One last hurrah for landmark Bodega shop The Wooden Duck

BODEGA - Anne Keck was 7 the year she traveled cross-country in the family camper sleeping at night atop an antique chest of drawers her mother simply had to take home when she saw it for sale on the East Coast.

It was one of many ways in which the line between work and family life was forever blurred for Keck and her antique-dealing parents.

Though the senior Kecks worked as teachers during the week, their antique store, The Wooden Duck, was both home and passion.

For most of their 50-year marriage, Annabelle and Herb Keck slept in an 18th Century four-poster bed right there in the shop, on the first floor of the one-time Druids Hall, built in 1911.

They opened the doors to customers on weekends, welcoming newcomers and greeting old friends who came in search of early Americana and the stories that came with it.

Anne Keck, a Santa Rosa attorney, grew up in a tiny upstairs room, sharing the wood-paneled second floor with what nowadays might be called “a great room,” complete with a small kitchen tucked into a corner.

Down the narrow wooden stairs, the shop remains jammed with antiques of all kinds collected during summer trips to auctions largely back East: pewter kitchenware, whale-oil lamps, antique firearms, silver spoons, glassware, butter molds, a dipper, strainer and potato peeler all made from tin.

It's Keck's job now, in the absence of her late parents, to sell the large inventory that remained when the shop was abruptly closed three years ago after her widowed mother, not able to run it on her own, couldn't find a suitable shopkeeper.

An estate sale this weekend and next is fulfillment of a promise she made to her mother, who died in May, to bring closure to the The Wooden Duck and its legacy before the building becomes a private residence for Anne Keck's stepdaughter.

“My parents established these extremely strong relationships, not only with the community but with people who loved antiques,” said Anne Keck, 54. “This is our grand finale.”

Annabelle and Herb Keck had been living in the Los Angeles area when they moved to Sonoma County with their daughter in 1967 and moved into a rental in Santa Rosa while they figured out where they would settle.

On a weekend outing to the rural village of Bodega, they stopped in an art gallery in the historic Potter School. It was across Bodega Lane from a curio shop on a hill above the small commercial district, their daughter said. At one point, Herb wandered over to the store to browse, meeting back up with his wife in the middle of the street, according to family lore.

“My mom said, ‘I have a painting I want to buy,' and he said, ‘I have a building I want to buy,'?” Anne Keck said.

It soon became home, with Herb Keck departing each morning to teach shop at the Sonoma County probation camp, initially in Forestville and later located at the Los Guillicos juvenile facility east of Santa Rosa. Annabelle Keck worked two days a week as a speech therapist for the Twin Hills School District in rural Sebastopol.

A shop was not part of their plan, though both loved and collected antiques, their daughter said.

And after repeated inquiries by would-be customers wondering when the store would reopen, they decided to take the plunge, opening the doors from noon to 5 p.m., weekends only.

The Kecks had recently purchased a valuable old duck decoy - “the paint faded, but still lovely,” Anne Keck said - at the time the couple was casting about for a name for their emporium. “How about calling it the wooden duck?” their daughter piped up.

In Bodega, where a few scattered historic buildings known primarily as background scenery for Alfred Hitchcock's 1963 film “The Birds,” the gold clapboard building store stood out as a landmark and a popular destination for visitors. Inside, the building still feels a bit like the museum some customers viewed it as, even upstairs. The wood panels of the canted ceiling, installed more than a century ago, still bear the workmen's fingerprints. A collection of well-preserved ivory scrimshaw is mounted on wall. The kitchen counter is a repurposed wooden game board for an old English pub game called Shove Ha'penny, related to shuffle board.

The Kecks would travel the country each summer, enthusiasts in “the hunt of the treasures,” mostly early American antiques. The first floor remains filled with displays of silver souvenir spoons, cast iron trivets, broaches ornamented with human hair, a large, iron ship's wheel.

“They bought things they liked, and they didn't care if they sold it,” their daughter said. “Their love and joy in the things showed; that's why people wanted to buy it.”

After Herb Keck died in 2003, his wife continued running the shop, eventually with help. But by 2007, she was no longer able to live on her own and moved into Santa Rosa.

She had a shopkeeper for a time who moved on after several years. Without someone to replace her, the doors were shut and locked, the building virtually left alone until now.

In recent weeks, Anne Keck and her husband, Michael Ahern, have been cleaning and sorting in preparation for the antique sale, a bittersweet exercise for someone whose life was so intertwined with that of the shop.

“It's the memories,” Keck said, suddenly overwhelmed Wednesday. “It's like giving up my children, and giving up my parents.”

Located at 132 Bodega Lane, the store will be open from noon to 5 p.m. Aug. 25 and 26 and Sept. 1 and 2.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 707-521-5249 or Mary.Callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.