The Princess Dresser ...

This country was seven years into the Great Depression when I was born, so the first four years of my life were spent in a sheep shed. Five of us - father, mother, sister, brother and me - survived in a one-room structure that had not been built for human occupancy. Wide planks were laid to create a floor. Cracks between the planks allowed cold winter winds to come whistling through.

A small lean-to with tin roof and dirt floor was attached to the main room and that became our kitchen. The legs of a wood burning cook stove rested upon the hard packed earth. A motley collection of chairs around a make-shift table completed the room's furnishings.

There were no windows. The front door was made of weathered gray boards with rusty hinges. It remained open in summer to let in sunshine. Unfortunately, it also let in flies and mosquitoes. During winter months kerosene lamps chased away the shadows.

Two beds were layered with plenty of homemade quilts. There was an old Singer treadle sewing machine.

And there was a beautiful dresser ...

My father had met and married my mother eight years before the beginning of the Great Depression. He was working for the railroad at that time. The first gift he bought his young bride was a princess dresser ... one large drawer across the bottom and two small drawers on top ... shiny veneer finish ... and a mirror that moved back and forth and up and down, producing just the right viewing angle.

My father loved to watch as my mother sat at that dresser brushing her long black hair.

As the nation headed deeper into financial disaster my father lost his old job and couldn't find a new one that paid a living wage. He searched for work daily, faithfully. He was willing to take any job doing anything. Often, he worked from sunup until sundown doing hard menial labor and earned only fifty cents. He was grateful for that work. Fifty cents bought food for his family.

Gradually, he lost almost everything he owned, but he never let go of the dresser.

To me, a child of four with no store-bought toys, the princess dresser with its movable mirror was a constant temptation. I wasn't allowed to wiggle the mirror except when I was officially acting as Daddy's helper. He'd casually mention that he ought to comb his hair and I'd fly into motion, rushing to take my place at the side of the dresser, small hand on the bottom of the mirror, ready to tilt as needed. For a man who cared little about his physical appearance during that time, Daddy sure combed his hair a lot.

We left the sheep shed in 1940. Earthly belongings, including the dresser, fit nicely on the back of a neighbor's rickety truck as we waved goodbye to poverty in Texas and rolled toward greener pastures in Arkansas.

My father had landed a new job with the Rock Island Railroad. Thank God the worst was behind him now. Thank God his strength had seen us through. Thank God.

My mother soon pushed the little princess dresser aside to make room for more fashionable furniture and it finally came to rest beneath boxes of unwanted junk in an out-building.

Long years passed. My father's health declined. The old home place was closed down. Daddy gave me permission to take the dresser. He stood watching as I rescued it from the barn. The mirror would need to be re-silvered now ... His work worn fingers traced scratches in the veneer. One knob was missing from the big drawer. He sighed ...

A few years before he died, on Father's Day, Daddy came to my house where my brother and I proudly displayed the newly restored princess dresser. Daddy's eyes examined it from top to bottom. The flawless gleaming wood finish ... the perfect mirror ... every knob in place. He found it hard to speak but his head kept nodding approval. Maybe he was seeing the reflection of a long-ago woman brushing her hair ... Maybe he was remembering a small daughter who delighted in tilting the mirror as he straightened his hat.

The princess dresser remains in our family today. I'm glad my children and grandchildren will keep it and love it always.

Hopes and dreams were once folded tenderly into those drawers ...

Memories still linger in that tilted mirror ....