“Wow! Look at that!” I said as I looked into the scope of one of my favorite items. I was playing with the stereopticon, with my sister. When I looked through the eyeholes, I saw a normal photograph blown up in visually stunning three dimensional shapes. A picture of a magnificent room filled with animal pelts occupied my vision.

“I bet this used to be a king’s bedroom!” I said.

“James, Lauren, time for dinner!” I heard my dad calling for me, but I barely paid attention. I was too wrapped up in looking at the 3 D objects. After a brief period of time, I left to go eat dinner.

“What took you so long, James?” my mom wondered aloud.

“I was playing with the stereopticon,” I replied. “Where did that come from? It looks very old.”

“It was a big part of my mother’s childhood; it was her first real present given to her by her mother. I will tell you the story my grandma told me of how she got this antique for her daughter.”

The farmhouse was stinking with the smell of cow manure and rotten wood. However, it was filled with many different kinds of strange trinkets and treasures. I had my eye on one in particular. It seemed like something my science class and daughter would enjoy. I looked around and saw that there weren’t very many people there; nowhere was too crowded in Dysart, Iowa, especially with the war, which was luckily drawing to a close. My husband and some of my neighbors were off on the Eastern front against the Germans. The auctioneer set out a variety of antiques. He began to auction off all of the different items. The first one was an old bicycle, covered in rust. Barely anyone held any interest, including me.

“Sold! For ten dollars!”

The auctioneer picked out another item. It was a beautiful jeweled tiara, fit for a princess, which the people gathered gazed at with amazement, marveling at the treasure. I had no interest in it. Growing up as a farm girl, I only valued items with a function, not for beauty. But there was one exception, my wedding ring. It was the only item in the world that I acknowledged for its startling magnificence.

“One hundred fifty, two fifty, three hundred, three fifty, three fifty going once, going twice, sold! Three hundred and fifty dollars! To the woman in the blue dress!”

The auctioneer, pulled out the next object.

“Ladies and gentlemen, this item is a 19th century stereopticon. It is a device with the ability to make two dimensional pictures appear three dimensional. It is an advance of photographic technology that will blow your mind! It comes with over eighty photos taken in the 1800’s.”

This was the one I had my eye on earlier. I was so excited to try to bring something great home for my science class, and my new baby, Jane. I couldn’t wait to see the looks on the faces of my science students, and I knew Jane would come to enjoy and appreciate it as she grew older.

“There’s twenty, now thirty, forty, and fifty!

I started to feel a little nervous, knowing I had only brought seventy five dollars.

“Sixty five!” I yelled.

“Seventy!”

It was the woman in the blue dress, who bought the tiara. I felt a sense of disappointment. There was no way I could outbid a wealthy woman like that. However, I yelled out, “Seventy five!” nonetheless. “Seventy five going once, going twice, sold! To the woman in the brown jacket!”

I felt a great sense of satisfaction as I took the object out of the auctioneer’s hand, and strode quickly out the door. When I stepped into my old and rusty Ford Model T, I felt a rush of satisfaction. I would soon head home to show my girl her new treasure.

I walked into the old, but clean farmhouse and into the living room. My eldest son was holding baby Jane. When I walked in, I gave him a kiss, and said, “How was babysitting Jane?”

“Rough,” he replied, “But it was fun playing with her. What’s that in your hand?”

“It’s a stereopticon, here look through the eyeholes,”

“Wow! The picture is poppin’ out at my face! Let’s show baby Jane!”

We brought the antique right up to the baby, and held it up to her small eyes. The baby giggled and giggled until tears came out of her eyes. It made me wonder if the baby knew what she was looking at. As she grew, she really did come to love that stereopticon, as well as many other old scientific objects, sparking her interest in becoming a science teacher.

“So that’s the story of the stereopticon,” my mom said after dinner while we were sipping tall glasses of iced tea, looking out on the woods surrounding our house.

I soon went back inside to look at the stereopticon. I looked into the big three dimensional images from the device. I then wondered if I would ever give my kids a nice present like a stereopticon.