My sister, Lila, lived with Wayne and me for two years while completing high school at Byron. She received many graduation gifts at the end of her senior year in 1951. One gift was a large bottle of cologne from our cousin Velma and Harold Miller. It meant a lot to Lila because as we two girls were growing up and times were hard, expensive perfume was never on our list of needs. Perfume was considered a luxury, not a necessity for us.

Since Lila slept on our couch in our small one bedroom home, she kept the bottle of cologne on top of my dresser. A short time later, I spent a few days at the hospital and Lila stayed with relatives. I came home first and smelled a strong odor of perfume in the house and was puzzled why, but did not check further into it. Lila came home the next day and when she went to use her cologne, she discovered that about one third of it was gone. She was quite upset and asked me why I had used so much of her perfume. I told her I had not even opened the bottle. I asked Wayne about it and he said while we were gone some of our friends came to visit. While he and the husband went out to milk, the wife was left in the house. He noted he had also smelled a strong perfume scent when he came back to the house too. By adding these things together, we decided we knew where the perfume went, but could not figure how she took it with her. The lady was well known around the community for taking things.

A couple of days later, when I opened my medicine drawer, I noticed a bottle of my vitamin pills was missing. We were almost positive that was our clue as to how the lady transported her stolen goods home. On Wednesdays, we took turns visiting each other’s homes to play cards, so when it was our turn to play cards at the couple’s house, Lila went along. We planned for her to slip into the lady’s bedroom and look for the bottle of perfume. She found it! Lila noted how full it was so we devised a plan how to get it back and get even with our thief at the same time. It took another two Wednesdays to put our plan in motion. We emptied another like bottle and put the same amount of liquid in it. We chose vinegar! Same color… different fragrance!

The next time we played cards at the friend’s house, Lila switched the bottles while we were occupied playing cards. She slipped in and out of their bedroom not being noticed and back into where we were, giving me the OK sign. It was hard for me to keep a straight face the rest of the evening. We still laugh at how the lady must have splashed the vinegar on her before realizing it was not the stolen perfume and wondering why it had turned to vinegar. After all of these years, I often wonder if she ever figured out what Lila and I did.