Effie's Stationery

Effie loved flower arranging.  She was quite good at it too.  In fact, she was artistically talented and very inventive.  One day as she was in the back yard "visiting" with her flowers she spotted a small feather in the flower bed.  She picked it up and, looking at it, decided it looked like a flower.  She put it in her apron pocket where it stayed until later in the day.  With Alfred gone, Harriett and her husband, Deke,  had moved into the big old home place with her.  It was too big for her to keep by herself.  Then those horrible days when Deke became ill.  And then too quickly he was gone. Then it was just her and her girls. But she once again had a family to care for.  A very small family but she was glad to have her girls there.


Christie came home from school later that afternoon.   After Christie had her snack, they both went to the big work room for homework time.  A quilting frame was set up in the middle of the room and Alfred's old partners desk sat down at the end.  Christie put her homework down on her side of the desk and Effie got some stationery out of the drawer along with her old fashioned quill type pen and a bottle of ink.  It was then she remembered the feather.  Quickly she made a few light strokes in the upper left hand corner of the page and glued the feather at the top of one of them.  And sure enough.  It looked like a fluffy little flower, quite a pretty one too.  And the first letter was written on Effie's stationery.


That stationery would be treasured and coveted by most of the family in years to come.  But for that day, it was just something a little different to do with a piece of paper.


Her home had a huge back yard.  At the very back was a fenced in chicken yard and Effie kept chickens.  Each spring the new chicks would come (much to Christie's delight) and were kept in an incubator on the enclosed back porch until they were ready to move into the chicken house.   Effie kept a large vegetable garden and each fall vegetables were canned and put into the big freezer in the basement.  Kettles of the best cream of tomato soup in the world were made and canned in the big pressure canner. She had lovely flower gardens with fruit trees and grape vines and gooseberry bushes.  She fixed breakfast, lunch, and dinner for her little family because in a small town people go home for lunch.  Effie made crazy quilts.  As a former teacher she tutored her granddaughter in special subjects and projects.  And, of course, there was the church, the garden club and her canasta club, all which received her willing and unstinting efforts.  If you asked her, she would tell you that she didn't work, she stayed at home.


She bought stationery at the Rexall drug store down town.  The kept a nice line of boxed stationery.  And now she bought a couple of extra boxes and began to experiment with the feathers and light wispy pen strokes.  She began to hear back from recipients of her letters asking where she got that lovely stationery.  They wanted some.  She made a few extra sheets of stationery every time she sat down now.  Slowly, slowly a couple of extra boxes accumulated.  Over the years, if you were good, very good, if you graduated high school or college with honors and you were also very lucky, you would get a box of that stationery.  Most family members upon receiving their longed-for box of stationery would would lock it away with the other valuables with one exception.  They would use just one sheet.  That was the thank-you letter to Aunt Effie.  Well, if you were even luckier you might get to use a second sheet.  But that's a story for another day.

~~The End~~

Crandall Note:  My box of stationery is locked away with valuables in a safe.  I get it out and look at it once in awhile and I see my Grandmother sitting at that partners desk with her old fashioned pen and her jar of ink and the feathers scattered out.  I didn't get many of her letters because I lived with her.  But those who did treasure them.  Written in Spencerian script and containing a wealth of homey information, they are each one priceless. 

Until next time.....Happy Searching!