xt72ng4gns8z https://exploreuk.uky.edu/dips/xt72ng4gns8z/data/mets.xml The Frontier Nursing Service, Inc. 1948 bulletins English The Frontier Nursing Service, Inc. Contact the Special Collections Research Center for information regarding rights and use of this collection. Frontier Nursing Service Quarterly Bulletins The Quarterly Bulletin of The Frontier Nursing Service, Inc., Vol. 23, No. 4, Spring 1948 text The Quarterly Bulletin of The Frontier Nursing Service, Inc., Vol. 23, No. 4, Spring 1948 1948 2014 true xt72ng4gns8z section xt72ng4gns8z The Quarterly Bulletm
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The Fr0r1t1er Nursmg SSIVICG, Inc.
VOLUME 23 SPRING, 1948 NUMBER 4
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MARY BRECKINRIDGE
Editor of the Quarterly Bulletin of the Frontier Nursing Service
Printed in response to requests .
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THE QUARTERLY BULLETIN or THE ERONTIER Nunsmc SERVICE, nm.
Published Quarterly by the Frontier Nursing Service, Lexington, Ky.
Subscription Price $1.00 Per Year
VOLUME 23 SPRING, 1948 NUMBER 4 ,
"Entered as second-class matter June 30, 1926, at the Post Office at Lexington, Ky.,
under Act of March 3, 1879."
Copyright, 1948, Frontier Nursing Service, Inc.

E
INDEX
ARTICLE AUTHOR PAGE
:· A Few Notes on Nursing Mary Breckinridge 3
E, Beyond the Mountains 47
g s Coniiuence by Jeep? Nancy Newcomb 52
Field Notes 54
Initiation of a Tenderfoot Adelheid Mueller 29
Kentucky’s Frontier Nursing Service Yeh Shih Chin, M.D. 42
Letters from Wendover Margaret M cD0well `" 7
Old Courier News 23
Old Staff News 35
Spring (Picture) Inside Back Cover ,
Spring (Verse) George MacDonald 2
Urgent Needs A 19
BRIEF BITS
A Prayer Thomas Ellwood 46
( Broken Dream Tramp 53
Come to Your Senses 52
l Danish Kringle (A Recipe) 22
I Good Advice 41
I Joe Saw the Train 33
Just Jokes, Reasons Given 33
V Little Greenflies The Countryman 33
I V Mary Russell (Photograph) 18
I Rain Hats (Cartoons) Bertha Bloomer 34
Three Friends (Photograph) 63
True Tales 28
_ White Elephant (I1lus.) 51
`I

G I5?
T SPRING
Through all The {og, Through all ear’rh`s winlery sighs,
I sceni Thy spring, l {eel rhe elernal air,
Warm, soil: and dewy, Tilled wirh Tlowery eyes, i
Ancl genlle. murmuring moiions everywhere——
· Of life in hear+, and Tree, ancl lorool<, and moss; ‘
· Thy brearh wakes beauiy, love. and bliss, ancl prayer,
And slrengih To hang wi+h nails upon Thy cross. l T
—Th,e Diary of an Old Soul
by George MacDonald, 1824-1905 V
London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. l
Centenary Edition, 1924. ll
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FRoN·r1ER Nuasmc smzvrcn 2
T A FEW NOTES ON NURSING
by an old nurse
st? I
" There is a tendency in nursing at the moment towards
standardization in certain fixed patterns. Modern nursing owes
its remarkable growth to experimentation. For this growth to
continue it is necessary to avoid rigidity. Inflexibility is some-
o thing we all of us have to avoid as persons and in our professions.
Arnold Toynbee says in his A Study of History that differ-
_ entiation is the mark of growth and standardization is the mark
pf of disintegration. One need not lack standards in avoiding stand-
L _ ardization, just as one need not lack unity in avoiding uniformity.
Just as there is a minimum in shelter, food, and clothing,
and in education, which should form the standards below which
{ no part of a civilized community should be allowed to fall, and
above which the sky is the limit, so there should always be in
{ nursing basic standards below which no schools of nursing
should be allowed to fall but above which experimentation should
’ continue to be encouraged. In graduate work experimentation
should be fostered wherever there is an outlet for it.
The same principle holds good in professional organizations
of nurses. There is no objection to any group of nurses inter-
ested in some particular phase of nursing, such as industrial
nursing, having their own organization where they can discuss
I their own problems. To set such an organization into a rigid
l mold to conform in its structure to other organizations, formed
3 for other purposes, tends towards uniformity. Unity is hindered
rather than served by uniformity.
p Nowhere is there greater need for flexibility, variation, than
i in the laudable effort to get co-operation in nurses’ professional .
,, organizations. Rigidity in structure, especially if the form
adopted is final, will block progress at the top.
li Itis good to encourage several types of nursing training,
li such as:
ki (1) The training school attached to the large hospitals or

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4 THE QUARTERLY BULLETIN _ j
medical centres to which satisfactory graduates from
high school are eligible. q
(2) The collegiate school, if one bears in mind that a col-
» lege graduate needs as much general nursing training i
( as a high school graduate. If. her ultimate aim is teach- [
ing or supervision, she needs more general training Y
rather than less, because she should not teach or super-
vise any subject that she does not know better than the j`
nurses under her know it. The practice field for nurses ,
is the patient. The person who supervises or teaches ` ·
other nurses must know this practice field better than
they do. No amount of biology or chemistry can take
the place of this first hand knowledge of the patient. 24
(3) A third method of training nurses should offer a great ,
deal for the future. This is the course in a university it
with which one or more hospitals are affiliated, and g i
which leads to a Bachelor’s degree and a diploma in g
nursing in five years. The student taking this course
should spend her first two, immature years in the uni- Q
versity and her three years of added maturity in the jg?
training school with such further lectures given as she {
needs to qualify both for the Bachelor’s degree and the li;
nursing diploma. ,
(4) It is good that the experimentation we have encouraged
in the training of nurses includes other methods besides
the three just outlined. Many nurses are well trained
at small schools with aifiliations in larger hospitals for _
such branches of nursing as the small schools cannot
provide adequately. Other nurses are trained at chil- T
dren’s hospitals with affiliations for adult nursing. R
(5) There is another way in which nurses could be trained
and it would have the advantage of helping to meet
the present shortage. Nearly a year of a three years’ Q
course in training is now spent in affiliations and spe- Y
cializations. Nurses could be given thorough training T
in the general medical and surgical nursing of adults, ,
in two full years spent in a large general hospital. They
would be qualified at the end of that time for part I of T
r
?
{
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gg Faowrma NUi>.siN<; smavicn 5
Q their examinations for registration. They could be
{ employed, after they had passed these examinations,
? as staff nurses in large general hospitals and in private
duty for the nursing of sick adults. A third year would
{ be required for nurses who wished to take part II of
*¤ their examinations. ,This third year need not follow
{ immediately after the first two years. If a nurse needed
fl _ to earn money for a year or two before taking her third
, year, she could do it. The third year would include
. obstetrical nursing, the nursing of sick children, and
A such affiliations as visiting nursing. The nurse who
went through this third year and passed part II of
if her examinations would be registered for all branches
, of nursing.
This method of training nurses might, or might not, do
- away with the need for the licensed attendant or so-called prac-
tical nurse. Theoretically such a nurse is supposed to be able
to care for chronics, leaving the fully trained nurse free for
ii. acutely ill people. In practice the tendency is for thewealthy
j chronic to have three fully trained nurses, and the poor patient
to struggle with part time "practical nursing." The sick person
gi of limited means, when he is not hospitalized, is better cared for
V by a visiting nurse association where nurses of the highest
J caliber are able to teach his family and friends to give him satis-
factory care between their visits.
III
i, When it comes to graduate training and graduate employ-
ment every encouragement should be given to experimentation.
A wide variety of choices should be open to the graduate nurse
e i who wanted to go on with her education and she should never
be allowed to feel a sense of rigidity and inflexibility that would
A. make her toe the line. This is too large a subject to cover in a
@7 memorandum, but nurses who have struggled to put over an
· experimental field of work have had to face handicaps in their
` own profession that should not have been there.
, A few ideas for the future may be briefly suggested. First,
'_ in planning a national registration law there should be such
; flexibility that a good deal of latitude would be left to the State
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6 THE QUARTERLY BULLETIN Q
Boards of Nurse Examiners to meet the peculiarities of their
local situations. Young nurses could take. the national examina- _;
tions-—as physicians do—or could take their state boards——as »
physicians do. Every encouragement should be given for Cana- i
dian, British, European and Asiatic nurses of equivalent stand- {v
ards to find work in this country whether on a reciprocal basis *I
or as individuals under the quota system of the immigration I
laws. Since nurses are international-minded they should foster V
in their own laws everything that tends to pull down interna- - z
tional barriers. Efforts should be made to encourage periods of 5
work by American nurses in overseas countries. A rigid recip-
rocity should not be required. Certainly not at the present time. A
IV T
The one thing that should be kept before all nurses always J
is that their highest office is the care of the sick whether in a j
hospital or in the home, whether on a crowded city street or on
a remote creek in a rural area. Preventive work and teaching
work should grow out of the nursing of the sick. Skilled nursing V ;
care, demonstrated over a period of time, should precede teach- *3.
ing and supervision. Even one terribly sick patient carefully It
nursed on even one remote creek is a gold mine. Home nursing
and care of the sick are taught a whole neighborhood through _.
the care of that one patient. Furthermore a nurse who has done _.i
this, has demonstrated her skill to that neighborhood in such a i
manner that she then holds them in the hollow of her hand. I
She, having served them in what they recognize as an essential g
need, finds them willing to listen to advice about diet and sani-
tary privies; willing to take shots; and easily led to the preven-
tion of all preventable illness. In nursing, the prevention of
disease can rarely be divorced satisfactorily from the bedside
care of the patient. The patient will be with us always because
we cannot abolish birth and death. All we can ever do is widen
the span that lies between.
./fzmgy <@wr%1b24uk{ye
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FRONTIER NURSING SERVICE 7
LETTERS, FROM WENDOVER c
J ‘ I by `
4 : MARGARET4McDOWELL (··BoBB1E··)
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I BoBB1E Mcnowmmi AND CALICO
E Wendover, March 28, 1947
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INTRODUCTION FOR JUNIOR LEAGUERS ANYWHERE
[ by Frances Shaver, Mrs. Robert E. Shaver, editor of Lexington
Junior League publications in 1947, and a member of the Pub-
~. licity Committee for the Lexington Junior League:
» "I just wish each and every one of you could have heard
E the talk which Mary Breckinridge, director of the Frontier
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Nursing Service, gave to the Lexington Junior League members
at their general luncheon meeting on March 1, 1947. Then you
would have easily understood the eagerness with which one of
our provisionals, "Bobbie" McDowell, set out with her that
afternoon-—heading for Wendover, in the heart of the Kentucky ‘ ·
mountains, and a six weeks’ service period as courier and nurse’s *.
aide with the Frontier Nursing Service. I can no better give
you a personal eye-view into life up there than to present, in _;
full, the exciting, action-packed letters which Bobbie wrote to »
me during her stay in the Kentucky mountains last spring.
_ "Leaguers, meet Bobbie McDowell—Courier—Nurse’s Aide to L
the Frontier Nursing Service:"
Wendover, Kentucky
March 2., 1947 {
Dear Frances:
This is the only letter that I can remember that I haven’t {
had to splint my hand to a pen to make myself write. There is
so much to tell you of life at Wendover and of the Frontier {T
` Nursing Service itself that I shall probably end this epistle
chapters hence. .
You must have a thumbnail sketch of the events immedi— Q
ately following the League luncheon on March first. After Mrs.
Breckinridge had finished her speech to the League members,
she was anxious to start immediately for the mountains. Later "
I understood graphically her decision to make an early depar-
ture from Lexington.
Our posse, consisting of Mrs. Breckinridge, Jean Hollins,
who is the resident courier, Dorothy Buck, the assistant director LH
of nursing, and little old me began our journey. We drove to l
Hyden, Kentucky, in a car belonging to one of the couriers.
It started raining before we left Lexington and continued
throughout the trip. All the way up there had been considerable
conversation between the other three, who knew where we were _ Y
going, as to whether or not the river would be up. I noticed a
marked note of respect in their voices when they referred to .
"the River," but there was no way I could establish any remote L
relationship between this phantom body of water and the four

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{ Fnoiwimn Nuasmc; smzvicm 9
l of us on a concrete highway in a Ford roadster. I had no
thought of fear or even trepidation. No one can be afraid of
§ anything when they are with Mrs. Breckinridge. Her dynamic
character projects to you the knowledge that the potential
, I accomplishments of the future are too important to be detained
I by any obstacle which might present itself at the present time.
Jean Hollins took us out of Hyden on an unsurfaced mud
road and everyone, excepting myself, voiced in chorus the query,
· "Will ‘Bounce’ be at the tin garage ?" I had little time to wonder ‘
at this. We arrived at a tin garage by the roadside, no more-
no less, and I was perfectly convinced that av Pekinese dog,
§ "Bounce" by name, would emerge from its shelter to be added
lp to the passenger list of the car. But no! Jean stopped, climbed
§= out of the roadster, and said, "Let’s shift." That left me a bit
dazed, but I followed her out just to look like I knew what she
meant. By this time she had opened the garage doors and
revealed "Bounce," the only mechanism in the world which, to
gr my mind, has a soul—the jeep.
We transferred luggage, passengers, and` parcels to
g, "Bounce" by flashlight and started on down the mud road. At
the bottom of the next hill the road came to an abrupt end, and
E the only thing ahead was a healthy, gurgling stream. We took
g to the water and lurched down the creek. Eventually we came
to the mouth of the creek and, to my utter amazement, we
E turned and went straight across the river. By this time I knew
beyond any shadow of a doubt that Jean had only to tap
"Bounce" lightly on his right back fender with her riding crop,
and he would have jumped any fence in the county for her. She
propelled us across the ford in the river to the comparative
safety of a mountain road on the other side—a road which went
M straight up!
About a mile farther on we saw the warmth of the lighted
, windows of the "Big House" at Wendover. I know now that it
was then I first fell in love with the Frontier Nursing Service.
I felt its warmth long before I saw its tires.
` I After the most welcome supper I have ever eaten, I heaved
the body into bed and "died" until the next morning when I was
‘ awakened at seven. I dressed and arrived for breakfast at the
"Big House" by seven-thirty. By the time I had reached "mess"

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Q
I knew, beyond a doubt, the two most important articles of
clothing for any courier to take to Frontier Nursing Service-
blue jeans and a pair of long rubber boots that DON’T leak. ,
I had started from the house where I "bunk" in a pair of jodh- é
purs and jodhpur shoes and arrived at breakfast in a mud pack! _ ·
Breakfast over, Pat Mickle, another courier, and Jean Hol- *§
lins showed me through the duties of my job. First, we watered
all the horses and then groomed them for the day. If we found ,1
any horse hurt, sick, or otherwise incapacitated we treated him,
according to Jean’s instructions. Then, we went on any missions ,
of any sort that might be at hand, i.e., delivering messages,
taking a horse to someone who needed him, or fetching the l
mail. Our errands done, we exercised the horses until time to
brew tea. It is the courier’s job to fix tea for the whole staff
and serve it at 4:00 p.m. After that we watered the horses for
the night and our day was finished. i
While we were grooming the horses, Pat and Jean gave me {
an outline of what makes the organization tick. Wendover and i
its little village of buildings, which range from living quarters
to a blacksmith shop, houses the whole administrative staff of E
the Frontier Nursing Service. All the correspondence is done
here, all statistics`compiled—the whole Service is run from here. i
The Service consists of the Wendover administrative headquar-
ters, the Hyden Hospital and Frontier Graduate School of Mid-
wifery, and six outpost centers, each staffed by its own nurses, ;
who cover twelve nursing districts. I
Forgive me if I leave you and turn to the arduous task of _
lowering myself, section by section, into bed. I hadn’t been on ,
a horse in six months and believe me hundreds of muscles that `
have been sleeping peacefully for years are standing at atten-
tion for life, I think. V
Lots of love,
4 , BoBB1E. , %
March 17, 1947
Dear Frances: “
The most kaleidoscopic period of time imaginable has K
elapsed since last I wrote you. Furthermore, from my present
vantage point, I don’t anticipate any moment, day or night, that

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bears any similarity to any other moment I’ve ever experienced.
After a week of courier work at Wendover, Mrs. Breckin-
_ ridge offered me the opportunity of going out to the Beech
2 Fork Center, as a Nurse’s Aide, to work with the two nurse-
· midwives who cover the two Beech Fork districts. Mentally my
`vf saddle bags were packed, even before I said I would love to go.
As soon as the river was down low enough to cross, Pat
Mickle piloted me through the intricacies of the ford. With the
river behind us, "Boots," my horse, and I continued our journey.
¢ By the time we had covered the twelve miles between Wendover
` and the Center and forded the river again, I was as glad as
i "Boots" to see the little white pull-gate of the Center come into
view. As we approached the barn, I strongly suspected that
"Boots" and I were joined at the hip in a Siamese sort of way.
V, I was infinitely relieved to find that I could dismount, and my
ir mental processes registered no dismay at the fact that I was
{ walking on my knees when I led "Boots" into the barn.
I unsaddled, watered, groomed, and fed my horse. Then I
realized I was ravenously hungry myself. The nurses hadn’t
returned from their daily rounds, so I went to the house,
Q deposited my saddle bags in the nearest corner, and prepared
Q the most heavenly fried egg sandwich I have ever consumed.
But, in my state of starvation, I could have fried a nest egg,
5 covered it with two slices of bread, and unquestionably it would
» have tasted magnificent!
L It wasn’t long until I heard horses coming up the hill, which
- told me that the nurses were returning from their day’s work. I
; met them both, Louisa Chapman and Jane Sanders, by name, and
. from their first greeting they made me feel as if I were both
Y wanted and welcome. It was nearly five in the afternoon when
Q they arrived. After I found they had been in their saddles since
S eight that morning, I knew they shared my desire for an early
` dinner and lots of sleep. That night we had both. ,
i The next morning at breakfast, Louisa, better known as
E "Chappy," told me that she and Jane each had three women
due to deliver momentarily. As a consequence, we would prob-
j ably be busy.
It was decided that I should go with Jane and begin my
training in prenatal care of patients and postpartum care of

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12 THE QUARTERLY BULLETIN
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mothers and babies, which is done in the homes by the nurses
on their rounds each day. By the time I had collected "Boots,"
Jane was mounted. We started out on the day’s work. I won- · *`
dered as we rode up the creek bed and along the trail how a {
stranger such as I would be greeted in the homes. Just as the .,
various hesitancies which had been wandering around in my gy
head began to take concrete form, we arrived at the first home
we were to visit. We hitched our horses and heaved ourselves .
and our saddle bags up the mountain to the cabin. Jane was J
my salvation. She eliminated what might have been the awk- fi
ward moments of arrival by immediately introducing me to the ·
patient and her husband. As Jane began her routine of exam- _
ination, she explained to the patient that I had come to help 2
the nurses because they were so very busy. The girl smiled
up at me and said, "I’m glad you’re here to help our nurses. We
think a mighty lot of our nurses, and we know how hard they
work for us." i
It was at that moment I first knew the definition of the
Frontier Nursing Service—a bulwark of mercy to a people who
had lived unaided in a wilderness of pain. There were no more Y
doubts in my mind concerning the reception which awaited me
in the homes. The. fact that I was a stranger as an individual Q
was totally obliterated by the fact that I represented the F.N.S., g
and I was helping their nurse. §
Our visit completed, we mounted again, and proceeded on il
our way. I’ll never know whether the paths really became more
perilous as the day went on or whether my perspective just `
became progressively more cockeyed. One thing of which I was
convinced by the time we had completed five visits, and returned
home. Jane’s District was Leslie County. Chappy’s was bound _
to be in the next county because there wasn’t room for it in the gg
county we had covered that day! . Q
When we returned to the Center, Chappy was there and l
had hot, home-madedoughnuts and milk waiting for us. There
is no combination of words that will approach the accurate Y
description of how good they tasted after nine hours on District.
Later I drove Jane into Hyden in the jeep. She was headed for I
Lexington and a few days’ well-earned rest. When I returned J
Chappy and I had dinner and, realizing that neither of us would · i
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Fizoiwima Nuasma smevicia is
Y} be ver·y scintillating conversationalists in our drowsy condition,
we succumbed to the temptation of bed.
u I was abruptly brought to a semi-conscious state of wake-
fulness at five a.m. with the sensation that I had been sleeping
" in the iniield of Churchill Downs and had been awakened by the
I field of horses in the second race passing the quarter pole inches
from my bed. I couldn’t reconcile any of the sounds I heard
[ with an expectant father’s arrival to get a nurse for his wife,
5 but I lurched out of bed, into a jacket, and out to the kitchen
‘l door in one continuous movement. As I poked my head out the
' I door, Chappy rounded the corner of the house, running a bad l
· third in the race. Her long blonde hair was flying straight out
behind her and her eyes were out on stems. My first question
was, "Where’s the father‘?" In a tone bordering on hysteria
F Chappy said, "Father, nuts!" and told me that Jane’s horse
and mine had somehow let themselves out of their stalls and
were on a spree. Just as she finished, I heard a noise on top of
the mountain behind our house. I looked up just as "Boots"
gave one long resounding whinny and both horses came cavort-
ing down the mountainside at top speed, hurling an avalanche
l of rocks from boulder to pebble size down on us. By the time
I they reached the bottom of the hill, "Boots" felt so gay that
§ apparently he thought he was potentially a jumper and tried to
clear the wire fence. His take-off was perfect but he couldn’t
* manage his hind quarters quite so well. He caught one of his
back legs in the wire fence. I ran down and held him while
A Chappy started a search for the wire cutters and a halter. The
wire cutters were not to be found, but she brought me a halter,
and I managed to extricate "Boots" from the fence. He was · .
. totally crestfallen and went meekly back to his stall, as did
; Jane’s horse. ‘
» J As I crawled back into bed, I knew anything could happen.
Q? I only hoped whatever was coming next would wait a little while.
It did. We woke up again fairly late in the morning as it was
A Sunday, which is theoretically our day off. Unless, of course,
1 we get an emergency call or a delivery, in which even our day
I off automatically ceases and we are on duty again. A leisurely
j day is a rare delicacy, and we relished it undisturbed.
‘ Ha.ving retired about ten o’clock that evening, I was awak-
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14 THE QUARTERLY BULLETIN
ened at one a.m. by voices in the kitchen. Just as my feet hit
the floor, Chappy stuck her head in my room and told me to g
throw on some clothes. A father had come for us. Two or three
inches of snow had fallen during the night, and the whole out- `
of—doors was a quick—freeze unit. I threw all the clothes I could I
on myself; we grabbed the delivery bags, and started down the
hill. The father had driven for us in a borrowed logging truck,
so we piled ourselves and our luggage in its cab and drove off ·
down the creek bed.
I shall undoubtedly forget that man’s name. But, one
thing I shall always remember about him. He is the only man ',
I have ever known who can drive a truck by Braille. There was i
no other way he could possibly have successfully driven us to I
his cabin, inasmuch as the aggregrate power of his two head- l
lights couldn’t have exceeded one candle-power.
Upon our arrival, Chappy immediately examined the patient {E
and found that she had some potential complications and g
shouldn’t be delivered at home. Chappy apprised her of the A
conditions and told her she should go to our Hospital in Hyden. i
The girl consented on the condition that Chappy wouldn’t leave y,
her. Next came the operation of getting her to the Hospital.
First, we retraced our tracks in the truck back to the Center.
Chappy rode in the cab with her patient, and I slithered onto `
the snow-covered bed of the truck with the delivery bags. I j
wasn’t conscious of our progress on the return trip as I was
expending all my energy on chasing the delivery bags over the p
entire snowy surface of the truck bed in a concentrated attempt [
to prevent them from sliding off the back end. At the Center I
we transferred our patient, the bags, and ourselves into the _
jeep, and the second lap of our journey was under way. We I
reached the Hospital none too soon for my peace of mind, as our
patient’s pains were coming very close together by the time we
arrived. _
We stayed until we had seen a beautiful daughter born and
both the mother and baby sleeping safely and peacefully.
Daylight was just breaking when we arrived back at the
Center. After some artificial respiration in the form of break-
fast, we decided to make rounds on the patients Chappy had

l
FRONTIER NURSING SERVICE is
5x'
to see before going to bed. Fortunately, all our calls could be l
il made in the jeep.
C By the middle of the morning, we were on our way to see
I the last patient. When we arrived at the door, a deathly pale
p- man greeted us and started mumbling incoherent phrases about
his wife. It didn’t take long for the situation to focus. She was
in labor. We had no delivery bags with us, so Chappy hustled
, . me off to the Center to get them. As I was driving down the
road, I noticed the gas was quite low. I decided that the begin-
ning of a delivery was a most inopportune time to be low on
fuel. I stopped at the general store near the Center for I knew
ig I would find help from its proprietor, Lee Hoskins. Lee is one
I of the priceless characters of this section of the country, in that
tg, he is the stabilizer for all the inhabitants of the vicinity. From
Q somewhere he always manages to find an answer for the problem
at hand, as he did for me that morning. He lent me the money
for gas and directed me to the man at a nearby sawmill who
zi could supply it.
it With my fuel replenished, I started for the Center. Upon
I arrival, the first thing that greeted me was a note, pinned to the
Y; door, announcing that our maid and barn man had marital diffi-
culties. Both had returned to their respective homes——leaving
us without. Although I hadn’t the vaguest idea who would milk
the cow or feed the horses that afternoon if Chappy and I
__ weren’t back, I did know that Jane was returning early in the
if afternoon, and I had implicit faith that she would handle the
, situation. Simultaneously, I decided that Chappy’s mental
{ energy was being taxed to capacity in the childbirth department,
so I pigeon-holed the entire situation in a remote crevice of my
mind, grabbed a set of delivery bags, and ran.
When I arrived back at the cabin, I was greeted by a totally
different atmosphere than I had felt before. Chappy’s presence
in the house accounted for the miraculous transformation. I
Q never expect to see again anyone absorb all the fears and faith
2 of two people so completely and placidly as Chappy did then
in that short period of time. This was to be their first child, but
·; neither the father nor the mother feared the unknown black-
· ness of childbirth as long as Chappy was there.
, The afternoon and early. evening seemed