Before I start I'd just like to mention that I belong to a group of people called the Mennonites. We are a group of Christians who believe completely in nonviolence.

So we had to move. Really it was my decision as head of the family, but I don't need to be making these decisions all on my own. You see, it hasn't been too long since the last move out of Europe and you can't be dragging your family all across the Northern Hemisphere in these times. Keep it in mind that I'm talking about the 1870s here, so this before the automobile, which I still don't care for. We had horses and we had our feet. We certainly weren't poor, we did quite well considering our lifestyle and our people were even looked at as a huge economical asset. This means that because of our hard work and productivity, countries actually asked us to move into them and on top of that we were often given land and religious freedom. But sadly, after giving these freedoms, countries often took them away. Remember we are absolutely nonviolent, and one of our priveleges that was taken away was our exemption from military service. With no other option, I brought the family together and decided to head to the New World. That's how we ended up on a boat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, which in turn led to the discovery of my rare talent.

This boat trip was longer and much more dangerous than a boat trip across the Atlantic is today. Would you even take a great big boat across the atlantic today? Anyway, here we were passing time on that boat, for there's not a lot to do on a long boat trip like that, when I heard a girl just screaming her head off. It sounded just aweful. I don't think I've ever heard a girl wail away like that. As you can imagine, half the crew and all of the passengers had raced over to this girl to see what was the matter. The youngster, in all of her boredom, had dared to cimb over the railing on the one of the upperdecks. This was on the front of the boat, not the side, so when she lost her grip and fell she landed 10 feet below on the first deck smashing her arm beneath her. Now, unfortunately, I've seen many broken bones and dislocated joints in my time as a famer. You see farm life isn't just hard on farmers, it's hard on animals too. So when I got to the scene of the accident, I saw everyone standing around clueless. The awkward way the girl's arm hung made it clear enough what the problem was: a dislocated choulder. My experience with these things was enough to help a even without being a doctor. I told the girl that she'd be feeling better in a jiff and before she could make heads or tails of who I was, her arm was back in place. It's best to do things like that quickly.

Fast forward a bit to America. I had become well known for the incedent on the boat, and people started coming to me out in our South Dakota community of Marion. You see, there weren't a lot of doctors in the sparsely populated Midwest, so I did my best. Sometimes people were brought by their families to have broken bones set, and other times I dealt with dislocations. People were always allowed to stay with us if they needed, but just as often I made house calls. In these times amputation was the alternative to my services, but even so I never charged anyone, I just put a donation bowl up on the table while I worked.