Amelia Marie had a beautiful lacy shawl which she let me borrow for a barn dance. I sure did hate to take it back, too! It was a beautiful shade of lilac, and it brought out my eyes. I felt like a glamorous fashion queen the night I wore it, and loved her for letting me use it! We were best friends, more like sisters! It was hard to see her in her late "thirties", living by herself in the old family farmhouse, but she did a "right fair job" of keeping the place up. My cousin Abe would stop by now and then to fix something for her, and of course, for pay, Amelia would feed him. I think his wife, Erma Lee, got a little jealous over it, but that was her problem. Bless her heart, Erma was ugly, and I don't know why Abe ever married her in the first place. She and I never got along that well, unfortunately, but anyway, as I said, I had to go to Amelia's and return the shawl. It was so smoky in that old house when I got there, I had to fan myself to breathe! Whew! There was a new bird's nest in the chimney that day, and my friend was trying to build a fire; so of course, the chimney got stopped up, and that's why it happened. When the smoke cleared, for some reason or another, I noticed something I simply hadn't noticed before. "Amelia", I asked, "Why do you have a set of old rusty spurs on your wall"? I could see that her face changed in a dramatic way. She stared at the spurs. I wondered if they had belonged to someone in the family, but had to wait until she turned to me for an answer. She didn't say anything for a long time, so I had time to wonder some more. I did wonder, too! I wondered and wondered and wondered. I even imagined that perhaps she had met someone; maybe she never told me about him and that, after a brief romance with her, he had forgotten his spurs! OH!...OH!... And maybe he gave her the lilac shawl, and she kissed him under the moonlight beneath the sweet magnolias in the sprawling front yard. What if they took long walks, and had picnics, and shamefully danced by the lake past dark. Maybe that's where his spurs landed. Oh, and what if they had a love child together?!!! (It was possible, because she was gone for a few months, and I always questioned that story about her sick grandmother.) I almost swooned at the thought of it! It was all so romantic, and mysterious. I envisioned the cowboy as being very tall and handsome, with long wavy brown hair, a beautiful smile, and big brown eyes...(like Amelia's) Of course, he would have been a drifter, because that was the nature of his work. His hat would have been worn, and stained...his chaps leathered and weathered, soft and supple from the wear, covering his torn faded jeans. How handsome and striking he would have looked as he sat high in the saddle on a chestnut colored horse! I had to fan myself again, not because of the smoke this time, but at the thought of how rugged, and ruddy he must have looked, and how his perfectly formed full delicious lips would have tasted on mine. Did I say mine?!!! OH, MY!! I meant HERS!! Then I woke up from my daydreaming about the cowboy that surely must have been hers, and realized that it was really hot in there and smoke was filling the house again. This time, though, instead of the chimney, the smoke was coming from the kitchen. Amelia had bought a sack of flour from the General Store the day before, and had two loaves of bread baking in the old wood cook stove. She forgot about them, after being distracted by me, and they were burning! I was so upset, I accidentally dropped the lovely shawl I had come to return! It fell on the floor, and I ran to the kitchen to help Amelia. We quickly got the burning loaves out of the oven, took a deep breath, and sat down at the table. Amelia started talking about how she was going to finish the quilt she was making with scraps from the forty pound flour sack, while I scraped away at the loaves, hoping to salvage some of the bread. Looking to my left towards the parlor, I was horrified to see the lilac shawl lying on the floor! "Oh, Amelia!" "Your shawl!" I tripped all over my long skirt running to get it!! Amelia called to me to be careful, and I scooped up the shawl, and held it in my arms again. Amelia came over to me and gave me a hug. I handed the shawl to her, and she strolled across the room, and gently hung it over the spurs. That was curious to me, since there were dressers, and chests for such items. "Why?" I thought, would she hang that beautiful shawl on some old rusty spurs?" So, I asked her why. She explained to me that her mother had always kept them together like that. After asking her again about the rusty spurs, Amelia told me that they had belonged to her MOTHER who had gotten them from a gentleman "friend" many years ago. The same "friend" had given her mother the lacy lilac shawl. I hadn't noticed (until Amelia showed me,) but the garment had an embroidered label sewn in a side seam, which read, "For my little Amelia Marie".
