THE POLIO HOLE
A memoir by Shelley Fraser Mickle
recalled in a slide show
by Mrs. Harrell’s 6th grade students
January, 2012
Each of the students wrote a brief summary of a
chapter followed by quotes from the chapter that were
significant to them because of
striking language, thoughts or both,
and which they illustrated to highlight these words.
Enjoy and be inspired!
CHAPTER 1:
THE WIPE OUT
PAGES
19-23
Shelley Fraser Mickle is riding on the fender
of her brother’s bike. She gets her toe stuck
in the spoke of the bike which makes her
brother and her soar into a pile of mud.
Shelly has aching shins…Her grandfather
treats her with his homemade medicines,
“smelly stuff” and “inside stuff.” But the
aching and swelling don’t stop…Her mom
takes her to a local doctor who says, “She is
worn out from starting school. Drink lots of
water. It will pass; it's just a virus.” Lots of
water doesn't help… Shelley’s mom drives
her to Memphis, Tennessee. The doctor there
says that Shelley has the dreaded disease,
polio. Shelley has fallen down the polio hole.
“ ‘Hold your legs out. Don't get them near the
spokes,’ my brother remarked.”
“My shin looks like a carrot down a
cheese grater.”
“Now I smell like a tractor
that’s been stuck in a
swamp leaking oil.’’
This is after her grandpa
treats her with his homemade
medicine.


“In silence I’m tested for the dreaded disease that
everyone is afraid of--polio.”
“The iron lungs in the isolation hospitals make
hissing noises that follow us down the hall. They
sound like a nest of rattlesnakes in a nightmare.”
CHAPTER 2:
PARALLEL LIVES
PAGES
25-28
“It’s a wicked germ. It swatted down children
with the quickness of a sword” is a great way to
start off this chapter with some of Shelley’s
thoughts.
“I do not know any of them. I do not live close to even one
of them. But we are all leading parallel lives. We are
living the same story.”
In this chapter, Shelley remembers the past
history of polio including Franklin Roosevelt.
“For all those years polio seemed to stay
asleep, arousing enough to claim only a few
victims. But now something had
fully awakened it.”
•“What was it exactly?
•How did someone “catch” it?
•How was it passed on?
• Why now was it spreading from
one state to another?
•And why couldn’t someone stop it?
•“It comes in through the mouth”
•“No, it comes in through the nose.”
• “Flies carry it.”
•“It lives in the toilet.”
•“Its carried in water.”
•“Close all the swimming pools.”
• “Shut down the movie houses.”
• “Stop holding hands.”
• “Stop using library books”
•“Stop using the telephone”
 “Part
of the problem was America-
-did not invest
money into science.”
 “In
time, too, America understood
that illnesses were cured only
through knowledge gained by
scientific study.”
CLEARLY IT WAS A GERM BEING PASSED FROM
ONE CHILD TO ANOTHER- POLIO, INFANTILE
PARALYSIS.

“In 1921, Franklin
Roosevelt who
would become the
thirty-second
president of the
United States, had
gotten it. He was a
grown man when
he became sick.
The disease
seemed to be
changing—
searching out even
older victims.”
“IN THE MORNING, I SIT UP, MY LEGS
TWISTED UNDER ME IN AN ODD WAY.”

“I can fold them now so I can sit up. The
doctors on their rounds stop in. They
gather around my bed. ‘Look at this! Oh
my!’ A sound of celebration surrounds my
part of the ward……. It becomes like a song:
Keep your feet against the board. Hold them
there. Sleep, eat, stay with your feet against
the board. It will help them to stay straight.”
CHAPTER 3
THE UPSIDE-DOWN LETTER
PAGES
29-35
“The history of polio was like a villain in a
play, darting in and out of the darkness
from behind stage.”
That is the sentence I think best describes polio.
This chapter is all about how polio got started
and people understanding how it works.
It is also about Shelley’s family
who misses her and can’t spend
any time with her. I think that
is the saddest thing a daughter
and her parent could have to
live with.
“About 72,000 cats were killed, fearing that they carried
the germs that stole children’s muscles, paralyzing
them.”
“By the time cold weather arrived
when the virus darted off the
stage for the time being—6,000
people were dead.”
“I open my mail. There is a get-well card from every kid in my
class.”
“Apparently humans come in
different colors, and they come in
different shapes too. But what really
strikes me about Vera Mae is the
way that she can tell a ghost story.”
CHAPTER 4:
ONE HUNDRED
THOUSAND MONKEYS
PAGES 36-42
“Funny-Zip my stuffed monkey comes to mind . . . I
begin yearning for Zip, my Zip, a black furry toy
with rubber hands.”
Shelley finds her stuffed monkey, Zip, and she goes to visit
a boy. They have fun and draw with each other. But when
he’s lost, she wonders what's wrong with him. No nurse will
tell her. One nurse brings her a night visitor to keep her
company. They smile and giggle. Shelley asks her night
visitor about why they are here, and she gets her answer.
“The hissing sound of machines makes it
seem like I’m in a horror film . . . I met a
boy there. He is four. He cannot breathe
but he can draw pictures and send them
out.”
“One week no pictures come and I ask my mother,
‘Where is it?’… ‘The boy has left,’ she tells me… I get
the feeling she is not being straight with me. She is
lying.... she whispers, ‘He died.’ ”
“I wonder more, Where am I exactly? What does all this
have to do with me? I have an idea. I think I even know,
but I need it to be named.… I don’t ask my mother, I know
she isn’t up to it. Instead I ask the night nurse when she
comes to bring my supper.… ‘What wrong with me?’ She
hears my question but doesn’t answer, ‘Why am I here?’
She ducks her head and rushes from the room.”
“SUDDENLY, A NURSE ROLLS A STRETCHER
INTO THE ROOM. ON IT IS A GIRL. ‘THOUGHT
YOU MIGHT WANT A VISITOR.’ ”


“My night visitor looks at me. She is older than I am.
She is twelve.… But what surprises me is she has skin
the color of Verna Mae’s... No one, though, is saying
anything about that.… Here, the Jim Crow system of
rules that keep people of different colors apart is as
withered as the parts of us the virus has killed.”
“The nurse leaves the room, and she and I become who
we really are.… “I giggle. She smiles. I set Zip on my
shoulder and give him a voice.… I stick his rubber
banana in my mouth and say, ‘Ummmmm, ummm good.’
She laughs with as much breath as she can spare.”

“Soon, like a song beginning a second verse, I ask,
‘What do you think is wrong with us?’ ”

“Quickly-as though she does not have time to think- my
night visitor says, ‘Polio. We both have it.’ ”
I LOVE THIS PART; IT IS VERY CUTE.
“My mother walks in.… She
wears a fancy suit and carries a
whopping big bottle of ketchup.…
Finally she hands
me the Sears catalog and Zip.
Zip, my Zip! My adorable stuffed
monkey with a rubber banana in one
hand!”
CHAPTER 5:
MY NIGHT VISITOR
PAGES
43-46
“Polio we both have it”
In this chapter Shelley Fraser
Mickle learns she has polio. She
remembers the first time she
heard about it and how
fortunate she was then. She
starts to accept that she has
polio with the help of her night
visitor.
“The word(polio) fills the room like
a marble dropping on the tile floor”
THEY LOOKED LIKE DOLLS MOUNTED ON
DISPLAY…THEY MOVED LIKE SNAILS…THEY DID NOT
LOOK HAPPY.
“I look back at my
night visitor . . .
her eyes watch me
with a liquid
stillness . . . the
polio hole I have
now fallen in. I
am one of them”
“In an echo of sadness it lands. No I do not want
to go through life like this. I do not want to be
one of them. Yet as I look over at my visitor it is
clear this is not a choice for us.”
“ I WAS NO DIFFERENT FROM THE EARTH. I WAS WHO I WAS
LONG BEFORE I WAS CHANGED. I WAS STILL WHO
MATTER HOW I WOULD BE FROM HERE ON OUT.”
I WAS, NO
CHAPTER 6:
2,680,000 DIMES AND THE HOUSE GUM BUILT
PAGES 47-52
THIS CHAPTER TELLS HOW FRANKLIN
ROOSEVELT ON AUGUST 8, 1921, HAD
FALLEN INTO THE POLIO HOLE. AFTER
THAT, HE STARTED THE MARCH OF
DIMES. ABOUT 2,680,000 DIMES ARRIVED
A COUPLE DAYS LATER. THEY SAID THAT
THEY WOULD FIND A CURE WITH ALL THE
MONEY.
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT'S
PICTURE IS ON THE DIME.
MEANWHILE, SHELLEY’S OLDER
BROTHER “LAUNCHED A WHOLE WAD
GUM ON THE LIVING ROOM CEILING”
OF

“Right away my parents’ eyes went straight
to the ceiling…the gum was spread out up
there like a squashed bug…Oh, My good
lord.”
I choose this because it is a funny quote and the
author was explaining when she noticed gum was
on the ceiling.

“We just better go ahead and
buy the house”
I added this because it relates to
what the author was saying and
what the kids were doing. The
kids did something to damage the
house.

“I had just lost a hair pulling fight…and I was
feeling mean…I picked up a few pieces of peasized gravel and threw it up on the windshield.
The gravel ran down like a whoosh of rain. The
rest of our gang started doing it too…But it was
clear I was the ring leader…the man jumped
out and stood in front of me. ‘Where you live?’ I
didn’t move my lips…I ran like the sidewalk
was on fire. I ran like my front door was home
plate on a ball field and I was rounding the
bases on a bunt.”
CHAPTER 7:
PACKED AND HEADED
TO JAIL
PAGES 53-57
This was a humorous chapter but it also had some
seriousness to it. Shelley’s mother had played a trick on
her by saying she had to go to jail for throwing gravel at a
garbage truck. That part of the chapter was a little
humorous but the message from that section was that it
taught Shelley about consequences. Another message was
when Shelley learned that people have “fire” in them by
her friend’s mom making sure that she would be quiet.
Shelley gives away some vital information leading to the explanation that she will
get polio:
 “In that year Harry Truman got elected as president for the first
time… Jonas Salk was running tubes in Pittsburg. He was on his way
to finding three different, definite strains of a virus. One of them
would steal my cartwheels.”

“The garbage man says you cracked his
windshield with a rock. This is a federal
crime. Garbage men work for the state. –
YOU HAVE TO GO TO JAIL.”
The mother told her daughter that if she didn’t sit still
that she would slap the fire out of her.


“Oh yes she does have fire in her. And you
needn’t talk back to me, either, Missy. In silence,
I pondered this for a while.”
“I also decided that when any mother was
driving, it was a good idea to suck in my lips and
keep my mouth shut.”
And everyone’s favorite…
“I was told we were going to move again… My father was going
to help build a dam… It seems business with Mr. Butts was
slow… For weeks, whenever somebody asked me why my family
was moving, I truthfully said, because of some dam business.”
CHAPTER 8:
SEVENTEEN THOUSAND
MONKEYS
PAGES
58-65
Dr. Salk is trying to find a cure for the polio virus. They gain
the cynomolgus monkey and later 17,000 give their lives to
help cure the virus. Meanwhile, Shelley’s night visitor is a
lot sicker than she is. They continue to play together, and
Shelley thinks about a boy doll named Robert E. Lee. They
agree on one doll, and will call her Suzie. But in a few weeks
they are put in different rooms and she wonders how Santa
Claus can get to a kid like her. She thinks back to ‘Chate’
her Grandmother, and how she was easy to scare and they
had fun. Chate told her about God, a mixture of Santa Claus
and Roy Rogers with the use of the fairy Godmother’s wand-or so Shelley thought.
“Best of all she was easy to scare.”


“Snakes and cats she mentioned in the same
breath. So I put 20 and 30 in bed with her,
and she would come hollering out, galloping
in her nightgown.”
“While she took care of me, I promised I
would not choke on the food she gave me.”
“While she is in my room, I cut out paper
dolls and hold them in my fingers.”
“I walk my paper dolls over to her. ‘Where are
you going today?’… ‘Oh I don’t know,’ answers a
blonde… ‘I have a Missionary Society Meeting
this morning and a Bridge Club this afternoon.’
”
 “I make up conversations from things I’ve heard
my mother or grandmothers say.… My night
visitor chuckles with her cheeks puffed out.
Then her eyes follow me as I pick up the
Sears Catalog.… ‘You like this?’
I flip the page, pinpointing it by
circling the doll.”

I LIKE THIS PART; IT IS CUTE, INTERESTING AND
FUNNY. IT’S A GREAT WAY TO END A CHAPTER, AND IT
INTRODUCES HER ROOMMATE.

“Now I sit as my mother walks into my new
hospital room. She is carrying a paper sack and
pulls out a new bottle of ketchup. Also a bright
red patent leather purse. My new roommate has
a funny bubbling voice. She is younger than I am
and has dark curling hair. She sits up in her bed
and quickly says in her voice that sounds like a
frog, ‘Wow! Lemme see that!’ ”
CHAPTER 9:
THE DEVIL SUIT AND SALK NAMES ME
PAGES
66-72
Shelley gets another roommate who has a voice like a
cartoon character. Shelley’s mom and roommate have a
conversation with her about Halloween. Shelley’s mom
was explaining how Shelley did not like being Dale
Evens last Halloween, and how she envied her brother’s
devil costume. Finally, her mother lets her wear the
devil suit.
Dr. Jonas Salk names the three
different types of polio.
One is no stronger than a cold.
Another causes paralysis of arms
and legs, and the third, bulbar
polio, attacks the muscles that
breathe and swallow.
Most people that “catch” this kind
of polio are most likely to die.


“My new roommate's china-white face and dark curling
hair made her look like a doll in the weekly wiper [aka
Sears catalogue].”
“The feel of wool, as it cools, is clammy against my skin.
It is as thick around my skin as a layering of an onion.”
This is right after the nurses put hot wool rag on
Shelley’s legs.
The next quote is after Shelley is eyeing the devil costume
all day and her mom finally says just to put it on.
Shelley plots to scare the Montgomery babies.

“Hunkering by a bush, I watched the babies on the
porch, gumming graham crackers. Mrs. Montgomery
was inside stirring stuff. I sulked, moving like someone
in a WW II. I squatted behind a bush. And, I stuck my
face against the screen porch showing my teeth and
growling. The Montgomery babies--they let loose. They
screamed so loud they sounded like squashed cats. Mrs.
Montgomery ran on to the porch hollering, “What in
tarnation.” I stood mute. Then I let out a scream and
began crying myself. I ran home after that.”
CHAPTER 10:
CUPID STRIKES DURING JUICE TIME
PAGES 73-78
This chapter was about Shelly's parents sending her to
school(kindergarten). She learned to read with ease But
didn’t like the idea of not being able to use an eraser. ”
In this chapter Shelly also found “The love of her life,” a
boy named Billy.
Also, the doctors begin to wonder if the poliovirus was in
the bloodstream before the symptoms appeared and that
was why it was difficult to discover it in time for a cure.




“The early winter wind whips them
until their leaves fly off like tiny
magic carpets that elves might ride.”
“If my brother had been holding a baseball bat, he’d
have knocked me to China…but I was lying through my
teeth…I couldn’t read.”
“The thing about a lie…once you start one,
you have to live it out or else
you have no character.”
“No one was going to teach me to read…
My mother looked at me as if I’d been
bitten by a go-crazy snake.”




“I just wanted everything with words to be between them
and me…not to mess with the mystery.”
“After my morning cup of coffee,
my mother drove me to….kindergarten…”
“…those Big Chief Tablets…smelled like freshly-sawn
wood…lines far enough apart to handle zeros the size of bird
eggs…”
“My capital A slid on its side like a drunk 7…My finished
page looked like a cowboy’s shooting match in a saloon.”



“Keeping the eraser hidden
was as bad as living a lie.”
“And Billy B. sat beside me and turned his head
and gave me a look. It was a look that, right
away, I knew meant, Be Mine.
“I looked down at my lap at the book opened
there, and the letters on the page spoke silently
inside my head, and made sense…I could hear
their voices…”

“Words were a magic silence, I decided.
Words lived in my head; they lived in my
fingertips.”


“…the words were still there on
the page…They were the
storyteller’s fingerprints.”
“…books…were the work of
humans…That meant that one day,
even I could write one.”
CHAPTER 11:
THE STUFF OF NIGHTMARES
PAGES 79-82
Chapter 11 was mostly based on “curing” polio. this was
where she found out that one of her legs is shorter than
the other. She then explained the story about what
happened to her grandmother and how she had to wear
two different shoe heights. She saw the fear in her
parents, but she was worried about the doll, Suzie,
arriving for Christmas, and if she (Shelley) would be stuck
in the hospital forever.

“…how can he make a large enough quantity for thousands,
if not millions, of vaccines to be given as inoculations? And,
how best to make the vaccine safe? How should he kill the
virus? And, how quickly can he find the answers.”
This quote showed questions or worry about using this new
idea to cure polio. What were the pros and cons.

“While Dr. Salk is worrying about what he does not know, I
am lying in bed on the second floor of the Isolation Hospital
in Memphis Tennessee, worrying about Christmas. Where
will I be? Will I ever be able to walk? Will I ever go home?”
“He is talking about which muscles have come
back and which ones haven’t. Suddenly in the
midst of it, I catch onto the words, “One leg will
be sorter than the other.”
CHAPTER 12:
THE TRAP OF THE NUTTER BUTTERS
PAGES 83-88
After a long while at the hospital, Shelley Fraser comes
home for Christmas. She is suited in very heavy metal
braces so that she can go home for Christmas. When reentering the world, she has a big change in perspective
after being in the hospital for quite a long time. She also
sets a Nutter-Butter trap for Santa to catch him on tape at
Christmas. Nutter Butters are Shelley's favorite cookie.
QUOTES

“Never again will I see the world as it
has been. Worries have been
rearranged. Everything has been reshelved.”


“I can catch Santa Claus in his
act. I plan to broadcast my
findings, maybe on that new thing
called television. Radio for sure.
Kids will hail me as a prophet.”
“What parts of you work you take. What
can’t, you can’t waste a minute on”.
CHAPTER 13:
I BECOME A PREACHER
PAGES 90-95
“Now my life is like a train on one
track, merging on another track with
the lives of Dr. Salk and Dr. Sabin and
Dr. Hortsmann. We are all coming
together in this one story, even though
we’ll never meet.”
In this chapter, polio epidemics have
been more abundant. Everyone wants
an explanation. Dr. Salk (using a dead
virus) and Dr. Sabin (using a live
virus) do not believe each others
immunizations will work, and they are
starting to feel competitive and
envious. Meanwhile, Shelley is back at
home! Unfortunately, she takes to
preaching about the Polio Hole.
“I don’t exactly plan it [the preaching]--it seems to just…take
off….”
“I am like Alice coming back from Wonderland…and like
Alice, I get annoying….”
“There is a plan to this world”
“…bad things happen to those who deserve it. Did I get rid
of [other people’s] thoughts about [the reason for my polio was
me being bad]?”
“…my feet ride…over spring grass, silky and lime green…
white wild flowers spread as if a box of powdered sugar has
been opened and shaken out…now it seems twice the
miracle.”
CHAPTER 14:
ICE CREAM MONEY
PAGES 97-102
Three times a week Shelley is driven to Memphis for
physical therapy. In Memphis, she happens to see a
man playing an organ grinder and collecting money.
So, Shelley decides to try it at home. She gets Zip (her
stuffed monkey) and a jack in the box and goes on
playing.
When her mother finds her, she has enough money to
weigh down a monkey. She uses it to buy ice cream for
Verna Mae and herself.
EXCERPTS



“I was a sitting golden goose. But then, our gold
mine was hooked to that other mine, the one that
could blow us to where our soul shrinks, feeling
like yesterday’s washrag”
“Instead, we lick what our pity-money bought.
We swallow it and gloat in the aftertaste of the
givers’ ignorance”
“Well, pity is a bitter-tasting soup.”
CHAPTER 15:
TAKING CHANCES
PAGES
103-110
“We should have known getting
me back, perfect, was a fairy tale.”
Shelley got out of the Isolation
Hospital and returned home, but she
had braces on her legs. She could get
the braces off once she turned thirteen
by having surgery connecting the
weaker tendons to the stronger ones.
Eventually, she could go swimming
too!
One day, Shelley headed to the sewing
shop and looked at a doll which she
called “Robert E. Lee.” She went back
to see him everyday just as Shelly’s
mom had visited her while she was in
the hospital.

“Being in a drive by shooting of the soul
is not good for digestion you know.”


“Mounds of bulldozed dirt the
color of toast sprinkled with
gravel-are left sitting as if a
giant city of ants is underway.”
“My nose is a straw pointed
toward the hotdog lord.”
CHAPTER 16:
SHOOT OUT AT THE DIRT MOUND
PAGES



110-115
Shelley joins a dirt ball war and ends up
chipping a tooth after getting hit in the face
with a gravel filled dirtball from her brother
Shelley tries to join her brother’s lawn mowing
business, but a lady turns her down because of the
braces on her legs and her smallness.
Shelley believes that there should be a prize for
suffering and that life should get easier.



“Dissension and arguments break out as naturally as a
stream finding a new route to a river.”
“There should be a prize for suffering…life should get easy …
angels should fly by me every second I am awake … a whole
bunch of them should sit and watch throughout the night, then
leave pennies and candy on my dresser.”
“ I have to make sure I make friends like the “bar” hunter
down the street who never thinks twice about the Hole I
fell in, who only cares that I climbed out.”
CHAPTER 17:
A DOG NAMED BUDDY
PAGES
116-120
In this chapter, Shelley is on her way home when
they make a stop at her mother's cousin's house
where she gets her new dog, Buddy. When she
gets home, she goes back to school where
everyone is glad to see her and she is enrolled in
piano lessons with Miss F. as her teacher. The
lessons are going well until she has to use the
pedals.
With all the dead weight of her
foot in the brace, it just isn't
working and she overhears her
mom talking to her dad wondering
if she's any good singing.
QUOTES



“He is very much house broken, unless he
can't remember to go out.”
“I happi you bak, Mickey M. writes.”
“I can put it on fine-that's a cinch; just drop
the dead weight of my brace onto it. Splat!”
CHAPTER 18:
THE BIG TEST AND A DO- OVER
PAGES 122-126
In this chapter Dr. Salk tests his killed-virus vaccine
and it is successful. Shelley is again elected as queen
of Halloween. At the turn of the month, the kids race
to the millpond. In the middle of the race, Shelley
takes a detour through her house. Grabbing a
popsicle, she returns to the millpond licking it long
after the race was over.


“Someone yells, ‘Last one there is a rotten egg.’ ”
“I am the tortoise and will just keep going. In the end I
will win.”
In this quote, Shelley thinks of the tortoise and the hare
fable.

“Smiling, I make a detour through the red house’s
kitchen and pop open the fridge.”
CHAPTER 19:
MEASURING THE TOWN
PAGES
127-129
“Look what I just found. I found it in a vacant lot.”
In this chapter, Shelley finds a carpenter’s level. Being her,
she finds a funny way to use it. After asking her father to
saw it down, she writes “nuts” over the left section, “sane”
over the middle, and “haywire” over the right, and, as the
title suggests, goes measuring people around the town.
Nuts
Sane
Haywire
“Amazingly, the bubble . . . moves right to the middle . . .
sane . . . ‘Well, [let me] try it again’ . . . He tilts his head . . .
bubble . . . slides off into ‘nuts’ . . . ‘Go try it on your
mother.’ ”
“ ‘I’ve come to measure you’ . . . ‘Measure what?’ ‘The
inside of your head . . . I think you better sit down . . .
You’re going to regret it’. . . I set the crazy meter on top
of her head . . . it slips to haywire so fast, it’s
ridiculous.”
“Over the next week, I keep a running tally
from all over town. It’s strange how anybody
who measures ‘sane’ first quickly tips their
head . . . over into nuts or haywire . . . It is
quite clear—everybody living in my own time
and place is ashamed of coming up sane.”
This was probably one of my favorite sections in this story;
even though it came at the beginning of the chapter, I
decided to save the best for last.
“Verna Mae is the color of . . . her African ancestors . . . I
am the physical shape of how a virus marked me . . .
And yet, her daughter is not allowed to go to the same
school . . . All people of dark color have to be . . . shut
away from the rest of us . . . It is harder for Verna Mae
to be who she than it is for me . . . And that is craziness.”
CHAPTER 20:
DECISIONS TO BE MADE
PAGES 130-135
Christmas morning Shelley wakes up to a blue
crib with her dime-store doll, Robert E. Lee! She
ends up adoring Robert to death.
Scientists are still deciding
who should get the vaccine and
when to give it. They are going
to give almost half the test trial
of kids the vaccine, and almost
half will receive a placebo
which means that they will
receive something like a shot of
water. Then they will compare
it. But this is still one whole
year away.
QUOTES
“Oh, give me a home where the buffalo
roam, where the deer and the antelope
play. Where seldom is heard a
discouraging word. And the skies are not
cloudy all day.”
“Then I will walk as well as anyone.
Then the whole ordeal will seem erased.”
“Over 200 counties and 44 states are
chosen.”
 “I eat Christmas dinner with Robert beside
me propped on three fat books.”
 “I brush my fingers against his make-believe
eyelashes attached to his hinged lids.”

CHAPTER 21:
THE TRIALS AND DEATH OF ROBERT
PAGES
138-143
Shelley has an adored doll, Robert .E. Lee, that she got
for Christmas. When Gloria H. spots the doll, she offers to
trade her bride doll for Robert for one week. Good things
are not in store for Robert. Gloria is the oldest of five
girls, and when she goes to school, she leaves Robert
home. While Gloria is away, her sisters fight about
Robert, feed him mud pies, throw him around the mud,
and dress and undress him. When Robert is left on the
curve while the little sisters go to the drugstore for some
gum, a delivery truck backs over Robert.
At first the driver thinks it is
a real person, but when he
finds out it’s not he throws
Robert in the trash. When the
news is broken to Shelley,
Gloria and her mom promise
to get a new Robert.






“The bride is dainty
with beautiful skin the
color of a biscuit.”

“After school, I clump down
the alley with Robert E. Lee.”
“To those little sisters, Robert E. Lee is like a spilled
bucket of corn in a chicken yard.”
“Yep. Tap, Tap, on Robert’s plastic head.”
“I could have gotten a bad case of the gutbucket blues.”
“I knew I will never
love him like the first
Robert.”
“Real-life creatures are holding twice the
fascination.”
CHAPTER 22:
NAILING THE HOLE SHUT
PAGES
144-150
“The vaccine works!”
In this chapter, Dr. Jonas Salk had “nailed the hole
shut” with the help of his sidekick J. Fred Muggs, a
chimpanzee. Then, in 1955, more than 200 people had
“fallen down the Polio Hole” again.
Shelley Fraser Mickle finally had enough money from her savings
bonds to buy a horse. They drove up to a ramshackle house with a
barn on one side and Shelley is given Nell, her first white horse.
“I love her, ugly or not, flies in her lip, gray hair and all.”
QUOTES



“Yes! The vaccine works…it is safe and
effective . . . people own it . . . There can be
no patent. Could you patent the sun?”
Parents and children begin to feel safe. Pools might
be reopened. Movie houses may no longer be feared
as places where children can “catch” the poliovirus.
Buddy sits in the backseat wearing
his goggles, his tongue hanging out
the back window, watermelon red
and dripping spit.
QUOTES
No doubt, all her life she was fast, but now she
needs only to remember how much she hated
plowing cotton fields to run through one like a
bolt of lightning.
 Speed, oh glorious speed, licks my face like the
tongue of earth.
 I taste speed and I feel speed and am myself now
speed.
 Off we go---jets in tandem.


All day at school in the chair, I am like a
mustang hobbled in a petting zoo.
This paragraph is probably my favorite out of the chapter. I
know it came before the other quotes but I feel that Shelley
really felt a feeling so strong that on this piece of paper it
turned out beautifully and detailed just like how she felt.

“ Suddenly, I am on top . . . in a three beat
waltz . . . my heart breaks warp speed . . .
You can’t catch me . . . at times I am
Humpty-Dumpty about to fall . . . I-willhang-on-like-a-chigger-under-skin . . .
nowhere near to become the rotten egg this
time.”
CHAPTER 23:
NELL ESCAPES
PAGES 150-156
When Shelley gets a new
horse named Nell, all is
well despite the fact of her
case of polio.
It is near the end of sixth grade; May is
approaching and Shelley is ready to ride Nell in
Memphis, Tennessee.
Life is good, Shelley is getting her cast cut off,
she is graduating the sixth grade, and she is
looking forward to long rides with Nell in the
summer. She finds a place to board Nell. Just
when late November hits, the Mickle family gets
a call: Nell has busted out! They are on a highspeed chase with a galloping horse!
QUOTES FROM THE CHAPTER

“I can, I will, it’s okay; I know I can, it’ll be okay.”
This quote displays Shelley’s attitude. Even though she has polio, she still
has faith in herself.

“I’m out of practice. But I want to, want to, want to.”
This quote shows Shelley’s perseverance. When things seem impossible, she
thinks they are still possible.

“She is as eager to get out of the place of her toil as I am out of
my future.”
This quote is from when Shelley realizes that Nell doesn’t like being confined
in her stall anymore than she likes being confined by polio.

“She puts her foot down. No. I threaten to stay mad at her for
life.”
This quote is from when Shelley wants to walk across the stage at her
graduation although she needs to be rolled across the stage in her
wheelchair. This is a perfect example of Shelley’s confidence.
CHAPTER 24:
THE HOLE IN THE WORLD
PAGES 157-160
This chapter is purely about finding the cure for
polio through the vaccine that Dr. Sabin created.
“For thirty years, Dr. Sabin’s live-virus
vaccine will remain in favor especially
in developing countries where
epidemics continue to break out.”
“Only those whose access to clinics is hampered by
war are in danger. Or those who refuse the vaccine,
out of superstition or fear.”
“In other parts of the world
the Polio Hole remains open.”
“Solving medical mysteries is limited only by the size of a scientist’s
imagination and his or her capacity for work.”
“It-changed America–and taught people they have the
power to cure a disease.”
CHAPTER 25:
THE LAST CURVE
PAGES 161-163
“ In that spring of 1956,” Shelley and her family are
moving to another home. Shelley’s dog, Buddy, does not
make the trip because of his accident with a mail truck
that resulted in death.
It is a year of great accomplishments such as
black and white children able to share the same
school, the first Civil Rights act is launched, and
Dr. Seuss published The Cat in the Hat which will
delight children forever.
In the suitcase packed station wagon Shelley looks back
and admires a place she will love forever.


“I turn to look at the tongue
prints on the back window left
from Buddy . . . Main Street
where only recently I rode Nell .
. . to admire ourselves in the
glass windows of the stores.”
“ I look back once more . . . It’s
almost as if I can see Buddy and
Lightn’ Nell and Richard Key
and my hospital night visitor . . .
I think of Richard . . . my king,
who taught me there are second
chances . . my night visitor . . .
who made it so very clear how
lucky I was.”
This paragraph is very important to me because the way that
it was written can tell you that Shelley was really thinking
about love and people she loves. I think this paragraph is the
type that came out of someone’s heart and not their mind.

“Yet, I’ve never known a No where a Maybe
didn’t linger…words can hold breath and
life as surely as a pounding heart…carved
with care…read as if they are a letter sent
from someone who loves you.”
EPILOGUE
PAGES
164-168
“Time finishes every story,” and she sums hers up
recalling surgeries, souvenirs from Graceland, makeshift school, and special letters.
She remembers Roosevelt, Suzie, Nell, Verna Mae, and
Richard the Halloween King.
“I was far from being returned to normal and was more
than the length of six football fields from perfection.”
“…there is no such thing as perfection. Thank Goodness!”
Shelley Fraser Mickle became convinced that her . . .
“distinguishing characteristics should be counted
as exactly what they were—
outstanding characteristics.”
“Each student was to write me a letter every week,
which, I think made me about as popular as a raw
French fry . . . I got to see all their awkwardness and
misspelling.”
 “Yet one boy . . . in the back row wearing a black
jacket, motorcycle boots and an Elvis hairdo, wrote
me lovely letters . . . He also comfortably wore the
rumor that he had just come out of reform school.”

 “He
knew, way
before I did,
that everything
in literature
that is good
has in it the
tone of writing
a letter to
someone who
cares about
you.”
“LIVING WITH LIMITATIONS, THE EVERYDAY ACCEPTANCE THAT
THERE ARE RESTRICTIONS TO WHAT ONE CAN DO,
GIVES BIRTH TO A WILL THAT CAN WORK WONDERS…
“The braces were as clunky as
garbage trucks…
Petticoats and full skirts,
with poodles and Elvis guitars
on them, floated above the
steel…
A certain strength comes from
knowing there are some
things that cannot be willed.”
“Franklin Roosevelt
believed he had polio
[although he may have
suffered from a case of
Guillain-Barre
syndrome instead],
and his establishing the
March of Dimes
to find a cure changed
America.”

“She held up the picture of Richard and me…He
died…when he was only twenty-seven…
But he’s still alive
in your book.



Writing is always a trip taken in the dark,
fishing with words, hoping to pull living things
out of the depth of memory.
But should we ever question why we need to
keep reading and preserving books, the answer
can’t be clearer than Mrs. Key’s seven words.
How else will we ever know what each of us has
loved and lost, to be cherished again?”
ONE LAST STORY
BOPPING BUGS
PAGES
182-186
When she was three, Shelley’s brother had a pet
rabbit that she bopped with her brother’s baseball
bat every time it got out of its cage.
Once she bopped Bugs, the rabbit, so many times
that she knocked him out.
Her mom hid Bugs in the snow out in the yard
because she thought he was dead.
However, when her brother came home, Bugs was
in his cage again because the snow had stopped
his head from swelling and he had hopped back
into the house and into his cage after he woke up.
“No way was my mother’s favorite story
in the same league with Eratosthenes’s
story, or Pasteur’s-but still, ”Bopping
Bugs” held a truth, and it began when I
was three…
Whenever Bugs hopped out of his box, I
bopped him on the head with my
brother’s baseball bat and put him back
in…
It sure was a nice family feeling the way
my parents got together to make my
murder of bugs look like an accident.”


“Each time my mother told this story, we all
gained admiration for the hang-tough, never-die
attitude in a rabbit We were also reminded that
it is always best to look twice. What seems dead
may only be reviving.
Who knows what truths your stories hold?
You’ll never know until you tell them.
SHELLEY FRAZER MICKLE. THE POLIO HOLE: THE STORY OF
THE ILLNESS THAT CHANGED AMERICA. WILD ONION PRESS:
GAINESVILLE, FL. 2009
Chapter slides by the following 6th grade students:
1 Rachel Exelbirt
2 Sydney Stenner
3 Gianella Garzon
4 Jessica Brito
5 Andrea Wright
6 Tony Garner
7 Lev Ettinger
8 Jessica Brito
9 Rachel Exelbirt
You will find a link to Wild Onion
10 LaDorian Scott
11 Alyssa Flinchum
Press in the Resources section of
12 Kieran Kirby
the website. You can now better
13 Jamm Hostetler
14 Eric Smith
understand why developing and
15 Fredrick Fang
funding such a project was one of
16 Kassidy Robinson
17 Reece Vodre
Shelley Mickle’s passions in life
18 Wendy Thompson
19 Jamm Hostetler
20 Tatum Vega
21 Francisco Aguirre and Tatum Vega
22 Rebecca Schlafke and Tatum Vega
23 Coleman Tadrowski
24 Sydney Stenner
25 Rebecca Schlafke
26 Epilogue
27 Wendy Thompson