By Emily Votruba The old Gilmore Township Library on Elberta\u2019s Frankfort Avenue will reopen to the public in mid-July as The Elberta Mercantile Company<\/a>, a shop full of vintage items, antiques, and collectibles. <\/p>\n Mark and Carol Carlin of Ferndale and Frankfort are your hosts at this renovated and restored mid-century brick building, where one person\u2019s old junk can become someone else\u2019s new treasure (sometimes again and again).<\/p>\n Mark, 32 years an auditor, retired from the State of Michigan in 2010. Carol retired recently from a career in nursing, social work, and research at Wayne State University<\/a> to take care of her elderly parents and to enjoy every possible minute with the couple\u2019s four grandchildren. The joyful integration of old and new\u2014do you see a pattern here?<\/p>\n The Carlins have spent summers and some winters in Frankfort since 1990, when Carol says she first learned the \u201cFrankfort shuffle\u201d from her sister\u2019s mother-in-law, Marge Grix, during an icy winter visit. Over the years, the Carlins have instigated annual events such as the Rough Art show, at Grix\u2019s house (now occupied by Grix\u2019s grandson, local artist Joe Cissell<\/a>) during the Fourth of July parade<\/a> and an annual Memorial Day weekend yard sale at their place on Corning Avenue; that sale has included many of the sorts of curiosities they will now be purveying at Elberta Mercantile.<\/p>\n Things like collectible and one-of-a-kind clothing, classic children\u2019s toys (trains, entire year-runs of Matchbox cars, Fisher-Price mat\u00e9riel), sports and celebrity memorabilia, signage, furniture, fixtures\u2014and very heavy weird old things. <\/p>\n On a sunny day in June, as renovation work continued on the building, Mark and Carol invited me to sit at a table on the Mercantile\u2019s new coffee terrace, next to a planter from Odom\u2019s Reuse with native flowers, a large green steel wheel from somewhere in Thompsonville, and a rotary reception desk phone from a Sheraton in Detroit. Soon we were talking about \u201cparty lines\u201d and stretchable phone cords, and I could tell the conversation was going to flow as freely as the coffee.<\/p>\n The first order of business was to show me the antique chiropractor\u2019s table and tell me its story. The chiropractor\u2019s table looks, Mark aptly points out, like something out of Young Frankenstein, with geared adjustment wheels and various panels of cold steel on a huge cast-iron base. It must weigh 300 pounds, I think. <\/p>\n \u201cI like anything really old and heavy and metal that looks like it\u2019s going to run forever,\u201d says Marks, who got started collecting just after college, when he bought a big old cash register. \u201cWhiskey barrels. Tiger Stadium seats. Wheels. Just really old heavy stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd you gotta understand,\u201d adds Carol, laughing, \u201cwhen it\u2019s time to lift something huge and heavy, I\u2019m always the one on the other end of it!\u201d<\/p>\n When Mark showed up with the chiropractor\u2019s table in the back of the couple\u2019s van, Carol decided that this time she was not going to be the one on the other end\u2014they would get help from some of their new next-door neighbors. <\/p>\n \u201cSo we broke up the Eco-Building Products <\/a>staff meeting, and they helped us move the table,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n A little while later, another neighbor, Nancy Gumm, came over and mentioned that she and her family were having an estate sale of her dad\u2019s things and that the Carlins might want to check it out. She walked into the building, saw the chiropractor\u2019s table, and said, \u201cWow, my dad has one just like that!\u201d<\/p>\n As it turned out, Mark had already been to the sale. It was the same table.<\/p>\n Back when the couple first started coming up to Frankfort, Carol says, it was the Smokestack that really kicked Mark\u2019s collecting into gear. \u201cBecause you could sell anything there,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd after the Smokestack closed, we started accumulating things,\u201d Mark says. He continued to scour resale shops and garage sales, and Frankfort Cleanup Day produced some scores. \u201cWe call it the Frankfort Furniture Exchange.\u201d <\/p>\n They have sold things on consignment at the Emporium in Benzonia, as well as at those humongous Memorial Weekend yard sales, when some people would come three days in a row just to look and hang out.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve always been intrigued by Elberta,\u201d Carol says. \u201cMy preferred beach is over here. I like how wild it is. We didn\u2019t know many people over here before. But just since we\u2019ve started this project, we\u2019ve met more people than we\u2019ve maybe met in the whole previous 20 years of coming up here.\u201d<\/p>\n The Carlins recognize that they are taking over a building and a site with a lot of meaning to current and former Elberta \u201ckids,\u201d some of whom are now well into their golden years. Pulling out his copy of Blacklock\u2019s History of Elberta<\/em> and several pages of notes, Mark says he hopes that anyone with information and memories about the library or the Buckner garage or the blacksmiths shops\u2014all there prior\u2014or really, anything at all to share, will step forward.<\/p>\n The Carlins bought the building from the Village of Elberta<\/a> for $60,000 in April. The Village had decided to sell it as part of paring down its mid-six-figure general-fund-balance deficit. In addition to the proceeds from the sale, Elberta will now receive tax revenue from the property. <\/p>\n \u201cI am thrilled to have a new business in Elberta,\u201d says Diane Jenks, president of the Village Board of Trustees. \u201cThe library was a great asset, and I am thrilled they saved the building.\u201d<\/p>\n The Carlins considered other locations for their shop, including the Frankfort Building Supply site, but Mark decided that might prove unwieldy, financially and size-wise. <\/p>\n \u201cWhen you have a place that big, people start dropping stuff off, and you think you have unlimited space, but you don\u2019t,\u201d he says. \u201cNext thing you know, you can\u2019t move, and then the roof starts to leak. The fact that Elberta had already fixed the roof on the library was a big selling point.\u201d<\/p>\n Still, there was much to be done. The Carlins received an extensive report on what remediation might be required. <\/p>\n \u201cWe knew there was no lead-based paint, but there was asbestos in the floor-tile mastic and around the windows,\u201d Mark explains. \u201cWhat was unexpected was the asbestos in the drywall mudding, which was why all the drywall had to be removed and redone.\u201d <\/p>\n Not to mention that the windowpanes, which they had wanted to save, had to be completely replaced within their original metal frames\u2014they all were cracked or broken during asbestos remediation.<\/p>\n There is certainly heavy-metal contamination in the soil from the garage and the fire, but it is unclear how deep it goes, Mark says. Fortunately there are no underground storage tanks left over from the site\u2019s time as a service station, and it does not seem to be impacting groundwater. Since the building is commercial, the Carlins are not required to get an environmental study or to remediate the ground. <\/p>\n \u201cBut we\u2019d love to take care of the back area eventually,\u201d Carol says. \u201cWe have an arbor with a swing we found at Frankfort Cleanup Day, and we\u2019d like to set it up back there.\u201d<\/p>\n The Carlins have not only saved the building, they have updated it and restored it to something like its former glory: a fresh coat of stain in a tasteful green with yellow trim, the aforementioned coffee terrace, and\u2014perhaps most spectacularly\u2014the uncovering and restoring of the large windows, long obscured by drywall and bookshelves. The drop ceiling is gone, and a new cool, airy feeling comes from the white-painted steel roof supports high above, the ceiling fans, and the natural light reflecting off the turquoise-colored block walls. With its openness and concrete floor, the Elberta Mercantile will echo the old service station; and in the center of the main room, on wheels so that it can be moved about seasonally, is the old library circulation desk, acting as checkout counter.<\/p>\n \u201cWe don\u2019t specifically buy to sell,\u201d Carol says. \u201cWhen something good comes along, we\u2019ll have it in the house for a year or two. We\u2019ll enjoy it. And then we\u2019ll let it go\u2026 This has always been a dream\u2014probably more so for me\u2014to give Mark an outlet to display and sell. In our house right now, there are things that I\u2019m ready to let go of.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cCarol says it\u2019s like your body: you\u2019ve got to breathe in and breathe out,\u201d Mark says of their buying and selling. \u201cAfter we get all our junk in here, then we\u2019ll know more about how much space we have for consignments. But that\u2019s the hope, because people have some nice stuff. And we\u2019ll also take requests, if there\u2019s something you want us to keep our eyes peeled for.\u201d<\/p>\n Both these ideas excite me personally. I, too, have a lot of junk other people might treasure and am addicted to the energy of old things. \u201cIs there any type of thing you won\u2019t consider taking?\u201d I ask.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a colleague at my auditing job who\u2019d say, \u2018If it\u2019s not illegal or immoral or fattening, I\u2019ll approve it.\u2019 You just have to use common sense.\u201d Mark says. <\/p>\n \u201cIt always bums us out, some of the things people throw away,\u201d Carol adds. \u201cBut it means we\u2019ll always have junk!\u201d she says, grinning.<\/p>\n Elberta Mercantile Co., located at 704 Frankfort Avenue\/M-22 in Elberta, will be open Tuesdays through Sundays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. through October. Emily Votruba<\/a> runs and reports for The Elberta Alert<\/a>. Additional reporting contributed by Andrew Bolander.<\/em><\/p>\n Photo caption: Carol and Mark Carlin at The Elberta Mercantile Company, with Gordie Howe. Trompe l’oeil door painted by Kathleen Baker. 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