CONTINUED: Heart Attack

Paul turned to me as the Buick sputtered down the street. “If you step out of line even once, I’ll call Uncle Billy and he’ll get the county here to take you to the orphanage for the weekend.”

I snorted. “Wow, new friends. Get me in the girls dormitory, huh?” Billy was a cop and it would not be surprising to see a police car drive by a few times on the weekend. It was doubtful he would stop in unless he saw other emergency vehicles on the scene.

And so at precisely 1:41 p.m. Eastern Daylight Savings Time, June 20, 1959, Paul and I began life as the odd couple. I checked my watch one more time. On Monday I wanted to be able to tell my friends how many hours I had been left on my own. I wouldn’t mention the presence of my older brother, who in any case wasn’t watching me. He shut himself in our bedroom closet with a portable record player and his Bill Haley records. The player’s power cord snaked out from under the door to a nearby electrical outlet.

Twice I tipped the plug out of the socket momentarily and the record slowed down. From behind the door I heard him swear and punch the little player until I coughed and he realized what was happening. He chased me through the house and down the front stairs and part way down the street. But that was the only excitement all afternoon. The neighbors didn’t start hollering at us, so it turned out that all went well until after supper.

Around five o’clock Paul came out of the closet and made us a light supper. Except for well timed derisive comments, I let him accomplish his work. Although Paul had been assigned the cooking chores, he didn’t know how to cook any better than me, but he was considered more careful around fire. Specifically, I wasn’t allowed near the stove since curiosity got the better of me the month before and I heated up a D cell battery in one of Mom’s Revere Ware copper bottomed pots over an open flame. I did indeed employ a safety precaution by placing a lid on the pot. You could still see the round impression on the ceiling left by the lid when the battery blew up. The explosion made the neatest sound. Not a bang, but a sharp whoosh with a green flash of flame shooting up from the pot.

 When supper was over we sat back and finished up a dessert of candy and bananas. I noticed Paul massaging his chest.

“I think I’m having a heart attack,” he said and leaned forward hunching his shoulders. We hadn’t even begun to argue about who would wash or dry the two plates and two milk glasses.  

“You can’t have a heart attack,” I said. “You’re only sixteen.” But he really didn’t look so good. His face was pale and he wheezed with each breath.

“My chest hurts something awful,” he said.

 “It’s the peanut butter and fried baloney sandwiches you made us,” I said. “Topped off with the marshmallow chocolate cookies and the chicken corn candy for dessert. It’s called heartburn.”

“I don’t think so,” he moaned. “It really hurts.”

“Should I call Uncle Billy?” I said.

“Hell, no. Mom and Dad would never leave us alone again. Ever.”

I was getting concerned. “But if it’s a real heart attack, maybe we should—“

“Can’t you think of something? Remember the time you said toothpaste would work for Athlete’s Foot? Well, it did.”

“It did?”

“You made it up?”

“Not exactly,” I said. “It was based on my long experience in topical ointments.”

“You’re full of crap,” he said.

“Watch your tongue. I invented the use of ketchup for itchy scalp.”

“It worked?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t seen Mrs. Bletcher on my paper route since I recommended it to her. Seemed logical to me.”

“My chest really, really hurts,” he said and moaned again.

I racked my brain and finally an idea came.

 “Take the long wooden spoon Mom uses for spaghetti and stick it down your throat as far as it will go.”

“You mean, like a sword swallower?”

“Yeah, that’s it. Don’t swallow all of it. When it hits bottom, with just an inch or two sticking up out of your mouth, twist it around two or three times.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yes, it’ll mix up all the stomach acid with your food and that’ll take care of the heartburn.”

Paul sat there silent, his face a mask of pain.

“It might work,” I said, “if you don’t choke to death.”

He moaned again.

“Can you ride your bike?” I said.

“To where?

”The hospital. It’s only a mile or two over Pleasant Street. Maybe three.”

“I don’t think I can ride that far.”

“I’m sure it’s just heartburn,” I said.

He seemed to be getting worse as he pushed his knuckles back and forth over his chest. I had to think of a solution.

Another helpful thought came to me. “Where’s the Reader’s Digest Brain Surgery Manual?” That’s what we called the Home Health and First Aid book Mom kept on a bookshelf in the living room. I went and got it, brought it to the kitchen and thumbed through the heavy book waiting for my older brother to get over what I hoped was a bad case of heartburn.

“Here’s a diagnosis chart in the book,” I said. “Let’s go through it. Is the pain inside or outside the chest?”

“Inside.”

“Above or below the solar plexus?”

“What’s a solar plexus,” he said.

“If you don’t know what it is, you don’t have one. Left side or right side?”

“The middle.”

“Well,” I said, “the middle more to the right or the middle more to the left?”

“The middle of the middle.”

“Have you had this pain for over thirty days or less than ten days or –“

“I just got it, for cripe’s sake!”

“Have you participated in any strenuous activity in the past 24 hours? Lifted heavy objects or worked overtime?”

Paul ignored me.

“Does your skin possess a pallor or grayness?”

“I don’t know. Does it?”

“Just your hands from changing the bicycle tire this morning. Is there pain in your left arm?”

“I’m calling a cab,” said Paul.

On the phone he gave our address and asked how long it would take for a taxi to arrive. He said he needed to go to the hospital and volunteered he might be having a heart attack, but refused the suggestion to call an ambulance. “I’m only sixteen,” Paul told the dispatcher,” so I don’t think it’s bad enough for an ambulance.” Dad would have his own heart attack if he had to pay an ambulance bill.

The taxi cab arrived in fifteen minutes and pulled to the curb in front of the house. Mom and Dad and Michael pulled in the driveway seconds later as Paul and I were about to get in the cab. Gone only a few hours, they surprised us.

“You guys are certainly traveling in style,” said my father as he got out of our car and came over to the taxi. He didn’t look very well, his summer tan now rather peaked.

Paul began to whine. “My chest hurts something awful, Dad.”

“Paul’s having a heart attack,” I said.

Dad nodded and smiled. “No, he’s not. He’s got the flu.”

Mom walked over to us and Michael ran along behind her with his tin box. The tape was mostly off and trailed down like a ribbon..

“Your father has to go inside now and lie down,” Mom said.

“What’s the matter with him,” asked Paul.

“He has a bad case of the flu. It hit him just as we were leaving the city. We spent the afternoon in the hospital emergency room.”

“Thought I was having a heart attack,” Dad said. “You’re OK, Paul, you’ll have the heartburn for a little while longer, but it goes away when you start throwing up.”

“Thanks, Dad.” said Paul.”

“But that doesn’t last too long either,” said Dad. “When the chills and the muscle pains start, the vomiting is over.”

“Thanks, Dad,” Paul said again.

“Good thing, too,” said Dad, “because that’s when your other end cranks up.”

Paul was looking worse.

“I should go inside now, Dad.,” he said. “David will give you his blessing.”

“I think I’ll wait for his ordination,” said Dad.

Mom lit another Chesterfield. “I’ll have to call the family and tell them why we didn’t show up. Oh dear, they planned for us to stay overnight.”

Dad laughed. “They’ll forget all about us when they get the gin and whiskey out.”

Over the next few days all five of us came down with the symptoms. I told Michael we’d caught the flu from his Teddy Bear.

“Serves us right,” he said, “for stuffing him in a tin box with only two air holes.”

copyright David Griffin, 2014

CONTINUED: So, This Is Christmas ...by Rev. Lou Kavar Ph.D.

As John Lennon sang in a song from my youth, “So, this is Christmas!”

Our images of Christmas are of warmth, good cheer, and peace among people. While there is a good deal of merry-making and celebrations small and large, the world doesn’t stop for Christmas. If anything, our hopes of what Christmas should be make the realities of life seem more harsh and frustrating.

Our fantasies about Christmas gloss over the sacred stories of the birth of Jesus that are the foundation for this holiday day. Perhaps we forget that it was a poor young couple who made a difficult journey and had no safe place to stay. Or we romanticize the shepherds and miss that they were viewed as second class citizens who lived with their animals, didn’t maintain the religious laws of cleanliness, and were not welcome in most social circles. We mistakenly refer to the magi as “kings” but they were foreigners of a different religion and culture. Then, much like today, foreigners of a different culture and religion were viewed with suspicion not a warm welcome. The bottom line is this: the sacred stories of Christmas are about those who were outsiders, down on their luck, without any redeeming social value. Yet, they were the ones who are the central characters for the beginning for our stories about the birth of Jesus.

The sacred stories of Christmas are meant to remind us that hope is born in the lives of people who are struggling, facing hardship, and live in fear. These stories are the most significant when we allow the darkness of our lives to be filled with light – even if that light is just the glimmer of a single star. The depth of meaning in the stories of Christmas is most relevant for those living on the edge who aren’t sure what may come next.

I think the meaning of Christmas is captured in a sermon from the fifth century by Peter Chrysologus, a bishop in Central Italy, who wrote: “God saw the world falling to ruin because of fear and immediately acted to call it back with love. God invited it by grace, preserved it by love, and embraced it with compassion.”

The essence of the sacred stories of Christmas is that because the world is falling apart, because people experience pain and tragedy, because wrapped in fear we fail to do better, grace calls again and again to be people of love and compassion. The hope of Christmas is that struggle and strife aren’t the end of the story. Instead, something new can be born into our world that calls us to do better and to be better.

Yes, so this is Christmas! It’s not plastic sentimentality sold to us by commercial opportunists but it is the opportunity to allow hope be born anew. It is the hope of Christmas that bring us out of fear to a new faith that sets things right.

As I think about the pain and tragedy in the world and in the lives of people I know, it seems to me that we need Christmas more than ever. Indeed, we need to allow our lives to be transformed by love and compassion for the healing of the world.

On these last days before Christmas, I look for this hope as I pray the words of the ancient hymn: O Come, Emmanuel!

copyright by Rev. Lou Kavar Ph.D., 2014

 
Visit Lou's blog  here:

http://blog.loukavar.com/2014/12/22/so-this-is-christmas/

CONTINUED: Once Upon A Time

  Just the two of us ascended in the tiny elevator car.  I had stepped on in the basement, having come in from the street through the waiters’ locker room, stamping the season’s first snow off my cheap shoes.  He got on at the first floor, headed for the private dining rooms on the third floor while I continued to the fifth.  We spoke not a word. He hummed something while I cleared my throat.  Just as the elevator stopped at his floor, I said, “I must tell you something, ♫I Left My Heart In San Francisco♫. 

The doors opened and he stepped out without acknowledging my attempt at conversation.  He may not have heard me. 

I was twenty years old and from a small city farther upstate.  I knew a little piano, but never thought to ask Mr. Bennett if he needed an extra accompanist who could play just about any Chuck Berry song in the key of C.  And not much else. It might have been time for the aging crooner to consider updating his repertoire.  If he could do ♫Sing You Sinners,♫  he could certainly include Chuck’s classics like Maybellene and Roll Over Beethoven.  Forcing his voice up to the key of C should have been no problem for a professional. 

Frankly, I’d probably work for free.  And carry his bags.  I could even try to transpose to A.

I wasn’t very realistic at age twenty.  It’s a wonder I ever got any work done.  On that morning, the most important thing rolling around in my mind was not whether I could remember the wiring circuits that controlled the little magnets that pushed down the long thin blades just in the nick of time to send a punched car to the correct pocket on the sorter machine.   I was ♫Younger Than Spring♫ and my mind kept wandering to the snow falling on the streets of Manhattan and how pretty it looked. 

To some people snow is not pretty.  I have to say I began to lean in that direction as I got older.  But in my early adulthood … a period I now more honestly label my late childhood  … snow was gorgeous.  It would bring to mind a pretty girl with red cheeks sitting on a toboggan wearing a pink scarf and tight jeans.  My thoughts jumped to later, sheltered from a snowstorm in a dimly lit café, hunched over mugs of cinnamon-laced hot cider, her blue eyes and flaming red hair tugging on my heart as I sat in ♫The Shadow Of Her Smile♫. Still later, a dark sky arched high above a street lamp shining down on the snow covered sidewalk as our feet crunched along, bodies shivering inside our clothes, anxious to get to her apartment to enjoy each other’s warmth.  ♫For Once In My Life♫, I was in love. 

♫Where Do I Begin?♫  It is probably true that the last person you would expect to make a mature decision about a potential lifetime mate would be an unrealistic older child of twenty who couldn’t remember whether the little magnets that sent a punched card to the correct pocket were powered by a pulse from the cam contact or the detector switch. More alarming, I didn’t care about cams and switches and detectors that morning.  I went back down the elevator and out into the middle of West 52^nd Street to build a snowman.  But of course there is absolutely nowhere you can build a snowman on West 52^nd Street, except perhaps on the roof of a parked car.  ♫Just In Time♫, I stopped myself from making a mess on top of a very plain late model automobile when I realized I was approaching an unmarked police car.

What I remember best about the girl is she was nice to me.  Most young women I met at age 20 looked right through me as though I was a sheet of glass, like the door in the office building they pushed aside and went through each morning.  To get upstairs to a job, to earn money, to buy pretty clothes, to attract a man like me.  But not me.

In our twenties, most boys and girls were unaware we were simply at the age for chasing after someone else’s life we wanted to share.  ♫That Old Devil Moon♫ had a simple reproductive battle plan  that demanded we couple soon, while we still might live long enough to raise human children to the age of their own coupling.  We humans had no better  game plan than a ♫Firefly♫.

Most of us ran around and tried to look smart, pretty or handsome.  We hoped to meet the one who would serve our fancy, and maybe even our needs.  ♫I May Be Wrong♫, but I probably had no idea what my real needs were.

One definite need was to eat, so I went back upstairs to my job and  ♫I Got Rhythm♫.  I finally came to understand the music of the spheres, the interposer magnets and how to set 8 thousandths of an inch adjustment on the card feed blade.  ♫Maybe This Time♫ I would remember to turn off the power before probing the circuits.

For many of my friends, their one true love or a reasonable facsimile eventually showed up.  Or they got tired of searching and settled for companionship or sex.  Some  gazed with new eyes over old ground that held past  partners.  And if their old lovers were now spoken for, one could certainly find the old personalities wrapped around new candidates.  Some of my friends hoped what didn’t work in the past would work now.  “♫They Can’t Take That Away From Me♫,” they said. Many were disappointed to find you unlearn a good lesson at your own peril.

Evidently all of us believed five or six dates at the movies or tucked into a booth in a quiet bar were enough to form the basis of a lifetime commitment.  Some of us were right.

Biology pounded at the door and families, parsons, chapels, gown makers, formal attire renters and honeymoon destinations coaxed young lovers toward cementing their union.    One of ♫My Girl’s♫ friends had already married a boy who sold hot dogs downtown in an office building to earn money to buy her pretty clothes that made her attractive.  ♫But Not For Me♫.  I wanted the girl who promised she’d sail away with me on a ship called the ♫The Good Life♫.

“For us,” I told her, “it’s ♫A Time For Love♫.”

“♫This I All I Ask♫,” she answered, “♫I Wanna Be Around♫.”

“♫Because Of You♫,” I said, “I will never walk that ♫Boulevard of Broken Dreams♫.”

 “♫The Best Is Yet To Come♫,” she said.

Tony Bennett may have said the same each of the three times he married.  I still feel that way after nearly fifty years of marriage.  And if Tony and I met again on an elevator, we might agree that for us,  the birds, the bees and the marriage industry, ♫The Music Never Ends♫.

.copyright 2013 by David Griffin

CONTINUED: Neanderthal

"You just wanna see how strong I am," she said.

"That's not what I meant at all," I said, embarrassed to have been caught considering exactly what she accused me of.

Her eyes stared over my shoulder  from under heavy brows. “Then why do you want to arm wrestle a girl?”

"It’s … it's just that it will be a while before everything heats up and … well, the thought just popped into my head.”

“You’re full of crap,” she said.

Though I had no plan when I opened my big mouth, this was not going the way I wanted.

"No, really," I said, "I didn't mean it like you took it."  The way her eyes avoided mine told me there was something odd here, something amiss. Most girls would have said no and dismissed the notion. Lucy wanted to argue about it.

I laughed. “And I don’t want to beat a girl arm wrestling.”

     “Yeah, right,” she said.

     “It might hurt my image as Mr. Nice Guy.,”

     “OK,” she said.

     “Or it might hurt your image as –“

"OK, shithead," she said.  "Put 'er up."  Lucy leaned toward me, her elbow placed firmly on the surface of the lab table and her open hand beckoning me. A girl at the next table looked over at us.

“Look,” I said. “It was a silly idea.  Forget I mentioned it.”

She raised her voice. "Put 'er up! I said," staring directly at me.

I leaned forward, put my elbow on the table in front of her and she did exactly what I thought she would do. She sat back, refusing to engage me.

“You’re some man, picking on a girl,” she said.

I leaned back in my chair.  She had no intention of showing me her strength.

“You’re right,” I said airily.  “And besides, I sprained my wrist ... both of them ... a week ago … playing badminton."

"You wanted to test me," she said. 

I was hoping she'd forget I even brought it up.  I had no desire to embarrass her. 

Lucy looked pointedly at the girl at the next table.  I glanced around to see a number of students staring at us.  When the two at the next table turned away from Lucy’s stare, she brought her attention back to me.

“You should talk Sally’s lab partner into taking me so you can be with Sally,” she said with a sarcastic grin on her face.

Persuading Sally’s partner to pair up with this female lead from Planet of the Apes would not be easy.

“No,” I said. “That’s OK, Lucy.  I can probably put up with you.”  I didn’t say it, but I would have felt uncomfortable with Sally, always needing to impress her and strut my male ego when the other guys stopped by the lab table to visit with her.  Sally wasn’t worth the trouble.

Lucy leaned way back in her chair, crossed her arms behind her head and put her feet up on the edge of the lab table. She looked at me.  Her heavy brows gave her a formidable appearance

"Do you think I'm pretty?" she said.

I looked up at the ceiling. "Uh, yes. Honest, you're a ... you're a ... an attractive woman.  Really."

It occurred to me I might mean it.

"You'll take all the notes, write up the experiment?" she said.

With an easy smile of surrender I said, "Oh, of course. Be happy to."  I began to wonder if I could switch into another section and get out of this class.

"I think we'll get along," she said, making it sound like an order.

I flattened the notebook down on the black shiny surface of the lab table to take notes and then I stood to hook up the burner.

Lucy thumbed through her notebook as if it might contain nothing that interested her.   I busied myself with the Bunsen burner.

“Maybe Sally will arm wrestle you,” she said.

“OK, knock it off,” I said. “I get it.  You don’t want to arm wrestle.”

 “You’re the one who refused,” she said.

“You really didn’t want to.”  

“Bull,” she said.  “I offered.”

“Uh huh,” I said.

“I’ll arm wrestle you, punk … when you grow up.”

My desire to play it cool evaporated.  I snapped at her.

“No, you won’t. And I know why.”

“You think I’d lose, eh?”

“No,” I said.  “You’d win.”

"You think I'm some kinda Neanderthal, don't you?" 

I said nothing.

“What’re you, a weakling?” she said.

“No, Lucy, I am not a weakling”.

“I think you are.”

“I told you,” I said, “I am a gentleman.”

“Then act like it and leave me alone,” she said.

Lucy looked down at the table.  She picked up her mechanical pencil and began to twist the lead in and out of the shaft.

“OK, you’re not a weakling,” she said.  “So what am I … an Amazon?”

I continued to connect the gas hose and set up the burner.

“I’ve always been this way,” she said, her voice very small, like a little girl.  She kept her eyes down and watched her fingers twist the pencil as if she was performing an extremely complicated procedure. The two girls at the next table were busy firing up their burner.

I felt terrible.  I hadn’t meant for Lucy to feel bad about herself. Not when I started this.

“OK,” I said.  “I’m all set up, ready to go.”

I sat down, opposite her.  She continued to twirl the lead in and out.  She ignored me. I put my elbow down hard on the surface of the table with my hand up and open.

“Put ‘er up,” I said, louder than I had intended.

“No,” she said. I could feel several pairs of eyes on us.

“Put ‘er up, shithead,” I said,  my voice close to a whisper. “Do what you’re made to do.”

She banged her elbow down in front of me, grabbed my hand and rammed it over backward on the table. 

“I wasn’t ready,” I said.

Lucy put her hand in mine again and looked into my eyes. 

“It feels like we’re dancing,” I said, surprising myself.

I began to push her hand.  It didn’t budge.  I pushed even harder and it didn’t move a millimeter.  Her face showed only the slightest strain as our eyes locked together. I pushed my full strength up against her, a noise coming from deep in my throat. She began to push back slowly with a low breathy sound, almost a moan. Her front teeth came down over her lower lip.  In a moment she quickly slammed my hand down on the table.  She let go and sat up straight.

Our test tube had rolled to the edge of the table and lay there waiting for only a gentle nudge to push it over.  Five or six  students stared at us. The lab was quiet except for the whoosh of burners, but after a few seconds the normal hubbub returned.

Our youth, our hands touching, eyes meeting and those billowy gym shorts added  a dimension to our grappling with each other.  We both knew it.  I reached for her hand again, but she quickly put both in her lap. We were winded by our effort and her chest strained against her sweat shirt with each breath.  I still wondered about her underwear.

“You win,” I said.

“I always win,” she said.

“Only when you’re being yourself,” I said.

“Sometimes I’d rather be Sally,” she said.

“Sometimes I’d rather be Batman,” I said.

Lucy picked up the pencil and reached for the notebook.

“Are we all heated up yet?” she said, gesturing toward the burner.

“I’m pretty sure that I am,” I said and laughed.

“Just remember you’re a gentleman,” she said.

I took that as a hard won compliment.

             

copyright 2013, David Griffin

CONTINUED: Remembering Grandma by Harold Ratzburg

Being married to Grandpa was not easy.  He was very frugal when it came to spending money on things that his wife would like to have, like curtains for the house.  Who needs them, he must have figured.  He tended to drink a lot and sometimes when he came home from town with “his shoes full” as the old saying went, he became right down nasty and abused Grandma. Family legend has it that my Dad and his Brother Herman sometimes slept in the same room as Grandma to prevent Grandpa from beating up on her when he came home drunk. The legend also tells that when Grandma was pregnant, Grandpa helped himself to sexual favors from the hired girl.  He was far from being an angel, more like a certified S.O.B. if you ask me.  My Dad once mentioned to my Brother Lyle, that the reason he would never strike his wife or one of us kids, is that he saw how brutality hurt the whole family

                Grandpa was the boss and owner of the farm, and way back when, he was known to have one of the best horse farms in the area, with beautiful trotters for the buggies and work horses for the plow.  Unfortunately, good friends (?) found that if they would come and talk to Grandpa up behind the barn and be nice to him, he would sign personal notes for them, and in doing so, when they could not pay the notes, Grandpa couldn’t either, and so he signed the farm away into bankruptsy.

                Grandpa died in 1938 with the farm financially underwater.  Bankruptsy meant that Grandma couldn’t hold it together, so my Dad, Louie, took it over, and  Dads siblings signed off  on their shares.  In 1941, with the help of a lawyer, he worked out a written agreement, with his mother, (my Grandma of course), which contained some interesting clauses.  It provided, for example, that Grandma would live in the same house as our family and eat at the same table.  If she decided that she would rather live alone in a separate part of the house, (which she did), Dad would need to provide her with split wood to heat her rooms, plus 200 pounds of meat each year, Milk and cream as needed, 5 pounds of butter per month, 400 pounds of potatoes and 200 pounds of flour each year, and 2 dozen eggs each week.  She was also guaranteed the use of the well for water and use of the cellar to store her food.  That did cover it rather well, I do believe.

                My early memory kicks in about 1938 when Grandpa died.  I sort of remember his body lying in state in the living room for a day or so for viewing, but that’s about all I remember about him. 

Grandma was a saint and loved us kids dearly and showed it to us all the time, and so, following are some stories about Grandma and what I remember of her and her love for us young ones.

SOUP IN A BISS----Now that is a concoction you don’t see much anymore mainly because you don’t see many tin cans used regularly in the kitchen for cooking and eating.  A “biss” was a plain old tin can about 6 inches high and 4 ½ inches across that originally came filled with something to eat from the store.  It was cleaned out and became part of an old farm wife’s cookware in the kitchen.  The soup was made from bread, broken up into smaller pieces and put into the biss.  But----pay attention now----it had to be homemade bread, not the store bought, Wonder Bread kind.  On top of that bread, put enough sugar to sweeten to this kids taste and pour milk over it to make a brew, and that was a “soup in the biss”.  It was always the favorite of us kids, especially if you had a sweet tooth like I did, and still have.

What made it kind of memorable in our house was that frequently, Grandma would treat me with  soup in a biss, just before my meal times back in the other side of the house with my family, and it ruined my appetite----which really annoyed my mother enough times that it made a big enough “discussion” in the house that as a kid, I remember it.  You probably know how it can be, with two women living in one house together.

BLOODY BUTCHERING TIME----Blood of any kind really gets the attention of any kid, and I was certainly not an exception.  There were plenty of butchering times around the farm back then because it was a natural part of putting home grown food on the table.  Grandma, and all other farm wives thought nothing of going out to the chicken coop, and taking that long stiff piece of wire that we called the “chicken hook” and fishing around through all the chicken legs and feet under the flock of chickens,  until she would hook the leg of the hen that she wanted to cook for supper.  Then, it was off to the chopping block, and off with the head and so on till that poor old chicken was on the table.

Butchering pigs was a much bloodier affair, when a hog would caught, tipped over on its side and stuck in the throat with my Dad’s special “sticking knife” that he  used.  The pig needed to be held down on the ground to bleed out, so that Grandma, with her old pioneer training, could come forward with her dish pan to catch the blood that gushed out of the wound.  That blood shortly wound up on the table as Grandma’s blood sausage, using the intestines of that same pig as casing for the sausage.  As a kid I was able to help with the process of cleaning out the intestines by pouring water through them, and then cranking the handle of the food grinder to stuff the guts with the blood sausage material that Grandma had cooked up.

COOKING HOME MADE SOAP----This was all part of Grandma’s pioneer background and training.  Living in a log house when she was first married gave her all sorts of work that brides these days will certainly never experience,  (I will add right here, that at this point in the story, some of your readers might be saying-----“Hold on there a minute, we can still butcher and handle these jobs as well as any pioneer could”------but my statements go with thoughts about my kids and Grandkids and their experiences of growing up and living in today’s metropolitan world with a supermarket just down the street, and NOT on a farm.)

Anyway, when it came to making soap, it was a chance for me to “help out” Grandma by PLAYING WITH FIRE!!!!!!!!!!!  I never knew or cared much about how Grandma took some of the parts of that butchered pig that were not edible and turned them into soap, but I do recall that several cans of “Red Devil Lye” was part of the concoction.  The best part of it for us kids is that the concoction had to be boiled for a long time, and Grandma handled that by using a big, 30 inch diameter cast iron kettle which she hung over the fire out in the yard, on a framework made of cedar poles.  Under the pot was the fire which had to be fed with fresh wood for a long time, and that is where we kids had our fun.  Just imagine, being allowed to feed a fire and keep poking around in it to keep it burning good and even being appreciated for our efforts.  (To us it was just fun) 

It beat the heck out getting caught, like happened to me one time, when I was playing with matches and dry corn husks in the sawdust filled ice house.  Dad was not happy when he caught me, but at least I knew enough to NOT try that in the hay mow of the barn.

After cooking long enough, Grandma would let the pot hang to cool off, and the finished product was a layer of soap, about two inches thick, which was cut into blocks and used for washing clothes.  In earlier pioneer days, I’m sure it was used for all purposes, including shampooing the hair and other personal hygiene.

GRANDMA’S HEALTH CONCERNS----Grandma was always concerned about the health of her grandkids, and one of her major concerns about me, that drove me wild, was that I was going to ruin my eyesight by reading too much.  When our family received a pile of old magazines that had been salvaged from a dump near Milwaukee by a relative and brought up north to us poor relatives on the farm, I was in seventh heaven, cause now I had something new to read.  I had my favorite reading hideouts, like up in my “fort” above the corn crib, or in the soft hay of the hay mow.  I couldn’t read too much in the house because Grandma would keep nagging me about it.  When I had to change reading locations, I would roll the magazine around my lower leg and hold it in place inside my sock while I casually walked across the yard.  I out-foxed Grandma like that every time.

Reading in bed, with a flashlight was a real no-no!!!  With flashlight batteries costing at least five cents apiece, back in those days, such extravagance was just out of the question.  Reading in bed with the electric power that was installed in the house in 1936 was difficult too, because the sole light in my bedroom was a bare single bulb hanging down from the ceiling in the middle of the room, switched on and off with a string stretching  from the bulb socket to the bed post.  The electric building code back then did not provide for receptacles along the walls, but then, we couldn’t afford extra bed lamps either.

GRANDMA’S PETS----Understandingly, cats and dogs were and are a normal part of a farmer’s life, but Grandma, accumulated a few unusual ones.

The first one, long before my time, was a pet deer.  I know about it only through family legends, but it seems that somewhere, somehow, the family found a small male fawn up north somewhere, that was adopted into the family as a pet.  It was not exactly legal to have a wild life pet, even back in those days, and as the story goes, the game warden got wind of it and came to check it out.  Again, as the story goes, that deer was so wise that when the game warden showed up on the yard, the deer went and hid itself behind a pile of lumber stacked in a corner of the barn and granary, and the warden never was able to pin down this illegal possession incident.  The deer was raised to adulthood on the farm, but as it got older, it got a more and more nasty disposition and had to be kept behind a fence.  Eventually, it got so nasty that it tried to tear up the fence by twisting it with its antlers and it had to go.  It probably ended up on the farm kitchen table as a venison meal, because the head and antlers were mounted and adorned the living room wall for years.  That mounted head even followed the family when the farm was sold and Ma and Dad moved to downtown Marion, where it hung in the garage for a number of years after that.

The pet pig that Grandma raised was a different story.  Grandma was always a soft touch for the weak and helpless, so in this case, when a sow got a large litter of piglets, there was one small, runty, piglet that was always last at the sow’s supper table and physically crowded to the rear end of its mothers rows of teats, which were most of the time out of reach for the little guy.  Grandma saw this and took pity on the piglet and took it up to the house to feed it out of a baby bottle and nipple.  It stayed up at the house, and eventually wound up penned up in a fence in Grandma’s garden.  The pig was never named, but it did become a family pet to all.

One of the surprising things we learned about pigs from this pet, was how clean pigs are when given a chance.  One of the most smelly jobs on a farm is cleaning out a pig stall, especially if it in an enclosed shed in the warm summer weather and it hasn’t been cleaned in a while. Pigs in the stall were forced to live there of course, but the pet pig had its own fenced pen, and it chose not to live like a pig.  It did its daily duty in a special place in one corner of the pen and all in all, it was a nice clean animal to be around.

Eventually however, Grandma’s pet pig went the way of most farm animals and became a farm product, when it was butchered and eaten by the family.  Very few farm animals, with the exception of dogs and cats, ever die a natural death.

GRANDMA’S PASSING----In 1948, after I had finished High School and then worked for the summer in Milwaukee to save up some money, Dick Kreuger, Gene Major, and I took off in Dick’s 1934 Chevy to go down to Florida and work there for the winter as an adventure trip to escape Wisconsin’s cold.  We searched for jobs in Jacksonville FL and couldn’t find any so we drove across the state (living on catsup sandwiches and sodas as I recall) to Tampa where we didn’t find any work either.  We finally got the idea that maybe Wisconsin was not so bad after all, and headed back to good old Marion.  We arrived home just in time for me to be a pall bearer for Grandma at her funeral from St. John’s Lutheran Church.

Goodbye Grandma, you were a wonderful Grandmother.

copyright 2014 by Harold Ratzburg

CONTINUED: The Madcap Adventures of Eliezer Gurevitch

Turkey was not much better.  This time they may have been persecuted by a different aggressor but the reason remained the same.  They were Jews. I learned through my sister-in-law, Sylvia, that she remembers her dad talking about the day of his Bar Mitzvah which  occurred shortly after the family moved to Turkey.  He recalled that following his Bar Mitzvah he was carried on the shoulders of the men through the streets, a long standing tradition.

Eventually the family migrated to Palestine by ship carrying British passports.  I don't know the circumstance of how the passports were obtained, probably illegally. Jews were not welcome there as well.  Their new enemies were the Arabs.   The British government, no friend of the Jews,  did not want the hassle of dealing with the politics of the region. They provided weak protection to the settlers. 

As more Jews from Europe fled to Palestine, anger against them grew and they formed groups to protect themselves.  One well known group was the Haganah.  It was a Jewish paramilitary organization, in what was the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948.  Believing that they could not rely on the British for protection from local Arab gangs, the Jewish leadership created the Haganah to protect Jewish farms and kibbutzim during the 1920's.  Following the 1929 Palestine riots, the Haganah's role changed dramatically.  It became a larger organization acquiring foreign arms and going from an untrained militia to a capable underground army.

The yellowed document I wrote about earlier revealed the applicant as Eliezer Gurevitch formerly Asher Segal which may have been an alias that he had once used.  My sister-in-law filled in the missing pieces of the puzzle, a story my husband knew little of.  I had an opportunity to share as well because I had always heard that my father-in-law was from the Republic of Georgia. 

I learned that my father-in-law worked for the Haganah.  He secreted guns in the luggage compartment of Palestinian tour buses while doubling as a driver for a Palestinian touring company.  He and his cousin did this risky work until it became too dangerous.   His mother borrowed money to pay for a visa and and roundtrip passage to the United States.   He sailed to New York harbor arranging to meet with his American family who had emigrated to Buffalo, New York.  During his brief stay in Buffalo, family in Cleveland, Ohio introduced him to four unmarried sisters.  He had a choice of marrying any one of them!  Their father judiciously allowed his daughters the right to refuse a proposal if any one of them had strong feelings against the suitor.  He reminds me of Tevye from " Fiddler on the Roof who allowed two of his daughters to marry for love.  Unheard of during the early years of the twentieth century.  He chose my mother-in-law, Edna, because she laughed at his jokes and had a good sense of humor.  She expressed her desire to marry the handsome young man.  After a two week courtship, they married. He was twenty-four and she thirty-five.  She was advised by her sisters not to talk about her age.  She never told him that she was eleven year's older but he knew how old her siblings were and that she was the oldest of six.  Years before he died, my father-in-law took my husband and me into his confidence and said, "Mama doesn't know that I know how old she is.  That is to remain our secret."  Only after his death did she learn. She did not apply for Social Security when it was possible for her to do so because she didn't want her husband to know that their marriage had begun with a lie. She ruefully told the family, " He should have told me that he knew.  I could have collected Social Security ten years earlier!"

Three weeks after marrying Elias, his visa expired and he reluctantly returned to Palestine.  During the spring of 1931, he learned that he was going to become a father.  Baby Sylvia was born on January 21, 1932.  Her dad was able to return to the states a week before her birth. much to everyone's relief.

To the average onlooker my father-in-law's life must have seemed monotonous.  He  worked seven days a week during the early years of their marriage operating a gas station  and had little time and money for fun and leisure. On national holidays he managed to pile Sylvia and six small children from the neighborhood into his coupe and head for Euclid Beach Park on Lake Erie.  He bought tickets for all the children to go on the rides and treated them to ice cream.  He treasured those moments as  did his daughter, Sylvia.

Life was hard for the Gurev family and millions of other young couples starting out as the Great Depression deepened until the advent of World War Two.   The newlyweds moved into Edna's parents' home.  Seven adults shared a three bedroom house.  The sisters-in-law slept on an enclosed back porch which was freezing in the winter. When Sylvia no longer slept in a crib, she slept in the dining room on a cot.  She got no rest until the adults went to bed.  She never called her dad "daddy" until she was twelve probably because she rarely saw him as he went to work before she awakened and worked until 10:30 at night.

Sylvia remembers her father as honest, brave, polite and proud.  He was fluent in six languages, had an excellent education since his father worked for the czar for the first twelve years of his life but circumstances including the effect of measles prevented him from getting a  a job that required his intellect.  He loved being around children and telling whoppers.  His imagination allowed him to roam far and wide risking life and limb in death defying escapes.  In his late sixties, he and my mother-in-law took a long dreamed for trip to Israel meeting relatives in Tel Aviv and touring the country.  They somehow managed to walk up the crude steps at Masada to pay homage to those martyrs who died there long ago.

My father-in-law shortened his name some years later to Elias Gurev, a name I personally prefer because spelling my last name to those who don't know me would no doubt be more problematic than it already is.

Elias was not one to be bitter over all the family had lost during his younger years.  His joy came from his family and customers he befriended at his local gas station.  He told his daughter, Sylvia, that he had felt some momentary disappointment when the doctor told him he had a daughter but he could swap her for a boy if he remained unhappy.  They both had a good laugh knowing that once Sylvia nestled is her daddy's arms, he would never let her go.

They went from one child to having Harold six year's later and my husband, Jerry, four years after Harold's birth.  Jerry's birth was remarkable in that his mother was forty five when he belted out his first lusty cry.

Elias's tales will linger for as long as his children and grandchildren keep them alive.  

 Copyright 2014 by Sandra Gurev