My grandma worked in a jewelry store and was a florist and antique dealer, among other jobs in her career. She came of age in the days before we defined a “traditional American family” as having a dad who worked for pay and a mom who stayed home with the children. Everyone had to work for a family to survive during the Great Depression. Grandma worked inside and outside the home. She and Grandpa had eloped at 16 and never had a wedding, but their marriage lasted 75 years until the proverbial “death do us part.” He died at 91 and two years later, we celebrated their Heavenly reunion.
I helped my mom to close the estate. My grandparents had lived in the home he built for 70 years, and having been Depression-era folks, did not throw away much. You never knew when you might need a small plastic bag of wooden What-Exactly-Are-Those? So while we sorted, boxed, handed-down, and prepared for auction, we discovered treasures that told their life and love story. Here’s an example:
First Career Custom Wedding Cake Topper
Since she’d never had her own wedding, a favorite lifelong activity of Grandma’s had been helping people prepare for their weddings. She sold china, diamonds and silver in the jewelry store wedding registry. There was an assortment of items she particularly loved: glass and china cake toppers for wedding cakes. She always promoted the ones she thought would suit, and earned the highest commissions of all the shop girls for her up-selling skill with customers.
Wedding Cake Toppers from the Second Career
Later, in the flower shop, Grandma learned to make beautiful real and silk floral arrangements that adorned wedding sanctuaries, chapels and ballrooms across the region. She did the wedding flowers for every relative in my mom’s generation, mine, and the next as well. With her skill at cake topper sales, and because some area cake designers used real flowers, Grandma also kept a selection of cake decorating supplies at the florist’s. My mom’s 1953 wedding cake topper with the lace heart surrounding the bride and groom came from the flower shop. Grandma became known in other venues as she expanded the cake supplies with birthday cake toppers, and toppers for graduations and other major life events
A Third Career Tops Them All
But the antique shop had the best collection of cake toppers ever. Grandma bought items for her shop for years and stored them in her basement. When she “retired,” Grandpa converted the garage into a shop for her. The items she stocked came from going-out-of-business sales, garage sales and estate sales. By the time we were planning her estate sale the topper collection included monogram cake toppers, several ridiculously funny wedding cake toppers and some obviously customized toppers with wise quotes about life, or commemorating divorces, awards, and a few life experiences not suitable for mention. Some were very old and others very recent. A monogram cake topper even had the bride and groom’s photographs superimposed on it. The box had been mailed from Shopbakersnook.com. According to her inventory book, she had sold more than 2700 cake toppers over the years!
One Final Treasure
Since she didn’t have a wedding or wedding cake, we didn’t expect to find a topper that had actually belonged to Grandma. However, in a corner of the cedar chest in her bedroom, underneath two vintage formal dresses, we found a wooden box. In it was a piece of paper yellow with age and crumbling at the corners. It was stuck to a twig. On one side, it said, “I read this in a book of old English wise quotes and agree completely ‘A good wife and health are man’s best wealth.’” On the back, it said, “Happy Anniversary! Love, Frank.”