Some Special Christmas gifts when I was young

Some gifts are so special that you just don't forget them. I remember my dolls and the beautiful outfits my Aunt Bob (Barbara) crocheted for them. Little caps, sweaters, and booties. When I was 7 or 8 I got a beautiful Horsman Doll (from Martin's Dept store in Elba I later learned). Mother took us there to pick out a doll and that's what Santa brought. I chose one with hair that had Shirley Temple curls and eyes that opened and closed and had eye lashes. She had a little red mouth with a hole between her teeth and this is where I would put the nipple of the bottle to feed her. Then she would wet her diaper. This was like a real baby and I loved holding her and playing with her. I remember naming her Sara Frances! 

In the spring when were playing outside in our playhouse (not a building, but a space outlined with boards or bricks which marked off rooms, etc.), we decided to have a funeral and bury Sara Frances. I think it was because a neighbor's child had died and we had heard the adults talking about the funeral. We found a wooden box and used it for the casket. We put the doll in the box and then put the lid on the box. Then we dug a hole in the ground and put the box in the hole and covered it up. We gathered my grandmothers pretty pink cabbage roses and put on top of the grave (and got in trouble for this). I don't remember who all attended the funeral but probably my cousin Tom, neighbors (Cowen family), and my sisters and I. After the funeral, we started playing something else and forgot all about my doll until the next day. I hurried and dug up the box when I remembered where I had left my doll, and I have never been so heart broken. The skin of my doll was wrinkled and peeling away from her pretty face and her eyes had gotten damp and fell back into her head! I remember crying and wrapped her up in "Swaddling" clothes and played with her anyway. I never left my dolls outside anymore! My grandmother explained to us that this is what happens to people when they are buried - that they decay. I've never forgotten this sad experience. From this time on, we stuck to burying and having funerals for baby chickens and animals on the farm. I think I was in Jr. High school when I went to my first funeral (an old neighbor, Mrs. Emma Foley Lewis) and it wasn't at all what I expected funerals to be. I didn't go to another one for a long time.