Memories Discovered Here at Second Chance

Pogo Sticks. Johnny Was hand-me-down jackets. Nifty food processors that make the best V-8 juice. These you can find at Second Chance, our beloved thrift store whose popularity defies explanation.

Nostalgia––that you can also find. Just ask Stephanie Ruckert.

Stephanie is the owner/ founder of a full-service interior design company located in the Woodlands but also serving Fayette County. She was raised here but traveled the globe as a world-class barefoot water skier.

While browsing the Second Chance aisles last Saturday, she came upon an object that stopped her cold. It was an old trunk. Not just any trunk but one that unleashed a stampede of memories––memories of her youth growing up here in La Grange. It was an exact replica, except in coloration, of her MeMaw’s trunk parked stoically at the foot of her grandma’s bed.

It wasn’t there to hold her grandmother’s handmade quilts necessarily––though those were in there too. It served as the repository of her childhood dreams and her imagination, particularly her writings. It was where her grandmother kept her grandchildren’s handmade artwork and Stephanie’s dress-up raiment. It held all the paraphernalia manifest in a young girl’s character, persona, her view of the world. (I think of my junior high J.C. Higgins baseball glove that I will NOT give away to this day.) We all know, these gems of our early development take on an evocative patina in later life; they are like old friends who meant everything to us once upon a time. And, then we’d moved on.

Though she’d not seen her grandmother’s trunk for many years, her uncle, restaurateur Mike Ballow of Stephenville, had. In fact, he inherited it.

By enormous coincidence, the day she first saw the Second Chance trunk was the day Ballow sent her a text about the grandmother’s trunk. His text included photos of a threepage remembrance of her Me-Maw’s life. The author: none other than Stephanie herself written as a paean to her mother’s mother. It is dated Oct. 1, 1987, when Stephanie was in middle school.

Reading the 37-year-old memoir, one can sense how much the teenager adored her grandmother. Just as one can see––as she plans to paint, stain, and refinish the new trunk to resemble the old one––how the now adult businessperson cherishes the memories the Second Chance discovery affords.

I’m betting the new trunk is gonna end up stoically at the foot of Stephanie’s bed.

The Second Chance Emporium is a magical place that brings bargains to folks and is the backbone of our community charities. But it can also rekindle fond memories of those who meant everything to us.

It’s special like that.

(More information about Stephanie’s interior design services can be had at: stephanieruckert. com.)