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When Larry Singleton was 10 years old, he begrudgingly accompanied his mother and father, Kathleen and Don Singleton, on their weekend forays buying and selling antiques. He would help his parents unload and set up their wares at flea markets near and far from their hometown of Lebanon, Tennessee, where they owned an antique shop called Spider Web Antiques. But at that time in Singleton’s life, he wasn’t really into the thrill of the hunt. Although his mother did persuade him to start collecting pocketknives, he admits, “I wasn’t all that crazy about old stuff.” But “old stuff” has shaped Singleton’s life—and he has come to embrace it.

Since 1979, he has been in charge of furnishing every single Cracker Barrel Old Country Store in the nation with authentic memorabilia from our nation’s past. Today, there are 650 Cracker Barrels in 45 states, with roughly 1,000 antique items per location. Singleton manages the chain’s 26,000- square-foot décor warehouse, which houses some 90,000 American artifacts, all of them found, cleaned, repaired, barcoded, and organized by Singleton and his staff of five. Among those curiosities are rustic tools dating back to 1700s New England, metal gas station signs from the 1950s, original black and white family portraits, antique china, baby carriages, and vintage toys. In other words, all of the items you’ll find on display at your local Cracker Barrel. Those obsessed with shows like American Pickers and Antiques Roadshowmight wonder how Singleton landed such a dream job. The answer? “I inherited it,” he explains. “That’s the only way you can get this cool of a job.” In the late 1960s, Danny Evins, a Shell Oil distributor and Lebanon resident, reached out to Kathleen and Don to see if they could help decorate a restaurant he was opening off Interstate 40. Just over a decade after the U.S. Highway Interstate system was introduced in 1958, Evins’s concept flew in the face of the cookie cutter fast-food restaurants that had popped up along the highways. This establishment would serve down-home fixin’s whipped up by local cooks and the decor would harken back to the days when every town had its own general store. The Singletons agreed to Evins’s offer, and in 1969, they decorated the very first Cracker Barrel Old Country Store with old-timey finds like farm tools and advertisements. Over the years, Evins expanded the Cracker Barrel universe, opening another and then another—all of them decorated with the Singletons’ antiques.

In 1979, Kathleen got sick, and so her son stepped up to the plate, leaving his construction job to join the family business. By that point, there were 19 Cracker Barrel Old Country stores located across the U.S. Singleton’s father began showing him the ropes that he may have missed as a kid, taking him to flea markets and auctions around the country, and introducing him to dealers and helping him build a network. “I’ve always kind of joked and said I’m really good at finding it and dragging it in,” he says of his four decades spent scavenging the country for pieces of Americana. In the beginning, he was going to markets like Renninger’s Antique and Farmers’ Market in Pennsylvania, the Brimfield Antique Show in Massachusetts, or First Monday Trade Days in Canton, Texas. But eventually, dealers, collectors, and fellow scavengers started reaching out to Singleton directly, especially when they had items they wanted to sell in bulk. “We were one of the few that would buy a 100, or 200, or 500 of something over the years,” says Singleton. “People would get in these old buildings and warehouses and find 1,000 signs or 200 old cans.” This method of accumulating vintage treasures came in handy when the pace of Cracker Barrel store openings started accelerating to about 40 or 50 restaurants per year. These days, the pace of growth is a more manageable 8 to 10 stores a year. Back in the early days, the Singletons would store their finds in Larry’s grandparents’ bedroom. Today, the collection has outgrown the Singleton home—the tens of thousands of items are meticulously categorized and housed in Cracker Barrel’s decor warehouse, located at the company’s Lebanon headquarters. So what’s the oldest (and rarest) piece in the CB collection? A portable pantry from the 1800s. “It was the kitchen when people were traveling out west,” says Singleton. “It went on the back of wagons, so you’d keep all of your flour, your coffee, your sugar in this decorated piece. It’s just a really neat piece that I’ve probably only seen three or four of over the years I’ve been doing this.” So what’s Singleton’s secret to scoring so many incredible antique finds? “Get to know the dealers,” says Singleton, who now lives in the Shell Oil gas station from which his parents used to operate their antique shop. “One thing I’ve always learned is that the dealers want to tell you everything they know about the piece. Listen to them. Listen to where they found it. If you’ve got a question like, is this real, or what’s the date, you know the person to get in touch with. – Source: Country Living.

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