Nellie Scott

I have some rather vivid recollections of being in Nellie Scott’s home. She was not as neat a housekeeper as my mother and the little table in her kitchen was always littered with traces of the last meal — crumbs etc. — with the ubiquitous salt and pepper shakers always in evidence. These were always put away in the cupboard after the meal was over at home.

Nellie had the kind of stereopticon device for viewing pictures that gives the illusion of depth perception and she let us look at these.



Stereopticon viewer

She subscribed to a women’s magazine called the Delineator http://www.magazineart.org/magazines/d/delineator.html as I seem to remember and this magazine contained a page (I guess in each issue) of cut-out paper dolls. She let us have these after she had read the reverse of the page. The reverse never contained any advertising material.



Cover of Delineator magazine, December 1931

Nellie was a small, stooped lady, I suppose that she suffered from osteoporosis although at that time I don’t think it was recognized for what it was. Her relatives sort of “sponged” on her particularly in times of economic stress as during the Depression years. I don’t know what she lived on. Eventually she lost her home (sometime after our family moved to the Peterson farm). She lived out her days in a sort of ramshackle house at the west end of town. She apparently died in her sleep maybe from hypothermia. Anyway somebody noticed she wasn’t being seen and investigated. This I have secondhand as I had left Iowa by then.