I (Ruth) was born on a small 180 acre dairy farm in Duenweg, Missouri, jues east of Joplin, on August 28, 1920, just about the time women were getting the right to vote. My parents, John Madison and Gaynelle, were born around 1890, and were extremely hard working sober minded people. In the 1920s and 1930s simple everyday living was hard work, especially if you lived on, and tried to make a living, on a farm. Without our modern appliances,doing laundry, cleaning house, and preparing meals required hard physical labor; washing clothing by hand, every day, hanging it out to dry. And always there was clothing to be mended.
Fortunately we had electricity and a septic tank water system with a well, and refrigeration. We had a celler for cool storage.
Back then we didn't grow up thinking about sex all the time. It wasn't thrown at us like it is today. How can you turn on the television today and NOT think about it?
Getting married and having children was something I was going to do no matter what, its what women did.
I had three career choices: nursing, teathing, secretarial. My senior year in high school, 1938, I decided on nursing. My parents didn't care what I chose, as long as I was trained to do something to earn a living, and I was trained and working in a hospital by the time I was 20.
When world war two broke out, I was dating my future husband. He had just finished law school, and was working in his father's law firm, when the war forced him to enlist in the navy. I wanted to enlist too, as a WAC or a WAVE, but my two brothers and fiance persuaded me that nurses would be needed just as much on the homefront. (to be cont.)
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