The Hubcap Queen
(Pearsonville, California) The high California desert is not a place a lot of people come to on purpose. Its beauty is an acquired taste; its inhospitable climate, legendary. But there's a sort of town here called Pearsonville and no, it's not a mirage.
There's really not much reason to stop in Pearsonville unless you're looking for a bite to eat or some gas or maybe a hubcap for your '55 Nash. Pearsonville is the hubcap capital of the world.
And Lucy Pearson of Pearsonville is the undisputed hubcap queen.p>
Ms. Lucy Pearson: Some of them are probably 50 years old.
Smith: Lucy's yard is covered with thousands of them — yes, from a Nash and an Edsel, even a Willys. It's a long time since she and her husband left their old Kentucky home to make a life out here.
Ms. Pearson: We've been here 36 years now.
Smith: And every time he hauled in a junk car for their new business, Lucy would pop the hubcaps off and shine them up.
Ms. Pearson: Well, he told the kids, 'I think the old lady's lost her marbles,' you know, because every hubcap I could find or get hold of would go in my stack.
Smith: That stack has grown a bit in 36 years. It's been shuffled through and dealt into a warehouse of wheel covers, catalogued and computerized.
Ms. Pearson: Last time I counted them, I had 140,000.
Smith: She has a few of some and plenty of others, and people who want them know just who to call.
Ms. Pearson: I got stacks and stacks of them.
Smith: Boy, you sure do.
Ms. Pearson: Comes a big earthquake — boy, oh, boy. It's...
Smith: It's a memory lane of motoring history whose perspective comes from about six inches off the road. Plastic hubcaps, peculiar hubcaps; some less than perfect, all for sale if the price is right. Once in a while, Lucy's too busy to deal with your average walk-in customer, so that falls to her son Don and his partner.
There's 140,000 hubcaps here. Can this dog get me a hubcap?
Don: What, for your Honda?
Smith: Yeah.
Don: All right. Go get me a '82 Honda hubcap, please, 13-inch. Go get me the hubcap, Buddy. Get that hubcap.
I hope you got your money ready.
Smith: I do. I do, I do. Listen to that. Oh, look at this.
Don: A Honda hubcap. There, that was a Honda hubcap, right there.
Ms. Pearson: Good boy, Buddy.
Smith: Yeah, there you go.
Don: Buddy, get the money for me, would you please? All right.
Ms. Pearson: These are Oldsmobiles...
Smith: Yeah.
Ms. Pearson: ...and my Buicks are over there.
Smith: Yeah.
Smith: At age 70, or a bit more, it's clear Lucy is not losing her edge.
That's, like, off an old Bug or something, huh?
Ms. Pearson: Bus. I think that's off a bus.
Smith: Oh, this is a bus.
Ms. Pearson: Yeah.
Smith: Oh, I bet you're right.
Ms. Pearson: Yeah.
Smith: You are right.
The desert is a good place for hubcaps: no rain, no rust. And the hubcap queen says there's room for more, though she swears she will never part with some of the family jewels.
Ms. Pearson: That's a Rolls Royce and this is my DeSoto. I think that's my favorite one, yeah.
Smith: They say not much grows in the desert, except for maybe one little hubcap collection. Harry Smith, CBS News, Pearsonville, California.
First aired on the CBS Evening NewsJuly 11, 1997
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