To look around is to appreciate the effort that has been put in to gather assortments of intriguing items, from artistically-crafted knives to books about American history and the West, from 60s and 70s records to evocative wall art, from electric typewriters to a pair of phonographic cylinder-based transcribing machines with Thomas Edison’s signature visible on each, from soaps hand made by Bob’s wife, to a wooden mold for the sand-casting of a large gear manufactured by Cox Brothers Foundry.
You could say, too, that Erwin inherited his antique store talent. “My grandmother had an antique store in Dallas. My dad had been a collector. It comes naturally. [When] I retired, [I] knew I needed something to do. And so first, I restored a building with the idea it would become a shop, and here we are,” Erwin said.
At first, Erwin had his shop across the street from where it is now. But now his store occupies a space that was once known as Haynes Brothers. If you look up, you can still see the elegantly tiled ceiling that variety store used starting at some point in its existence from the 1930s to the 1970s.
Erwin said his store is an extension of his own tastes when it comes to collecting. “I like knives a lot. I like old tools. I like books when you can find them, Western stuff, spurs and bits and Western garb. So those are the areas that I think that I enjoy the most personally,” he said.
The Western interest makes sense given Erwin’s origins. He said he was born “on a farm in Plano, Texas.” The interest in business machines makes sense, too. He would work for Ross Perot’s Electronic Data Systems and then Perot Systems. Yes, the very Ross Perot, born and raised in Texarkana, who became a billionaire in the computer industry, and ran twice, in 1992 and 1996, as a third-party presidential candidate with a prophetic focus on the cost to America of its companies relocating factories outside of the country’s borders.
“I was there during the time that he ran for president,” Erwin said. “I was a salesman, and that was an interesting time trying to sell. The stuff I sold was a million dollars or more. So when he was running for president, it was strange. People would say, ‘Well, is he going to stay in the computer business, or is he going to be the president?’ I had lunch with him a couple times. I didn't know him well at all. He was a very intense, intimidating man, being five foot six.”
After many years, Erwin said, “I became tired of corporate America, and I moved to Hope and we bought the bed and breakfast jail in Washington. I bought a farm outside of town. Still have it. The state now owns the jail and but I've done a lot of different things here. Most notably, I worked at the hardware store part time for 17 years.” This is the famous LaGrone Williams Hardware store right next door.
Of all the items, Erwin showed me during my visit to his store, the Cox Brothers’ gear, several Bruner Ivory Handle Company sticks, an antique piggy-bank from Hope’s First National Bank, the Edison Dictation machines, this former American Literature professor was most impressed with a framed letter from Algonquian Roundtable member Alexander Woollcott, New Yorker essayist, drama critic, radio personality and one of the wittiest human beings this side of Oscar Wilde. He was also the model for the main character of The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942).
In the December 14, 1934 letter Woollcott, writing under the letterhead of The Cream of Wheat Broadcasts, thanks a Mrs. Woods for an anecdote about Daniel Boone and then says he remembers meeting an older lady who claimed Boone, when visiting her father, had been served meals in the woodshed “because Daniel smelled so bad.” Woollcott at that time had his own radio show called The Town Crier. Erwin found the letter inside a book he bought.
Finding out the story behind the Woollcott letter is just one of the joys of owning a shop like Bob’s Antiques and in itself a great defense of the art of collecting, that has become so suspect in our times today when the merciless minimalism of Marie Kondo still holds such sway.
“You need your junk,” Erwin said. “It grounds you. It reminds you of other things besides the current. … It’s a lot of fun. I get to see a lot of things I’ve never seen before. I’ve got people that brings me things. It’s just fun.”
Additional fun has come from co-founding the Hope Downtown Network which has brought aesthetic sense to the look of Hope's Downtown area through its grants and through the opportunity it provides for business owners there to build mutual relationships.
To stock his store, Erwin said he does go to a few auctions, but much of his inventory comes from people who bring him things. The records came from a man who called Erwin one night to say, “Bob, I’ve got 500 albums here at the house. And my wife wants them out of here by 5:00 today.” Similar things happen all the time. Sometimes he even finds items simply left at his store’s front doors.
Whether you want to shop or contribute more inventory, Bob’s Antiques is open Thursday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in the store with the two jolly reindeer leaping across the awning.
