He went straight for the stock listings. “Of course I’m going to church. I just forgot to bring in my suit from the car.”
I like Ike for a lot of reasons. One of them is that he never asks me to go to church with him. And it isn’t because I’m white and he’s black. At our age, Ike and I are quite comfortable in our respective wrinkled skins. We couldn’t care less what other people think. Ike doesn’t ask me about church because he knows I wouldn’t go. I’m just not churchy. I guess I got my fill of it back in LaFargeville. I spent half of my childhood twisting in a church pew. Maybe I’d go to church if I could find one with a minister who gave five-minute sermons, or a choir that could resist singing all five verses of those awful, throat-burning hymns.
I scanned the front page. I read the first three paragraphs of every story in the metro section. I shook open the editorial pages to see what silly positions we were taking on the big issues of the day. I eyeballed the obituaries, looking for people I knew. I gathered my strength and pulled out the lifestyle section to read Gabriella Nash’s feature on those four crazy garage sale ladies.
It was, as I expected, the top story. There was a huge color photo of the four women pretending to squeeze into Eddie French’s taxi with armfuls of bargains. There was an intriguing headline:
‘THE QUEENS OF NEVER DULL’
From garage sales to Caribbean cruises, Life just gets better for these grande dames of Hannawa
There was Gabriella’s first professional byline:
By Gabriella Nash
Hannawa-Union Staff Writer
And there was her first story:
Hannawa-Cab driver Eddie French pulls into the Carmichael House’s curved drive at eight o’clock on the button.
Waiting for him under the condominium tower’s portico are four seventy-something women. They are dressed to the nines in colorful microfiber pantsuits and wide-brimmed straw hats.
The women squeeze into the freshly washed yellow Chevrolet with their travel mugs of coffee and a big box of Danish. They also have the classifieds from that morning’s paper. Every garage sale in the city and its near suburbs is circled in red.
“To the hunt!” commands one of the women from under her purple hat. “One-nineteen Plumbrook.”
“One-nineteen, it is,” French answers, tugging dutifully on the bill of his bright orange Hannawa Woolybears baseball cap. He swings his cab back onto Hardihood Avenue and heads for Greenlawn.
Ike was busy calculating the current value of his stock portfolio. But somehow my “Damn it!” penetrated his brain. “Something bad, Maddy?”
“I’ll say. The girl can write.”
Ike sadly shook his head. “I’ll ask the reverend to say a special prayer.”
“Thank you-unfortunately I don’t think God will take her talent back.”
“I was talking about a prayer for you.”
“I don’t think that one will get through either.”
We laughed. Winked at each other. Went back to our respective sections of the paper.
French knows only too well what he’s in for today. Every Saturday for the past five years-from early May to the end of October-he has been driving this spirited foursome on their search for treasure.
And when he’s not driving them to garage sales, he’s driving them to rummage sales and auctions. Or to charity luncheons and teas. Or to concerts or plays. Or to the airport.
“They’ve got to be the busiest ladies in Hannawa,” says the bewhiskered, 61-year-old French. “I know I’m the busiest cab driver.”
And just who are these four always-on-the-go golden girls?
Wouldn’t you know it. Right when I got to the part of the story I wanted to read most, James let go with his I’m-done-peeing-let me-in howl. I looked at Ike for assistance. Ike pretended he didn’t see me. So I let James in myself. And filled his bowl with his second breakfast of the day. And I poured myself a second cup of coffee.
“No fresh-up for me?” Ike complained.
“Sorry, I thought you were dead.”
I took the empty mug out of his hand and filled it. Finally I sat down to what looked to be one of the best features I’d read in our paper in a long time. Apparently Alec Tinker was not the dunderhead I figured. And even though I was not about to forgive Gabriella for spilling the beans about my investigation into Gordon Sweet’s murder, I had to admit our first week of colleaguedom had gone well enough. She’d waited patiently for the background stories she needed. She’d said nothing more long-winded than “Hi” when we bumped into each other in the cafeteria. Most importantly, she hadn’t called me Morgue Mama to my face-a mistake most new reporters make and then forever regret.
Collectively they call themselves The Queens of Never Dull.
“It’s a club without rules or dues,” says Kay Hausenfelter, curled up on the pink loveseat in her sun-washed living room. “We started out as a bridge foursome in the clubroom here. I guess we just liked each other’s company. Before you knew it we were bumming all over town together.”
While all four of the Never Dulls call the upscale Carmichael House condominiums home, Hausenfelter has lived there the longest, a few months shy of ten years.
Hausenfelter moved into the pricey, tenstory tower after the death of her husband, Harold Hausenfelter. Before his retirement, he had served as president and CEO of Hausenfelter Bread Company, the city’s largest bakery. They had been married for 41 years.
“Harold was the sweetest man on earth,” she says, adding quickly that he was also one of the toughest. “He had to be tough to take on a project like me,” she says.
Hausenfelter met her future husband in 1954, when she was appearing at the Orion Theater on South Main Street.
“That’s right,” she laughs. “I was a striptease artist. Twenty-four years old and not so fresh out of Elk City, Oklahoma.”
“Can you believe that!”
“Believe what, sweetie?”
Ike’s question almost stopped my heart. He’d never called me sweetie before. Either it was a term of endearment that I wasn’t ready for, or the mechanical response of a widower. I peeked around the paper at him and decided it was the latter. I read the quote to him. “‘I was a striptease artist. Twentyfour years old and not so fresh out of Elk City, Oklahoma.’” Ike partially emerged from his trance. “I thought you were from some little town in New York?”
“Not me sweetie -this old woman in the paper. I can’t believe the copy desk let a quote like that run. ‘Not so fresh out of Hot Springs.’ Why didn’t we just run a list of all the men she’d slept with?”
He was listening now. Grinning at my fuddy-duddiness. “Times they are a changing, Maddy. Anything goes.”
It was my turn to grin. At his eclectic command of musical cliches. “Bob Dylan and Cole Porter in the same sentence. Not bad.” I went back to Gabriella’s story.
I finished reading about the former stripper and bread heiress, and moved on to the next garage sale queen:
Ariel Wilburger-Gowdy pleads guilty to “being something of an earth mother these days.” Her condo is filled with plants and cats. Atop the stack of books on her coffee table is her prized copy of Jane Goodall’s book, Reason For Hope.
She proudly shows the inscription to visitors.
“Ariel,” the famous scientist wrote, “hear your heart.”
“I’ve always had a noisy heart,” Wilburger-Gowdy admits. “In the old days it was preoccupied with men-most of whom I married. Today it’s animals, organic food and recycling glass bottles.”
And just how many times has she been married?
“Four and no more,” she jokes.
Her first husband, former state senator Walter Wilburger, is the father of her only child, a daughter who teaches business ethics at Hemphill College.
The Gowdy part of her last name comes not from a former husband, but from her late father, roofing-shingle
