flu hits cowley

The year that the flu broke out in Cowley. Daphne and I came down with it first and we were sick up stairs with the windows open. We were sick for a week. When we came down stairs we were so weak we had a hard time walking. We laid around in the sun to get well. Then Mother and the kids all came down with it, we stayed home and help the family get well. So when the town came down with it and the Dr. had more than he could do. The Dr. found out that we were able to go help the families that were sick. now just to let you know I did not know how to boil water I knew nothing about cooking.

The Dr. sent me out in the county to a woman that had lost her husband with the flu, and she and her son about seven years old, shut herself and the boy in a bedroom, shut the blinds and keep a fire in that little room.

When I got there all I had to do was make soup, tea and toast and keep her with firewood.

She opened the door just wide enough for me to hand her what she wanted and the heat and fumes that came out of that bedroom would knock a person down. I had to sleep in the bed where her husband had died.

I stayed there about four days and when the Dr. came out to see her, I told him, she would die in there if she did not get some fresh air, well, he opened up that door and raised the blind and opened the windows. I stayed two more days and got her lots of wood in the house and went back home.

Then he sent me out on the other end of town in the county, where the whole family was down with the flu. Then I had to keep the fires going and keep water in the house and set up all night to see if the kids needed anything and keep the fires going. While there I read the book of Ben Hur. In about a week the husband was able to get around to do the chores.

I was home about a week and the Dr. sent me to a family in town with three children and a baby six-month-old. When I walked into that house, they had quilt and blankets over the windows and it was dark as night. There the husband lay in bed with covers up to his chin. The wife and the children in another bedroom with the window blinds down. The air was so stale it was awful.

The first thing I did was open the two doors and opened up the windows. There he lay yelling at me that I was going to kill him for sure, then I went into the other bedroom and covered the family up warm and done the same thing. When the Dr. came to see them he was yelping about it and the Dr. told him that was the best thing I could have done. I stayed there till he could get up on his feet again. I had to bath the baby every morning and fix then their soup, toast and tea, the washing was sent out.

The schools were all shut down and people were dying like fly’s, but I know Daphne and I lay up stairs with the windows wide open and we did not die. But everybody would shut themselves in a hot bedroom and would not let in any fresh air and I think that was what killed them, that was in the fall 1917 “I think.” In the mean time Daphne was doing the same thing, she liked to nurse the people and she said she was going to be a nurse.

“But I had my fill of it. I never wanted to see a sick person again”.