A ring, yellow roses & a Flying Cloud

It was Christmas 1929 and when Mitzi arrived home her mother had some news for her. There was a small package for her on the Christmas tree. It was a box from Steve, whom she had met at the St. Stephen of Hungary Catholic Church during Easter that year. Steve's sister Helen had taken Mitzi for a nice visit to their home in June of that year, and Mitzi and Steve had gotten further acquainted. Now this gift awaited her on the Christmas tree, accompanied by a dozen yellow roses.

She opened the box to find a friendship ring from Steve with a sapphire stone. In the months following that Christmas, the two exchanged letters. Steve came to visit Mitzi's family's home several times, always arriving in his Reo Flying Cloud automobile with loud "cut-outs" on the exhaust, as Mitzi remembers.

It was only six months after she received the Christmas friendship ring that Mitzi and Steve were married. A beautiful outdoor reception was held for the guests, complete with an arbor made just for the occasion by her father. According to Mitzi's sister Wilma, "He had brought fresh sapling trees from the nearby forest to place into holes dug into the yard to shade the wedding feast. They looked as though they grew there."

Mitzi's mother and a friend made all the food for the reception. It was a beautiful day in 1930 for this eighteen-year-old bride and her twenty-five-year-old groom and their families.


The wedding celebrated, the reception waning, the couple drove off to their honeymoon - in the same Reo Flying Cloud.

Minus the "loud cut-outs".

Image of the 1927 Reo Flying Cloud Sedan ad courtesy of John's Old Car and Truck Ads.

The topic for this post was inspired by Thomas MacEntee's Advent Calendar of Christmas Memories at Destination: Austin Family. Check out his calendar daily this month for some good mini-memoirs of this nostalgic season. This post will be listed under Christmas Gifts on December 10.

This article has also been included in Tim Greenman's virtual Cabinet of Curiosities (1st impression, part 2 version) on December 17. Step on over for a good show as Tim raises the curtain on some other interesing curiosities including dolls, a watch, lace, a stool, and winged cats (?!), all with good stories behind them.