Emerging Infectious Disease ISSN: 1080-6059

A Country Story

Another Dimension

Kenneth Fields

“When I was a little girl back in East Texas,”

My mother’s mother, Beulah, used to tell,

“There was an outbreak of the German measles,

Mama was pregnant, so I went away

To a neighbor lady’s, three or four miles from home

When the first signs showed. I was just eight, and sick,

And lonesome for Mama. One day she came for me.

My little sister had broken out, and Mama

Figuring she would die, and the baby, too,

Wanted us all together for those last weeks.

She wanted me home with her. As it turned out

My sister had been reading by the fire

And broke out from the heat, and it was me

That carried the measles home. After Mama died

I used to think of seeing her out the window

Talking to the neighbor lady on that day,

Crying and wiping her eyes with her apron hem.”

DOI: 10.3201/eid1311.AD1311

From Classic Rough News. Copyright The University of Chicago Press. Reprinted with permission.

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