Mom's Cabinet

Anyone who came to 4071 Eagle Street remembers Mom's French cabinet.  It was really fancy.  It was gold, with flowers painted on the lower part of the curved locking glass door. The back of the cabinet was mirrored glass. She got it in the mid sixties and kept all her favorite things in it for display.  She kept her Kewpie doll there.  She also collected crystal balls, snow babies, Madame Alexander Dolls, antiques and highly breakable things.  Its amazing that this cabinet outlived her considering there were so many erratic toddlers and crazy, violent people that stormed through the living room over the 20 plus years that it stood there.

I don't remember when the cabinet came to Eagle Street.  Looking through family photos, I have concluded, based on photo dates, that early 1965 is the likely time of its addition to the household. I was four years old. Mom was obsessed with the gold cabinet.  She liked to pose me and the younger kids in front of it for photo opportunities.  Mostly, she posed us so that we would be looking at the cabinet. Like this:

Tammy

And this:

 Mom liked to take naked photos of her kids.  I respectfully gave them cover here

 Lynda is the only person who knows where this cabinet came from.  Here is her story:

"Mom and I answered an ad in the newspaper for something. I don't remember what we originally went to look at.  When we got to the woman's house, Mom and the woman immediately got along pretty well, and the woman was showing Mom some of her prized possessions.  One of these possessions was the gold cabinet.  There was also lots of expensive jewelry.  As they visited, the woman started opening up about why she had so much stuff.  She had embezzled from her employer to get extra money and went on a big shopping spree, and now she didn't know what to do.  She was starting to get very worried that she was going to get caught and go to jail.

Mom, who was really good at sizing up her opportunities, figured out real fast that she could take advantage of this woman's situation.The woman was particularly worried that if the cops caught her, she would lose her gold cabinet.  She said she didn't really care about the jewelry or any of the other stuff, but no matter what, she did not want anything happening to her precious cabinet.  Mom promised she would help her if something happened.

Suddenly, some police showed up at her door.  They would not let us leave, but Mom convinced them that she was the woman's friend, and we were there because we were picking up Mom's cabinet to bring it back to our house. She told the cops that that cabinet had been placed there temporarily to showcase the crystal that was being sold at a crystal party that Mom had arranged at the woman's house. (Home parties for crystal and Tupperware were the rage in the sixties)  The woman picked up on the story and affirmed that she had just borrowed it for the crystal party, and that it was not hers.  The cops took the woman in another room and began to question her, while mom grabbed handfuls of jewelry and pocketed it.

We moved the cabinet out to our car as the cops handcuffed the crying woman and put her in the police car.   We drove off with the woman's prized cabinet and alot of the jewelry that she probably bought with the embezzled money, and the cops had no idea that mom just stole a lot of expensive stuff.

We saw the story on the news.  I don't remember the amount of the embezzlement, but it was alot of money.  Amazingly, Mom, after seeing the news report, took me back out to the scene of the crime to see if there was anything else she could steal.  But the house was yellow-taped, and even Mom was afraid to break into the house.  I am sure that if  Skip had been with us, she would have sent him inside.

 The woman eventually was sent to prison for many years.

Mom always told me that she would give me the cabinet one day, because I was the only one who knew how we got it, and that it was a secret that I could never tell to anyone.

Mom made money off that woman.  Many times, we would go to a downtown jewelry store and sell some of it the jewelry. I don't know how much money she got for the stuff, but Mom was always so happy after those trips to the jewelry store.

After Mom died in 1986, Tabatha took the cabinet.  She sold it for a couple hundred bucks."

Thanks for an incredible story, Lynda!  For anyone who knew Mom, this is entirely believable and a good example of her usual Sociopathic personality.