Dr. York, Miss Winnie, and the Typhoid Shot

In rural North Carolina in 1951, despite parental reassurances, a typhoid shot hurt. It hurt even more when the children saw who would be administering the shot: Miss Winnie, a large, dictatorial nurse who had been "especially built by the nursing school so she would never blow away in a hard wind". In this hilarious epic tale, our young hero learns three valuable lessons: avoiding pain only heightens it, a mother's wrath can hurt worse than a shot, and growing up sometimes involves choosing the lesser of two evils.

In "Tonsils," young Davis comes face-to-face with a creature known as a "nurse-nun" when he has to get his tonsils removed. This humorous account of a tonsillectomy performed on Good Friday in a Catholic hospital pops with Davis' usual firecracker wit and humor.

For Adults and Young Adults