Johnny Cut My Finger

Mary was a tomboy. She was always shadowing her older brothers Seppe (Joe) and John.

In the spring of 1921, when Mary was five, brother John had the task of chopping turnips that had become shriveled and hard over winter. (The turnips were cow food.) John wielded the hatchet and told his younger sister that she could hold the turnip while he chopped. Mary complied.

John swung and in one stroke cut through the turnip and the middle finger of Mary’s right hand.The finger dangled by a flap of skin. Blood spurted. Mary wailed, alarming her mother Eva, who’d been washing windows on the first floor of the farmhouse. Mary held bloody finger in hand and ran to the ladder where her mother was perched. “Johnny cut my finger,” holding it up to show. Eva exclaimed in German, “Great God in Heaven!” She immediately knew there was nothing she could do.

Good fortune followed disaster. Across the street the Blomers were having a grocery delivery. Eva raced across the crushed oyster shell road for help. In quick order Mrs. Blomer, with Mary in her lap, and the delivery driver were speeding in the grocery’s panel truck to Dr. Sinexon ‘s office in Paulsboro. Mary squeezed her hand as hard as she could to quell the blood.

Mary, who always called herself a crybaby, without any painkiller, stood bravely while the doctor sewed the two parts of the finger back together. She did her best not to cry, but sobs spilled. The doctor paused to ask, “Does that hurt you?”

Mary said, “No.”

“Shut up then,” the doctor admonished.

Mary returned home with her stitched finger in a splint and arm in a sling.

In a day before anesthesia, antibiotics, and micro-surgery, that her finger knit back together is astonishing. There was always a visible scar. It didn’t bend much. But it healed without infection.

Mary remembers a subsequent trip to the doctor’s so the finger could be examined and stitches removed. She rode on the handle bar of a bike while her father Joe pedaled to Paulsboro and back.

[Ed Searl]