Had I been born before 1910 I would have become a number one flapper. Suddenly the women stopped wearing corsets, cut their hair, wore short skirts and learned wild dances like the Charleston, black bottom and muskrat.

In the States alcoholic drinks were outlawed, but speakeasies thrived. Police raids were common and to spend a night in jail became a status symbol.

I can see me heading out with a boyfriend wearing heels, a fringed dress, long beads and a perky little headband with feathers. The long cigarette holder would be hidden walking past my father, but the camel would have been lit as soon as the car pulled away from the curb.

Ah, the freedom of short hair styled in a finger-wave over long hair piled on the head. Then the music, the free and easy music of jazz and honky-tonk. It was a time of social revolution and fun.

Submitted by Ellynore Seybold

*****

It isn’t a decade I am drawn to, but a time. A time when I feel I have lived before and it is the 1860’s during our Civil War.

What would my typical day have been—I had followed Clara Barton and become a hospital nurse. In the war I worked in a field hospital which was really a home requisitioned by the army for its use.

My days began early long before the surgeon arrived. My duties were to prepare the operating room. I washed the blood from the floors, filled the cabinets with clean linens and rolled bandages. I checked the supplies of the few medications that were available. I laid out the instruments for the many surgeries we would do in just this one day. I had seen to their cleanliness the evening before: the knife for incising the skin, the saw for amputations, probes to search for bullets, needles and thread to close the wounds.

By seven all was in readiness and in wait for the carnage of the day. As the sound of the guns sounded in the countryside around us. I took a deep breath soon a line formed of young men screaming in pain or passed out in its agony.

It became my responsibility to decide which of the wounded should be the first treated and which would be left to lie on the floor and later sent to be buried. If I had a few moments I would sit with a dying boy, hold his hand and do my best to comfort. I would pray or sing a lullaby.

Christine Howard