This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories,

and we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your

stories. Send them to Our American Stories.com. That's Our American Stories.com. They're some of our

favorites. Speaking of which, up next, Joy Neal Kidney, a listener and storyteller who hails from

our great IHeart Station, W.HO. 1040 in Des Moines, Iowa. Joy is the author of

Liora's letters and Liora's Dexter stories, the scarcity years of the Great Depression.

Here's a story about a needle incident Joy's grandmother went through during those years.

My grandparents were all dressed up to go out, to a wedding maybe, or a funeral.

In the January 1935 black and white photo,

Clay Wilson has on a three-piece suit and a tweed, newsboy type, or Gatsby cap.

Leora is in a dark two-piece outfit, wearing pumps, silk stockings, and a hat with a little feather.

Mom, do you know where your folks might have been going in this old picture, I asked?

Yes, they were waiting for a ride to the clinic so she could

have the needle removed from her hand. Oh, I knew that needle story. Grandma was visiting us once at

the farm when I was a girl. She caught me parking a sewing needle in the arm of the couch.

Never leave a needle like that, you could end up with an ordeal like I once had.

She showed me how she couldn't flatten her right hand.

Grandma Leora told how she'd lodged a quilting needle in the bib of an apron worn over her house dress.

Her tub washer was broken, so she scrubbed the laundry, for nine people, mind you, on a corrugated metal washboard.

She felt the stab in the palm of her hand. It happened so fast, she said, it had broken off with the larger end in her palm.

She couldn't get a hold of it to pull it out.

...