A local Abilene woman was reunited with a lost childhood memory jar she created in the 1930s.
Stella Rideout, 90, says she believes she made the jar at around ten years old. It was covered in trinkets and items she scrounged from her basement in West Virginia.
The jar was with her for her entire life, even as she moved to Abilene in the 1950’s with her husband.
“Well, the last fifty years it sat in a hall with an umbrella in it,” Stella spoke of the antique.
When Stella fell ill, many of her belongings were sold off in an estate sale, including the jar.
The family just assumed the jar was gone and would not be seen again until her daughter, Nyla Davis ran across it at a booth at “Rust and Roses” antique store on South 14th in Abilene, Texas.
“I enjoy looking at antiques, so I saw this store and I came in and, as I was browsing, I came upon the jar,” Nyla explained.
After discovering the jar, Nyla and her mother took a trip to purchase it, but they found the price too steep for Stella’s budget.
Word spread among the community of antique sellers at the shop and eventually reached the current owner of the memory jar, Joe Pete.
After hearing the story, Joe contacted Stella and gave the jar to her without charge.
“A lot of this that we do is about putting it in the right spot. That was the right spot,” Joe told us in an interview.
As for the jar, Stella plans to put the jar on display and use it as a new conversation piece.
She says, “I guess that’s why they call it a memory jar.”
(Information from BigCountryHomepage.com)
