[or-roots] Aunt Charlotte's book ( Methodist Missionaries)

[DAVIESW739 at aol.com]

Brother Joe and Sister Mary had quite a fine "turn out", a cart made of the 
front wheels of a wagon. Bill Athey was a cabinet maker and he had built a bed 
for it that was just as fine as one could ask for. He polished it and stained 
it to what he called Venetian red. The dye stuff came from a clay bank up the 
river and was about the color of a new brick.

    Brother Joe drove a yoke of Spanish oxen, perfectly matched and as black 
as crows. They had huge horns that interfered unless they kept them 
interlocked or their heads tilted. They were trotting oxen and the big cart swinging 
across the prairie behind them, left a fine cloud of dust in its wake. I was 
pretty proud when I drove to church with them. They usually stopped for me as they 
passed our house. Eleanor Beers was my especial friend. The Beers lived next 
door to Brother Joe's and Eleanor most always went to church with them. 
Eleanor and I always sat on the back seat and held on tightly lest we be josted out.

    Eleanor was fine company and under cover of the rumble of the big cart, 
we could laugh just as loudly as we pleased, even though Mother happened to be 
along.

    One Sunday we were both terribly excited, Eleanor wore her new pink 
shawl, it was the most beautiful shawl that I ever saw, a delicate shell pink silk, 
with deep, deep knotted fringe and raised figures thrown up in wonderful 
patterns, thick and solid next to the edge and less so toward the center. Eleanor 
was very fair and I thought her the loveliest thing I had ever seen.I got into 
the back seat beside Eleanor carefully, lest I sit on the edge of her shawl 
and crush it. She drew the ends well away from me and tucked them around her on 
the other side. We were on our way when something seemed happening to Eleanor 
and Eleanor's shawl, it was almost gone from her. She clung to the vanishing 
corner of it and screamed. A final violent wrench and it was gone. Brother Joe 
stopped the oxen and went back to look in the grass and low bushes, he looked 
everywhere. Eleanor's pink shawl had just completely vanished. finally Joe, 
wise in the ways of carts, thought to look at the hub. Sure enough, there was 
the shawl, wound around and around, but you would never have known that it had 
once been pink, but seeing it, one could readily tell that it would never be 
pink again. Though Mother worked and worked at it, the axle grease was ground 
into every fiber of it. It was such a mess, completely ruined and on the first 
day that she had been allowed to wear it. Our Sunday was spoiled. Brother Joe 
turned back and spent the day at our house.

    If Eleanor Beers were alive now and you were to ask her about the 
greatest tragedy of her life, I am sure she would tell you about the pink silk shawl 
with the brocade figures and the deep, knotted fringe around it.

Walt Davies
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