- The Journey Is The Reward – Installment 4 of 6 -
Jean Courter Marchand was born in 1921 and grew up in the Climax area. In 2000, she wrote this article on her memories and perspective of events and people she came in contact with, focusing more on the first twentytwo years of her life.
“Health and medicine while I was growing up: During the 1020s Homer Hendricks, MD, lived in Climax. He attended the birth of all three of my mother’s children and of many other babies in the community. There were at least three boys named Homer in my age group. One time I had a bedwetting problem and my parents asked how to treat it. Dr. Hendrick’s said to cut down on the water given to me. But then another time I remember being with my dad when we met Dr. Hendricks on the street in Climax, he diagnosed the problem by asking me to stick out my tongue, I did, and the doctor said to give me more water to drink! It seemed that many children in those days had a disease of “worms” which was treated with some powder, I have no idea what it was, that came from Pettijohn Drug Store. It was dispensed folded into pink paper. Castor oil was a laxative of choice for adults, but it was considered too strong for children. Mom always kept a bottle of Fletcher’s Castoria for us children.
“About the time my brother Bill came along is when I was introduced to cod-liver oil, probably because my Aunt Irene was a registered nurse. It had not been uncommon for children to have bowed legs because of a lack of Vitamin D. In 1906 at the University of Wisconsin it was discovered that Vitamin D was necessary to help the body use calcium to build strong bones. I heard Irene tell Mom that sunshine provided Vitamin D and that sunbaths for children were beneficial. One morning I stood with a minimum of clothing, exposing first my front and then my back side for about ten minutes. I don’t have bowed legs! The sunbath must have worked! That nasty tasting cod-liver oil was more likely the reason.
“After Dr. Hendricks left Climax in 1928, it was a rare occasion we had a doctor’s care. As a public health measure, the county doctor visited each school annually to give shots to all students. Shots were given for diphtheria and typhoid. I was a freshman in high school in the fall of 1934 and got the first of a series of three shots for typhoid fever. After, I was sitting in my desk in study hall when I fainted. A classmate nearby said, in all seriousness, “My God, she’s dead!” I woke up soon, but I got plenty of attention. I was offended when Miss Haehn, the English teacher, said it was probably some idea in my head that caused me to faint. I do tend to have low blood pressure, but she was partly right, several times since I have fainted after I’ve had a shot or had blood drawn.
“We did see Dr. Grove, M.D. in Eureka about the time Dr. Hendricks left Climax. It was Dr. Grove who removed tonsils for both Clayton and me, we stayed overnight in the Eureka Hospital. A more serious health event came a few months later when Clayton and I both developed whooping cough. That was decades before the development of a vaccine for pertussis. I coughed so hard for several days that anything I ate was vomited, but I had no complications. It was strawberry season and it seemed such a waste to eat the delicious strawberries and then to give them up. Clayton was not so fortunate, his was life threatening. He coughed for days, coughed so hard his fingernails turned blue because his oxygen supply was cut off. One or the other of my parents was up many times during each night to care for the ill two-year old.
“In the fall of 1933 Grandpa Courter, age ninety, helped Dad and Mom put hay in the barn during which he developed an infected toe. During the winter it didn’t heal and his toe swelled, then the swelling progressed to his foot and his leg which then became purple (gangrene). The next April he went to Topeka where his daughter Irene worked and his left leg was amputated above the knee. Later that summer he returned to live in the house with us. I think he tried crutches, but couldn’t make them work safely, so he got around in the house using a captain’s chair, twisting his body and rocking the chair along the floor. A year later Irene managed to get a used wheelchair for him. Winters were particularly hard on him; the cold bothered him, although he had a woodburning stove in his bedroom. He had ghost pains in his absent leg. I don’t believe he ever complained. After two winters in our home his daughter, who had central heat, asked him to come to live with her family in Goodland. Our family took him out there for the winter. When spring came, he wrote to us saying he hoped to come back to the farm to live, at least for the summer. His poignant remark was “I’ve always been tied to an old cow’s tail.” He was brought back in May and in the fall of 1937, he went to live with Irene in Topeka. During our childhood Irene was the only person who had any money to purchase anything new for us and she never failed to bring us smalls gifts when she came to spend a few days with us and her father. Grandpa died in January 1938 and was buried at Barnes, where he had homestead seventy years earlier.
“Social norms of rural America in the 1920s and 1930s were much different than today. My parents, especially my father, were sticklers for decorum. I sometimes wonder if Dad’s outlook would properly be called Victorian (he was born in 1894). For whatever reason we children were taught the importance of proper table manners, there was no slurping of soup, talking with a full mouth, or putting elbows on the table. Modesty was an absolute requirement. When my father’s friend Thompson Euwer came with his twelve-year-old daughter for a visit, she had what was called a play suit, now we would call it a jump suit. Later I expressed a desire for a play suit and Dad was quite emphatic in saying “No way!”
“When females went to the outhouse they waited until the men were out of the area; you wouldn’t want them to see you going to the toilet! As for the men, they evidently didn’t often need to relieve themselves, as I almost never saw one heading toward the outhouse. Of course, there was plenty of room around the barns and feedlots. At bedtime Dad would say, “I’m going out to look at the stars.” My aunt Anna, in preparation for bathing even in the daytime, felt it necessary to put newspaper over the windows which had no shades, this in a rural area where there were seldom visitors and where the men of the household were busy in the fields.
“One year we had an especially bountiful crop of strawberries, so Mom and Dad had a couple of strawberry parties. The guests at one party were mostly those who participated with my parents in the Farm Bureau. The other party the next night was for neighbors not in the first group. Each evening Mom’s very large dishpan was filled with three gallons of strawberries, they were served with plenty of cream, which had been separated from the evening’s milking. Now that I have experienced picking strawberries, I appreciate the labor that went into arranging the delicious dessert.
“Farmers who had cows to milk twice a day did not often get vacations. There were only a very few nights in my first eighteen years that my parents missed milking twice a day, then they paid someone to do the task for them. One of the first times was for the two days and one night when the family took Grandpa Courter to Goodland to his daughters for the winter. Another was a year when my parents and we three children went to the State Fair at Hutchinson; we were gone overnight.”
