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Serial #0207

Iron Lady Looking Glass 

The lady has been gone over fifty years now. Her house, still regal and proud, even as it slowly weathers in, sits high above the cut of Antelope Creek. Black branches of creek elm and locust protect the secrets of the old house.

In the early 1890s she married an Englishman who had cowboyed his way south from Kansas. They filed on the Antelope Creek land and he hauled lumber from the railhead thirty miles south to build her a house. With large dormers pointing to the four directions, a wide porch, high ceilings, and wide moldings, the house impressed all who saw it.

Her Englishman died a few years after the house was completed. She stayed on the place, raising thoroughbreds and cattle, breaking her own horses, and doing all of the chores. She owned a black Lincoln Zephyr, though she never learned to drive, and would hire a young neighbor to drive her to town when she needed supplies.

All of the painted parts of the Iron Lady Looking Glass are recycled from the four dormer house: blue from the large front room, yellow from an upstairs bedroom, and black trim cut from the remains of the screen door. Rust-striped Tennessee V-drain tin is used for the back panels, and amber mica encloses the top of the Looking Glass.