Lycippus Hardware & Supply store to be put up for public sale

Bits of Westmoreland County farm life dating to the mid-1800s will be up for public sale Aug. 12 when the contents and buildings of the landmark Lycippus Hardware & Supply store on Route 130 in Mt. Pleasant Township is auctioned.

“All good things must come to an end. I had a good 44-year run, but it was starting to eat away at my retirement money,” said owner Chuck Mozingo.

“That's not good,” he said.

Mozingo, who turned 85 on Jan. 30, said health problems have severely limited his operation of the store that dates to the 1840s, when it first opened as a blacksmith shop.

Auctioneer William D. Frye of nearby Pleasant Unity has been cataloging the thousands of pieces of merchandise Mozingo maintained in the three-story main building and two outdoor structures. He calls many items available “just remarkable.”

“You're talking about real antiques, many from the late 1800s that are actually brand new ... still packaged in the original boxes and cartons,” Frye said.

Or still contained in the original wood shipping crates.

In addition to the nuts, bolts, pipes, hoses, hammers and sledgehammers a person would expect to find in a hardware store, Mozingo's building is packed with items from previous eras.

There are Conestoga wagon wheel replacement kits, steel-wheeled wheelbarrows, horse-drawn machinery including cultivators and plows, kerosene stoves, buggy parts, specialized buggy jacks, wood wagon-wheel spokes, leather horse collars and glass balls that adorn the top of lightning rods.

Frye laughed at an incident when he was cataloging items and “Chuck yelled down the stairs when I was in the basement and asked if I knew what was in that big wood crate in the back.”

“I replied, ‘Yes I do. ... it's a wood quilting frame from the late 1800s or early 1900s still in the wood crate,' ” Frye said.

Nails are still stored in wood barrels in the store, there are old stove toasters, leather-working tools, old children's lunch boxes, old advertising signs, galvanized steel tubs, scythe handles and blades, and washboards “still in the boxes,” Frye noted.

Frye and his family recently drove to Amish farm country around Smicksburg, Indiana County, to deliver flyers advertising the auction because of many of the antiquated tools and farming supplies available.

“I was telling one woman about the wood quilting frame that is still like new, and she got really excited about it,” Frye said.

A native of West Virginia, Mozingo operated a crane at Latrobe Steel Co. and purchased the hardware store and inventory in 1973, from William Chicka, who had owned it since the early 1950s.

Mozingo said he and his late wife, Eleanor, built their home themselves in nearby Unity, and he used to run to the store for supplies and “fell in love with it.”

“I loved the older stuff,” Mozingo said in an interview this year. “I'd walk in here, and it reminded me of my home in West Virginia, where everybody had a few chickens under the porch and grew their own crops.”

On Friday, Mozingo said his two grown sons, Eric, 46, and Chuck, 54, had no interest in operating the store, but that was OK with him.

“I'm glad they told me. ... It made this decision a lot easier,” Mozingo said.

There will be a one-hour inspection prior to the Aug. 12 auction beginning at 8 a.m.; the auction begins at 9 a.m.

The main structure and two outbuildings will be sold at noon, according to Frye.

Because of the number of items, a second auction is planned for Sept. 9 “and we'll have a third or fourth auction, if necessary,” Frye said.

Still the salesman, Mozingo anticipates there will be plenty of valuable items held back for the later sales.

“You don't want to put all the gravy in there at once,” Mozingo said.

“I've worked my entire life, first delivering newspapers when I was little, until now. I'll miss it, but it's time,” he said.

Information on the auction can be viewed at www.auctionzip.com/cgi-bin/auctionview.cgi?lid=2936240.

Paul Peirce is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 724-850-2860, ppeirce@tribweb.com or via Twitter @ppeirce_trib.