DAISY, her story

Once she was known as Hagerstown model 339-7 dollhouse, but she preferred to think of herself as Daisy.

Most of the time she sat on her shelf in the toy store dreaming of the day she’d be taken down and wrapped up for a trip to her new home. After all, there wasn’t much to see or do on a shelf.

“I wonder what color they’ll paint me”, she thought. “I hope I get to be yellow, I do so love yellow. Maybe they’ll give me shutters. Dingly Dell # 72 has them. I’d like green ones. Green goes so nicely with yellow paint. Oh, and a green door, maybe with a flowery wreath. Oh, a heart shaped flowery wreath like on the house in the calendar picture.”
She sighed contentedly dreaming her pretty dollhouse dreams.

One day a customer pointed straight at her as she spoke to the clerk. “Oh joy!” Daisy thought. “It’s my day! This is it!”

Yes indeed, the clerk walked straight over to her and lifted her down off the shelf. “Goodbye, girls!” she trilled to the other dollhouses. “Goodbye, Sam!” she called to the log cabin, and “Adieu, Sebastien!” to the tall, stately stone manor house.

In no time at all she was in her new home, ready to be transformed into the house of her dreams. Sure enough, bright and early next morning her lady started gathering her tools. There were scissors, and cutting knives, glues, rulers, and a stack of colored papers.
“Jiminy Crickets! Wallpaper!” Daisy practically screamed with delight.

She relaxed as expert hands began their work. “Gee,” Daisy thought. “That wallpaper is awful red. I was hoping for a pretty rose colored floral in that room. Oh well. Maybe she plans on mahogany bedroom furniture. Some of that mahogany stuff looks really grand with dark red wallpaper. Of course, that paper sure is red-red.”

Later that afternoon the lady took out a shiny brass bed and put it into the red room, then she stepped back for a look. Daisy was dubious about the brass bed and the fancy red velvet wallpaper. “Yes, please, lady, think it over. Mahogany would be a nicer choice. I’m sure you’ll agree.” But the lady left the brass bed in the room.

The next day the lady selected a pink wall paper. “That’s better”, Daisy thought. “Pink is such a nice ladylike color, though I’m not so sure about it being next to that red room. Still, furniture does make the room, after all. It’s not just about the wallpaper.”

The lady laid the pink wallpaper on the table. It was shot through with gold stripes and red and blue flowers. Daisy just about faded away in embarrassment. She had dreamed of being a tastefully dressed yellow cottage with a green door and green shutters and white trim, with maybe a pretty picket fence in front. “I think the lady‘s taste in colors leaves something to be desired,” she thought. “Maybe she’s color blind,” she added charitably.

The next day the lady returned from shopping with some fancy gilded mirrors for Daisy’s bedrooms. She placed more furniture into the bedrooms, including a tufted red velvet couch for the red room, “Well, that it a pretty couch,” Daisy thought, and a pink dresser with flowers that matched the wallpaper for the pink room. “I hope she didn’t pay extra for that” sighed Daisy.

The lady also added some pretty little embroidered cushions. One said ‘Love’ another said ‘San Francisco’, and Daisy couldn’t make out the rest. Next the lady glued some pretty pictures of flowers and ladies on the wall and added a stitched sampler to the red room that said ‘He who loves longest loves best’. “I wonder what that’s supposed to mean?” pondered Daisy.


Part II
The next day the lady started on the parlor. She glued in some pale gold wallpaper that was decorated with sprays of delicate flowers and a bit of gilding. “Oh, that looks quite nice”, thought Daisy, hopefully.

A beautiful walnut parlor set followed, upholstered in light blue satin, accompanied by a matching piano. The lady hung blue satin draperies on the windows that matched the parlor set. Daisy was very happy. The upstairs rooms may be in not quite the best of taste, but the parlor was more than making up for it. Even the rug was absolutely perfect. It was the most gorgeous room Daisy could ever imagine and she began to feel much better.

A few days later the lady came into the workroom with some bags. She pulled a can of paint out of one. “Oh, goody, goody”, Daisy thought, “Maybe I get painted today!”

The lady had already painted Daisy’s window trim white, and Daisy was eager to see what sort of a face she’d be presenting to the world. “Yellow, yellow, please let me be yellow. She’s opening the can…..oh boy, oh boy, I’m going to be…..red? I’m too little and cute to be red”, she pouted.” Big barns are red, little houses aren’t red”.

There was nothing Daisy could do but sit there and be painted red. “What’s the matter with this woman? What is she thinking?” Daisy was getting downright peeved.

There was just one room left to decorate. “Well,” Daisy sighed, “She can’t mess up a kitchen. No matter what she does I’m sure the kitchen will do. It certainly can’t look as bad as the bedrooms or my (sniff) front.”

The lady laid some pieces of stained wood on the table. “Why,” Daisy thought, “that looks like paneled wainscot, and very nice wainscot indeed, in mahogany yet. Who puts mahogany wainscot in a kitchen?” She settled back and waited to see what came next.

“Oh, maybe it won’t be a kitchen after all. Maybe I’ll have a library.”
The idea of having a library within her little walls made her feel very grand indeed. She felt quite puffed up with that thought.

The lady brought out a white box. “Maybe it’s a fireplace! No, the box is too big for a fireplace. Maybe there’s bookcases in there, no, it’s still too big for that. Or maybe it’s a library set all in one box, like kitchen sets or living room sets, like the ones they used to sell in the store!”
She waited.
“What’s that? Why……it’s a bar…..a mahogany bar.”

Indeed it was, a magnificent mahogany bar and the wainscot matched it exactly. It even had a delicate brass rail that ran along the bottom. The lady had also bought tiny green and brown bottles with pretty labels and the smallest glasses you could ever imagine, all made of real, tinkling glass. She added a matching table with two little chairs with red velvet seats. Next she hung a picture of a lady in a big gilded frame.

“Oh my,” blushed Daisy. “ Why, she has no clothes on. Wait a minute………”. A thought had begun to cross Daisy’s mind. “Not that, no it can’t be.”

The lady opened another box. In it lay a small doll. The doll had long black hair and a lacy peignoir. Daisy could see right through the lace that she had a corset tied in pink ribbons and pink garters, with a pink rose on one of them.

“Oh, noooooo!!” wailed Daisy in despair, “I’m a House of Assignation!!!! I’ll never be able to hold my head up again! Oh the shame…..” She whimpered silently, and later that night, when she was all alone, she cried herself to sleep.

The weeks passed. Daisy was on display in the lady’s living room, and none too happy to be so. “She should be ashamed of herself,” she pouted . “I’m certainly ashamed of myself and I didn’t even do anything.” Every time a visitor came in to see her Daisy just wished she could shrink into 144 scale.

One day Daisy was tenderly packed into a large box and taken on a long trip. “What now?“ she moaned. Her nerves caused her clapboards to feel too tight, and she was sure her shingles must be curling. “I wish I could have stayed on my own shelf in the toy store.” She began to wail, and once again, cried herself to sleep.

When she woke she found herself in a very large room and there were hundreds of people milling about. Many of them were stopping to look at her. She could see big banners overhead that said Northeast Miniatures Fair. “Oh fine,” she thought angrily. “The woman turns me into a bordello and now she wants to get rid of me. Yes, people, take a good look at gaudy, tawdry, tacky me. My life is ruined anyway.”

Just then something was placed on the table just in front of her. “What’s that? What’s it say? I can’t read upside down writing very well. Wait a minute, it looks like a blue ribbon. It says…..”

“First Prize goes to….” announced the loudspeaker. Daisy didn’t hear the rest. She didn’t need to. By then she had deciphered the upside down writing on the blue ribbon. It said, First Prize.

So, Daisy didn’t get to be a sweet little yellow cottage with green shutters and a white picket fence, but then again, it’s not every Hagerstown model 339-7 dollhouse that gets to be a prizewinning bordello.