[ Mr.Smith lives in Kentucky USA ]
No cars, no school buses, everywhere they went were on foot. The age that modern people would never imagine, the place that everybody grew their own food and lived miles apart from each other. Mr. Smith, who I visited today, had experienced all that.
Large and proud family
It was a warm sunny fall day when I visited Mr. Smith at his home. We started talking about his teenage experiences, they were educational and interesting. "I was born in eastern Kentucky in the country and I have 9 brothers and sisters in my family," he talked about his family, "my mother was a midwife. This is the one thing that I would always remember because you don't hear of midwifes anymore. They were like a doctor who went to people's homes to help the sick and delivers babies." He is so proud for his mother being a midwife.
Gunboat Smith (LOC)
Ethel Smith (left) and Fanny Rosenfeld (second fro...
Rutherford Smith and Romeo PetersThey didn't have hospitals. Most of the deliveries of a baby were done by the mothers themselves. "One winter day I can remember going to help my mother to deliver a baby. She rode a horse through the cold water and the ice was frozen to the horse's tail and her feet were frozen in the stirrups. She never failed to help the sick no matter what the weather was." He never met a doctor when he was young.
Housework was the
part-time job
When we talked about what he did at home, he told me he would have to work and do as he was told. "We were brought up to feed horses and cattle by hand we did not have a tractor or modern equipment." There was no electricity, they used kerosene lamp. He got up early in the mornings, lit the...