Epic sale continuing in Conway

LARGE-SCALE SALE: “Unbelievable Antique Hoarder Sale” boasts a Conway listing on EstateSales.net. Unbelievable is right. Ivo Jones, whose Ivo Jones Designs Inc. is handling the unreal, upscale estate sale of china, crystal, antique furnishings and designer accessories at 2312 Martha Drive (tinyurl.com/conwaysale) says, “The house is full. … We brought in almost a 2,500-square-foot event tent. We’ve got a 1,600-square-foot storage building, plus a four-car garage. And the house is 7,400 square feet heated and cooled. … It’s an unbelievable lifetime collection.”

To prepare for it, Jones says, “We started Jan. 19, so it took us three months and one week and 4,500-plus man-hours — I clocked it.”

As for the story behind the sale, Jones says: “It was an antique collecting/ hoarding deal, and it just ultimately culminated in a divorce. And the judge ordered all the excess sold. … You could furnish five or six homes out of this one house easily. … We tagged over 3,500 pieces of clothing. There were over 500 purses, over 300 pairs of shoes, about 500 perfume bottles, hundreds and hundreds of pieces of jewelry.”

The sale began last weekend and continues with discounts up to 50 percent from noon to 4 p.m. today and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday. More sales are likely.

Jones says, “A hoarder sale is never one sale.”

CAN’T FORGET JEANNETTE:

Theater legend Gertrude Hadley Jeannette, who was born in Urbana in 1914, died in New York in April at age 103.

Jeannette, who was inducted into the Arkansas Black Hall of Fame in 1999, was a playwright, producer, director, actress, civil rights activist — and a cabdriver. She was “believed to be the first woman to drive a cab in New York City,” according to her obituary in The New York Times.

The Times writes that on Jeannette’s first day, she “got in an accident — on purpose” after being cut off by another cab: “‘I rammed my fender under his fender, swung it over to the right and ripped it.’ … When the other driver got a good look at her, she recalled, he screamed: ‘A woman driver! A woman driver!’”

The Encyclopedia of Arkansas History & Culture says, “Jeannette’s experience driving a cab inspired her creatively, especially in playwriting.” She had roles in Broadway plays such as Lost in the Stars, Amen Corner and The Great White Hope and in films like Shaft, Black Girl and Cotton Comes to Harlem.

Jeannette certainly had a lot of drive.