At Home on Ladybug Farm - Donna Ball [21]
Lindsay gasped and dropped to her knees beside Cici. “Good heavens! That’s a glass plate from one of the old shadow-box cameras.” She took the plate in her hands reverently. “Look at that! This must be from the turn of the century—look how the woman is dressed. And—why, that’s our house! Cici, this must be one of the first photographs taken after the house was built!”
The plate depicted a woman in a long pale dress with leg-o’-mutton sleeves, standing on a lawn beneath the limbs of a spreading oak. Her dark hair was pulled back into a poufy bun, and her features were fair. She looked to be in her midthirties but, by the standards of that day, she was almost certainly younger. There was a wicker chair beside her, and in the background stood a very familiar house.
“It has to be one of the Blackwell women,” Lindsay said.
“Maybe it’s her wedding picture,” suggested Cici. “After all, she is wearing white.”
“It’s possible,” agreed Lindsay. “Maybe it’s part of a set.”
“There are dozens of them in this box,” Cici said, pulling out another.
Lindsay eagerly took it from her, while Cici resumed her study of the first picture by holding it up to the light.
“Gosh, I wish this were clearer!” Cici said. “I’d love to see the detail on the house. How it must have looked when it was first built.”
“I wonder if there’s any way to develop these things? Or whatever you have to do to them to print them on paper.”
“There must be. This is the age of technology. You can do anything.”
“You can’t play a 45 record without a phonograph,” pointed out Lindsay.
“And you can’t play an eight-track on anything,” Cici admitted.
“Still,” Lindsay said, “what a piece of history this is! I’ll get Noah to wrap them so they don’t break, and carry them down for me. I can’t wait to see the rest of them.”
“One project at a time,” Cici said, carefully returning the last of the plates to the box as she stood. “Come on, let’s get this vanity out of here.”
Farley’s familiar blue truck creaked to a stop in the circular drive in front of the house just as Cici and Lindsay had finished trundling the vanity across the yard, up the wide curving steps, and across the columned porch to the front door. They carefully lowered the furniture to the painted floorboards of the porch and straightened up, grateful for the break, as Farley got out of the truck.
He was a big, slow-moving man with a propensity for dressing in camouflage and cracked steel-toed boots. He always sported a two-day growth of stubbly beard, and carried a soda can, into which he periodically spit a stream of tobacco juice. He was a man of few words but apparently endless skills. He had repaired their water heater, replaced the tiles on their roof, rewired their house, rebuilt their porch railing when it was destroyed by a flock of sheep, and performed numerous other emergency services for them around the house. It had been he, in fact, who had supplied them with the sheepdog, who was now barking and circling the truck madly, occasionally lunging in to take a nip at the tires.
Ignoring the barking dog, Farley politely tipped the bill of his camo cap to the two ladies on the porch. “Mornin’,” he said, and spat into the can.
“Good morning, Farley.” Cici raised her voice to be heard above the din.
Lindsay shouted, “Rebel, quiet!” to no avail, and then smiled at Farley. “Hi, Farley.”
“Doing deliveries for Jonesie,” he said, and nodded toward the back of the pickup truck. “Got your sander here.”
Jonesie and his wife—who was generally known as Mrs. Jonesie—were the proprietors of Family Hardware and Sundries, the biggest store in the tiny town of Blue Valley. From tea-spoons to masonry saws, from dish towels to windowpanes, if they didn’t have it, they could get it.
“Oh, good!” exclaimed Cici, coming down the steps.
“Great,” added Lindsay with slightly less enthusiasm.
“Hi, Farley!” Lori called from across the yard, waving as she skipped toward them. Doing the requisite little dance