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Show 164 The new life into which I had been so unceremoniously plunged couldn't have been more different from all I was used to. A whole new cast of characters with a full range of costumes enveloped me. It was hard to believe I was one of them. Doctors in white uniform, nurses in white uniform, orderlies in white uniform , all entering and exiting through doors of sterile white into rooms of white, through hallways of white. The only relieving color was blue. My uniforms, which Mama had made according to strict directions in a frenzy of sewing, consisted of eights sets each of bibs and aprons over grey and white pin striped seersucker, or nurses cloth shirt waists and eight-gored skirts. The bibs and aprons covered completely the waists and skirts except where the long tails of the bibs crossed in the back and were buttoned onto the band of the very full apron. This uniform was topped by a stiff white collar and finished off with white stockings and shoes. Our skirts were down to our ankles, and once they came back from the laundry, all our clothes were as stiff as boards, so that we flapped when we walked. We bathed daily, nothing new for me, and donned clean clothes from the skin out daily. Going from the nurses' home to the hospital in twos each morning we resembled a double column of gulls. Today's nurses in dacron knit look sloppy beside us. There were several categories of nurses, of which we, the Relief Society nurses were the most lowly. Graduate nurses in ethereal white, their caps banded with narrow black velvet, were the supervisors, the special nurses doing private duty, the goddess-like Superintendent of |