I want to introduce myself in this my first Steem entry. My name is Jiggs and I am the mother of Stellabelle, whom you probably know. I have watched her in Steem for over a year and have finally decided to join her! Being an older person, there are many experiences i am eager to share and I look forward to sharing them with you.

My parents were both born and raised in the Midwest—father in Iowa and Mother in Michigan (family spent some time in Canada.) They both ended up in Montana where they met and married. They both had an 8th grade education, popular in their day.

My mother’s first pregnancy was a very large baby boy who could not be delivered naturally from my rather small framed mother. The delivery was at home with no doctor present—only a neighborhood midwife and in 1929 C-sections were rare. After a long horrifying labor the perfect boy was born stillborn. She then had 2 other successful deliveries of my 2 older sisters with a midwife and I was the 4th and final child.

Our lives were simple by today’s standards.

We lived on the outskirts of Kalispell Montana in a 2 bedroom house with no indoor plumbing. The house was was on 2 1/2 acres of land and we occasionally had cows, pigs, goats and lots of chickens in the various out-buildings on our land. My good father made an almost adequate living as an independent logger and my energetic mother spent many years as a domestic in town. We lacked financial security—especially in winter— but my sisters and I had a carefree life playing outside, going to public school in town, taking piano lessons, visiting neighbors, tending to the chickens, and hiking in the foothills behind our house where wild strawberries, shooting stars and wood ticks were plentiful.

Money was scarce but all three girls went to college, because of great determination and scrimping of our ambitious mother.

In the 1950’s in Montana, this was not the natural course for girls after high school. The two older girls married young, much to the chagrin of our mother, but one received a college degree in music and one became a licensed practical nurse. After one year as a music major in college I switched to nursing and became a diploma registered nurse (three year program, no longer in existence) then on a Federal gov’t grant, graduated from Montana State University with a BS in nursing.

I worked in Kalispell General Hospital and then after moving to California, worked in Lancaster, CA in Antelope Valley Hospital. Looking for a regular day-time position and adventure, I then took a commission as 1st Lt. in the US Army.

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This is enough of my story for now….more later on my decision to join Steemit and more on my very LONG life so far.

I learned something else by trying to make my first post....it disappeared, even after I saw it published on Steemit. That's when I found out that I need more Steem Power in order to post my first one. I have my fingers crossed that this one won't disappear, too.