Claysville couple finds antique Sarris parade van on North Carolina visit
Courtesy of Tom Kelsall
When Tom Kelsall of Claysville spotted a Sarris Candies parade van in an antique store down south, he told his wife, Susan, “We got to take this home.” The couple loaded the miniature van into their truck and brought a piece of local history home, where it will soon be reunited with Bill Sarris, second-generation owner of Sarris’ Candies.
Courtesy of Tom Kelsall
A vintage Sarris Candies parade van sits in Tom Kelsall’s garage, where he unloaded the antique upon returning home from a North Carolina vacation at the end of last year. Plans have been made to return the van to Bill Sarris, who said his company will fix it up and showcase the historic vehicle in local parades.
Courtesy of Tom Kelsall
Tom Kelsall was surprised to see the Sarris Candies logo peeking out from underneath a table in an antiques store in Asheville, N.C., when he and his wife Susan visited after Christmas. The Claysville couple purchased the sweet piece of Canonsburg history and brought it home.
Courtesy of Tom Kelsall
The Sarris Candies vintage miniature parade van is back in town, after Tom and Susan Kelsall of Claysville stumbled upon the antique during a holiday trip to Asheville, N.C.
On Christmas morning, a wide-eyed Susan Kelsall pulled tickets to America’s Largest Home out of her stocking, an unexpected gift from Tom Kelsall, her husband of 21 years.
“I took her there 10 years ago, in the summertime, and she’s always wanted to see it at Christmastime,” said Tom Kelsall, a postal worker and old-things-enthusiast. “I bought the tickets to go to Biltmore and put them in the bottom of her stocking. It was fun, she thought we were going to our cabin for a couple days. The trip, for her, was actually a surprise.”
After their Christmas celebrations, the Kelsalls took a drive south to Asheville, N.C., where Susan was eager to see Biltmore Estate dressed in holiday décor. Tom had purchased afternoon tickets so his wife could take in the dazzling outdoor Christmas tree display against a dusky sky, bask in the glow of candlelight decorations and admire the cozy, garland-trimmed library.
“We got up in the morning with time to kill,” Kelsall said. “One of the things we like to do is go ‘junking, we call it ‘junkin’,’ it’s antiquing.”
The Kelsalls searched for nearby shops and decided at random to visit to Antique Tobacco Barn, a sprawling, 77,000 square-foot attraction that has been voted several times the best place to buy antiques in Western North Carolina.
“Her taste is different,” he said. “(Susan) likes glassware, where mine’s more on the eclectic side. I like old gas and oil stuff, rusty gold, kind of. I like finding old stuff, especially if it has a story.”
The Kelsalls meandered the tobacco barn, browsing wares from about 75 different vendors. As the couple looked around, something big and bold caught Tom’s eye.
“I literally spotted the truck from, like, 50 feet away,” he said. “I had no idea what I was seeing; from a distance, all I could see was red and that diamond-shaped Sarris Candy logo, and the letter S. I thought, ‘That can’t be Sarris Candies.’ It was literally under this huge table.”
The Claysville couple hurried forward and there, behind a small pile of other antiques, stood a vintage Sarris Candies miniature parade van.
“When I got over there and realized what it was, I was like, this is one of the coolest things I ever saw. I told Susan, ‘We got to take this home,'” Kelsall said.
The item was listed for $1,200, which Kelsall negotiated down to $900. But his wife wasn’t sold – initially.
“Her first reaction was, ‘How the hell do we bring it home?'” Kelsall laughed.
Fortunately, the Kelsalls had driven their truck to the Carolinas, and the Sarris parade van fit snugly in their bright red pickup bed.
Biltmore Estate at Christmastime did not disappoint, but it was the chocolate piece of home discovered hundreds of miles away that occupied Tom Kelsall’s mind.
“The original plan was, we should try to take this thing back where it belongs. At that time, I had no idea how it ended up where it was. ‘How long has it been missing? Did they know where it was? Did they give it away, did they throw it away?’ I had no idea how it got separated from Sarris,” Kelsall said.
When they got back to Claysville, he and his wife unloaded the antique and Kelsall posted a photo of the parade van to social media and it soon went viral.
“I … just decided to throw the picture up on Facebook. A couple people shared it, a couple other people shared it. It was on the news the next night,” he said.
Word spread to Bill Sarris, second-generation owner and CEO of Sarris Candies, who was surprised to hear the old van was back in town.
“I had just a bunch of people that just kept saying ‘Hey, did you see this?’ It was on Facebook, the news,” Sarris said. “The internet’s got a lot of bad stuff going on. To see all the positive reactions, it’s pretty cool.”
Kelsall and Sarris connected, and plans to return the miniature parade van to Sarris Candies are in the works.
“I talked to (Kelsall) … and he said, ‘What do you want to do?’ I said, ‘You might as well bring her home,'” Sarris laughed. “He’s going to bring the van back. We’re gonna get it up and running and have some fun with it.”
The only stipulation to the sweet, sweet reunion: Susan Kelsall half-joked the van has to make an appearance in the Claysville parade, Sarris said.
“We’re always in the local parade. We’ll probably fix it up and get it in there, even if we have to carry it,” he said.
Kelsall is looking forward to returning the miniature parade van (which, Sarris said, was taken by an antique dealer who cleared out the company’s warehouse a while ago, including the “dirty, dusty” van that somehow found its way to North Carolina and back home again) to Canonsburg’s iconic candy company.
Sarris is looking forward to the reunion, too.
“Sometimes people leave and they come home. They just don’t want to stay away,” Sarris said. “It’s just like people, they come back home, that’s where they want to be.”