Informant: “I went to my friend’s farm in north Dakota, that’s where she grew up, you know on a family farm probably 50 miles away from the nearest town, and anytime they had an injury, if you stepped on a nail or something which is something you would do on a farm, what they would do is they would stick the foot in a bucket full of alcohol. You wouldn’t go to the doctors, you wouldn’t put antiseptic on it, you used alcohol. Like hard alcohol, like vodka or whiskey or something and that took care of the problem, that’s how they solved their infections, and prevented infections.”

Interviewer: “When did she tell you?”

Informant: “Let’s see, I went to visit her farm in like 1992, so this was only like 20 years ago, so relatively recent, but that’s what they did growing up.”

Interviewer: “What do you think of this particular cure?”

Informant: “Well, growing up in a city I thought it was kind of backwards because I’m used to just getting medicines, but it worked for them. They went to town once a week because of how far they lived from town and they only bought supplies once a week. So, for them to stop farming and drive into town to go get some antibiotics was like a big huge waste of a farmers time. So, instead they would just use a home remedy.”

Interviewer: “Sorry, but where does she live again?”

Informant: “Um its was like 50 miles west of the Minnesota, north Dakota border, so it was into the farmlands of north Dakota.”

The informant is a middle-aged mother with three-boys. She grew up in Minnesota with a large family in the suburbs of Minneapolis. As stated in the interview, the informant learned the lore from her friend when she went to visit her on her farm in North Dakota. The informant remembered this lore because she was surprised that they did not use medicine, but it still worked for her friend’s family.

I thought this was an interesting folk practice because it is very practical. This family would use the closest thing that they had on hand to deal with a particular medical problem, and these practices were still being used until at least 20 years ago. This folk practice really attests to fact that just because a remedy is a folk remedy does not mean that it is wrong.