Blackey, Kentucky: C. B. Caudill Old Timey Store (Closed)

The C.B. Caudill Store is now closed. Joe and Gaynelle Begley have both passed on. Their family kept the store open as a museum for a while, and you may be able to schedule a visit. Ask at the Blackey Library.

You can't buy much at the old C.B. Caudill Store these days. A can of kidney beans. A tin of Prince Albert tobacco. Perhaps a hard-to-find pipe fitting. What you can get at Joe & Gaynell Begley's place in Letcher County isn't for sale. It's priceless. The walls and shelves of the gray corrugated building that the Begley's also call home are so full of artifacts, there's no room for Jello or Pop Tarts or Corn Flakes. There are hog nose-ringers, barbed-wire stretchers, miners' pickaxes, everything given to them over the span of a lifetime. You can sit on the porch and visit with the Begley's. Truly a unique place to visit, you'll step back in time.