Mae's Real Stories

Here are three nesting dolls that we used to play with when we were children. We liked to take the large doll and the middle-sided doll apart and put them back together. The littlest doll didn't come apart. The dolls are made of wood, so we were allowed to play with them without being afraid they would break. Eventually, the flowers and faces painted on the wood began to chip and look old.

My mother called the biggest doll the "Baba Doll" because it was wearing a scarf like her grandmother's scarf. (You can see the scarf in the picture of her grandmother).

Our mother used to tell us how she bought this set of dolls on her honeymoon, right after she and my father were married. She would describe how they drove from St.Louis all the way to Bemidji, Minnesota in his car. We looked at the pictures that she had drawn and post cards of the trip. She had a post card of a statue of Paul Bunyan, the legendary lumberjack, and his great blue ox Babe. Paul Bunyan had a red and black checked lumberjack shirt. I also remember a post card of a big iron mine where men worked on little trains carrying iron ore.

Here is a recent picture of Paul Bunyan in Bemidji. I think it must be the same one my parents saw 65 years ago.