Saturday, September 14, 2013

"A red hot iron . . . ."


A few days after Ima arrived in South Egremont, her knee pained her so much that, without telling her father, she traveled to New York for treatment. Independent as always, she went alone. Tom wrote to their father that “Mike asked her to let him go with her and she said no.” 
         Ima finally wrote to her father from New York on July 5 about her recurrence of knee trouble. “I have used myself too hard of late,” she said matter-of-factly, making light of what must have been a painful episode. She was undergoing treatments by a Dr. Gibney, which consisted of applying a “red hot iron—on my knee and spinal column . . . . I may have a light brace.” She was staying with her New York friend, Lydia Day, at 18 East 40th Street. The doctor ordered Ima to walk as much as she could.
On July 9, the day before her twenty-second birthday, Ima wrote ruefully to her father that she had spent her last birthday “in bed” on account of her knee and a year later was “having the same old knee treated.” But she consoled herself by asking for a birthday present: on one of her walks she had seen a “magnificent necklace” of gold and opals for eighty dollars in an antique shop. Her father promptly sent her a check for eighty dollars (that would be over $2000.00 today).
On July 10, her birthday, she sent him a telegram: “All right walked two miles yesterday love to all.”
    
     Presumably she bought the necklace.


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