A kick in the pants

Six out of seven days of the week, Martha Davis is surrounded by the past.

There's the steering wheel off the Blount's Creek ferry, and the rare Dairy Swing butter churn from Louisville, Ky., and the three-bladed snow and ice scooter.

"That's got some age on it," Davis said as she admired the scooter.

"I have a lot of favorite items. I like my blue meat packing cabinet," Davis said.

"We've got quite a bit of stuff," she said.

Davis, 75, and her husband of 58 years, Charles, 78, run Martha's Favorite Things, an antique store, just west of Havelock on U.S. 70. They've been in the business for the last 13 years.

Martha Davis says that a few of her favorite things have walked out the door.

"My favorite things I think I have sold," she said. "You hate to see it go, but you feel good it's going to a good home and will be loved."

Located in an old general store, the building is full of history told by the furniture, tools, kitchen implements, artwork, pottery, toys and a zillion other antique knickknacks.

"I like the old stuff," she said.

She's got candle makers, pigeon cages, baskets, lanterns and decoys.

"A lot of it is junk, but it's still a treasure," she said.

There are big brass bells, wagon wheels, water pumps and coffee grinders, not to mention antique bottles of every color and variety, toy trucks and cars and dolls.

"A lot of people drool over everything," she said.

Business has been slow of late since the economy went south.

"I've got some Elvis Presley cookie jars. Maybe that will bring people out," she said. "They're reproductions though."

There is one big drawing card at Martha's, and that's a reproduction of Tom Haywood's famous Kicking Machine.

"It does draw a lot of people," Martha Davis said. "It gets a good workout especially after hours when we're closed."

Haywood used to own the store in the early 1900s. In 1937, he introduced the Kicking Machine as a gimmick to lure customers.

"From my understanding he was quite a man. He'd do anything for making money," she said.

The Kicking Machine caught the interest of President Harry Truman on his 1948 trip to Cherry Point and New Bern, and later was visited by Lucille Ball.

The original Kicking Machine is in the N.C. Museum of History in Raleigh.

Charles Davis is in charge of keeping the reproduction in functional operation.

The vast shelves of the old Haywood general store are a perfect place for Martha's Favorite Things.

"From what I understand, the building was built here between 1880 and 1885," she said.

"Not many people know that Babe Ruth used to hang out here," Charles Davis said.

The building used to face the railroad track but later was turned 180 degrees when U.S. 70 was built. The old two-lane version of the highway runs right by the business.

"When we first came here, people would come in here and sit in the rocking chairs," Martha Davis said. "We had a lot of traffic. We'd say to the people from Connecticut ‘Y'all come back now' and they'd look at us and smile and say ‘Would you say that again please?'"