A Few Stories:

The Me Doll: When I as in grade school, Grant’s Department Store in downtown Davenport had a wonderful second floor toy department. They had everything from tiny kewpie dolls, to life-sized walking dolls. I had never seen so many of the latter in my life. At six, I wasn’t much bigger than the dolls were. There were also interesting variations, including a smaller walking doll that was all molded plastic. Even then, she looked to me like a throwback to another time, and I wonder if she was old store stock. I should have bought her! In any case, one late summer, my Uncle Tom, long the supplier of dolls for me, bought the life-sized doll. She is very much like Patti Playpal, and her hair is red. It was once curly, but it’s been washed too often to keep its curl. I still have her dress and at least one very large blue vinyl doll shoe, but she wears my Raggedy Ann costume these days. My grandmother, official doll seamstress, also made her a blue, flowered dress with a white dollar. An alien doll is currently modeling that outfit. There is a great photo of me standing next to the big doll. I’m wearing a set of satin Chinese pajamas from San Francisco. The doll is standing next to me. We look more like sisters. My little dog Killer had a lot of issues with that doll. I think he couldn’t decide if she was real or not, and he kept a respectful distance. For years, until I got Tallulah the 6’ manikin, the walking doll was my biggest doll ever. She still is one of my most cherished.

Every week, my Uncle Tom, who was an artist, drove home to us in Rock Island from his studio in Peoria. He always brought a doll. He also have me great Japanese and Korean dolls that he brought home from the Korean War, where he had been an MP. He could fix dolls better than any doll hospital, even reproducing tiny limbs and painting chipped, cracked faces to perfection. He lathe turned a new foot for a dolls house wooden buffet that broke; to this day, I don’t know which leg is the one he fixed. He always chose the best, and one summer, he bought at least ten very beautiful Japanese dolls, including a bride, Kabuki actresses, a baby nurse, and others. Only now can I appreciate how exhausting it must have been for him to have to pack each week, and not dare come home without finding me a doll!! I have all of them, and have taken care of them for over thirty years. I always looked forward to him coming on Fridays. I would wait for him watching The Honeymooners on Jackie Gleason. He’d pick me up, and we’d head for A&P to get the smoked oysters and pork hocks we liked, but no one else did. Then, I’d torture him by playing restaurant. Of course, he asked for it; he bought me the dishes and toy food I used to stock my café. He used to help me paint, and he taught me to love to make things. He was patient, and not only endured my “cooking,” but even paid for it, about $2-$5 per meal! He was the most talented person I had ever known, and he went to the School of the Art Institute. He had a handle on perspective like no one I’ve ever met. The summer before he died, he gave me a lot of his sketches and projects from school. He also left me his carved wooden cigar box with a picture of a girl in a beautiful garden. I can’t remember what he kept in it, but it was in his suitcase every weekend. I keep doll heads