Happy Birthday . . . .

. . . Little Sister

Margery dear, you've been wanting to be 79 for a whole year now and at 7 a. m. New England time today, you finally made it.

I'm glad we had that happy birthday conversation earlier today. It was really funny catching up with the happenings of that February 9th so long ago - Mother "breaking her leg" at 5 in the morning on the front walk and being rushed off to the hospital.

Our devious father sent us older boys back to bed with that explanation but never did tell us why she was out on the front walk so early in the morning and in her nightgown, too.

And then after a few days you came home in Mother's arms and Paul took a good look and said "that's not a turtle you told me I'd get. I'm not ever going to that hospital, they send you home with babies." But Paul eventually got to love you anyway even if you weren't a turtle.

Kids nowadays don't have to be fibbed to when there's a baby on the horizon - they know about the coming blessed event sometimes even before the mother does because kids these days learn things years ahead of when we oldsters did.

So now, how do I TIE this story together with anything else in this February challenge month? Think I can't? Listen up.

While I was working as a beginning reporter in the late 40s last century, I had occasion to wrie a story that TIES in with births - and here's a true story:

One afternoon a city policeman was assigned to find a man at work on an electrical job in the north part of the city.

He cruised around until he found the lineman atop a pole and asked him to come down, he needed to talk with him.

But the lineman said it would have to wait he was busy. The officer insisted but so did the lineman, yelling down "just tell me what you want, I'm busy."
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So the polieman had to give him the message atop the pole and he yelled ":you're wanted at the hospital, your wife just had a baby."

The busy lineman flustered furiously in astonishment and promptly came down to the ground - but he didn't climb down, he fell from the top of the pole!

I came about writing the story when I got wind of the happening the next day and visited the new mother, her baby, and her husband - in the same hospital room!

Why did the lineman get so flustered that he fell? He didn't know his wife was going to have a baby.

AND neither did the Mrs. - she had been taken to the hsopital that morning because she had, she told her doctor, stomach cramps and never knew she was in a family way!

The baby and mother were fine. Here's where we TIE this story and my little sister's birth day together - HE had the broken leg that Margery's mommy didn't have!

- 30 -