Pick & Grin: Treasure Hunting in Cherokee County

Three stops, countless finds and plenty of reasons to go back.

By Kelly Caldwell

Around here, “pickin’ and grinnin’” usually brings to mind guitars, banjos and a front porch.

We’re giving the old phrase a new meaning.

We’re picking our way through Alabama, one antique trail, vintage shop, flea market and dusty corner at a time. And the grin? That’s what happens when you find it.

You go looking for old stuff. Sometimes you find an old memory instead.

Give me an antique store, a little time and absolutely no idea what I am looking for, and I am happy.

That’s really the fun of treasure hunting. I don’t necessarily want to walk into a store knowing exactly what I’m there to buy. I want to wander. I want to dig. I want to turn a corner and find something that makes me say, OMG, come look at this.

Cherokee County is a pretty good place to do exactly that.

An Antique Trail Worth Exploring

At the time of our visit, the Cherokee County Chamber of Commerce's Antique Trail featured 13 different locations to pick and treasure hunt your way around the county. The trail included antique shops, thrift stores, vendor markets, auctions and flea-market finds.

Our visit was a short one, so there was no way we were going to make it to every stop. Trust me, I would have tried.

But three stops—Harris Furniture & Antiques, Weiss Lake Emporium and Rustic Charm—were more than enough to convince me we need to go back.

From Teddy to Tiffany at Harris Furniture & Antiques

Let’s start with Harris Furniture & Antiques in Centre.

It is massive.

I don’t mean “there’s another room in the back” big. I mean the kind of place where you wander through one section, turn a corner and realize there is a whole lot more to see.

During our visit, there were even antique cars inside. At least three of them.

But one of the first things that stopped me in my tracks wasn’t an antique car or some priceless piece of history.

It was Teddy Ruxpin.

And he was in great condition.

If you were a kid or had kids in the 1980s, you probably remember Teddy. He was the talking bear with a cassette player inside. You put in his special cassette, and Teddy told stories while his mouth moved along with the recording.

Very sweet. Very wholesome.

Unless, apparently, your father was my father.

My little sister got a Teddy Ruxpin for Christmas one year, and Dad decided to see what would happen if he replaced Teddy’s story cassette with a Jimi Hendrix tape.

Y’all.

The memory of Teddy Ruxpin trying his absolute best to rock out to Jimi Hendrix remains Caldwell family GOLD.

And there I was, all these years later, standing in an antique store in Centre looking at another Teddy Ruxpin and laughing about something I hadn’t thought about in years.

That’s what antique stores can do to you. You can walk past hundreds of things, and then, out of nowhere, there is a memory sitting on a shelf.

But Harris wasn’t finished with me.

A little farther into our treasure hunt, we came across something that required considerably more reverence.

A 1910 Tiffany lamp.

It was under lock and key, which seemed entirely appropriate once I saw the price tag.

$20,000.

I admired that particular treasure from an appropriate distance.

In the same store, I found a Teddy Ruxpin that transported me straight back to childhood, a 1910 Tiffany lamp with a $20,000 price tag and at least three antique automobiles.

From Teddy to Tiffany.

That’s Harris Furniture & Antiques.

Just Cross the Street to Weiss Lake Emporium

Here’s another thing I love about this part of the Antique Trail.

When you finally pull yourself away from Harris, you don’t have to go very far to continue the hunt.

Weiss Lake Emporium is right across the street.

While I was busy getting distracted by Teddy Ruxpin, antique cars and a $20,000 lamp, Mama was doing a little treasure hunting of her own.

She headed into Weiss Lake Emporium, and her experience couldn’t have been more different.

The store has an organized, put-together vendor-market feel, with individual spaces to browse and plenty to look through.

And then Mama discovered something I particularly appreciated.

They celebrate Christmas year-round.

Now, I don’t need much encouragement when it comes to Christmas, so a place where it is perfectly acceptable to browse Christmas decorations regardless of what the calendar says sounds pretty good to me.

We also learned about Cookies with Santa, complete with photo opportunities. Because, of course, if you’re going to celebrate Christmas all year, Santa eventually needs to show up.

These places aren’t carbon copies of one another. In Centre, you can literally cross the street and have a completely different treasure hunt.

Depression Glass and Deer Antlers at Rustic Charm

Our third stop was Rustic Charm, right next door to Beauty for Ashes Recovery, another stop on the Antique Trail.

By this point, I was beginning to understand that the Cherokee County Antique Trail doesn’t really believe in staying in one lane.

At Rustic Charm, we found beautiful Depression glass and other things you might expect to discover while antiquing.

And then there was the jewelry made from deer antlers.

Now, I am not a hunter.

Not even a little bit.

But I was completely intrigued.

Especially by the wedding bands.

There was something about taking something as rustic as an antler and turning it into a wedding band that made me stop and look. They were unusual, beautiful in their own way and certainly not something I expected to find that day.

Would I have ever thought I needed to go shopping for an antler wedding band?

Absolutely not.

Did I stand there studying them anyway?

Absolutely.

And that is the hunt.

You walk into an antique store thinking you’re going to look at old dishes and furniture, and 20 minutes later you’re contemplating the craftsmanship of deer-antler wedding bands even though you have never hunted a day in your life.

That’s why I don’t particularly care for antique shopping with a list.

A list assumes you already know what you’re going to find.

Where’s the fun in that?

So Many Places, So Little Time

Here’s the problem with an Antique Trail.

Eventually, you run out of day.

We only scratched the surface of what Cherokee County has to offer, and look what we found.

A Teddy Ruxpin. A 1910 Tiffany lamp. Antique cars. Depression glass. Deer-antler wedding bands. Christmas in every season.

And we still didn’t get to walk through the doors of Centre Auction Gallery, Cherokee Glass, 411 Antiques, Family Care Center Thrift Store or Abandoned Storage Finds.

Just reading those names makes me wonder what we missed.

Abandoned Storage Finds?

Come on. You know I want to dig through that.

But maybe that’s exactly what an Antique Trail is supposed to do. It isn’t something you necessarily check off in one afternoon. You pick a few stops, see what you can find and save a few for next time.

Because the best part of treasure hunting isn’t always the thing you take home.

Sometimes it’s something that takes you straight back to childhood and makes you laugh about your dad all over again. Sometimes it’s something you never knew existed until five minutes ago.

And sometimes the best thing you find is simply a reason to come back.

Mama, we’re going to need another day.

Before heading out, check with the Cherokee County Chamber of Commerce for current Antique Trail information and with individual shops for hours and seasonal activities. The treasures described here were spotted during our visit; inventory changes.