General Notes

Emma Ruth's Story
When Dad and Mom, (Lee and Levesta Deckard), got married, Dad built a
little two-room log house up on Knob Creek. It was built by my Grandpa
and Grandma Deckards home.
Dad and Mom had seven children; Hebert, Dorothy, Luke, Ruth, Elza,
Clovis (Bean), and Dorotha. All of the children were born at home and not
very many had a doctor. My great aunt Jane Arthur was our doctor when we
needed one.
Aunt Jane always came and took care of the babies, also she would come
everyday and help us kids wash and do the work. We had to do washing on a
washboard and carry our water from Grandma's well. It was very hard, but
each of us children knew our job.
Later, Dad bought some ground up on the hill, above where we lived. He
built a four room box house with a porch on both sides. Dad had to work
awfully hard to pay for it. At that time, there was no jobs to be found.
He made cross ties and the older boys helped him. That about all the work
there was, besides cutting wood and picking berries. As soon as the
children got big enough, we had to start working ourselves. Mom would
save cream, churn it, and then sell butter. We couldn't have all the
butter and eggs we wanted, because she had to sell it to buy sugar and
other things to cook with. After we moved up on the hill, Mom had another
baby boy, which was named Glenn. When Glenn was seventeen months old, all
of the children caught the flu. Glenn caught pneumonia fever and died.
Later on, Mom had four more children: Floyd, Mary Ann, Margaret, and
Carl. This is the time that almost all of the kids caught the whooping
cough and Dorotha almost died.
When we got sick, we done our own doctoring. We gave the babies catnip
tea for hives and to make them sleep. If we had boils, we put meat fat,
elm bark, or potatoes scraps on it to bring it to a  head. If We had a
sore that had red streaks running up from it, we would scrape a beet, and
put on it. For a cold, we would fry onions and mix turpentine, camphor,
coal oil, and Vicks with it and put it on our chest and backs, then we
would lay a warm cloth over it and hold a warm stove lid on that.
Sometimes we would make a bag and put salt or stove wood ashes in it and
make it damp and hot and hold it on our chests and backs. This really
would help us. For headaches,Dad would give us coffee and we would wet a
wash cloth for our heads. It really wasn't a washcloth, it was just any
kind of rag we could find. We had no way of knowing if we had a fever,
only by feeling our forehead. We didn't have Aspin or anything like that
to take. For the girl's period cramps, we made tea out of sassafras
roots, and was it ever bitter. We made tea out of sassafras roots for our
blood. We would drink it through the winter for weed in our breast. For
sores that wouldn't heal, we soaked them in hot water with Epson Salts,
soda, and salt.
For sores in our mouth, we made tea out of yellow root or we just
chewed it. when our eyes would get sore, we would take night shade and
put it in cream and then drop in into our eyes. For a laxative, we would
take Epson Salts, black drought, or castor oil and we hated it. I started
out with my children using the same thing, because I didn't know any
better. When we got the croup, Dad would kill a skunk and fry out the fat
and then make us drink the grease. For worms, they would put turpentine
in sugar and give it to us. There was a weed called worm fuzz. They would
make it into tea. This type of tea was used for getting rid of worms. the
taste was awful. For boils, we would take the lining out of an egg shell
and put it on the boil to draw it to a head. We even sometimes put hot
water in a bottle (make it hot and steamy) and then pour the water out
and put the bottle neck over the boil to draw it open.
For diarrhea, we took the bark off a cherry tree and made tea or make tea
out of blackberry roots. If we ran a nail in