{Some memories}

I'm excited to go back into nursing.

My favorite field has been and will always be geriatrics (old people).

In addition to the fact that I enjoy taking care of ill people and making others comfortable, they tell the best stories and offer a look into what life was like "back then".

A couple of weeks ago it was really slow at work and I talked with an elderly couple (in their 80's) for a good hour and a half.

They were both born in 1926 in Mississipi.

The wife (I can't recall her name) told me that:

 

"I had a very strong immune system and didn't contract any childhood diseases.

I even went to visit a friend with chicken pox to be exposed just to get it over with.. and didn't get chicken pox at all.

However, I did develop a case of mumps in the late 1920's."

"Growing up during the depression", she told me, "was difficult."

"It was a different world and a different time.

Middle class families didn't have enough money anymore.

People didn't have enough to eat.

I had one friend whose family only had oatmeal to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Families couldn't spent money on their children.

That's a vast difference from today!"

"At the time, it cost 11 cents to go see a movie.

I remember when Gone with the Wind first came to movie theaters, in 1939.

It cost 39 cents to go.

I wanted to go so bad but we didn't have any extra money for me to go see a movie.

My mother knew that a badly wanted to go.

She was part of a bridge club and would get together with other ladies and play for money.

She was an excellent player and won $1 and gave it to me so I could go see Gone with the Wind!"

"In the summer of 1936 I was 10 years old.

I was to go visit some relatives in Alabama.

I traveled 500 miles all by myself on a Greyhound bus.

It was safe back then.. things wouldn't happen to girls like they do now a days.

Strangers were helpful.

There was a 2 hour layover.

While waiting I went to a movie theater and saw Tarzan!

My mother sure was upset when I told her that upon returning home!"

I asked how they met and they told me:

"We met at a junior/senior picnic in high school.

Then we got married when we were 20 years old."

The wife told me that the secret to living to old age is lots of exercise and the fact that it's okay to have dessert!

"I'm in my 80's and I still play tennis!"

The husband told me that his mother was a teacher in 1910 and had to drive a horse and buggy to the school 25 miles away from her home.