SUNDAY MEMORIES
Judy Wills
When you get a cold these days (hopefully seldom, and just a mild one), when you search for the best pill or concoction to shake it out of your system…..how in the world do you choose? There seems to be hundreds out there to choose from. Just google it, and you will see.
And yet, I can remember my Mother’s remedy for a chest cold, as clear as yesterday. You see, we had this little space heater in our bathroom that was built into one wall.
Sounds like a disconnect already, doesn’t it? Well, hang on……..it’s coming. She would have me sit on the edge of the bathtub, and she would rub Bengay® all over my chest.
Then she would take a dry washcloth and hold it in front of that little space heater until it was nearly hot, then she would have me hold it over my chest while she was heating another wash cloth. That went on – back and forth between two cloths – until she felt she had done enough. Then I was sent to bed.
I don’t remember any cold medication, although there was probably something. Perhaps nothing more than hot tea with lemon and/or honey to help with the sore throat and the cough.
But I’m always sent back to that memory and Mother’s remedy when I smell Bengay™ or anything like it. It is such a sweet memory of a simpler time and loving care my Mother took with me when I was ailing.
I also don’t remember too many other houses that had that kind of in-the-wall space heater. Perhaps it was indicative of the time those houses were built. Fred and I did have one in the bathroom in our first apartment, but that apartment, too was built in the 1950’s or so. I think now in our modern homes, there is a “heat lamp” light fixture that warms the room. Such a loss.
But what a warm, loving memory that is for me.
A few weeks ago our two adult Sunday School teachers sort of retired. After twenty years of teaching, it was time for something new. Our pastor’s wife said we were all saturated in the Bible, and it was true. At first we just talked, but to me it seemed we were saying the same things over and over. They were the best things you could say, full of faith and hope, but still…
some of the hangers where the museum’s aircraft are now housed. Among notable aircraft built by Fairchild during and shortly after WWII included the PT-19/PT-23/PT-26 Cornell trainers, the AT-21 Gunner twin-engine trainer, the C-61 Argus (For the RAF), and the C-82 Packet, C-119 Flying Boxcar and the C-123 Provider cargo planes. The museum wasn’t officially open, but one of the guys working at the airport hangar (where “Greta” delivered me) agreed to show me the museum’s aircraft collection and tell me a little about Fairchild’s roll in wartime Hagerstown.
medical treatment used on the fighting men during the Civil War. It is surprising to me that as many men as did, survived their treatments, surgeries and amputations during that war. I guess the main reason for their survival rate was that they were young and healthy when they went into the war. It makes one appreciate modern medical practices such as the advances in cleanliness, antiseptics, surgical applications and especially prosthetics technology.
front of the museum just long enough to go in and ask where to park. I couldn’t have been in the museum more than 3 or 4 minutes, but when I came out to move my car I had a parking ticket and the writer of that ticket was nowhere to be seen. He/she must have been lurking in some doorway, close by, just waiting for me to walk away from my car, because the ticket was a computer print-out with a “lot” of automobile information that had to have been observed and entered into their hand-held device. Man, was that fast! Needless to say, that was a costly museum visit.
Old Things R New 