My grandmother used to keep this little chalkware dog on the living room floor, right inside the front door. Because the dog was handpainted and easily chipped, it was a "look, but don't touch" item, which made me want to touch it even more :o) On soft summer afternoons, Gaga (my name for my maternal grandmother) would let me hold it gently in my lap while sitting on a cushiony pile of homemade quilts, just in case ...
When I was small, I was certain the chalkware dog was a boy, though he had no name to confirm that fact. Dogs were boys and cats were girls. Cows were girls and horses were boys. I believed that was the way God created the animals, and therefore the way it should be.
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Gaga lived right across the street from us, in a 2 bedroom war-era cottage identical to ours'. I officially lived with my mom and dad, but space was tight in the room I shared with my two brothers, so most nights I slept in Gaga's extra bedroom, which had been decorated just for me.
On Christmas Eve, the year I was 10, we moved 40 miles away to a shiny new home in a shiny new town. I saw Gaga often during the next 8 years, and then not nearly so often after I moved away for college. Whenever I visited, the little chalkware dog was there to greet me, though I noticed it less and less as I grew older.
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Eventually, Gaga sold her house and moved in with my mom, in the big house that used to be shiny and new. Many of the things she owned while I was growing up were given away, and most of her remaining personal things spent the next 28 years in boxes stacked in the upstairs hallway, undiscovered, unopened, and unpacked. Gaga died in 1989, at 91 years of age, and my mother decided the dusty stacks of boxes were not to be disturbed. I had forgotten all about the chalkware dog.
My mother passed away in early 2007, and many months passed before my brothers and I began sorting through two lifetimes of treasures: Mom's and Gaga's. Emptying the house was a long walk through the past ... sometimes-sad, sometimes-delightful, always cobwebbed-and-dusty, and sometimes offering a special surprise. I resurrected the chalkware dog from a box of ribbons, lace, bank statements, and old birthday cards, all jumbled together from being hastily packed.
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Of course, the dog came home with me. For the first few months we called him PupPup. With the bits and bobs of insight I'd acquired over my 50-some years, I decided the chalkware dog was -- and is -- actually a girl, and I christened her LuLu a few weeks ago..
And then, two interesting things happened:
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This week, on Monday morning, I decided to take some pictures of LuLu to share with all of you. She was in her place of honor, on the shelf of an architectural cove -- don't laugh --above the toilet in the master bathroom. It's a bright and sunny rooom, with creamy yellow walls and white lace curtains, and LuLu likes it there because she's guaranteed to see Mr. Vintage and myself several times each day.
I turned LuLu over while taking photos, to see if there were any clues to her provenance (that's the fancy word for "where she came from") or to exactly how old she might be. I was very surprised to see my Uncle Jerry's name in pencil-printed block letters on the bottom: it meant that he was the one who had painted LuLu, that he had given her as a gift to his beloved mother, whom he adored, and that he presumably missed his friends from Richmond High.
The quality of the painting is skilled enough to indicate Jerry must have made LuLu as a project in a high school art or shop class, sometime during the Depression. Uncle Jerry served in the Second World War, and he died in 1953, just two years before I was born. I have no idea why I didn't look at LuLu's "bottom" during the three months since I brought her home, as it's the first thing I do with most of my finds. Having found Jerry's name on the bottom, I now have an even greater appreciation of LuLu's sentimental value, and why Gaga worried so much that the chalkware dog would be damaged.
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The other interesting thing happened this afternoon, while I was reading Becky's latest post at Sweet Cottage Dreams. One of the photos in that post shows the street in front of her house, which looks amazingly like my street in Bakersfield.
Wanting to know more -- including do we really live on the same street? -- I went to Becky's flickr album in search of more information and familiar-looking streetscapes. I found this sweet photo on her very first page:
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OMG, LuLu has a brother! Or a friend, cousin, or chalkware soulmate. Look carefully and compare the two photos: both of these perky pups were cast from the same mold! Becky identifies her dog as "an old chalkware carnival toy." It appears to me that both of these dogs are actually pre-cast chalkware or Plaster of Paris blanks, lovingly painted to capture the hearts of their new owners. The upturned part of LuLu's tail broke off many years ago, but the rest of the hills and valleys on these cutie pie dogs are the same, they're just painted differently...
After a bit more sleuthing, I discovered that Becky lives in Modesto, about 200 miles north of my Bakersfield home. Both are smack dab in the middle of the San Joaquin Valley, and it appears that our housing tracts and streets are as similar as our weather..
Thank you, Becky, for the pleasure I got when I found your photo ... truly a hidden treasure and an unexpected twist to LuLu's story!
