found in antique store
many years and miles later
The story of a childhood present stolen - the lady who had played with it -
and the friends who "take care of one of ours!"
“Something drew me to the back of the store… I never do that… always just look at the front display cases.” It was a few weeks before Christmas 2005 when 64 year old Mona King looked up at the top shelf in the antique store and saw the metal doll house she had received for Christmas when she was just six years old!
It had been stolen along with all of her possessions when her family was relocating some 20 years ago and the moving truck never showed up at their new home.
Although by some instinct Mona was positive this was her dollhouse, she asked the clerk at Thora Mae’s Antique Shop in the Cannon Mall to check the bottom for her. If it really was her very own doll house it would have been signed on the bottom by her great uncle who put it together on that long ago Christmas morning back in Montana.
She remembered how long it took him to do it. The family had gathered for their special holiday breakfast of waffles and goodies and everyone else was eating. But her uncle was determined to get it completed. Mona recalled him saying, “I won’t eat until I get Mona’s house together.”
He finally was done and wrote on the bottom… “Uncel Russel Shidler to Mona Rae”.
Mona asked the clerk to look underneath the house and see if anything was written there. She would turn her back so she couldn’t see it herself.
Mona recalled the store clerk tipping the doll house up to peer underneath. Did she see any writing? The answer was, “No.”
As the clerk tipped the house to look at the other end she explained, yes, there was some writing. Mona asked, “Does it say, Uncle Russel Shidler to Mona Rae?”
Hearing an affirmative from the clerk, Mona recalls bursting into tears. You see the doll house was more than just a child’s toy to Mona. It also brought back so many memories. The house also had some toy furniture that Mona recognized as her own. But the curtains her Mama and Grandma had made were gone.
Mona lives by herself in Freeborn Manor on a limited income. But she told the clerk to keep the doll house for her until she received her check the next month and she would be back to buy it.
“I was so happy,” Mona exclaimed. Walking back home she recalled, “I stopped in Brewsters (Bar & Grill) afterward and was told, ‘You’re lit up like a light bulb!’”
And so she told her friends about her long lost doll house – found again.
Now the story gets even more heartwarming. The folks at Brewster's realized how important this doll house was to Mona. Mike (Swede) Johnson decided to buy it for her according to his wife, Shirley. She explained that he told her to go to the mall and pay for it and have it set aside until Mona came out to pick it up. When he mentioned this at Brewster's, she recalled, other folks like Paulette and Ken Friesen wanted to be part of it too. And more people chipped in.
But Mona didn’t go back to the antique store.
The "gang at Brewster's" couldn’t wait any longer to see their surprise happen so Paulette went to pick it up. She put it in a large gift bag and proceeded to leave it alone on a table near the bar waiting for Mona to stop by.
She did. Mona recalled that nobody mentioned the bag sitting there. She thought it belonged to some other customers. But when those folks left and didn’t take the bag, she recalled Ken saying, “What’s on the table? People must have left it.” And then Mona said he told her, “Go see what’s in it.”
And when she did, Mona burst into tears.
No one would reveal the cost of the doll house.
That’s not the important part, the Brewster's gang explained.
It’s about taking care of “One of ours”.
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