The Needle In Her Hand

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your story. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. That’s OurAmericanStories.com. There’s some of our favorites. Speaking of which, up next, Joyneil Kidney, a listener and storyteller who hails from our great iHeartStation WHHO 1040 in Des Moines, Iowa. Joy is the author of Leora’s Letters and Leora’s Dexter Stories: The Scarcity Years of the Great Depression. Here’s a story about a needle incident Joy’s grandmother went through during those years.

My grandparents were all dressed up to go out to a wedding, maybe, or a funeral. In the January 1935 black-and-white photo, Clay Wilson has on a three-piece suit and a tweed newsboy-type or Gatsby cap. Leora is in a dark two-piece outfit, wearing pumps, silk stockings, and a hat with a little feather. “Mom, do you know where your folks might have been going in this old picture?” I asked. “Yes, they were waiting for a ride to the clinic so she could have the needle removed from her hand.” Oh, I knew that needle story. Grandma was visiting us once at the farm when I was a girl. She caught me parking a sewing needle in the arm of the couch. “Never leave a needle like that. You could end up with an ordeal like I once had.” She showed me how she couldn’t flatten her right hand. Grandma Leora told how she’d lodged a quilting needle in the bib of an apron worn over her house dress. Her tub washer was broken, so she scrubbed the laundry for nine people, mind you, on a corrugated metal washboard. She felt the stab in the palm of her hand. “It happened so fast,” she said, “it had broken off with the larger end in her palm.” She couldn’t get a hold of it to pull it out. My grandparents had no extra money for a doctor, but Great Depression years or not, she sure needed one. Doctor Keith Chapler numbed her hand and fished around for the needle, but he couldn’t find it. He sent her home, said to soak the hand in hot water, and he’d get a time set up for X-rays. Out of clinic. Leora didn’t think about how hot the water was. She couldn’t feel it. It scalded the skin on her hand, so now they had to wait until the burn healed. This was also during the winter, so another worry was that she might come down with a bad cold or worse after having been put under with ether, which was used as an anesthetic. The fragment of steel had been located on the X-ray, but the doctor still had trouble finding it when he managed to cut it out. Afterwards, she was nauseous from breathing the ether. Her hand was encased in porous plaster for about a month, making housework a challenge for this busy woman. It’s a good thing their daughter, Doris, was in high school then, and Leora’s mother lived nearby and could help out. “Yes, in the old picture, I can see that she’s holding her hand behind her. That’s the only clue. But why would they get all dressed up for that?” I asked. “Well, during those Depression years, Clay had two sets of clothing: overalls and the suit. And Leora’s choices were her housework dress or the good one.” I later learned that Clay had sold his Model T truck, so they had no transportation. Doctor Keith Chapler, who did the surgery on Leora’s hand, had arrived in Dexter in 1933, fresh out of medical school, along with Doctor Robert Osborne. That July, law officers burst into the doctors’ office with two criminals, Buck and Blanche Barrow. There had been a shootout in Dexfield Park. Buck, the brother of Clyde Barrow of Bonnie and Clyde notoriety, had a severe head wound from an earlier gunfight. He and his wife had just been arrested at Dexfield Park. Bonnie and Clyde got away. Doctors Chapler and Osborne spent their entire careers in the town of Dexter, Iowa, ushering hundreds of us into the world, taking out our tonsils, and administering our first polio vaccines. The museum in town has a large exhibit about the Dexter Clinic Hospital and another about the shootout in Dexfield Park with the Barrow Gang. The Clay and Leora Wilson family is also featured. All seven children grew up in Dexter during the Depression. All five brothers served in World War II. Only two came home. Small town newspapers offer local tidbits, such as Leora’s needle story. The Sentinel reported that Mrs. Clay Wilson thinks she found something harder to locate than the proverbial needle in a haystack, and that is a needle in the hand. While washing out a few things by hand, she rammed the blunt end of the needle about halfway into the fleshy part of her hand, the point breaking off so that it was impossible to pull out the embedded part. The needle had been left in a dress where she had stuck it while quilting. She did not visit the doctor until afternoon, and by that time the needle could not be located. It was necessary to have X-ray pictures taken to find the little steel dagger, which by that time had traveled to the first joint of the thumb. An incision was made Tuesday morning and the needle removed. But Mrs. Wilson’s advice to all needle users is, in the first place, remove all such weapons from articles of clothing before pushing them on a washboard, and, second, do not wait several hours before getting medical attention. If once you get stuck with a needle decades later. That was also Grandma Leora’s advice to a granddaughter who also learned to hunt for the real and sometimes poignant stories behind old photographs.

And a great job as always by Monte for the production of the story. Joyneil Kidney’s story, the story of her grandma’s needle incident, here on Our American Stories. Lee Habib here, and I’d like to encourage you to subscribe to Our American Stories on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get our podcasts. Any story you missed or want to hear again can be found there daily. Again, please subscribe to the Our American Stories podcast on Apple Podcasts, the iHeartRadio app, or anywhere you get your podcasts. It helps us keep these great American stories coming.