Former Emporian Peggy Kraum Schuler and her husband, Walt, retired to Emporia in December. Their new thrift store will open Thursday in the former Hill’s Appliance building, 427 Merchant St.
“We just wanted something to do, but didn’t want to go to work for someone else,” Walt Schuler said last week between unloading stock and leaving to bring back a fresh load. “We’ll have anything and everything — alkaline batteries to stuffed zebras.”
The store has been named “Hornet Thrift,” with accompanying hornet logo, which Peggy Schuler pointed out bears no relationship or resemblance to Corky, the Emporia State University hornet mascot. Corky is tough-looking and ready to sting.
“You’re not going to get stung at Hornet Thrift,” she said, with the good humor that slips easily into her conversation.
Peggy Schuler is happy to be back. She said that she and her husband had been working on the move for months, since she brought him to Emporia for a visit and he immediately loved her hometown.
Walt Schuler was a lifelong resident of the Kansas City area; Peggy Schuler had lived there about 27 years.
“We were sick to death of the city,” she said. “(Emporia) is just a comfortable place.”
Emporia is so comfortable, in fact, that Peggy Schuler’s mother, Betty Kraum, set the pattern for her daughter. Kraum and her husband, Lowell, had moved from Emporia to Florida and lived there a number of years before Lowell Kraum died. About three years later, Peggy Schuler said, she received a call from her mother saying she wanted to come home. Betty Kraum returned to Emporia and stayed here until she died in 1996.
Peggy Schuler, who lived in Bonner Springs, worked in the court clerk’s offices in Shawnee, Lenexa and Lake Quivira before she retired, and she was ready to move home.
“We’ve been working on this move for months,” she said. Their grown children, including Shandi Schierling of Olpe, were perplexed about why the couple wanted to retire here. Once the arrangements were being made, they stopped having doubts.
“Well, now it’s happening and they’re all excited about it,” she said.
Peggy Schuler’s roots here encompass four generations. Great-grandfather A.E. Kraum owned Kraum’s Drug Store in the 300 block of Commercial Street. He passed that on to his son Clarence who, in turn, passed it to his own son, Lowell Kraum.
The men created many of their own pharmaceuticals in those days, she said, and she has an envelope full of the formulae for many of them, hand-written by her ancestors.
Some of the formulae are still useful, like old family recipes. Peggy Schuler blends her own Balm of Gilead for her family and friends, using a formula and instructions written by her grandfather, Clarence. The mixture contains a variety of herbs and ingredients that are fading from use and, consequently, are becoming increasingly difficult to find.
The homemade balm may eventually find its way onto a shelf at Hornet Thrift. Initially, though, the couple’s stock will reflect a broad range of needs and interests. In the midst of stocking the store on Friday, it already held snow shovels, books, jewelry, collectibles, children’s and adult clothing, small appliances, fabric remnants, cookie jars and a variety of other useful, but used, stock. Items available may vary from week to week; however, the Schulers plan to have a consistent criteria for all that they sell.
“It’s going to be clean, it’s going to be usable,” Peggy Schuler said. “There’s enough junk in the world already.”