I always knew we didn't have money to spend on anything extra or preventable treatment.  A tooth that hurt was not treated, but soon pulled.  High fever was treated with a mustard-plaster on your chest and covering yourself up.  Colds, coughs and runny noses called for Vicks to place in the nose or roll a dab of sugar to suck or rub it on your neck.  Spring cleaning was a large dose of Castor-Oil; cotton placed in the ear to take care of an earache; cuts...just stop the bleeding and apply Iodine and then wrap it up. The Good Lord was watching over us and Mother was His helper. As far as I remember, Janet was the first one to ever be in a so-called hospital.  My first stay in a hospital was at age 38 in New Orleans for a back operation. The age-old saying "If it ain't broken and sticking out, don't fix it" must have originated with our family. Janet and I were born in Hollybrook, Va. - same house, same room and same bed.  My birth certificate states that Dr. Davidson came three days after birth to place silver nitrate into my eyes. (I'm surprised that Bill didn't do that!) Bill was born in Seco, Kentucky.  A few years ago (October 2001) he and I visited that place -- population 18.  It is a coal-mining camp.  A man showed us where Bill would have been born in either one of two rooms that the mining camp doctor used for his patients -- right over the mining camp store. But someone was watching over us.  One night Lewis was playing "kick-the--can" and he ran and kicked the can and took off full-speed.  Shortly, he hit a clothesline chest high and snapped the bone through his leg.  He had to have that set.  Bill was lucky when Lewis was chopping wood and he got too close to Lewis on back swing of axe and was cut across the head. One night we were burning an old tire that was producing plenty of smoke.  At the time, I was wearing Bill's sheep-lined coat and standing in the smoke.  Bill insisted I take his coat off.  Finally, I found a good size rock and Bill takes off -- turns a corner as I threw the rock over a tree; it drops down on Bill's head -- the 2nd big cut for him. The reason Bill is so smart is that he found parts of a broken window pane... picked it up and began to chew and eat it!  Castor Oil time for him!! Bob -- We loved to pick teaberry leaves and chew them.  One time I had eaten all I could so I was gathering more to stick in my pockets.  I showed Mom all of my teaberry gatherings.  Immediately she told me "That's not teaberry -- POISON IVY!"  A treatment of castor oil plus something to dry up my hands and lips. Was it Bill or Bob that was able to stuff a marble up his nose but unable to get it out? Janet - Janet needed a drink of water.  The glass looked like it was full of water so down it goes.  But it turned out to be a mixture of lysol.  Of course at that time no one had ever heard of the stomach pump but she was taken to Dr. Davidson -- probably more castor oil for her. Janet was probably the only one as a child to be placed in a hospital.  It was determined that she had pneumonia and breathing had become very difficult for her.  Since it was Christmas all of us were allowed to go into the room to see her.  I will never forget seeing a hose running from under her bedding that hung slightly above an old metal bucket.  You could hear - ping! - as a drop of liquid would fall from the hose into the bucket.  I didn't know at that time the doctor had cut out one of Janet's ribs, inserted the hose within her to drain the infection out of the body.  Later on Bill told me that this system, crude as it was, probably saved Janet's life.