Occasionally, Sue Miller and I get to pack up Ivy with our wine and cheese and roll onto someone else’s lot to serve. It’s always an adventure and if that’s not enough, we get a chance to laugh and have fun.  Sunday was just that day for us. 

Life’s Patina Barn Sale in Malvern is one of the events we try to get to together.  Ivy’s ignition switch has been giving me some trouble so before I left my house, I tied a string around the key, pulled it up across the steering column, and wrapped it around the fog light button.   Like most work arounds, this failed by the time I got to Sue’s. The next best thing to keep Ivy running was for Sue to hold the key for the first mile or so until we could gently let it go and have Ivy’s engine continue to run.

On this sunny spring day, the bus was parked up against the stone barn in the shade with the sliding door facing the driveway.  Just across the drive from us was the goat pen.  The vendor tables were few in comparison to other years. Before guests started rolling in, we got a chance to peruse the other artisans’ tables. 

The colorful table to the left of the goat pen was Mona the Mad Hatter! The bright colors radiating from her table drew us in quickly!  She was wearing an ornate purple headband, which she changed to hat with lots and lots of flowers of a soft hue when she donned her sun glasses. Sue and I approached her and began to try on her beautiful Derby Fascinators. We chose 2 to wear while we were there.

Once chatting, we were quick to realize, Mona - who went from marketing to milliner when her marketing job abruptly ended on the day of the Kentucky Derby, had a wonderful and courageous story to tell.  We haven’t heard it all yet, but I can picture her on Madison Avenue when that big gust of wind blew her hats off her table and taxi cabs and cars were running over them. 

While back at the bus, wearing our hats and shilly-shallying between white and red wine and the inevitable blend of both, we giggled like little girls.  Sue’s idea was that we would sell more wine if we drank wine, and she was right.  People approached the bus and bought both wine and cheese and engaged in fun conversation. 

A striking younger woman and her husband stopped, both very engaging people. After some time, Dawn Timmeney’s husband, Mike, sat in the doorway of Ivy and was very compliant when I asked him to hand me bottles.  He entertained us with jokes and stories while Dawn, the Fox News Anchor, visited with vendors returning to us frequently when her glass needed a refill, or just to chat, or to check in on Mike.  On one of her trips, she brought with her the vendor to the right of the goat pen, who just happened to be Chubby Checker’s daughter!  She introduced us to Ilka and our crowd got slightly larger. 

They stayed with us for a good bit and as the day wore down, strolling up the tree lined driveway as if taking a walk on a spring day in Hyde Park, came Phillip Silverstone, well known for his talk shows regarding wine and his global fashion photography, with his lovely wife on his arm.  Soon we had this eclectic group of people sipping on wine, taking photos with/of each other and all having a great time.

As the party slowly broke apart, Sue and I packed up our things.  Sue held on to Ivy’s key and we drove up around the barn into the field to make a U-turn.  Ivy’s wheel is hard to turn and even harder when her wheels are in grass.  Sue, with her hand on the key said, “Make a wide turn” at almost the same time I was making an immediate and smaller turn. Up over a bump from the field back to the driveway, Sue’s hand on the key, and me with one hand on the wheel, I beeped the horn and off we went. 

It was a surreal afternoon, worthy of a much better writer than I, but that night was the first night in a long while that I couldn’t sleep because the reflection of a beautiful day kept me awake.   

To good friends and interesting people!

Sharon