Two Dressers +

 The house on State Street is for sale now, but if memory serves, the house was once owned by Paul McGraw, and after his death the contents of the house were up for sale at what was called an auction, but really meant to make an offer on any items of interest. 

  I believe Sara may have alerted my mother to the sale. This would have been not too long after we moved to Valley Falls and about a year or so after "Jack's" store was relocated to what had once been Peter Barrett's bar. Sara may have been related to Paul, though I'm not sure.

 At the time, we had very little furniture, only that which was transported by car from our last home past the curve going out from the village. Dorothy and I shared a bedroom and a bed, and the remains of an old pink dresser probably a leftover in some house or other. The drawers were so badly broken that our clothes were just put on top of the dresser. When my mother learned that there were dressers in the house, she made sure to attend on sale day. She ended up buying 2 dressers for $6.  One was a brown wooden dresser, probably oak, which was designated for my brother. The other was of blonde wood  with a curved mirror and 4 drawers. Since we girls were to share, we each had an upper and a lower drawer. 

   But most remarkable to me, probably aged 6 or 7 or so, was that after the sale, the auctioneer, or the man handling the sale, leaned down to me and handed me a key--the key to the dresser, of which all 4 drawers locked. That was probably the first piece of property I'd ever owned, and at home I looped a green ribbon, probably from an old candy box, through the hole in the key, and hid it away. I don't remember where, but possibly in an old sock which was under the other socks. Later, this key would be the basis of squabbles with my sister, when she would accuse me of locking up the last pair of clean socks, but I never surrendered that key which  granted me some measure of independence or authority or something like that, not until I ceded ownership of the dresser many years later. 

  Even more memorable to me was that the man who handed me the key, or maybe it was another man that same day, also gave me a Crucifix with a Holy Water Font. I still have it on my bedroom wall.