Honoring PK local, Nancy Taylor A woman who has significantly influenced our community.
Story by Michelle Ince | Photos contributed by Dayna Coston
Pictured right, Nancy Taylor in her home with Steve Pruyn, her first employee at The Trading Post in 1976. Pruyn just happened to be visiting Nancy when interviewing for this story. The Taylor’s owned The Trading Post from 1976 – 2003.
Nancy Taylor may not be a household name, but this Possum Kingdom Lake resident has had a major impact on the Possum Kingdom we know and love today.
Taylor, along with her husband, Davy, bought the Trading Post back in 1976, an investment that made them both pillars of the community.
Taylor’s daughter, Dayna Coston, said her mom started visiting PK in 1948, when her family would come and camp on the hills of what is now Gaines Bend.
“They would come out and catfish and sleep out under the stars,” Coston said.
In the 1960s, Nancy Taylor’s family bought a home on Willow Beach Road, which they visited often on the weekends. That all changed in 1976 when we married and we both wanted to live here, Taylor said.
Davy’s dad found out about the Trading Post. The couple split the purchase price of the store and within a year, those family loans had been paid back, making the Taylors the sole owners.
But by the time the couple purchased the store, it was in bad shape, she said, adding that it took three months to clean it up and make it ready for business.
Steve Pruyn, who had worked at the store for a year for its former owner, Bob Harris, said Harris was a good guy but didn’t like to throw anything away. He recalled that Harris also liked to relax on a cot in the office and only got up when a customer rang a bell for service.
Pruyn said the store needed cleaning after the Taylors bought it, so they tossed the old merchandise along with the shelves for the items. Vendors brought in new shelving, and much of the refrigeration also had to be repaired or replaced.
After the store reopened, though, business was slow, Pruyn said.
“It was so slow at first that Davy and Nancy and I would set up a card table and play cards and dominoes,” he said.
When customers did come, Pruyn said, Nancy Taylor would get up from the table and wait on them – and as the Trading Post’s reputation began to improve, it didn’t take long for the business to boom.
Those boom days left an impression on Coston.
“I remember, as a kid growing up, just to kind of add to how busy they would be in the summers, they would park ice trucks and beer trucks (in the parking lot) and would literally park all weekend,” she said.
Pruyn added that it was more of a “party lake” back then, where locals would fill up Sandy Beach and Bug Beach. He said he used arrive to work at 5 a.m. and would stay until 10 p.m., constantly restocking shelves and trying to keep up with the demand.
“We had 15-hour days for a while,” he said.
The Trading Post didn’t just carry the basics, either. Nancy Taylor would drive all across the state comparing prices and inventory, and many times on busy weekends she would make runs to Fort Worth or Mineral Wells to restock items for sale.
For the next 27 years, the Taylors ran the Trading Post before eventually selling the business to one of their former employees, Martin Collins, who had worked for the couple during his high school days.
Nancy Taylor in “jail” at the Chili Cookoff in the early 90s.
In their spare time, the Taylors enjoyed playing shuffleboard, and being a local business owner led Nancy Taylor to help form the Possum Kingdom Lake Chamber of Commerce, pooling her efforts with other PK locals at the time, including Shawn and Ann Humphries.
She served in many capacities with the chamber, including as second vice president and eventually first vice president. She also considered serving as the chamber’s president, but her husband discouraged her from taking on that role.
Taylor also helped create the PK Balloon Fest and PK Splash Days. Coston said PK Splash Days originally consisted of a boat parade before adding a pageant to the festivities that crowned an annual Miss PK.
Taylor said her time at the Trading Post is the source of many good memories. “I loved every minute of it,” she said. “I enjoyed the people coming.”
Taylor said she was the one good with names, while her husband was good at remembering people by their vehicles. It was under their ownership that the Trading Post gained its reputation for its excellent meat selection and well-stocked shelves, something Coston said is a tradition that the current owners have continued.
Serving the community was a priority for the Taylors, who used to have charge accounts, but some of those accounts went unpaid when times got tough, Pruyn said. He added that certain cuts of meat that were deemed unworthy to sell – because they were “mis-steaks,” as Davy Taylor called them – would be stored in the freezer and given to customers in need.
When Davy Taylor passed away on Feb. 15, 2020, Nancy Taylor’s best friend, Gail Beard, wrote a poem to commemorate him. In it, she memorialized the couple’s Trading Post days in this line: “The Trading Post was Davy’s claim to fame, but we all knew Nancy was the dame.”
Nancy Taylor still lives at Possum Kingdom enjoying her retirement, spending time with her children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren, and reminiscing about the good old days.
Nancy Taylor back in her days at The Trading Post
April of 1980: Laurie Lively, Gerald Powell, Martin Collins (Marty), Rusty Garvin, Nancy Taylor and Steve Pruyn
