WHEN ROD GRAVES was a youngster, 30-some years ago, he and his family visited Fredericksburg from their home town of Luray.

They made several stops, but the one that Graves still remembers with childlike fascination is time spent at a museum known as Stoner's Store.

"Walking through that place, seeing everything from old spool cabinets to apple peelers to period furniture, really made an impression on me," said Graves. "It got me interested in what I'm doing today."

Graves, the curator of the Luray Caverns Historic Car & Carriage Caravan Museum, will have a special sense of dèjá vu Monday when he oversees the public auction of roughly half of the items that at one time filled the popular museum on Prince Edward Street.

The sale, which kicks off at 10 a.m. at the Luray Caverns operation owned and run by the Graves family, will feature thousands of items that once drew visitors to the model of a 19th-century village store.

Items for sale range from an Oak Regent coin-operated crank stereopticon (a primitive slide projector) to a German cheese slicer, from a tobacco cutter to an 1870 Springfield rifle. Throw in stone churns, period product signs and even a cherry seeder and there's a little something
for everyone.

The store was owned and operated by D. Letcher Stoner, a longtime city businessman and president of Fredericksburg Hardware Co.

In addition to the Stoner Store items sold to Luray Caverns in 1967, the sale will also feature 12 or more antique cars and other items collected by the Graves family.

Rod Graves, who has been in the family business for 11 years now, said he wants to make one thing clear to Fredericksburg-area folks interested in the Stoner Store collection.

"We are not selling off the collection," he said. "We are, however, parting with some of the items in that collection that are not of museum quality, or don't fit the vision we have for the future of the collection."

Graves said he hopes, within the next few years, to expand the transportation museum. His vision: to tell the story of the region and its people through historic and folk-art objects from Virginia, especially the lower Shenandoah Valley.