A POTPOURRI OF
REMINISCENCES
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A POTPOURRI OF
REMINISCENCES
|
|
by |
November, 2002
September, 2001 through May, 2002
1. My Entry into the Tall Tale Contest
This yarn goes back to the summer of 1947.
I had
been mustered out of the Army, had re-entered the pre-medical curriculum at the
There was a program called the Arts / Med which (if you were lucky enough to get accepted) would allow you to enter Medical school with only 3 years of pre-med, and they would consider the first year of Medicine as the 4th year of your Bachelor of Arts Degree.
At that time,
the monthly stipend for a single veteran on the GI Bill was
$50 a month. I was paying $25 a month
rent, so that didn’t leave much for food, laundry and Friday night beer.
In the
Army, I had been trained as an X-ray technician.
I had heard that some of the medical students were getting room, board and laundry
for taking x-rays at night. So, I took a
bus out to
I
inquired as to their need for a night technician who was experienced and he took me down
to see the 
Sister Superior
right away. We chatted and she allowed as how
the present technicians were getting tired of night call and that they just might be able
to find a place for me. I was to live in
the intern's quarters and I would get room, board, and laundry for taking emergency x-rays
every night and every other weekend. She
drove a hard bargain, but I needed her offerings and so I moved into the intern's
quarters.
They
were all a nice group of medical students and bore me no resentment even though I was a
lowly plebe. They would even give me a
ride over to the University in the mornings. The
interns’ quarters were noisy in the evenings, so I would go up to the X-ray
department to study, and if there was any business from the Emergency room, I would be
right there.
One summer evening, I was studying, and a bit bored, so I turned on the radio on the desk. A program called “The Tall Tale Contest” came on, and they said that whoever sent in the tallest tale for the week would win a free weekend at the Deshler Wallick Hotel. They read the winner for the previous week and I thought that I could do better than that, so I copied down the address and resolved to join their liars contest.
The next night, after I had finished my assignments, I wrote out a
tale that I thought would win, and mailed it. Several
weeks passed and I had forgotten all about my entry.
One
day I went up to the X-ray department, ostensibly on business, but I really wanted to see
that cute secretary that worked up there. She
asked me if I had entered a contest at a radio station and said that the station had
called to see if I worked there or if I was a patient there. She gave me a number to call the station and
-- lo and behold -- I had won the contest, and the letter and the hotel reservation would
be in the mail for the next 
weekend.
So, when the time came, I packed my small suitcase, and drove 7 blocks east and checked in to the hotel. I called my secretary friend and she didn't believe that I was in the hotel, so I described the room in detail. I invited her up to see the room but she refused the invitation. She did, however, agree to have dinner with me in the hotel dining room and we had an evening of dancing afterward.
And so, that was my introduction to tall tale telling. The radio station said it was quite a good story and thanked me for participating. The tale I told goes as follows:
When I was a youngster in high school, I had a pet fox squirrel. Now, this wasn't just an ordinary squirrel. He was the fastest tree climbing squirrel in the world! Naturally, with such a valuable squirrel, I pampered him a lot, with a special padded cage that was heated in the winter.
Each day when I would come home from school, I would exercise my squirrel and I would let him out of his cage. We had a tall walnut tree, about 100 feet tall, in the middle of our back yard. That squirrel would circle the back yard about 3 times to pick up speed, then --WHOOSH! -- up the tree he would go, knock off a walnut and race back down and be there to catch it before it hit the ground!
Well one day, I was late in getting home from school. We had had a severe thunder and lightening storm the night before, and a bolt of lightening had hit that walnut tree slap dab at the bottom and knocked it down. Since I was late coming home, Mom thought the squirrel needed to be let out of his cage; she had completely forgotten about the walnut tree’s being felled. And when that squirrel got out of his cage, he circled the back yard 3 times and climbed 100 feet in the air before he realized that tree wasn't there!
Most of us have had a favorite uncle or aunt as we were growing up. My favorite uncle was Charles Shilling, who was married to Lula Showalter, my mother's older sister.
Uncle
Charlie and Aunt Lu lived about 25 miles northeast of our home in
They had a large windmill and tower adjacent to their house that
supported a most wondrous grape arbor that grew the most delicious white grapes that were
so refreshing when you came in out of a hot field
Uncle
Charlie and Aunt Lu had 2 children, a boy named Russell, 
and a
girl named Roberta. I never met or knew
Russell, as he died of meningitis. He
had been the light of Uncle Charlie's life, and his loss was a terrible blow. Perhaps that is why Uncle Charlie was always so
friendly to me, as I must have represented the boy he lost, and longed for.
Uncle Charlie would frequently ask me when I was going to come up and help him on the farm. I always thought he was kidding me, but, as I got older and bigger and could really be of some use to him, I realized that he would really like for me to come. My Mom and Dad urged me to go and stay for a week and see what life on the farm was like. They promised to come and get me in a week, so I decided to try it, early one summer when Uncle Charlie was ready to make hay.
After he had mowed the hay and raked it into windrows with a side
delivery rake, it had to cure for a day or so, depending on the weather. When I couldn't be in the field with Uncle
Charlie, Aunt Lu and I would sneak over to New Stark, where there was a little general
store that sold ice.
She would get a chunk of ice on the bumper of the old Chevrolet, and
we would go back home, where we would chip it into pieces and make a freezer of ice cream. Then, after supper, she would surprise him
with a big bowl of homemade ice cream.
We would all eat ice cream all evening because they didn't have a refrigerator to freeze it. I never met a man who liked ice cream more than Uncle Charlie.
The next day, he would hook the hay loader on the back of the hay wagon, and then he taught me how to drive old Maude and Jack, his beloved team of mules. I would drive the wagon down the windrows of hay while he took the hay coming up from the hay loader and placed it on the wagon to make an even load.
When we had a wagonload, we would unhook the hay loader and head
for the barn. Uncle Charlie would back
the wagon into the barn. Then he unhitched the mules from the wagon and hitched them to
the ropes and pulleys in the barn.
He taught me how to stick the hayforks in the hay, and then he would drive the mules forward and pull the hay up in the haymow. I would pull the trip rope and dump the load where we wanted it in the mow. Then we would start all over again.
That was really an enjoyable thing for this city boy to learn. I felt so proud to be useful. I loved it.
Towards the end of the week, I was getting a little homesick and would be out in the front yard looking down the road for my folks’ car.
Over the span of 5 or
6 years, Uncle Charlie introduced me to so many things.
I learned about the "Threshing Circles" which were groups of 10 or 12
farmers who would join together to help harvest each other's crops of wheat and oats, and
the tremendous dinners at
Uncle Charlie was a staunch conservationist. Woe unto any hunter who shot a hen pheasant or exceeded the daily bag limit of pheasants or
rabbits. They would 
never again be allowed to hunt on Uncle Charlie's land. When the winters were severe, he would carry
buckets of shelled corn back to the woods for the pheasants, squirrels, and rabbits. He would produce brush piles, and would
always let his fence rows grow for nesting cover for the birds.
In the latter part of 1942, Uncle Charlie became
ill, and on
I remember telling my dad the news as he got home from work that day. It was the first time I had ever seen him weep, as he and Charlie were the closest of friends. The funeral was in the same church where Roberta was married.
In those days, the body always lay in state in the living room of the family home. On the day of the funeral, I was standing out in the middle of the road as the pallbearers brought the casket from the house to the funeral coach.
Just as they were placing the casket into the hearse, a rooster
and a hen pheasant came up out of the ditch and
cackled as they flew directly over the casket, as it was being loaded.
At that
moment, I knew that Uncle Charlie
was in God's hands, and that He had sent 2 messengers to assure us all, and to pay a last
and fitting tribute to Uncle Charlie.
I waited almost 60 years to write this, and it has been in m memory bank ever since the funeral and the pheasant flyover. Of course, this piece is just seed for so many stories about Uncle Charlie and my many interactions with him and Aunt Lu
--Emmett
Murray,
3. Lost in
It was 1933. I was 8 years old. The country was in a depression, although I
did not realize it at the time. My
father was a master carpenter and a construction foreman.
In my whole life, I cannot ever remember my father being out of work.
My mother was a financial genius, as she would stretch paychecks to the breaking point. As I remember, she bought insurance for 10 cents a week and I can still remember Mr. Brown coming every Friday and collecting the dime and entering it in his debit book.
Mother didn't trust the banks then, and I remember her hiding a
ten-dollar bill under the corner of the dining room carpet or pulling down a window shade
and rolling a 20-dollar bill up in it. She
always said, "If there is a fire, grab the window shades and run outside."
At any
rate, back in 1933, my dad's employer, The Green and Sawyer Co, took a subtracting job on
a big state hospital in
The second summer, my folks were able to rent a
furnished house from a football coach who was going to be away taking college courses. So my mom loaded my 2 brothers, my sister and
me into our 1928 Chrysler and we moved to
My brothers were able to get construction jobs for the summer, and so they were busy most of the time and had other interests.
One
Saturday, my parents, sister and I, along with another couple from the construction team,
the Agenbroads, took a trip to
We were walking by a big department store and my parents stopped to look at something in the window. I was investigating one of the sidewalk elevators that they used to take merchandise down from the curbside to the basement of the store.
Apparently, several people moved in behind my folks and, when I looked up, I couldn't see them. So off I took, looking for them, and the more I couldn't spot them, the faster I walked, and I began to cry and call for my mom.
I was 2 or 3 bocks away when 2 Polish ladies, all dressed in black
as if they had been to a funeral, grabbed hold of me, and I couldn't understand them and
then I did start to bawl. They
took me to a policeman on the corner and turned me over to him, and that really
scared me.
Then he
blew his whistle, stopped the traffic, and walked me over to a patrol car parked across
the 
street. He talked to
the officer in the front seat, opened the back door, and put me inside. The officers calmed me down and said they
would find my mom and dad.
Meanwhile,
back at the department store, all Hell broke loose when Mom turned around and I was gone. She was angry and frightened, and told the
cop on the corner that she was going to "shake the socks off me when she got me
back". But, just then, the patrol car
with me inside pulled up to where she was standing.
The officers got me out and she overflowed with tears and almost hugged me to
pieces. She didn’t shake my socks
off and I NEVER WENT BACK TO
As you
may recall, the summer of 1933 found the
Living next door to us was an Italian family, the Gelias. Rosa was the matriarch, or Momma, and Primo
was an 8 year old boy who became my inseparable friend.
We
played hard all day and, as evening approached,
Then
"Now I gotta go" he would say, and off he would go.
One Sunday, my folks were going to go to a nearby Indian Reservation and watch the Lacrosse games, and I got permission for Primo to go with us. People would park their cars at the side of the field and watch the rough games. Primo and I would find other things to interest us and were left to our own pursuits.
There was a raspberry
patch behind the cars, and so Primo and I became entrepreneurs. We would pull out the long stem of a timothy
plant and carefully thread 15 or so raspberries on the stem and when we had 15 or 20, we
would walk along the cars and sell our wares for a penny a stalk. We made enough penny-candy money to last us for
several weeks
One day, I was in the house, and Primo came by and asked my older brother, who was on the porch, if I was home. My brother called in to me and said that Primo was out front. Then he put his foot about a foot from the bottom of the screen door. I pushed on the screen door and it flew back and hit me in the nose.
My brother laughed and I cut lose with some choice playground profanity.
I was suddenly jerked up by the collar of my shirt and marched to the kitchen sink. Mom told me to smile and show my teeth and then she took a soft bar of Fels naphtha soap and mashed it into my mouth and teeth. I was literally foaming at the mouth. Mom then took pity on me and took a toothbrush and helped get the soap out of the spaces between my teeth. I never went out of that screen door again without thinking of my foaming at the mouth experience, and the horrible taste of Fels naphtha soap.
5. The First
Doctor in
(from a speech)
My name is Emmett Murray and this is my wife, Polly. Before I retired in 1995, I had been a Family Physician for 42 years.
Polly was
a Master Homemaker who raised 4 great children. While I was busy with my practice,
she was active in the PTA, room mother for many years, and ran the school carnivals and
bake sales. In addition, she spent many years in the Medical Auxiliary as
legislative and membership chairman. She also spent 10 years as a Red Cross
Volunteer, and was a docent at our
After I retired, I had some free time, so I went down to the Museum to see what was going on. Shortly thereafter, I took the Docent training course and became a docent. As it turned out, they had a medical display which needed updating.
I became
interested in who the first Doctor in
To apply for statehood, a territory had to
have 60,000 voting males (women's suffrage hadn't occurred as yet).
In the
early years of our country, there were 2 ways of becoming a doctor. First, there
were Medical Schools in
The second way was for a student to "Read Medicine" for 7 years with a practicing doctor. The student would have to pay the doctor a fee of $100 (a fortune in hose days) and agree to assist the doctor in all ways. These involved caring for the doctor's horses, harness, saddle and buggy; tending the herb and medicinal garden; sweeping out the office; keeping all the records; and assisting the Doctor's wife if she had any tasks for him. If they had a spare bedroom, he was allowed to sleep in the house; if not, he had to sleep in the barn.
For all this, he was allowed to go on house calls with the doctor, assist the doctor as his proficiency increased, read the doctor's books on Medicine and study the skeleton that was kept in the closet. If he performed well, he was given a certificate, which allowed him to practice medicine after his 7 years of apprentice ship.
In the Indian tribes, their medicine man was called a shaman, and
it is of interest to note that for a brave to become a shaman, he also had to serve a
7-year apprenticeship with the tribe’s medicine man.
The
In 1812, President James Madison sent a large number of troops into
the
The
garrison contained a small hospital, and a doctor, Samuel Jacob Lewis, was
assigned to
Now this is not the end of the story. Noel has told me that many stories have a comma. A comma is a story within a story, and here is that story:
Samuel
Jacob Lewis’ life had been filled with hardships. He was one of
7 children of a farm couple in
Jacob had always wanted to study Medicine, so, soon after he finished his
schooling, he arranged to become the apprentice to a physician in Somerset County,
Shortly before he had
finished his first year, he got word that some renegade Indians had abducted his
sister from her home in
He
traced her to the
With the
help of some of his friends, he was able to rescue her and elude an infuriated Indian
search party that trailed them for several days. They made their way to
After a
short while, he returned to his study with the Doctor, finished his prescribed time and
duties, married, and took his new bride to
In 1813,
he was appointed Surgeon of the First Regiment of the
“And now you know the rest of the Story.”
6. What I Learned from a Boyhood Chum
As we make our way through life, some person or some experience
will frequently leave footprints on the beaches of our memories. Oftentimes, these
footprints are washed away by the tides of time, but, occasionally, not completely so, and
remain imprinted in our memory.
These may not be footprints of a celebrity, or a teacher, or an important person, or those of a great historical or monumental experience. Sometimes, these are the impressions left by a person we just considered a friend or an acquaintance at the time.
Such a person was Errol Hilliard, who was a second grader when I first met him and he began walking on the beaches of my memory.
Errol lived about three blocks west of me on Hazel Avenue in Lima, in a neighborhood that had predated my neighborhood by 20 or 30 years. Although the homes in that area were older, and some were a little dilapidated, most were fairly well-maintained.
Errol lived in a one-floor home with his mother, father, and younger sister, Betty. Errol's father was a coal hauler for the Lima Ice
and Coal Company.
I first
met Errol as he walked past my house on his way to the
About
two blocks west of the Hilliard house,
One Fall
day, he asked me if I would like to go hickory nut hunting with him after school; I eagerly responded that I’d love to go. We stopped
at my house where I introduced Errol to my mom, and told her 
what
we planned to do.
I got her permission to go and, while I changed into my "exploring and nut hunting clothes", Mom talked with Errol and told him that she knew his father because he would occasionally deliver coal to our house. Mom gave me a cloth, ten-pound sugar sack to store my booty and treasures.
We next went to Errol's house