The last place you'll find Ray and Sandra Johnson and their daughter, Carrie, is sitting down in their Coosawattee River Rockers. This family is usually just too busy to sit.

Ray, a retired minister-turned-carpenter, builds the rockers and other furniture that they sell in their Blue Ridge shop, Tomorrow's Antiques Today. Here visitors browse a blend of gifts, including holiday decorations, accents for the home, and Ray's handmade pieces. Many also love the sounds of the shop--Carrie's peals of laughter and the hymns Sandra plays on her grand piano. Visitors in town often hear the music from down the street and follow it into the shop.

"They call me 'The Pied Piper'; I lure them in the door," Sandra says, looking up as she plays "How Great Thou Art."

Customers often gather around the piano and sing along. Others may settle into Ray's rockers and enjoy a quiet moment in this little hymn of a mountain village.

When they opened their shop, the Johnsons added a new stanza to shopping in Blue Ridge, a town mainly occupied by antiques shops perched above railroad tracks. Leisure travelers would often come to the area to ride the Blue Ridge Scenic Railway excursion train that chugs into the nearby highland countryside.

The Johnsons' long journey to Blue Ridge began soon after their marriage, when the couple was too broke to buy furniture. "We'd go down to Ethan Allen and look, and I'd come home and start building," Ray recalls. "Furnituremaking is one of those things I've enjoyed over the years."

It Began With a Piano
The first piece they bought was the ebony grand piano Sandra plays in their shop. It traveled with them to Baptist churches in Florida, Alabama, and Georgia, where Ray served as pastor and his wife as minister of music. When they retired from their last post, the couple felt led to provide a business for Carrie. So they rambled around the Southeast looking for the place they thought would strike just the right chord for their home and business. One day they found Blue Ridge.

"We came down Main Street and said, 'This is it,' " Ray recalls. "Here we were--a retired pastor with no job, no church, and no visible means of income. The bank loaned us money to buy a house, and doors began to open." The Johnsons bought a home in nearby Ellijay and followed with the Blue Ridge shop in August 2000. Since then, the wood shop has been relocated next to the store, and the combined areas now total 6,000 square feet.

The scents of cherry, oak, and pine permeate the spaces. "I enjoy working with cherry, but it's so expensive," Ray says. "Pine is soft; it nicks up. I like oak because it's here forever. The name of our store is Tomorrow's Antiques Today; that's because the furniture I build will be here long after I'm gone. These are the antiques of the future."

Sermons From the Wood Shop
A visitor asks how many sermons he composes while working on furniture. "A lot," Ray replies with a smile. "There's a lot of contemplation and solitude in doing something with your hands. Somebody asked me why I spend so much time making the rockers when the money return is not much. I like to quote the scripture: 'Whatsoever ye do, work heartily, as unto the Lord?' "

The Coosawattee River Rockers lure many customers to sit for a spell. Named for a nearby waterway, Ray outfits each chair with a built-in quilt rack, a tilted back, and a footrest that supports both calves and feet. All these bells and whistles adorn an elegant piece created with hand-fitted mortise-and-tenon joints.

Ray switches on power tools for initial shaping, and then sculpts the pieces by hand. He makes armoires, for example, without screws, using only hand-cut dovetails and dowels.

He also outfits some furniture for convenience. For large pieces, such as computer centers, Ray created a joint he calls a "wedgie"; it's a small piece of wood designed to accommodate the movement of panels due to weather and humidity and to allow for quick and easy breakdown and reassembly. He has a patent pending.

Other furniture items he makes include tables, bookcases, secretaries, hall trees, quilt stands, and tree lamps. He builds pieces as large as entertainment centers and as small as towel racks. The designs range from rustic to classic--here a cherry bookcase with dentil molding, there a coffee table with wood barely carved from the tree. (Prices range from less than $100 to $3,000.)

Carrie's Business
Ray's furniture showroom takes up about half the store, an enterprise Carrie largely runs. She is a natural-born merchant and accounting whiz who, as a child, spent long hours playing store. She could be a college senior now but stays too busy at her business to finish her degree.

"People ask me if I'm ever going back to school, and I say, 'I don't know. I'm doing what I was going to school to learn how to do,' " she says.

Meanwhile, between helping customers, Sandra fills the store with music. Ray pauses and listens. "I did my best studying when she was playing. When you listen to her, you hear her heart."

Tomorrow's Antiques Today: 601-1 East Main Street, Blue Ridge; (706) 258-3703 or www.tomorrowsantiquestoday.net. The shop is open 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Saturday.