Chapter 1

From the Memoirs of Tillie Emerson DeWade...

Tillie nodded as she stared at the lights on the Christmas tree. When she was a child there were no electric lights for Christmas trees and certainly no fairy lights winking hypnotically. But those trees were every bit as magical, with their finely blown glass ornaments and popcorn and cranberries strung in festoons. She remembered the trees from her youth smelling better, too. They were fresh cut right out of the forest, not raised in a field and trimmed to be bushy.

"Gramma?"

"Hm-m?" Tillie shook her head and came back to the present. Her three great grandchildren were gathered around her.

"Gramma, tell us a story." Little Jason snuggled up closer to her knees and ran one of his Matchbox Cars across her foot. "Tell us about when you were little."

"Um-mm," Tillie tried to remember what she hadn't already told them.

"Did you have cars like mine?" Jason persisted.

"Of course not." Roddy was ten and thought he knew everything. "They rode horses and wore long dresses. Dumb stuff like that."

"We had cars. But one Christmas my friend and I did ride horseback to a dance."

"I'd rather hear how you met Grandpa Frank." Betty, the only girl, didn't like being out-voted by boys.

"Actually, it's all the same story. It really happened like this."

I'd been looking forward to going to the Christmas Dance at the Grange Hall forever. Well, ever since I started teaching first, second and third grade at Smithy's Corners School way back in September. Smithy's Corners was a little bitty settlement over in the Coast Range of Oregon and that was the fall of 1931.

With my new party dress, strappy sandals and real silk stockings, I figured I would knock the socks off Finn Cullen.

Finn was one of the crew supervisors at the lumber camp. He was interested in me, I could tell. Three afternoons, already, he'd been waiting for me when school let out. He gave me a ride home from the schoolhouse in his swell new Ford roadster with the grumble...er, rumble seat. He was older than most of his crew, but he behaved like such a gentleman and I was pretty sure Mama would approve of him.

Finn asked me to go to the dance with him and I was walking on air. I thought I might be forever-after interested in him. He was supposed to pick me up at seven-thirty. Actually, he was giving Mildred a ride to the dance, too, but I was his date.

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