he 13 (5 Story
Esther Rube knows her
trolls are not exactly
• entrants for the Miss
America contest.
For Esther Rube,
doll collecting
is a family
tradition.
Elizabeth Applebaum
AppleTree Editor
7/31
1998
72 Detroit Jewish News
en st er Rube
became pregnant with
her first-child, her
mother, Katie, stepped forward
with a promise: "If you have a
girl, she can have my collection:-
And what a collection — dolls,
hundreds of them — from the turn
of the century to the present. Plas-
tic infants, swathed in cloth dia-
pers, from the 1940s, Madame
Alexander collectibles, a Little Lulu,
delicate figures with music boxes,
a stuffed Bugs Bunny.
Esther had a boy.
The next time her daughter
became pregnant, Katie again
made an offer. Have a girl, she
told Esther, and "I'll think about let-
ting her have my collection."
Esther had another boy.
By the time Esther became preg-
nant for the third time (it would be
another boy), Katie had had too
much time to think it over.
"Forget it," she told her daugh-
ter. "I don't care what you have.
I'm keeping the collection."
Though Katie died years ago,
she would no doubt be pleased to
see that her daughter watches
over the doll collection with as
much love and care as she herself
once did. Lulu, Bugs and the rest
of their pals rest comfortably in
glass cases or stand well-protect-
ed on tables in the living room, in
Esther Rube's Southfield home.
Mrs. Rube has added a twist of
her own: trolls. There was this
empty shelf upstairs, she explains,
and she put one troll on it, then
she saw another troll and another
.•:
Thankfully, she doesn't try to
pass them off as beautiful or even
cute.
"They're so ugly," she says.
"And they're worth absolutely
nothing." She admits collecting
them is "a sickness." Her husband