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wrung their necks herself), hearty soups, and fresh eggs.
    When I was a girl, Lucy rented part of the workroom to Zeke Salvini, a longtime family friend who sold linoleum. This arrangement was one of the small sidebar businesses she had through the years to supplement what she made sewing for a little extra pocket money. Along one wall of her workroom, Zeke stored big rolls of linoleum. Zeke gave me small, square samples of linoleum on a chain to play with. I think he may be partially responsible for my lust for interior decorating and subsequent swatch addiction.
    Lucy lost her wedding band in the workroom in the late 1960s when she was cutting a pattern. She was bereft, so Zeke took every one of the linoleum rolls (some twelve feet high) and unrolled them, looking for the ring. They never found it.
    It’s hard to believe it now, but Lucy was in her mid-seventies that summer. She did not seem her age at all, as she still worked full-time. She turned the shoe repair shop into a showroom to sell shoes after my grandfather died, keeping the sewing business going in the back. After my grandfather died, she thought about having another shoemaker come in and run the shop, but decided against it. She found additional sources of income, keeping the books for a local ice company.
    Lucy told me she felt lucky that her family lived above the shop, because she could run her business and tend to her family simultaneously. She also relied on her extended family of friends: the Ongaro, Uncini, Sartori, and Latini families looked out for her children, as she did for theirs. Lucy was far from her parents and blood family, but built a community of support around herself and her children. This was a key aspect to raising a successful family alone.

    Olga Bonanto and Lucy in Chisolm, Minnesota, circa 1940.
    Outside the showroom, a hallway led up a flight of steep, wide steps to the second floor, which was home. A window set into the wall of the kitchen (a lot like the one in the wall between the shoe shop and sewing room downstairs) overlooked the stairs, so Lucy could see who was at the entrance. These windows were time savers, and for the efficient, organized Lucy, raising a family alone and working, every moment was essential, as was security. These windows helped her screen who was coming in and out of the building.
    While the building was simple in design, and surely Lucy kept it that way, one element was grand and unforgettable. Throughout her home, the ceilings were fitted with skylights in the kitchen, the bedroom, and the bath. These windows provided light, and could be propped open for fresh air, but they also served as frames for the sky, which became a moving work of art through them. The Minnesota sky would float overhead, tufts of clouds on endless blue. During storms, when the sky turned black, the lighting was magnificent to observe through the glass—after they’d been bolted shut, of course, to keep out the rain.
    The living room faced Main Street. Long and rectangular, it was hemmed by a series of windows. Lucy had a long sofa and chairs in simple, durable beige wool fabric that faced a television set, and a fabulous ottoman, in circus-tent stripes, burgundy and beige leather with black piping, that I loved to play on.
    Next to the living room was a hallway that connected to the front bedroom and, down the back of the building, to a kitchen on the right and another bedroom across from it.
    The kitchen was all white. The skylight was centered over the table, surrounded by bright white enamel appliances. The kitchen table, a rectangle four by six feet, sat on a single engraved pedestal painted white, with matching chairs. The suite was a gift of the Morzenti family in Buhl, to express gratitude that Lucy had taken in their daughter when her mother was ill. Lucy told me that when she came to Chisholm, and through the years, that immigrant families coped by banding together, and doing for one another what family would