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Show 22.7 in Salt Lake City sent a box of discarded clothes for our use. These had been expensively made of good wool and silk and Mama gave them to me. I ripped the seams, washed and pressed the material and sewed it into smart clothes for myself and the children. It was hard to convince the ladies in the town who came to borrow my patterns that I had drafted my own. It turned out that I was a fair barber also, and soon had a number of customers among the men in town. Even when I didn't charge them, which was always, there was some adequate reciprocation. I had always, when I was home, been the piano of a four-piece dance band, and that was a cash job, three dollars a night. Nursing jobs came along and they were cash or equivalent. Nursing had always been so useful to me in caring for my children that I still feel a little training should be compulsory for prospective mothers, that is, all girls. With the knowledge I have I have been able to avoid the searing illnesses which were almost routine in Mama's family, the near-death escapes of Revo, Harold, Grant, and Vetris, who had typhoid complicated with jaundice. A neglected cold which built into pneumonia, the fevered child allowed to get up too soon, the infection not properly cared for are traps for such family crises. My husband proved to be versatile and inventive. He traded for the things he could use, built fences, corrals, and a root cellar after he had finished the house. He planted most of our acre into corn for winter fodder and butchered the pigs. We smoked and cured the hams. When things began to open up-a job on the road, the rise in the price of gold-which affected us practically instantly-we realized we had lived |