1929

1929

Nineteen twenty-nine is remembered in infamy for the global stock market crash that plunged the world into the Great Depression. This is about a different, more personal event that took place in the early spring of that year.

Virgil and Carrie were married in nineteen-ten and Carrie, my Grandmother was carrying her eleventh child out of the fourteen she brought to life and raised. What made it even more special was this baby was due on Grandma’s birthday, April second!

True to his schedule, George Herbert Fulton made his grand entrance into the family on the appointed date. He was born at home, just like all of his siblings, with an aunt and the doctor present.

The story could have ended with this new addition to an already large family struggling to survive, except George Herbert wouldn’t take his first breath. The doctor cleaned his airways, smacked his bottom, pinched his feet, and tried every trick he knew to get a newborn to breathe.

With tears in her eyes, Carrie dressed him in the gown she had for this wonderful occasion and held him, rocked him, and loved him.

“Put him down Carrie, he’s dead!” the doctor exclaimed.

“I want to at least get a picture with him!” Carrie quivered through her tears. What would have been a heavenly birthday turned tragic.

In order to tell the rest of the story, I must pause for a history lesson of how people lived in nineteen twenty-nine in rural America. There were no cell phones, so Carrie couldn’t simply snap a selfie with George.

The cameras of that time period needed lots of light and in nineteen twenty-nine, the Fulton family didn’t have electricity, so lighting inside the house was not bright enough to take a picture. Most home pictures of that era were taken outside to capture the right amount of light. All Carrie could hope for was the sunlight of an early brisk spring day, to capture a black and white image of her baby, to remember him from that sad birthday forward.

Carrie smoothed her dress and ran her free hand through her hair and proceeded to walk slowly out into the cold April morning. An era of gloom settled over the family as the older ones carried the younger ones out behind her to witness one of the last times they would see their newborn brother on this side of heaven. The old screen door creaked a mournful note like it always did when anyone disturbed its slumber; a fitting dirge under the circumstances.

I’m sure what happened next can be explained away by science or medicine, but as for me, I believe in miracles. There must have been some angel’s breath in that north wind that kissed George Herbert on the cheek that day.  He gasped for his first breath and let out a wail and didn’t quit until they took him back inside. It was the most beautiful thing Carrie had ever heard!

Herb, as we all knew him, went on to graduate high school, serve in the Korean War, raise a wonderful family of four children with a wife that loved him dearly, and have lots of grandkids that adored him! He even managed to graduate college while on his journey. He lived to be one month shy of his ninetieth birthday; all because his Momma loved him (and didn’t have a cell phone)!!!

Daniel Fulton

11/30/2019