American Picker...I knew him when...

Yup...it's him...Mike Wolf...we crossed paths when Lorie and I rented a shop in LeClaire, Iowa from him.

Mike's love of bikes is well known on the show, but every time he got a new one, he'd ride it down to the shop and talk me into a shoot...

Oh look...a loon...
Mike has a great eye for the good stuff, I was frequently tempted by all the cool stuff he dragged in and sold at our shop, funky stuff that really sold well...hey Mike, what ever happened to that moth-eaten antelope head...my kinda trash!

Lorie and I had the cutest shop, right on the Mighty Miss, called The Captain's Cottage Antiques...aka The Captain's Wives...the home was a former river boat captain's home back in the day...
This home was also featured in Country Living magazine, when fellow dealers, the Merkels' owned it, very primitive inside, both Lorie and I could've easily lived in this lil' home...if I can find the article, I'll post it.

Isn't it just the quaintest lil' thing...snow YUCK!!!

The home was quite old and displayed early river architecture...and Janet Merkel had the most fabulous gardens all 'round the house, to add to it's country flare.

We fell in love with this old counter Mike dragged in to let us use...sigh...and a copper boiler...who knows where he found this stuff...connections and tenacity!!!

This was Mike's lil' shop, you would've loved all the prims inside...it sat outside our back door, so we were slowly starting to fill it's porch with the trash of our trade...junk!

The whole place was just filled with ambiance and we had a blast doing the shop there, until the 'C' word turned me and Lorie's worlds upside down...my son in law
and her mother, brain cancer would force us to forgo our shop together while this tragedy unfolded.
But Mike continues to buy and refurbish old homes and buildings in LeClaire, a quaint town on the Mississippi...and I continue to sell soap at one of the local shops, Grasshoppers, the cutest lil' shop ever.
See, Iowa ain't so boring...come check us out...a lotta history goin' on here.


...time heals all...in a day in the life!