The young readers book begins like any good tale.
“A good many years ago there were three little girls who lived in a small town on the Sabine River in the southeast corner of Texas…Their house was a rambling brown one with a wide lawn facing Green Avenue. At one end of the Avenue was the corner that must be turned before you could get to the post office. Beyond Post Office Corner, across a street or two of stores and office buildings, was the river, widening out at that point for its entrance, not so very far away, into the Gulf of Mexico.”
In 1941, Harper & Brothers Publishing, had hopes sisters Claire, Carey and Katherine-Ann would become the city version of the Ingalls sisters in the “Little House” series that the company also published.
“Rings on Her Fingers” by Orange native Janette Sebring Lowrey never had the popularity or the long life of the Ingalls, but the novel about the young sisters gives a glimpse of a charmed upper-middle-class life in Orange more than a century ago.
The novel has been out of print for years, though other of Lowrey’s books are still in print. She wrote the story for “The Pokey Little Puppy,” one of the original Golden Books. It has never been out of print and is one of the best-selling children’s books of all times.
The Orange Public Library has a copy of “Rings on Her Fingers,” but it cannot be checked out. However, patrons may request the book at the desk and read it there.
Lowrey would’ve been familiar with the gentile life in Orange at the turn of the 19th Century. She was born in Orange on March 2, 1892, which would have meant she was nine years old the summer of 1901, when the novel is set.
She grew up with sisters in a house on Green Avenue, which was where the new houses, including numerous mansions, were built as the town moved northward from the river.
“In those days Green Avenue was not paved. It was made, instead, of sand and gravel, closely packed. Winding between trees, as it did, it looked in some lights like a faintly golden ribbon with a green scalloped border,” Lowrey poetically wrote.
Her father was Professor R.R. Sebring, the superintendent of public schools. In 1902, the Orange schools had 769 total students, though black and white schools were separate, according to the Orange Daily Tribune. Lowrey’s mother was one of the founders of the Ladies Shakespeare Club, which developed into the Woman’s Club of Orange.
The three sisters like to watch the older boy, Johnnie Parks, age 13, ride in his basket cart pulled by a Shetland pony. An on-going joke with the girls is that they call him “Ponnie Jarks” because one sister excitedly said it that way. They want a pony and decide to save their money to buy one. A plan revolves around selling their little gold rings with gems, given as gifts, to buy the pony. The rings end up getting lost and found.
The boy could have been inspired by H.J. Lutcher Stark, who also lived on Green Avenue, though some say the boy was Johnny Hart, the son of another prominent citizen. The desire for the pony and the escapades with the rings take the girls on adventures through town.
One of their trips is to Sunday school and church. They walk down Green around Post Office Corner, which would have been at Fifth and Main, and on the plank walks to the river. “There was the church with the Sabine River shining beyond it.” The church was likely the original woodframe Presbyterian Church on Market Street by the river.
“Buggies and surreys and runabouts and victorias stood at the long hitching rail” of the church. Lowrey names the styles of horse-drawn vehicles of the day. The novel includes “Captain Henderson” getting the first automobile in town, delivered from Beaumont.
However, the girls’ papa says the automobile “is a rich man’s toy. Never will take the place of the horse and buggy; too impractical.”
The girls travel on the Bayou Road beyond the houses and see the huge trees, ferns and palmettos. The illustrator Janice Holland provided several black and white drawings along with color illustrations.
On the Fourth of July, the girls go with family and friends to Sabine Lake. Mrs. Curry, Mrs Parks, Captain Simms and the Bancrofts had houses along the “clear, sandy stretch” of the lake. Family servants took the dray (a wagon) for the trip “with suitcases, boxes of sandwiches and cake and baked ham and fried chicken.”
The “lake houses looked alike,” Lowrey wrote. All had a wide open hall with bedrooms on the sides. Everyone slept under “mosquito bars,” a pyramid of net to put over the bed each night and tuck into the sides to keep out the pesky suckers.
The men went out in a sailboat in the dark “to fish for Gulf trout and redfish.” Girls had “bathing dresses” made of mohair.”
The younger ones go grabbing and floudering at night, using “a gunny sack and stickers, long wooden spears. They also crab.
Music is an important part of family life for the girls. They take turns practicing piano for 30 minutes a day. Friends come by and sing. Toward the end, they put their talents on a show at the Opera House. Orange’s Opera House downtown was on Division at Sixth Street, where Farmers Mercantile is today. The show includes piano, recitations and singing.
Unfortunately, Sonny Boy Henderson, who is always getting in trouble, lives up to his reputation during the show. To raise money to buy two Belgian hares, he buys a bulk of roasted peanuts, divides them up and sells them by the bags. The sound of “cracking and popping” goes throughout the audience. “Eating in the Opera House!” Then one of the rabbits gets out of a cage and goes on stage.
One of the girls’ friends is Miss Sophronia, who lives on a limited income and breaks her spectacles. The girls decide to use their rings to buy her new glasses. But instead, their family friend Dr. Parrish gets Miss Sophronia spectacles and the girls get to keep their rings.
At the end, the girls get their pony, of course. Johnnie has grown big enough to get his own horse and gives the girls his pony and cart.
-Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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