There are more health gimmicks today than you can shake a stick at. Vitamins from the Jurassic period like dinosaur bone extract, ginko biloba and even palmetto berries and ten thousand more things for health.
Back when I was a boy all we had was SSS tonic, Tanners Painless eye water and turpentine.
A good workout
Lord, that eye water did come in handy in the late summer when the sore eyes epidemic would start at school. It is hard to see the blackboard when your eyes are welded shut with the thick green goo caused by the sore eyes. We used to wake up in the morning and Momma would have to get a hot rag and lay on our eyes to soften the hardened matter so we could open them.
My smart aleck brother talked me into letting him just force mine open one morning. He stretched my eyelids open without the softening agent first and tore out all my eyelashes. Don’t worry; I paid him back. I poured turpentine on his hiney one night while he was asleep.
All the vitamins we got were what came in a sweet tater and sassafras tea. If it wasn’t in a sweet tater or sassafras tea, you didn’t need it. Other than that we had home remedies like putting a penny and cow tallow in a rag soaked in turpentine and wrapping it on your foot if you had stepped on a nail. Lord knows we didn’t want lockjaw. The old timers kept us scared to death of that particular ailment but the cow tallow remedy seemed to work. I guess it was the chemical reaction of the tallow, copper penny and turpentine. Whatever it was, it would draw the poison out. And of course pure turpentine poured on an open wound worked wonders. It disinfected and cauterized at the same time.
The most dreaded thing was when Granma Janie thought we just didn’t look right. We knew what that meant. Here “it” comes; working medicine. And it didn’t matter how much we protested that we felt fine. I could have a broke leg and a fever of 103 and if I even remotely thought “it” was in the wind I would act like I was fine, but to no avail. Grandma would pour “it” down our throat and to this day I don’t know what was in “it”. All I know is “it” tasted awful, but it would sure get your regularity schedule right. I made many a fast trip to the outhouse because of “it”, whatever “it” was. It must have been similar to Drano because you could feel “it” boiling all the way down and when “it” hit bottom, you had better have been prepared.
Momma tried a gentler approach. She would pour a teaspoonful of castor oil in a small glass of orange juice. I thought oil was supposed to float but this mess from the devil himself was so vile it would sink to the bottom of that glass. Claude, my older brother, and I would see the oil at the bottom and would suck out the juice on top and leave the grease behind. Then, sure as the world, Momma would say “You better drink every drop.” Then the ordeal would begin for I simply cannot swallow castor oil. It sticks in my throat and will go no farther. You couldn’t force it down with a bathroom plunger.
To this day whenever I drink orange juice, I think of those wonderful childhood days at the breakfast table; my Daddy reading the Bible to us, my Mother getting us fed and ready for school and getting herself ready for a hard day’s work, and making darn sure her boys were regular.
My smart aleck brother talked me into letting him just force mine open one morning. He stretched my eyelids open without the softening agent first and tore out all my eyelashes. Don’t worry; I paid him back. I poured turpentine on his hiney one night while he was asleep.
All the vitamins we got were what came in a sweet tater and sassafras tea. If it wasn’t in a sweet tater or sassafras tea, you didn’t need it. Other than that we had home remedies like putting a penny and cow tallow in a rag soaked in turpentine and wrapping it on your foot if you had stepped on a nail. Lord knows we didn’t want lockjaw. The old timers kept us scared to death of that particular ailment but the cow tallow remedy seemed to work. I guess it was the chemical reaction of the tallow, copper penny and turpentine. Whatever it was, it would draw the poison out. And of course pure turpentine poured on an open wound worked wonders. It disinfected and cauterized at the same time.
The most dreaded thing was when Granma Janie thought we just didn’t look right. We knew what that meant. Here “it” comes; working medicine. And it didn’t matter how much we protested that we felt fine. I could have a broke leg and a fever of 103 and if I even remotely thought “it” was in the wind I would act like I was fine, but to no avail. Grandma would pour “it” down our throat and to this day I don’t know what was in “it”. All I know is “it” tasted awful, but it would sure get your regularity schedule right. I made many a fast trip to the outhouse because of “it”, whatever “it” was. It must have been similar to Drano because you could feel “it” boiling all the way down and when “it” hit bottom, you had better have been prepared.
Momma tried a gentler approach. She would pour a teaspoonful of castor oil in a small glass of orange juice. I thought oil was supposed to float but this mess from the devil himself was so vile it would sink to the bottom of that glass. Claude, my older brother, and I would see the oil at the bottom and would suck out the juice on top and leave the grease behind. Then, sure as the world, Momma would say “You better drink every drop.” Then the ordeal would begin for I simply cannot swallow castor oil. It sticks in my throat and will go no farther. You couldn’t force it down with a bathroom plunger.
To this day whenever I drink orange juice, I think of those wonderful childhood days at the breakfast table; my Daddy reading the Bible to us, my Mother getting us fed and ready for school and getting herself ready for a hard day’s work, and making darn sure her boys were regular.
Trackbacks
Trackback specific URI for this entry
No Trackbacks