Old-Fashioned Remedies - by Mom

Ever get stitches? What happened?

Were you ever hospitalized as a kid?

What were some of the “old-fashioned” remedies for sickness that you remember your parents using?

Well, I have told you about breaking the window with my arm and the many stitches and re-stitching that had to be done.  I believe those were my only stitches until Melissa was born and I needed a little sewing up.

I never broke any bones, or had my tonsils out or other disasters of childhood. Of course, I never had a bike either, so that eliminated one source of catastrophe.

          I was never hospitalized, but I did go through a period of very bad headaches when I was 11 or 12. I was pretty sure it was a brain tumor, thanks to a Reader’s Digest article. I had Mono in 7^th grade, and then pneumonia just before 9^th grade.  I got lab tests and x-rays for the headaches, and a work-up for the Mono, but I was treated for everything in the clinic and at home.

          I had a lot of nosebleeds as a kid, and my mom could get pretty freaked out about that, but she would call my Uncle Sam on the phone. Once he even came over to the apartment late at night to check it out, but it was just a regular little-kid nosebleed.

          Back then, we got chicken pox, measles, mumps, scarlet fever (whatever that is). Chicken pox the remedy was baths. Measles and mumps were treated with aspirin (yes! Before Reyes syndrome was known) and a darkened room. Since the only room with heavy, room-darkening drapes was our parents’ bedroom, we would get to stay in there during the day.

          One thing for sure, when we were sick, it was mom who took care of us.  My dad only had to hear someone vomiting to trigger his own nausea and vomiting.

          We didn’t own a TV for several years, but there was this repair place that rented TVs for $1 / day, and when we were really sick with a major disease, or when my dad got surgery, we would get to have a TV for a week, a very old-fashioned remedy, indeed!

         

          Other remedies:

          Baking soda and water paste on bee stings or wasp stings

          A liquid called Campho-phenique for chiggers and mosquito bites

          Vicks on your throat for a cold or sore throat

          A hot match-tip on a tick to make him back out

          clear nail-polish on a tick to kill him without leaving his claws in you

          Calamine lotion for poison ivy and heat rash

          I can see as I look over this list that many of the common things were flora and fauna – And things you kids did not grow up with in St. George—chiggers, poison ivy.

My mom was pretty advanced, read a lot and had smart friends, so she didn’t do anything superstitious or weird. She had a sister (Mary) who was an RN and both her brothers were doctors who lived at home while they were students, so she absorbed a lot of smart things from that.

          We were a sturdy lot and enjoyed good health, for the most part.

Addendum

 Small scrapes and cuts were treated with one of these antiseptics:

Tincture of merthiolate or mercurochrome.

 They were two different things, applied with a dropper. The glass dropper was not a bulb / suction medicine dropper but rather a solid glass tube with a solid glass sphere on the tip, which would collect a small amount of liquid from the bottle which could then be applied to the wound.  It was used as an antiseptic, and painted a red badge of courage on your knee or the palms of your hands scraped in a fall. As I recall, Merthiolate stung but mercurochrome did not. It was thought that the stinging medicine worked better, but that may have been a fiction based on a temporary household depletion of the non-stinging potion.

School Days - by Dad

 Dear Melissa,

Ok, I led a sheltered childhood compared to Mom’s story about being persecuted in a catholic school. It will be boring by comparison, but here goes.

I started kindergarten and first through 6^th grade at he Heber North School. In Heber, everyone went to public school. I didn’t know there was any other kind. I don’t remember my kindergarten teacher, but my first grade teacher was Mrs. Walton, who was the nicest teacher ever. She let me bring World Book encyclopedia from home and read it in class. She thought I was the smartest little boy she had ever known. I’m sure there were other smart little boys, but she let me think I was the smartest. I think we still took little naps after drinking a carton of milk on a nap mat sometime in the mid morning. I can’t remember if that was first grade or kindergarten. I also remember I was the slowest eater in school. The teacher that was assigned to monitor the lunch room would start nagging me to eat faster as soon as I got my tray, because I was always the last one done. Interestingly, as a teen and adult I became a very fast eater which has always driven your mom crazy.

Recess was a really big thing throughout elementary school. I remember many different fads, things like playing marbles (having the prettiest marble, one with a defective flower in the middle, or a “steelie” was a big deal) , hop skotch (you had to have a really good taw), spinning tops, ice sliding during the winter, building snow forts, ball and jacks (mainly for girls) and avoiding the killer icicles were some of the main activities. Later we got some outdoor swings and “tricky bars” which were quite challenging. Jumping out of the swing at the peak of its ark was popular with the tough guys. I was never that tough.

The North school was a red sandstone brick building 3 stories high with a basement which house the coal furnace and the boiler which I never saw. There were radiators in the classrooms, which sometimes got so hot we would have to open the windows even in the winter. Attached to the 3 story building was an “annex” which housed the two first grade classrooms and one second grade classroom and the lunch room. You had to walk down a big ramp from the big building to get to the lunch room and annex and we would line up on that ramp for school lunch, which pretty much everyone ate school lunch. I remember the cost being a dollar a week initially and later 1.25 a week. The old school had ancient wood floors which the custodian polished every week and swept every day. The newer annex had linoleum over cement. Even when I went to school there were grooves worn in the wood floors from so many little feet passing over them every day. No elevators, just big wide wooden stairs going up to the second and third floor. The higher the floors got the 5^th and 6^th grade, the lower grades got the first and second floor. You could actually open the windows and potentially hang out of them. Of course, we never did because it was forbidden. On the third floor you could see the “killer icicles” if the janitor hadn’t made it all the way around the building with a long pole he used to knock them down every winter morning. They would create a little mound around the outside of the building just under the edge of the 3 foot eaves.

I would walk to school most days as it was 3 blocks from home. I think my mother walked with me some days when I was in the first grade. Bullies were always a risk for little kids like me and I was always worried about some bigger tougher kids chasing me down and beating on me. I don’t think anything serious ever happened, except maybe Barry Reynolds threw a rock at me that hit right above the right eye. I still have the scar, I think I was about 9. The only other bully incident I remember was Steven Walker in 7^th grade language arts class smashed an orange in my loose leaf which made a terrible mess of all my assignments and papers. He was not my friend, but I guess I have to forgive him now. 7^th graders are the most awkward people in the world, thinking that playing practical jokes on each other and on the teacher is cool. I caught it from the Science teacher, Mr Craig, by raising my hand in class and telling him his fly was down (it was). He called us “little bounders”, and I was one of them.

I learned to play the harmonica, the recorder, and a little metal flute in elementary. I envy mom, who learned the mandolin when she was in school. I became pretty competent at the harmonica, though. Mr Pace, my 6th grade teacher, was a master harmonica player. In 7^th grade I learned the clarinet which we bought from a guy in Salt Lake my granddad knew who sold clarinets. The coolest thing was, and I think the reason my dad bought the clarinet from him, he had an antique steam engine car in the back of his shop.

I went to school with most of the same kids all through elementary, junior high, and high school, with a few kids coming and going. I could still name ¾ of the kids I went to first and second grade with. There were only two elementary schools in Heber, the North and Central school. A few times a year we would have dances with the other school, and it opened up opportunities to look at all the cute girls from the Central school. Of course, you would never talk to them unless you somehow knew them from before, but once in a while you would get to dance with them in a square dance, or learning ballroom dancing.

Well, I was a pretty good speller too, like mom. I was usually one of the last 3 up in the spelling bee, but I don’t remember it being as dramatic as mom. My favorite subjects were math and reading and science and music. I also really liked the german we got to learn a little of in the 5^th and 6^th grade. My dad had a college German text and had taken it in college and was able to teach me a little. He was more interested, though, in the Saturday Evening Post German spoof cartoons. Anyway, learning was fun in elementary school and I liked everything.

Love, Dad

School Days (Part 1) - by Mom

 

Personal History Assignment:  School Days

Describe your elementary school. Name? Public? Private?

In what city or town did you attend grade school?

Who was your favorite grade school teacher? Why?

Was there a teacher that you didn’t like? Why?

What did you usually wear to school?

How did you get to school? How far was it?

What subjects did you like and which ones didn’t you like?

Who were your best friends? Tell what you can about them. Do you know where they are today? If so, do you keep in touch?

Did your siblings attend the same school? How many grades above or below them were you?

I attended four Elementary Schools, beginning with Kindergarten in Buffalo NY.  I think I already mentioned being walked to school by one of my dad’s Explorer Scouts when my mother broke her leg ice-skating on Lake Erie. I just did a little Mapquest to see if my memory served correctly.  The boy who took me was Chuck Alaimo and he attended Canisius High School, which was right next to my kindergarten. I don’t really know the name of the school I attended; perhaps is was Canisius as well. I liked K just fine but I loved saying “ Chuck Alaimo” over and over again, like a little song, and holding his hand along the way.  I was proud that he was a Boy Scout, although I’m sure at 5 years old I had no idea what that meant.

          We moved to Evansville Indiana when I was six and I attended Holy Spirit Parish School for first grade. I have described Sister Jean Ann and my First Communion, basically the highlights of that year.

          Another memorable moment of first grade was a deeply cloudy day.  The sky was so dark, it looked like night. We were not allowed to go out to recess, but the most amazing thing happened: Sister Jean Ann brought in large balls of gray clay, one for each of us. WE could do anything we wanted with our clay. It was smooth, smelled dusky and earthy, and was the same color as that slate-gray sky outdoors. Because of the darkness of the day, the classroom lights were on and made a strange contrast with the outside. At some point, Sister Jean Ann left the room for a moment, and one of the boys said, ”Watch this.”  He picked up his ball of clay, raised it over his head, and threw it out the open window. A gasp went up from 20-some 6 year olds, and the room went very quiet.  He sat there with no clay on his desk, the emptiest desk you ever saw, with his hands clasped in the place where the clay had been. I don’t recall anything that happened afterwards, except being filled with wonder.

          “How did he have the idea to do that? And how was he so brave to do what he thought of?” It took my breath away with admiration and a little horror, as one of the more knowing children whispered that he was in trouble. As for me, his action opened the world of possibility.  As I tell it now, it reminds me of the Fall in Eden, introducing the notion of acting outside the boundaries, the dark attraction of rebellion and disobedience.

          We moved again, to another part of town and another parish – Corpus Christi Catholic School and Church, Father James O’Connor pastor, where  I attended 2^nd through 7^th grade.  I was a bit of a misfit, a bookworm, no TV at home, Republican parents in a Democrat parish.  You name the stream, our family swam up it when everyone else swam down.  Evansville had a huge German-immigrant population, especially our side of town. My classmates names were Schnabel, Raben, Helfrich, Hilldenbrand. Although there were also King, Smith, Petrie, and Musgrave, “Soniat” was entirely foreign there.

          In the middle of 7^th Grade, my parents had a huge falling out with the priest and nuns. It’s a long story, but it was a defining moment for my family, and for me.

It started with a clerical error on the part of the parish clerk – a volunteer—who was not fully literate. It escalated to having me and my brother Ed being punished for months on the basis of that error.

          Catholic parishes collect funds from the parishoners by envelopes, similar to LDS tithing envelopes, except that each member is given a box of envelopes at the beginning of the year, with the dates on them for each Sunday and an identifying serial number, such as the Soniats’ number is 420. Thus, a clerk, opening envelope 420, would go to the ledger, find line 420, and enter the amount written on the check.   My mother, who paid all the bills, started including our tuition payment with her Sunday donation, instead of following the established pattern of the children bringing in the tuition to school.  But the clerk didn’t read,or perhaps he didin’t read English, although he apparently did numbers.  So he put down the tuition amount as “petty cash.” 

          So the nuns and the priest thought my family was not paying their fair share, although technically, the parish was not supposed to deny any child who wanted to attend the school, whether they paid or not.  For a long time, maybe even a couple years, my folks had no idea they were being considered deadbeats, despite their comparative prosperity. They paid every month, and as far as they knew, we were in good standing.

          Then some funny things happened. I was told I would not be  allowed to have recess with the other kids outside, but I was to practice the organ during that time, and play for daily Mass.  That was fine with me; I hated running around, jumping rope, playing TV tag and other stupid games, and I loved being in the church, playing the organ.

          In sixth or seventh grade, I won the spelling bee for my class, then beat the seventh grade best speller. But when it came time for the city Spelling Bee, they sent the kid who won the eighth grade class bee. That was weird, but then they started keeping my name off the Honor Roll, even though I had the best or second-best grades in my class. Still, my mom let it slide. I know she called the school once, but whatever their answer was, she accepted it.

          Then when I was in seventh grade, Eddie started 1^st grade. To tell you this part, I have to describe the building.  Corpus Christi was a new parish, with a new building. It was modern in style, with a lofty broad roof, that  covered not only the church but the school, too, all  integrated under the one roof.

          The school cafeteria was on the entry level, the church and classrooms were up a broad open staircase—glass and stainless steel and shiny hard stone composite floors. Very noisy. The cafeteria, which also served as the parish social hall, related architecturally to the church much more than to the school area. Because of the acoustics of all the hard material, all the sound from the cafeteria carried  right into the church. As you may know, Catholics believe that the consecrated host IS the Body of Christ.  Between Masses, a consecrated host is kept on the altar in a locked box called the tabernacle. A red candle is kept burning in the sanctuary to indicate to worshipers that the Host is in there. People would come throughout the day to worship—say a rosary, walk the Stations of the Cross during Lent, etc. To maintain the sacred ambiance of the church,

there was NO TALKING in the cafeteria. 240-250 children all together at lunch. NO TALKING ALLOWED. Silent lunch. For reverence. Perfectly reasonable in context, but pretty monastic expectations for a bunch of little kids.

          Needless to say, little first graders had a pretty hard time with this.  They all talked. But only Eddie Soniat was punishedfor talking. He was made to sit in a corner and eat alone “for the rest of the year,” as he tearfully told me. He begged me not to tell the parents, but after a few weeks, I was just mad.  I tried to sit with him but that wasn’t permitted either.  So I finally told my mom.  She called the school , and I don’t know exactly what was said, but immediately, the world caved in.

          My dad came home from work, we all went to the school.  We kids stayed in the car, I think, while there was a big meeting with the priest, the nuns, and I think that clerk was called in. (I remember that the clerk’s wife had died that year or the year before, because his son was in my class, and the teacher made him stand at his seat while she announced to the class that Michael Petrie’s mother had died, and we should all pray for her, etc. I thought afterward that maybe MR. Petrie made those mistakes over mother’s donations because he was so sad.)

          Anyway, there was much heat and much noise in our home for several days, while we did not attend school.  My parents had a meeting with the Bishop, which would basically be comparable to the LDS Area Representative. He told my parents they had to send us to Corpus Christi and no other Catholic school.  When Dad said he would just send us to public school, the Bishop countered that he might excommunicate my parents.

 At that point, the Bishop had only heard the pastor’s side of things.  I know my parents asked him to just take a look at the books, to see the consistent “donations” in the amount of tuition that had been labeled “Petty cash.” Hours later, the Bishop called and told my parents they could enroll us in another Parish school, if the priest there would have us.  He must have seen the error in the accounting, and known that the relationship between family and parish was irreparable.

Father Vollmer, the Hungarian pastor of Resurrection Parish, was afraid we were trouble-makers, and wanted to meet us before deciding to accept us.  We sat crying in the car—public school, excommunication, burning in hell --- worried about everything from spelling bees to eternal damnation, as our parents worked to persuade the priest.

Father Vollmer was leery, but in the end, said he would agree to a trial period. So I finished 7^th and 8^th grade at Resurrection, with no more drama, and the rest of the kids all attended there throughout elementary, until they moved to Alabama.

          I was very happy about the upcoming spelling bee, figuring I had it nailed, as the best speller in 8^th grade, but Resurrection held its Spelling Bee according to the rules of the sponsoring newspaper, which gave all kids an equal chance on stage. I misspelled “receive” in an early round, and I still never type it without double-checking the ei-ie part.

          Stay tuned for Part Two.

 

Embarrassing Mistake (something you broke) - by Mom

Personal history question : did you ever break anything , such as a window? The home I grew up in, on the west -side outskirts of Evansville, Indiana, was a two-storey white clapboard house on an odd-shaped lot, next to an aging dwindling farm.

The backyard was grassy and bordered by numerous trees, separating our backyard from the farmhouse's front yard. There was an ancient peach tree, producing almost no peaches but lots of thick sap. It had a low bowl of 3 or 4 very thick branches coming out if the trunk and this was one of my favorite places to read and hide from chores.

One spring day, I had been nestled in the tree with a book, and decided to go into the house. There was a set of concrete steps leading up to the back door. It must have been still a bit chilly weather, because instead of the screen door, the storm door was in place. It was a wooden frame door with eight large panes of glass. I was running up the steps, tripped on the top step and, in putting my arm out to catch myself, instead crashed my hand and forearm through one of the glass panes. I remember quite well the shape of the glass shard that was still in the frame. My wrist was bleeding a little, and in alarm, I pulled my arm back through the space, across that sticking-up piece of glass.

{Mom drew a picture, which I am still figuring out how to get on here in an easily accessible way!  It kind of looks like a drawing of the above picture with some blood colored onto the bottom center shard poking straight up.  : )}

Arm in. Arm out.
There was a great hue and cry. My mother's friend Liz Grunwald, was over visiting and she had some background in science, although I think it was chemistry, not anything actually medical. Nevertheless, she was calm, she wrapped my arm in a towel, and drove my mother and me to the hospital emergency room. I wonder now who stayed with her children while she drove us, but I don't remember. A nurse poured green liquid soap into the wound and scrubbed it with a stiff brush, and that hurt worse than the injury, the stitches or anything else. The doctor came in and stitched it up. There were three cuts, one small one close to the wrist and two parallel lacerations in the middle of my inner forearm. It took over twenty stitches; I didn't watch.

After it was all bandaged, my dad picked up up at the hospital. It didn't hurt and I just went about my usual 11 year old stuff the rest of the night. I had instructions not to lift anything, and I didn't, but in the course of playing, little brother Jimmy was about to fall off a chair and I caught him. Nothing happened at that moment, but in the middle of the night , I woke up to find the whole big bandage and my bed sheets soaked in blood. We went back to the ER . The stitches in the little cut had pulled open, causing a slow ooze. My arm was restitched, and when I returned to school, I had quite the show and tell.

That was not the first or last clumsy thing I ever did to break something, but it was probably the most memorable.

Another breaking incident occurred when owns a freshman in college. I had a childhood crush on William F. Buckley., who was a brilliant conservative political writer , much admired by pretty much all the adults I knew. When I got to St. Louis University, I discovered there was a chapter of his organization for students -- Young Americans for Freedom. I can talk about the politics of the day in another piece, but this club was mainly social. I was recruited by Mimi Federer, and by default went into the yearbook as one of the officers.

I never did anything official, except help her with a party for the club members at her house just before Christmas break. As the party got started, her mother asked me to carry the punch bowl (FULL!) from the kitchen to the party area. And I dropped it and broke it, and all the punch spilled, all over me, the floor and the tablecloth. To this day, when I think of it, I have the feeling that the bowl broke before I dropped it, but of course no one knows that for sure but the angels in heaven. Everyone was very nice about it, but of course I was mortified. I sometimes still blush when I recall the moment!

Now as I have written this little story, it occurs to me for the first time, Who fills a punch bowl and carries it to the table?? Not an experienced host. You place the punch bowl on the table, mix the punch in a pitcher in the kitchen, and pour it into the bowl in situ. But I didn't known that then and evidently, neither did Mimi or her mother!

Embarrassing Mistake - by Dad

Embarrassing mistake, Personal hx , Kent McDonald


An embarrassing mistake?? What? You want me to embarrass myself? I have to think of something funny and not too embarrassing. Let me think.
Ok, here is one.  I'm afraid this is one you all know about. It was spring2010, my year to go to the ACP meeting and mom and I are really excited because the meeting is in Toronto, Canada. We have never been to Toronto or to Canada for that matter, it is supposed to be beautiful in the spring and we have some friends we are going to hook up with and mom gets tickets for an exhibit that is in town while we are there for us and our friends. Boy we are excited. So a week before the trip, we have already made our plane and hotel reservations and researched about Toronto, the art and music that will be there, etc. so we start to pack and I go to the file cabinet where we keep our passports to gather up our paperwork. Guess what? Of course you know. Our passports expired 6 months ago. We scramble, we make calls, we figure and finagle. Th ere is absolutely no way to get our passports renewed in time. We call friends who have traveled to Canada recently, the Birds , etc. it used to be before 9/11 you could go in without a passport. Then you just needed one to get back. We thought if you got into Canada, we could then go to an embassy or consulate and get it renewed. We tried to figure every angle. Finally we decided to just try getting onto the airplane. Before we did, we went to the immigration office at the airport the day of our flight. No help.
So we go to the airline desk to try checking in to the flight. You know the answer. No negotiating or begging or pleading is necessary. The answer is just plain no. No way. Can't be done. What a let down. But we can use our credit flying on canada air within a year. So now I have 5 days off work, about $2500 in plane tickets and reservations that we can't use, and we are sitting in the las Vegas airport.
Well, I did feel pretty bad.  But mom and I have learned to make the best we can out of a bad situation . We called and cancelled what we could and ended  salvaging all but the airline tickets. Of course, we had to confess to our friends that I was too dumb to check our passports before planning a trip to another country. But we ended up going to California and having artery fun vacation. So all was not lost.
The moral of this story? Check your pass or be an ass...
Love, Dad

Cars and Driving - by Mom

            I first took Drivers Ed in High School, at Academy Immaculate Conception when I was a 16-year-old Junior. It was a required part of the curriculum.  I don’t know if that was a State requirement in Indiana, or if that was just our school.  The Driver’s Ed teacher was a young coach from Ferdinand High School, the public high school in the town, whom the Sisters borrowed once a week to take us out driving. The classroom part was handled by the Health teacher, who also taught math and Phys Ed.  We saw all the horrifying films of smashed heads and bloody crushed bodies of teenagers as part of our training. Those films made some girls laugh, and some of us cried.

            Driving with the coach was a mixed experience.  My friend Sheila Washington actually dated him (secretly, of course) until the nuns found out.  But as for me, all he did was yell at me.  You have to know that southern Indiana around there is not flat—there are lots of twisty, well-wooded roads, with blind curves and what felt like mountains to me. 

            I had never driven anything, including a bicycle (not kidding) and I was terrified.  We got out on the country roads and I was going about 15 miles an hour, until I got to a really curvy part and I slowed way down.  I remembered the driving “theory” instructions to speed up a little coming out of a curve, so I would spurt on the speed, but then there was another curve, and so I slowed way down again.  Following the pavement seemed like an impossible task; I was so sure I would run off the road!  I’m sure it must have been a terrible ride for the girls in the back. Finally, Denny ( or whatever his name was—he couldn’t have been much  more than 5 years older than we were) yelled, “Just drive the car!” I was crying but this time, paralyzed by fear, and I yelled back, “You’re supposed to TEACH me to drive the car!”  He said, “Haven’t you ever driven before?”  I said no, and he softened up, and taught me how to manage the speed and the curves and the whole thing.  Not so bad after all….

            Nevertheless, I didn’t get my license until after I turned 18 because the insurance rates were much lower for an 18-yr. old High School Graduate.

            When I started driving on a regular basis, I think I drove my parents’ International Harvester Travelall. It’s a brand /  company that no longer makes passenger vehicles.  I think they were originally a tractor company that made cars for a while. The Travellall was the forerunner of today’s SUV.  It was bigger than a jeep and smaller than a suburban. 

You can see (other) pictures here : http://dayerses.com/international-harvester-travelall.html.

            I drove very little as a teenager.  I didn’t get my license until age 18, then I went off to college sans  vehicle. Living in St Louis as a “poor student”  I either walked or took a bus wherever I wanted to go.  I didn’t even have friends with cars until my Junior year.  In my senior year, I persuaded my parents to let me and Peter and some others take the Travelall to Dallas for our friend Sally Schwab’s marriage to her high school sweetheart Tony Tinkle. (Yes. Those are their real names.) I don’t know exactly how it happened, but I was allowed to keep it in St. Louis from August until I went home for Christmas break.  I broke it about 2 months into the semester, procrastinated fixing it until the last minute, then baked cookies for the mechanic-friend of the guy I was dating, who  fixed it enough so I could get home to Evansville.  Actually the sequence of those events now seems very flawed, but it was some combination of those real  moments.

            I returned the vehicle to my folks, and didn’t own another car until just before I married Kent in SLC. Shortly after I moved there, he insisted I buy a car. I was determined to take a bus to work from 3^rd East and 3^rd South to the U of U Medical Center where I worked.  That is, until I learned that the first bus didn’t run until 90 minutes after I needed to be on the job. So Kent bought me a used gray Rambler, which looked sort  of like this picture (but gray):
     

One morning in the early dark I backed it into a large dumpster behind my building, specifically, I backed the rear vent window into the protruding arm of the dumpster, smashing the window out , letting the cold air in… Brrrrr….. for the rest of the winter.

            My only real accident was on our honeymoon.  We had been married less than 48 hours, and we had driven from SLC to just outside of Battle Mountain, NV on our way to San Francisco.  Road trip! NOT! Near Battle Mountain, Kent got sleepy and pulled over and asked me to drive, which I was happy to do, although I had very little experience of long-distance driving.  The morning was clear and bright, the road was dry, and shortly after taking the wheel, I fell asleep, waking up as I drifted off the road, over-corrected at the median and rolled the car 1 ¾ times across our lanes and onto the shoulder.  You might think this was terrifying, and it would have been, if I had been awake to see it all.  The big problem was that I didn’t have a valid license at the time, having not driven much, I had not renewed in Missouri, and hadn’t gotten around to getting a Utah license. I don’t remember a ticket; since no one was hurt, maybe there wasn’t one.

            I remember thinking that Kent would be perfectly understandable to get the marriage annulled.  But he didn’t.  WE had the totaled car towed to Ely, where we got a little plane to Reno, and from there to San Francisco, where we enjoyed our honeymoon without recrimination or sorrow!  Thanks to Dad being very forgiving and loving.

Links:
Rambler:
www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=rambler+car&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8#hl=en&client=safari&rls=en&q=rambler+car+pictures&revid=1021405042&sa=X&ei=f_w6UOK6LuSViAK2v4D4DQ&ved=0CHgQ1QIoAA&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.&fp=f4f342edee0689e5&biw=1115&bih=613

Cars and Driving - by Dad

When I was a teen we were allowed to get our license at 15 1/2 years old, I
think you had to drive with an adult until you were 16, then you got your
independent license. We all had drivers ed when I was in school, it was
taught by a guy named Gene Payne who was a legend in Heber, former highway
patrol became teacher who also taught health in junior high school, was
famous for setting aside two days after the deer hunt to tell deer stories
in class. He later became the owner of Snyder's Hot Pots, a swim resort in
Midway, and was alcoholic. But I digress. He was the one who taught me in
drivers ed. Prior to that I had been taught by my dad because I worked at
the garage and part of my work was washing all the used cars on the lot once
a week, so I would carefully drive the used cars from the lot to the car
wash bay, about half a block away. It was all on private property so I
didn't need a drivers license for that and started at age 13. By the time I
was 17, my dad had picked out a car he thought would be a good one for me,
and told me I could buy it. It was a 1957 Olds 88 with a giant 400 cubic
inch v8 engine which was very heavy and drove kind of like a boat. That was
my first car, though. I believe prior to that I had driven my mother's 61
chevy convertible and wrecked it once and drove it into a ditch once on a
date with Sharon Bowden. Her dad had to come and pull us out of the ditch
with his tractor. How embarrassing that was. I crashed my mother's car in
Salt Lake trying to speed up to wave to a friend (David Rasband) and crashed
into the rear end of the car in front of me. I remember that wreck ruined
the front end of the car, but only cost $700 to fix which seems like very
little, but it would probably be more like $7000 now.
I left that 57 olds for Stanton to drive when I went on my mission, and
according to the folks he "drove it into the ground". In any case it was no
more when I got back. I bought a classice VW beetle and drove for a short
time after my mission, then sold it and bought a datsun 1600 sports roadster
with a removable hardtop, the only two seater I have ever owned. I loved
that car, but sold it before I went to med school and was without a car my
first year of med school. I lived right across the street from the school so
I didn't really need a car and I bought a Schwinn Varsity used 10 speed for
transportation. My second year in med school (1976) I bought a 1965 Ford
Falcon, the worst car I have ever owned I suppose.

I  sold that car when I went to Israel for the summer after my second year,
and later bought a Toyota Corona, red 4 door that I owned when Mom and I got
married. We drove that car to San Francisco for our honeymoon. Out in the
middle of Nevada about mid morning after our wedding I was getting sleepy
and I asked carolyn if she could drive. She said yes, but she was sleepy too
and went to sleep, woke up going off the road, over corrected and rolled the
car 1 3/4 turns near the town of Battle Mountain, Nevada. Fortunately
neither of us was seriously hurt  - angels must have protected us and that
little car was very sturdy. We decided to leave the car there at the shop
and went to Ely, Nevada where we were able to get a plane to San Francisco
and rent a car for the rest of our honeymoon.

Well, I think that is enough rambling about cars. Thinking about cars
brought back a lot of memories. Thanks for asking.
Love,
Dad