Well, this isn't Mom's Shirley Temple doll, but one just like it. It was the only thing she still had from her childhood. After she went off to marry Pop, Nanny, her mother, sold off everything she left behind. Nanny was never a sentimental person and practical in the extreme. That is the charitable interpretation, though it always seemed rather vindictive to me. Nanny had always hoped that Mom would be a little money-making machine like Miss Temple, hence the doll. It reminds me of the story Mom told us once. She never had many toys (they were rather poor) but she did have a set of paper dolls. Nanny gave them away to the daughter of one of the customers at her beauty shop to ingratiate herself with the client.
Shirley had to wait through the birth of four rambunctious boys until finally my sister Susan was born. During that time her dress and shoes were destroyed and lost, her curls got rather ratty, and her butt tattooed with crayon. In the past few years Susan had the Ideal doll cleaned and restored and supplied with a new outfit, and she now sits pristinely in a display case.
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