A September Day in Kansas

Story ID:	836
Written by:	Gail Lee Martin
Organization:	Kansas Authors Club
Story type:	Family Memories
Location:	Greenwood County Kansas USA
Year:	1924
Person:	My mother & me

A September Day In Kansas

I first saw the light on day on Saturday 13th of September 1924. It was a hot, windy afternoon and Mother and I were together in bed at Nellie St. Clair’s Nursing Home in Eureka, Kansas. This was a home for women expecting their babies, not a home for old people. Mother and Daddy named me Gail lee after the hero and heroine, Lee and Gail in a book they had been reading that summer titled, “The Enchanted Hill” by B. M. Bower. Doctor Johnson said that Gail was a good name for a Kansas girl.

Mother breast feed me as she did my older sister, Melba. In caring for me she used cloth diapers she folded into a triangle and lay my little bottom on the triangle and pulled the point up between my wiggling legs and fastened with a big safety pin. She also used what was called ‘belly band.’

Mother had hand made some of these and was reusing some she had made for Melba. They were made with two pieces of cloth sewed together with two tiny tucks in the middle section. Overall they were about four inches wide and long enough to wrap around my little belly. The lapped belly band was then secured in the back with three tiny, brass, safety pins. The whole idea was to give support across my navel as it healed.

For awhile I wore little undershirts and the tiny nightgowns Mother had made with soft outing flannel. She had embroidered colorful flowers on the tiny collars. It is hard to imagine how many little clothes Mother to had to have on hand to last a week before wash day rolled around. She didn’t have plastic pants or disposable diapers that make my grandchildren so easy to take care of. The expense of caring for babies in 2006 sounds prohibitive to this 82 year old great grandmother.