<HTML><FONT FACE=arial,helvetica><FONT SIZE=2 FAMILY="SANSSERIF" FACE="Arial" LANG="0">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.<BR>
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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.<BR>
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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.<BR>
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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.<BR>
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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.<BR>
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Walt Davies</FONT></HTML>