Mom and Hurts

^{Page edited 10-Feb-22. MT}

Source: Edward Ellsworth Laughlin (In his own words.)

I don't know where Mom (Mabel Anne Tapscott) learned her nursing skills. It would not be considered orthodox today. I was six years old and in the first grade when the episode of the cornfield beans came about. Dad would add climbing bean seeds in the corn planter hopper with the corn in a couple of rows near the house. The beans would grow and climb with the corn as it grew.

When the plants reached the green bean stage, Mom would harvest them for canning and often for just a good mess of green beans for supper. This day I went with Mom to pick a mess of beans. We had to climb the fence into the cornfield. The fence was high and topped with barbed wire.

Mom climbed over and I came up after. When I worked over the barbed wire somehow I thought Mom had hold of me to help me down. She had not! I let go and went plop to the ground with both of the palms of my hands sliced open by the barbs of the wire. I still have the scars to prove it. I was bleeding badly and scared to death. She got me to the house and while I held my hands palms up, Mom poured horse liniment into the wounds. It burned like fire. Then she tore strips of an old sheet and wrapped my hands tightly to stem the bleeding. When the bleeding stopped, she removed the bandages and placed a strip of home-made bacon on each wound and rewrapped them. They healed just fine.

In those times out in the country, if the injury was not thought to be life-threatening you did not need a doctor, and hospitals were far and few between. Mom nursed the kids and the baby animals. Dad treated the livestock. All were well-cared for.

For more stories about the Laughlin families, visit Laughlin Family Stories.