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Photo By Jymi Bolden
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Joe McAfee shows one of the cabinets he and partner
Walter Johnson used to take to antique shows to fill up
with miniature collectibles.
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The future of a Cincinnati original that symbolizes a less conservative time hangs in the balance while lawyers scramble to find evidence that might keep the landmark alive.
Trivet Antique Boutique, 917 Race St. downtown, is scheduled to close for good Saturday because of a misplaced will.
On Nov. 1, 1999, the store's owner, Walter Johnson, died suddenly in his sleep after suffering a heart attack. Johnson reportedly had prepared a will, but for the past six months no friends, family or lawyers have been able to turn up documentation detailing his final wishes.
Because there's no will, the store and its quirky inventory will go to Johnson's next of kin, his cousin Judy Klefas. Currently the estate's judiciary, she's said she doesn't want to keep the store open.
When customers have entered Trivet over the past week or so, they've been told that if they like something they better buy it, because the store might not be around much longer.
Johnson's long-time partner, Joe McAfee, wants to keep Trivet open, saying it's all he's got. The two men opened the store together in the mid-1940s but kept everything in Johnson's name, ironically, to save them from legal and tax problems.
"Joe and Walter have been in business since way back when," said Rebecca Adams, paralegal for McAfee's lawyer and a 25-year friend of the Trivet proprietors. "It was a verbal partnership. There was nothing legal or binding to show."
The only proof that Johnson wanted the store to go to McAfee is an audiotape of Johnson saying just that. But the law is on Klefas' side, because audiotapes aren't admissible in court as official wills.
"I've been here for 57 years," McAfee said, "and to walk out of here with nothing? Well, it's been a wild ride, and every ride has an end."
McAfee's voice showed a hint of bitterness, particularly when he said he thinks someone destroyed Johnson's will. Johnson kept all of his records under a hot pad on his dining room table, McAfee said, and a few days after he died there suddenly was no will there.
The April 29 closing date still is tentative, Adams said. Klefas wants to sell the building and to receive the retail value of its contents. McAfee can't afford to buy the building but made an offer on Trivet's inventory.
Klefas countered with an offer of her own, so now the ball is in McAfee's court, Adams said.
McAfee, who turned 75 on April 17, sat waxing nostalgic in his usual spot behind Trivet's back counter, which is covered with plastic crystal balls and photographs of old friends and customers.
Back in its heyday, Trivet was the local stomping ground for Cincinnati's motorcycle gangs, McAfee said, but he maintains the store was "neutral ground." The kids used to line up just to get in here, he says, adding that he let in only five at a time.
It's a little different these days. No one lines up anymore. As a matter of fact, McAfee said, no one came in the store at all last week. The shop generally is best known these days as a goldmine for finding vintage clothing to wear to 1960s and '70s theme parties.
To any visitor, however, Trivet is definitely a unique local treat. Upon entering, customers are greeted with an undeniable odor of cats and mildew. A few seconds later, the eyes and mind soon reel in the odd phenomenon before them.
How can any place hold so much stuff? Wall to wall and floor to ceiling, every inch of the store, save skinny walking space corridors, is filled with trinkets, posters, lamps, piggy banks, buttons, patches and anything and everything else imaginable.
"It's all junk," McAfee said, sighing. But it's clear that something about the junk means a lot to him, whether it's the fact that it's surrounded him for the better part of his life or that it reminds him of Johnson.
McAfee and Johnson grew up together in Mount Lookout. In their late teens, McAfee went into the U.S. Navy and Johnson became an art teacher. In 1944 or 1945, McAfee can't remember which, they opened an antique shop with $2,000 apiece.
That store, the Blackamoure Shop, was on Elm Street between Third and Fourth streets. Business was so-so, and both men wanted to be more uptown, so they bought a store called Trivet on Fourth Street a few blocks up.
"It was strictly antiques," McAfee said. "We kept the name because the sign was already up and it was in the Yellow Pages."
In the early 1960s, after another move that put the store at its current location, Trivet began transitioning from antiques to clothes, trinkets and paraphernalia when McAfee and Johnson started making regular trips to New York City wholesalers.
It seemingly will all be gone soon. McAfee has no idea what will happen to the Tiffany lamp replicas, the miniatures, the dog-faced platform shoes or the plaster statues of the first 35 presidents that sit in a gallery upstairs.
Taking everything in stride, though, McAfee doesn't seem to harbor any ill will toward Klefas.
"Judy? She's a sweet girl, very pretty," he said as he walked through the store pointing out this and that.
Dale Cahill, a long-time friend who "dabbles" in antiques, wasn't as diplomatic.
"She thinks she's (Johnson's) next of kin, saying, 'I'm that long-lost cousin,' " Cahill said. "(Johnson and Klefas) weren't close. She went in like a storm after the funeral. She wants to take over everything."
McAfee hesitated to agree with Cahill but did admit that she hadn't been in the store for quite some time. He recalls her as a teen-ager who would help out in the store while McAfee and Johnson were traveling to antique shows.
In an earlier interview with CityBeat, Klefas said she felt awkward talking about the state of things. At the time, she said she had no idea what was going to happen with the store.
"It's just not the same without (Johnson)," she said. "It was my uncle's store, and now he's gone. Joe's coming at it from a different angle."
Klefas couldn't be reached to comment on the recent announcement of the store's closing.
Regardless, McAfee assures that he will go on. His attorney, niece and sister keep searching for something to validate his partnership with Johnson.
"Oh, but (Johnson's) house is so cluttered," McAfee said, adding that the store would be a reflection of Johnson's home if only the so-called "junk" where antiques. "There's 10 million places where you could've put (the will)."
Even if he doesn't get the store or even the inventory, McAfee said he'll open another store. Sure, it won't be exactly the same without the original inventory, he said, but at least he'll always have his memories.
McAfee's favorite memories are of Liberace, he said, adding that he, Johnson and the singer formed quite a relationship. McAfee pointed to a picture of Liberace and remembers how they first met.
After a show one night, he said, all three were at the same party. Johnson asked McAfee if he thought they should invite him back to Johnson's house for a party. "I said, 'Sure, go ask him.' But Wally just said, 'Oh no, I couldn't do that.' So I asked him. Gosh, what a ball we had."
Flipping through some old photographs, McAfee found one of him and Liberace at a diner counter. He recounted a story about some young black women who wanted Liberace's autograph. He agreed but wanted to finish his coffee first, McAfee said. "Do you know who those women were? The Supremes!"
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Photo By Jymi Bolden
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McAfee and Johnson hung around with America's favorite rebel, too.
"James Dean," McAfee recalled, "what a crazy, wild kid."
They met Dean before he became famous, McAfee said, adding that if his memory served him right the young actor was studying in Cincinnati.
"He almost got us killed," McAfee exclaimed, launching into a story of how Dean, driving their yellow convertible, passed a streetcar on the wrong side, just missing another one coming. "If we had been caught between, we'd of had a tall, skinny convertible."
McAfee still has Dean's boots -- his uncle sent them to him after the actor's funeral.
McAfee said he could go on for hours about the celebrities who have visited Trivet when they were in Cincinnati. The walls lining the stairwell to the store's basement document visits by Sinbad, Led Zepplin, Blues Traveler, Lenny Kravitz and The Black Crowes.
McAfee's nostalgic disposition turns forlorn when he accepts the fact that he and Johnson won't be retiring together. "I used to talk to Walter every night. When you're both around for 60 years, every night you expect that call."
And shoppers expect to see the short, bald man sporting a round belly covered in a leather vest and wearing acid-washed jeans and sneakers telling them, "You'd better buy that. It's a collectible."
Trivet regulars tend to stop in from time to time hoping to find something cool they didn't see the last time that they were there. So many are just now finding out that Johnson passed away last fall.
Just last week McAfee had to tell a caller that Johnson had died and that the store was closing. McAfee hung up the phone and looked at the store cat, Flash, and gave her a pat on the head.
"They can take all of this stuff, but I won't let them take you," he said. "Oh no, you're coming with me." ©
