It’s somewhat ironic that I should stumble upon this just today.
October 30, 1982
Mount Ayr, Iowa
Nana
Gladys Tennant PrentisI am compelled to write. We are in the last stages of a political campaign. Ronald Reagan is President. Governor and Congressional races are the important issues. I do not feel very strongly in favor of any particular candidate — but as a life-long Republican, I will vote mostly that way.
I am disturbed at the smear campaigns so many are conducting. We are in the midst of a depression or recession — unemployment is high, many are on welfare. Prices to the farmer are low — prices of things they must buy are high — but I remember. I will soon be 84 years old, and I can’t remember where I laid my scissors down — but I remember when things were much worse than they are now. My radio and TV blare out the political slogans — “Iowa is losing her people, they are going to the Sun Belt, the young people are leaving Iowa, and they will never come back.”
Sound familiar? Anyway, she continues…
They do come back, or I wouldn’t be here. This is my story.
My parents were farmers. They had two small children. One day they noticed the little girl was limping. She continued to limp more and more. When she was three years old, my parents took her to Chicago to a famous children’s hospital. There the doctors diagnosed her problem as tuberculosis of the bone. This of course, is your Aunt Edna. This was about 90 years ago, and the doctors thought an operation would help. My father always thought that perhaps he had had a tuberculous cow and that Edna had contracted the disease from the fresh milk. Iowa has since taken care of that problem. Cows are tested for TB and milk is all pasteurized. We do make progress.
The doctors operated — removed the diseased bone and literally carved out a new hip socket. She was in the Chicago hospital three months. Mother stayed with her. Carl was a baby and he was with Grandma Tennant in Mount Ayr. Dad felt he had to get back to the farm and try to make some money to pay the tremendous bills. When Edna and Mother came home, Carl didn’t remember her, and it took a while before he would leave Grandma (Christinia*). Soon another baby was on the way and Uncle Maurice was born. The farm was two miles from the country school where my mother had gone to school and later taught. (Later I attended that school for one year.) My parents realized Edna would never be able to walk those two miles, good days and bad snow, rain and sunshine, so my father looked around for other employment. He finally decided to go to school and study to be an Osteopathic Physician. So he rented out the farm (80 acres my mother had inherited from her parents) and moved his little family to Kirksville, Missouri. This was in 1898 and my mother was again pregnant, and I was on my way to join the family.
Kirksville had two schools of Osteopathy — Still’s and Ward’s. He chose Ward’s because it was cheaper tuition and he could rent a house close to the campus. They haad a grade school for students’ children, so Edna and Carl entered there. Edna had never gone to school though she was almost eight years old. Those were hard times, too, and there was no welfare or help financially as there is now.
The little songs I sing to the babies are songs Edna and Carl learned at the school in Kirksville — A Little Boy Went Walking; I Saw a Rabbit; Here’s a Ball for Baby; Good Morning, Merry Sunshine, etc. My mother sang them to me… I sang them to my children… my grandchildren and my great grand children. Who knows… I may yet sing (or try to sing) them to my great great grandchildren!
To wind this up — (old people never know when they have remembered more than they should), my father graduated from college, was granted a license to practice Osteopathy and moved his family to Trenton, Missouri, where he began to practice. We’ve come a long way in many respects since those days int he early 1900s. My mother had a very severe case of Typhoid Fever soon after they were established in Trenton. Doctors told my father, in her frail condition, that my mother could not survive a severe mid-west winter. So he closed his office, bundled up his little family — a lame daughter on crutches, two little boys, and a little girl, 3 months — me. My mother was so weak she could not even hold me on her lap, but Dad took the train headed for California — no job — no money, but determined to save his beloved wife’s life.
The only job he could find was a grocery store clerk for $10 per week. He only intended to stay a few of the winter months, but we stayed six or seven years. I attended Kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th grades in Pasadena. By that time Dad had lost his license to practice Osteopathy, the boys were at an age when they needed something to do, so the folks decided to return to the farm in Adams County, Iowa.
Again we boarded the train. To get back to the politics, — we did come back to Iowa. After a city lot, 80 acres seemed like “all outdoors” to us. Dad bought used machinery, a team of horses, a spring wagon, a cow and some pigs, and we were in business.
Now about unemployment. In those days, the man of the household was the only employed person. If all the women who used to stay in the home would go back there, there would probably be jobs for all the men.
The last part of the letter isn’t with the rest of it. Maybe I’ll find it one day.
Nana
Along with the previous letter is one from my Dad’s cousin Marion to his sister Anne:
Mount Ayr, Iowa
April 14, 1988Anne:
As for Mother’s surgeries: Hip operation took place in Chicago when she was 3 years old. She does not remember the name of the hospital other than it was a Catholic hospital. The nuns gave her a doll when she left — no, we don’t have it. Operation: they took off the ‘head’ (ball) of the femur and scraped the socket. For several years it would slip out of place, so she lay in the bed with a weight attached to her leg; the weight then suspended over the end of the bed to PULL Mom’s hip back in place. Then her father, G. A. Tennant, observed an Osteopath at work and was impressed… he then moved the family to Kirksvillle, Missouri (school of Osteopathy located there) and proceeded to learn how to manipulated Mom’s hip in order to avoid the weight ordeal attached to leg. So he promptly went to school and learned how to and was successful! Made it easier for both he and Mom. He graduated from the school and planned to set up an office in Trenton, Missouri. Whereupon, Grandma Tennant (Fannie L.) came down with a terrible case of typhoid fever… after nursing Grandma through it. Upon doctor’s advice he took his family of 4 children and sick wife to California!!
Knee surgery: took place in Rochester, Minn. They cut the knee joint removing 1-1/2 inches of dead bone (diseased) — that’s all the way around the knee, nearly severing the leg (as one can see by the scar). Then they brought the two “live bones” together fastening them with a silver nail! Then they put the leg in a cast that went from the ankle to groin, which she wore from October to March… Mom was 25 years old when this operation was performed. That’s it from Mom’s mouth!
Marion
* Note: Nana always spelled her Grandma’s name Christiania. I have corrected it to Christinia per other records I have. Her nickname was “Teen.”
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