Not Antique, Just Treasured

The Antique Roadshow on public television is probably the most viewed of all the shows on television.  When some people come to the roadshow they are rewarded by being told that the item they had purchased  because they liked it, is of really great monetary value.  I often wonder how many of those people try to capitalize on this new gained knowledge by selling their treasure for profit. Quite often it is a relic which has some significance to their family and they say they will not be selling it.  At some point in the future someone else in the family who inherits it may feel differently and be happy to sell the once treasured item.

I have many family connected items which I would never want to exchange for cash.  One such thing is an oak doll bed which is around eighty years old.  My father had a carpenter make it for me when I was a little girl.  My mother held onto it for years and when I established a home of my own, I took it under my roof.  Since my first child was a girl, it got some use from her when she was in the doll playing stage.  My son had no interest in it when he came along.

Then when my son and daughter came of age to have children and did, the three turned out to be boys, so my grandsons did not make use of the old, oak bed.  Before my first grandson came along I gave the bed to my daugher in case she had a daughter.  She made some bed covers for it and it sat like that for a long time.  This picture shows it all gussied up and sitting among the boy toys.

It must have been put aside for storage and probably forgotten.  Then one day my daughter was backing out of her garage and noticed a stack of things which had been set out for garbage collection.  Right on the top was the old oak doll bed.  She stopped her car, got out, and rescued it from sure destruction.  Shortly thereafter she gave it back to me since he expected no little girls to play with it.

It eventually made its way back to me, the original owner and it has been sitting in a rarely used bedroom for at least twenty years.  I kept meaning to have the loose  leg repaired but as you can see  from this picture it has not happened.  However that changed.  I really had forgotten about it being up there with the broken leg, until a crew of installers came to my house this month.  Having workers in your house calls for some rearranging when new windows are being put in all over the house.  As I moved some things out of the way I saw this doll bed and brought it down, hoping that someone with a hammer and a willing heart would take pity and repair it.

Just as I had hoped my son-in-aw saw it ( out in full view) and it reminded him that he had said he would repair it "some day".  And he did repair it.  It is not meant for a one hundred pound dolly, but otherwise is very usable.

This act of kindness on his part was all I needed to motivate me to start sewing on some bed covers for this little doll bed.