A piece and a memory of a flea market find.

Jewelry, I love it.  I just finished an article for the Prairieland Buzz about using jewelry as my travel souvenir, a practice I started long ago.  This necklace though is special, it stands out not only because of it’s beauty, but because of the story behind it.

This last summer we traveled to Pinckneyville, Illinois to a flea market at the American Thresher’s Reunion.  Pinckneyville is special to me because I was born here, and my father was a teacher for a very short time in the nearby town of Nashville.

While at the flea market, I spied this lovely bauble but deemed it too pricey for my pocketbook at the time.  While it was not out of line, I was reluctant to buy something that I truly didn’t need although I lamented loudly that I wanted it.

I told my husband Keith about it and we went on.  Our friends the Elliots were at the show and Jane and I went our way and Keith and Kent went theirs.  It wasn’t until November on my birthday when I opened a lovely velvet box that I found this necklace inside.

Keith had looked all over the flea market for this necklace and finally found the one he thought was it.  He struck pay dirt with me.  This piece is so lovely.  I had a larger clasp put on it and our local jeweler thought it was European and hand made.

While the beauty of the necklace, at least in my eyes, is undisputable, it is the fact that Keith searched the flea market for it for me, when this is a place that carries many treasures he holds dear.  This could have been the wrong piece, or the ugliest piece ever, but the fact that he searched it out for me when tractors, toys and farm literature abounded, would have made it special indeed no matter what he brought home.

The fact that is was THE NECKLACE was just the icing on the cake.