Couple saves Terrell Country Store

TERRELL Just weeks after the old Terrell Country Store closed, a husband-and-wife team reopened it on Feb. 1 as an antiques, collectibles and gifts store featuring everything from face jugs to vintage quilts and jewelry.

Statesville residents Jo Ireland and her husband, Bob Sysol, said they called a member of the Connor family, which has owned the two-story building since the late 1800s, when they learned the store had closed late last year. They signed a lease and got the keys to it on Dec. 31.

“We spent the night cleaning,” Jo Ireland said of the day they took over the store.

“And hunting ghosts,” Bob Sysol said of the long-rumored apparitions that are said to frequent the building – which long ago housed a casket business on the second floor. “None showed up,” although he said he was startled by a mysterious knocking on his front passenger side window as he drove home to Statesville from the store one night.

Bob Sysol had longstanding ties to the store, and quite possibly a ghost was trying to come home with him, he said. He’d sold antiques there and on Sundays managed the store under a previous owner, Amantha Gilreath. He also sold antiques under the most recent owners, Joe and Judy Rose, who had held the lease since 2010.

The store had been the community gathering spot for many decades in unincorporated Terrell. The couple said they couldn’t stand to see it closed.

They also intend to host outdoor auctions, led by auctioneer Karen Kelley of Karolina Auction Co. of Taylorsville, and community yard sales, “and make Terrell come alive again,” Jo Ireland said in a Jan. 24 interview at the store. “Just bring the whole community together.”

The couple also intend to bring back chainsaw artist Roger Sharpe of Olin to ply his trade, most likely on Saturdays, in front of motorists breezing by on N.C. 150. More than a few drivers have pulled a U-turn to watch Sharpe carve his latest intricate bear, eagle, wood spirit, turtle, fish or frog creation.

In spring, the store will serve hand-dipped ice cream.

Tenya Whitfield of Denver, whose watercolors depict Lake Norman scenes, also is among the local artisans featured at the store. She also makes Lake Norman-themed stationery.

The store, which has some booth space available, sells an eclectic mix of antiques and collectibles. The couple also have a booth at the Treasure Cove antique and collectibles mall on West Main Avenue in Taylorsville.

Items at their new store also include Hummels, Grandma Moses prints, shabby chic furniture, parts to old railroads, an old mimeograph machine, 80- to 90-year-old postcards, military items such as an 1819 military canteen, and such “man cave” items as old beer signs and clocks.

Among the more unusual items is a carving of unknown origin that Bob hooked at the bottom of Lake Norman when he was out fishing one day in 1992. No one who’s looked at the carving has even been able to decipher what it depicts. The couple tried to identify it through Duke University and Statesville’s Court Street Gallery, to no success.

They hope someone will walk through the door of their store one day and know what it is.

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