The "One Final Visit To "TollBooth Antiques" Story---BUT WAIT....There is MORE TO THIS STORY!!!

It was an ordinary day.  Reading my Sunday News when I came upon a story titled "Antiquing Gives Objects Of Past New Life."  Story dealt with the Tollbooth Antiques building in nearby Columbia, Pennsylvania that recently was destroyed by fire.  Story was written by Brenne Sheehan.  Began with:  Antique stores bring me a particular kind of comfort.  Whether it's the retrofuturistic Space in downtown Lancaster, the kitschy Pennsylvania Dutch haven of the Strasburg Antique Market or the fascination artifacts from Indigenous tribes at the Turqouoise Bar Emporium in Elizabethtown, I can always find vintage and handmade relics to get lost in.  It is a love I attribute to my father.  We visited plenty of antique stores in our adventures around the East Coast to find hand-carved decorative canoes for the mantle, incense burners and new chairs for our living room.  He taught me to find love in the preloved, from thrift clothes to vintage books.  One of the places we visited together was Tollbooth Antiques - the Columbia Mecca for antiques with two floors and more than 50 vendors that had a major fire July 18.  My heart goes out to the vendors, the Doolittle's (the owners), and Columbia Borough as they navigate the aftermath of the fire.  The first time I went to Tollbooth Antiques, I was around 10 years old.  A little collector of Hot Wheels, state park quarters and Beanie Babies, I was really coming into my love of knickknacks and other pointless, maximalist objects.  I made up the case for a $4 raccoon coin bank that has sat on the bookshelves of two bedrooms since then.  It even traveled up to my dorm in upstate New York when I left for college.  My dad and I have frequented Tollbooth every few years or so to search for new finds.  While their premise, like any business, is to sell merchandise, I've never felt a particular discomfort  leaving without buying anything.  As you walk through the 40,000-square-foot warehouse, friendly vendors will talk to you for hours about the historical significance of a mahogany bedside table as you lose yourself in their anecdotes and passion for objects of the past.  In a way, it was like a museum - it held artifacts, artwork and breathing  history.  Unlike a museum, all of the history was accessible.  You were encouraged to buy things and take trinkets home with you, making it a part of your space.  Not to mention it can be cheap, which is always attractive to a broke college student like me.  Last weekend, I was planning a trip to Tollbooth for the first time in a few years when I saw the Friday morning news.  It was heartbreaking.  For the first time, I saw the faces behind some of the booths where I sourced my collections of vintage spice canisters, where my dad bought the coffee table for our childhood home, where I bought my favorite leather jacket.  Suddenly, these objects that I had, became personified relics of these vendors' livelihoods: their incomes, their passions, their collections.  Sometimes, when antiquing with Dad, I'd turn over a price tag on an item I loved, gasping at a three, sometimes four-figure amount.  Every time I'd ask him, "Why is this so expensive?" he'd remind me.  "It's one of a kind."  And he was right.  I like to think of the price as paying a service to the antique collector, recognizing their work in obtaining an artifact that you love and giving them space for more antiques.  I have learned that antique dealers are more than sales-people.  They are passionate explorers who seek history and share it with others.  It is important to understand the significance of antiques stores as cultivators of American identity.  As I continue my apartment-shopping adventures, I commend Tollbooth for its legacy as a space for antique vendors in the local community.  While Tollbooth vendors venture to find new spaces in the coming weeks, I encourage all of those reading to follow, support and patronize them, while additionally exploring other antique collectives in the county.  Antiquing is helping preserve symbols of history and cross-cultural experiences through trade.  In buying from antique stores - whether it be a new dining room table or a porcelain doll - we are integrating history into our daily lives.  Bernie Sheehan is the 2024 futures intern at LNP/Lancaster Online.  "Unscripted" is a weekly entertainment column produced by a rotating team of writers.  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.  PS:  Today is Tuesday, July 30 and my morning newspaper has a story on page 1 titled: Tollbooth Antiques reopens!  WOW!!!  It has been less than 2 weeks after the fire that destroyed the main warehouse and the main warehouse has begun welcoming customers back.  Remarkable!  Even with most of Tollbooth's main building still a burnt-out brick shell, some vendors set up their shops in adjacent warehouses previously used for storage.  Tollbooth has indeed survived the July 18 fire!!!  The photos in the newspaper show a very small area, but....they are open!  If you are nearby, stop in one of the three small warehouses and encourage them to rebuild their old Tollbooth business.   I'm sure they would be thankful for you to stop and perhaps purchase something from them.  I'll keep you posted as to when they begin to redo their old antique barn.   PS - Their new addresses are: #1 Warehouse: 221 N. Chestnut St., #2 Warehouse: 207 N. Chestnut St., #3 Warehouse: 185 N. Front St., all in the small town of Columbia, Pennsylvania.   It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.