained.

He did have an old leather harness from the Civil War, but sold it to a buyer. He doesn’t plan on selling his tools anymore, just other antiques at the America’s Cup.

The store name is Illinois history. “When stores needed coffee, they shipped it up and down the river in Peoria where they roasted the beans. One of the brands was America’s Cup. They sold the beans to the stores, and then the stores ground them up and sold the coffee. There were painters that painted advertisements on the side of buildings,” Larry said, pointing out the American’s Cup sign painted on the side of the building decades ago – and restored by the Kelsos when they owned it. “These are called ghost paintings because you can barely see them. This one was touched up; Gloria Kelso had it retouched in the ’70s. We kept the name because that seemed respectful.”

For those who want to visit America’s Cup and see Pankey’s display, it is at 100 W. Main St. in Pleasant Plains and is open Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Call 217-626-1258 or visit his Facebook page at www.facebook.com/AmericasCupAntiques/info for details.

Readers with questions or comments for Cindy Ladage may write to her in care of this publication.