When we purchased an old house in the historic district of Jonesborough, we found the house just as the old lady had left it when she entered the nursing home to spend her final days. Food was still on the table, the bed unmade, all her worldly belongings were just as she had left them. When I set to the task of cleaning out the attic, which was the last part of the old 1920 house to clean, I kept thinking of a story told in our faculty lounge to a group of burned-out, worn-out teachers by an old "teller of war stories" fellow teacher. His story was about the optimist and the pessimist who were both given the task of cleaning out a barn that had not been cleaned in some time. They were both given a shovel and told to get to work. In a moment the pessimist threw his shovel away in disgust and left the barn. The optimist just smiled, picked up his shovel and said, "With this much stuff in here there must be a pony somewhere!" Upon which he went heartily to work!

As I worked on the project of cleaning out years of accumulated plastic flower arrangements from the dead son's grave, years of old Christmas decorations, old clothes and the like, I was beginning to wonder if I would ever find the PONY! In the very back of the attic with the very last group of things to take down to the borrowed town dump truck, I found large cardboard boxes. These were so large they had to be unpacked to move down the steep stairs.

When I began to unpack the boxes I found it, MY PONY, in the form of feed sack upon feed sack with the seams very carefully opened up, the string saved, the sacks washed and folded evenly. What a joy to find these old prints! Some had to be over 60 years old! Looking at these prints, you think of the old lady, Onnie the saver of fabric, who once scooped chicken feed from feed sacks and carefully saved the fabric for me to find and share!

The attic where I found the feed sacks has now been converted into a bedroom, bath, and MY very own sewing room. Sometimes I think I can feel the presence of Onnie in the old house and I think she must have a smile upon her face as she observes the many students of quilting who come and go through her old house.