Four decades ago, Joan Thomas left Nashville to housesit for a year at the historic Brinkwood bluff estate on Natural Bridge Road in Sewanee.

That first year of housesitting stretched into seven, and Thomas, like so many before her, succumbed to the magic of the mountain and never left. “At that point, this was home,” she said. “There was no way I could leave. I didn’t know a soul when I moved here, but this community just embraced me.”

Thomas, the longtime proprietor of Mooney’s Market & Emporium on West Main Street in Monteagle, soon turns 71, and like others her age, dreams of stepping back from the day-to-day responsibilities of running one of the mountain’s most iconic – and eclectic – stores to pursue her long-deferred passion, weaving.

“I was a very serious weaver, and I’m hoping to get back to that a little bit after decades of not doing it,” she explained.

Originally from Cleveland, Tenn., she graduated from Cleveland High School in 1973 and went off to Middle Tennessee State University to major in art and study illustration and graphics. A short-lived marriage to a fellow student brought her to Nashville where she took a night class in bookkeeping and quickly became the in-house bookkeeper for several companies.

“I got really lucky and worked as a bookkeeper for the children’s theater,” she said. It opened the door for more work in the entertainment industry. “I went into television production, theater stuff, and stayed in that world. I worked at the performing arts center doing whatever they needed from the stage door to the costumes to the set.”

She also took art classes in the evenings. “I took pottery and weaving at the same time,” she said. “You could take them both three times before you had to move on and make room for somebody else. One night, I went in and got my clay out, put it back, and never went back to pottery.”

She preferred the fiber, textures, and colors of weaving as well as the big floor looms that she used to make her gorgeous creations. “I wove every kind of thing that you can weave from shawls to table runners to rugs,” she said.

She found herself doing bookkeeping more and more on the side as she immersed herself in the theater world. And then, a theater friend’s mother, who’d come to take her daughter to visit her Sewanee grandparents before they moved into assisted living, put forth a startling proposition: Would Thomas want to take a year off?

“I had never heard of Sewanee,” Thomas said. “I had really been trying to manifest a cabin in the woods. I was in the city. I took a bus to work, and I wanted to get out into nature more. And this opportunity just walked in my door.

“I drove up here out of the blue, followed her directions out to the bluff, and just fell over. It was this big field overlooking Lost Cove with this big, old manor house. I could not believe it.”

She’d never stepped foot on the University of the South campus before and literally knew no one on the mountain. Ironically, on that first visit, she stopped for the train as it crossed in front of the building that would one day become her store, Mooney’s.

“When I moved up here, I brought my bookkeeping clients with me and got some more up here,” she said. Periodically, she’d go into Nashville to work with both the Nashville Network and a food stylist. In two weeks, she’d make enough money to live for six more months. She wove to her heart’s content, gardened, and meditated. Like so many others on the mountain, she also discovered how easy it was to make friends and become part of the community.

“Every day of those seven years was like this incredible gift, and I knew it,” she said. “I loved it and appreciated it so much. I never took it for granted.”

In the years following her time at Brinkwood, Thomas developed a new love and appreciation for historic buildings. One – in particular – caught her eye. “I’d always known it as the Mooney Place with African violets for sale. It was so sweet, and it was literally falling down. It had been sitting vacant for about 10 years and was going to be bulldozed. I had been eyeballing that place before I went down, and I just thought I ought to save that building. When I finally got up and got going, I went to the bank. The building was in foreclosure, and I bought it.”

That was in 2011. She credits Paul Cahoon, now deceased, with saving the building. “He was a handyman, but far more than that. He was an amazing builder and fixer- upper. He knew how to get things done and how to rebuild things. He just did it. He stabilized it and made it what it is. He tore out the rot and put it back. It took about a year to do it.”

Amazingly, Thomas didn’t have any idea what she was going to do with the building once it was done. “It was not my life’s dream to have a store,” she laughed. “As I was on my hands and knees finishing floors and then painting walls, it came to me what needed to happen.

“I’m a hippie. I have hippie values. That’s what I brought – peace, love, nonviolence, artistic expression, spiritual awareness, natural living. All of those values are what I put in here. At that time – in 2011 and 2012 – we were going through this really intense energy crisis. There was a lot of awareness about greenhouse gases and pollution.”

She wondered if she could help by bringing things to the mountain that she regularly drove to buy in Chattanooga. It would be her way to give back to the community, save gas, and fight pollution. As she finished up the last coat of paint, it was as if the building revealed itself to her.

“The main room, the original grocery store, would be a natural foods grocery,” she said. “We didn’t have that here. We needed it.”

When she told someone that she was going to sell tie-dyed tee shirts and natural foods, her friend replied it would never fly and suggested a dress shop instead. Thomas held her ground, though, and insisted on selling the things that she knew and loved.

“I knew those hippie values were gonna fly,” she laughed. “People were hungry for it, and they still are. It’s amazing. People will come in here and say they just need a hit of Mooney’s.

“It did take a lot more work than I ever dreamed it would. I had no idea what I was getting into – playing store as a kid was my experience.”

She’d always collected antiques because she loved old furniture and old stuff, so she thought she could sell those things in the back of the grocery where the family who’d once run it had lived. Thomas wanted to add plants and garden tools too. She also wanted to sell handmade things, local crafts, and yarn, especially yarn.

“It just all came together,” she said. For the first 18 months, she worked seven days a week from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. all by herself.

Claire Cabe, who originally helped her figure out how to set up the yarn section, ended up staying on to help out for a long time without any pay. Two other longtime workers who eventually came on board were Carole Manganaro and Lucy James.

One of the most charming things about Mooney’s is that they still handwrite their sales tickets and use a cash box because that was the only way Thomas knew how to do it in the beginning. Her customers love it. They tell her to never change.

Thomas, a self-described introvert, says those customers are the biggest joy of running Mooney’s. “I’ve met all these people that I never would have met,” she said. To this day, the biggest kick for her is hearing how much all these folks love and appreciate the store.

“That is what’s kept me going,” she said.

Their love and appreciation, however, make it even tougher for Thomas, who’s recently decided it’s time to step away from Mooney’s. Thomas, who turns 71 in July, needs to do all those things she’s put off for years as a busy shopkeeper. She very much wants to rediscover that weaver in herself.

Her hope is to find the right person – or persons – to fill her shoes. Ideally, she’d like to see Mooney’s go to a young couple who share her hippie values and vision. She’d even consider hiring the right person to run it for her, though, if that person appears.

If she’s lucky, Mooney’s may very well tell her exactly who needs to fill her shoes. She’d love for it to be someone who really “gets” the store.

“I want it all,” she said. “I want the yarn, the natural foods. I want the hippie energy, the vibe – the community seems to love it. I believe that somebody is going to come forward who wants to keep it going. It’s a lot of work, and it’s a big commitment, but that’s what I’m hoping for.”

For more information, call Mooney’s at 931-9247400.