I went into my mother’s bedroom the other night and found it to be like it was when she used it. Some of her favorite pictures and mirrors were on the walls. An old cannon ball bed, vanity, and chest of drawers were used for years by her and there are Oriental rugs on the floor along with a huge mountain goat rug made from four mountain goats. She said she liked put her bare feet in the rug as it kept her feet nice and warm.

There are some odd pictures that make a good story for mother, me, and Grandma Lucke.

I was about ten years old and we had moved into a new house at 12 Tenth Street. That house had a fireplace but we had no picture to hang over the mantle. So, I went one Christmas to the Dime Store and bought a large picture of a farm scene for about four dollars. I wrapped it and put it under the Christmas tree and when mother and dad opened it on Christmas morning; they immediately hung it over the fireplace.

It did not stay there long. Later that day Grandma Lucke came over to eat Christmas dinner with us. She saw the dime store art and immediately came to the conclusion that it was a picture of the old Faber place on Little Box Elder Creek. She said she wanted it and a few days later came to the house with a very expensive and large mirror to hang over the fireplace. She left with the dime store art. A year later mother still wanted her dime store art back so I suggested that a cousin of mine, Vance Warwick, who was a very good artist, could paint a picture of the Faber home place and grandma Lucke might like that better and we would get our dime store art back. He painted a very good picture of the Faber home place and we wrapped it and put it under her tree. Christmas morning she opened the box, saw the picture and there was no recognition. She hung that painting in a bedroom and it wasn’t until Grandma Lucke was selling her large house on Third Avenue that she called mother and told her to take the two pictures home as she did not have room for them where she was going to be living.

So home they came and in mother’s room, there hangs that huge mirror over her desk, the dime store art over her bed and next to it Vance Warwick’s picture of the Faber home place.

If only art could talk, what stories it would tell.

Hold on now, I think that art did talk and just told you a very good story!