The Last TB That They Remember– by Louise

It happened nearly 100 years ago. Mamas youngest brother was born Aug 20, 1917

JM was to young to go to school, His 8 brothers and sisters were all at school.

A neighbor woman died of consumption, it just slowly consumes a persons body. It's called tuberculosis now. They all knew it was contagious--some way.

There were no funeral homes to help bury a dead person. No place to buy a casket.

The only way to get lumber; was to go by wagon to the saw mills in east Texas, that took weeks. When someone died, the men took a board off the side of their house and nailed a casket together.

As it was the custom, my grandmother and other neighbor women, they went to her home to help. My Grandmother had no one at home to leave J M with. He was not old enough to go to school. They rode a horse and she tied the horse, under a tree, 50 yards from the house. She tied J M there with the horse. She watched them, out the window.

The women washed the body of the dead woman, fixed her hair and dressed her in her best dress. They put her best quilt in the casket, and put lace around it. She looked nice. They dampened a cloth in vinegar and laid it over her face, so it wouldn't turn dark, as fast. They kept the cat out of the room. It would have jumped up on her, to look. No one ever used the broom to sweep in the room with a body in a casket. Friends set in the room and quietly talked, around the clock, until burial.

Then all the women bathed theirselves and put on clean clothes that they had brought from home. They burned the clothes they had took off. They knew it was contageous some way.

My Grandmother untied JM and the horse and they rode it home.

The men had dug a grave up at the graveyard. They broke short branches of cedar and laid it around the open grave and covered the dirt pile. They laid the long leather harness, 'check lines', used to guide horses, pulling a wagon, and slid them under the casket : to slowly lower it into the grave. There was usually a preacher in the comunity to have the services for the funeral. or there were several men who could.

Two son's of this woman who was buried, were living in the Crazy Hotel retirement center, with my Aunt Etta. They agreed with the story and said that they believed that there were no more cases of consumption in the comunity.

The only way that I got this story, was through J M. He remembered it and he always resented it--that he was tied out with the horse. "Why couldn't Mama found some way-- to not tie me out with the horse?" It was most humiliating to him. If you were born 100 years ago--Your Mother would have helped--You may have been tied out too. If there was no one at home to watch you.

(Tommy said, that washing the dead--was the reason that disease in Africa spreads so quickly.) Tuberculosis has been called 'the forgotten plague'. It killed one in ten people in the middle 1800. Your fever built up, you coughed, lungs got infected, you wasted away, it 'consumed you. You coughed and couldn't eat. You lost weight until you died- and nothing could stop it. It was called commonly called 'consumption'. No one knew it was spread in the air, by coughing.

In 1870 health seekers 'built new cities' as they rushed west-to run from it. Fresh air and rest seemed to help it. People were forced to go to Sanitorims, for bed rest. Most of them died there.

Early 1940 the Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to the man who come up with strepto- miacin. Now tuberculosis it is not to be feared any more. A shot stops it.