Oct 7, 2008

Eclectic Ardmore, Oklahoma, shop makes for colorful stopBy Sophia DemblingDallasNews.com

Ardmore, Okla. – The Cloverleaf Boutique is crammed with potential impulse purchases, but the mother of all impulse buys sits outside the shop.

Store owner and dedicated junker Heidi Chapman had no intention of buying anything big at the Round Top Antiques Fair last year.

“I had not driven my big box truck, which I usually take, because I wasn’t going to buy anything big,” she says. “But I saw it within a few minutes and said, ‘I have to have that.’ “

And so she bought a giant ice cream cone sign that had stood outside the Sugar Shack in Great Bend, Kan., in the 1960s. She arranged for the dealer’s husband, a truck driver, to deliver it.

Ms. Chapman tried to keep the purchase from her husband until she could break the news. But then, as they ate dinner at a restaurant with friends a couple of days later, the dealer and her husband stopped by the table to talk logistics.

“She goes over it and goes over it, and my husband is just sitting there very patiently,” Ms. Chapman recalls. “Finally, when she was gone, he asked, ‘Would it be inappropriate to ask what she has bought that has to be delivered in an 18-wheeler?’ “

The big cone sits on a grassy patch within a ring of old, pink-painted bicycles. Outside the pink-and- white striped building is a dense cluster of other interesting junk old and new: wrought-iron bird cages, a ceramic swan, a winged pig and more.

Inside the shop, you’ll find antiques and penny candy; purses shaped like puppies; and zebra-print flip-flops, sunglasses and sundresses (the clothing brands include Ivy Jane, Language, Chaudry KC and Red Engine Jeans), cards and toys, jewelry and gift books, and T-shirts.

Read complete article.