Tough People

I always knew folks up here were tough. You have the long cold winter to contend with, and in the spring massive swarms of various bugs, and even in the summer some pretty ferocious winds and storms have to be met. However, nothing prepared me for the life stories I am privileged to hear these past two weeks. First, there is the lady who lives on the same dairy farm she was literally born on. She came into the world about 78 years ago on an early cold morning and her father delivered her. She came out cyanotic (blue) with the cord wrapped around her neck three times. Dad, who had delivered other children and many cows, reduced the cord, delivered her and tried to revive her. Despite his best efforts, she remained blue and breathing intermittently. Thus, he cut the cord and left her with mother, as he hitched up the wagon to the team and drove into town to get the local doctor---who fortunately was only about 7 miles away that week. The doctor rotated towns back then, and news of his arrival spread and folks would come in to see him during his itinerant week. The doctor came back with him, and working thru the night, kept the wee baby alive enough to meet me 78 years later. She said until this day she occasionally has trouble breathing and when she does, her feet turn blue. She relates that she is sure this is due to her mother’s prolonged labor, and her own near death. I really can’t dispute that—in any case, she is truly the product of a miracle birth. Obviously, God intended her to survive, and go on to run the dairy farm and produce numerous offspring of her own. All of which she too delivered in the same farmhouse. As if this wasn’t enough, I met a man in his 80’s, or maybe 90’s (he’s not sure) today, who was the 6th child of 12. His mother in fact had over 20 pregnancies, while she raised the family, milked the cows and took care of her husband, a logger. They lived in what my patient calls a “one room shack”. He says all the boys served in some capacity in WWII. He says he can’t understand how his mother waited for news from the war and did all this while the husband was away for months at a time, and still lived to be 80 something herself. She perhaps defines the phrase “barefoot and pregnant”. She was pregnant most of the time he can remember living at home in the shack. He said when a stillborn came, they would bury the infant out back, with the others. There was no fanfare, coroner’s inquiry, etc. They dried their tears, cleaned up, buried, and went on to tend to the cows, the garden the other children in their subsistence existence. Note that this is not 1776---this is life in the Upper Peninsula a mere 60 or 70 years ago. There were few paved roads---mostly logging trails. The land was filled with rich soil, but plagued with rocks in the soil. It would take years to till the land, dig up the rocks, and get the grass to grow for the dairy cows. Back breaking, incessant work before Tylenol or Motrin were common household items. Before in fact, the doctor was only 7 miles away. They are Fins and Swedes and Germans and Poles who still speak both languages. People who even today enter the doctor’s room with near reverence, to think that maybe I am the one who would stay up with that blue baby, getting her to turn pink by morning. Someone so rare that 7 miles away by horse and buggy is actually “pretty close, purt near next door.” Wow, I say, what an amazing people, what an amazing Peninsula, what an amazing County. These horse and buggy dairy farmers were or produced our greatest generation. Now, I am less surprised that they could hit that beach in Normandy, and dig into and spit up sand and bullets and keep on going all the way to Berlin. Is it any surprise? That is America, they are America, they are God’s Gift. Sad to think that there will never be another people like this. But what a joy to get to meet them still!!! Go out today and find one and give them a hug!!!