Hospitals
I was fairly lucky growing up in the 50's insofar as hospitalizations were concerned. There were a lot of things that could put you in the hospital. Al Botcher's brother had a young daughter who contracted something dreadful like tuberculosis and had to live in a sanitarium somewhere in central Minnesota.
We visited her there one time and it was like a prison. She was an inmate living in the place so as not to infect others, much like we are today because of the Wuhan virus, only much worse in her case.
We visited the grounds of the sanitarium and she could come out and sit on a little stone bench and talk to her mom and dad and siblings. They brought her gifts, of course, but you could see the dread in their faces and the strain the situation put them under, especially when it came time to leave. I was appalled.
My first visit was to have my tonsils removed, a minor bummer compared to what the Botcher girl was going through, but a bummer nonetheless. My tonsils were so enlarged and infected that I was practically choking on them.
I got checked into the hospital in La Crosse and they put me in a gown that laced up in back and made me comfortable in a bed. I lay there for a few hours while they accumulated data about me and did tests. Then came the dreaded moment when all these people rolled a gurney into the room and lifted me up on it.
They were smiling and saying comforting things designed to calm me down, which of course had just the opposite effect because I knew they were just blowing sunshine at me. We rolled into the elevator, out the elevator, down a few hallways and through these double doors into the operating room, which looked like they place they might take you for the electric chair.
A nurse put a needle into my arm which was hooked up to a long tube up to a floppy little bottle hanging from a hook. A plastic vial in the line showed a slow drip, drip, drip, as something was going into the tube and into my arm through the needle.
There was quite a large light overhead and a doctor stood above my head, almost out of view, with a mask over his face. He asked me a few stupid questions which I knew were designed to relax me. Then he took another little transparent hose and, with a needle, hooked it into the hose that was dripping stuff into me. I nervously asked what it was and the nurse told me it was sodium pentathol.
I watched the new color travel down the little tube and precisely when it reached the needle going into my arm, it was like someone clobbered me over the head with a sledge hammer. It was as if the entire room and it occupants were suddenly scrunched into a black snowball, and I spun over and down into a dark, dark abyss.
I awoke with the most painful throat imaginable and a pukey taste in my mouth, which I soon realized was dried and semi-coagulated blood. I couldn't swallow because of the intense soreness.
It was now that I learned that I could have ice cream to sooth. I tried a little and managed to swallow it. In a couple hours, I was eating more ice cream and drinking 7-up through a straw in little tiny bursts.
The situation improved and I think by the next day I was able to go home and continue the ice cream and 7-up diet in bed for a couple days.
A couple years later I had my second hospital stay. I had become lethargic and feverish and my mother and Al had taken me in for a strep test. I didn't have strep so they took some other tests and nobody could figure out what was wrong, so they recommended that I enter the hospital so they could find out.
This time I was put in a room on the second floor of an old hospital, called Grandview, in La Crosse. Many years later I would actually attend a college class in this building, which was one half block from the Main Hall of La Crosse State University.
I lay there for a few days while they took swabs of my throat and sinuses and blood tests. Then, while my mom was visiting, the doctor came into the room and announced that they had not been able to figure out what I had. He said that it could very well be an unknown virus and recommended that I have a spinal tap. It was scheduled for the next day.
I worried all night about this spinal tap, because I could overhear the doctor telling my mother what it was and she was all hysterical, as she tended to be in crisis situations. My mother didn't drive, because pulling her foot off the accelerator and onto the brake amounted to a crisis situation and she reacted hysterically and without finesse, almost squashing a man between the car she was learning in and his parked car. The driving school instructor intervened at the last minute and saved the situation, proclaiming afterward that she was unteachable.
The next day a nurse came and told me what the spinal tap would be like. They would fold me over so my head touched my knees and put a little, itty-bitty needle into my spine and suck out a tiny bit of fluid to analyze.
Then the doctor came in. He looked me over carefully, then removed the gown down to my waist.
"Better get three or four more people to help hold him down," he commented. "Otherwise he's going to be jumping and thrashing all over the place."
That calmed me down immeasurably. I began to weep in fear.
More people arrived and folded my quivering body in half, pinning me down against the gurney.
The doctor stuck the needle in and I'll bet it wasn't that "itty-bitty", but it didn't actually hurt and I didn't thrash around at all. After a bit he said "OK, done." and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Then the nurse touched the spot with a cotton ball soaked in alcohol and I almost jumped off the gurney.
They never did figure out what virus I had and after a few more days I got better and went home. Next thing you knew, I was back in school and the whole thing was forgotten.
Monday, July 27, 2020
Thursday, July 16, 2020
George Kindhammer
George Kindhammer
Al Botcher's farm in Pfeffer Valley was the next to the last one on the road. From the end of our driveway the road continued about a hundred and fifty yards up a small rise and the pavement ended. There was a barbed-wire fence across it which detached on one side so the fence could be dragged back, allowing passage. The road continued to crest the small rise, but was a dirt road now and at the bottom, a couple of hundred yards further, it opened into the yard where George Kindhammer lived in an old unpainted, somewhat dilapidated house.
I am of the opinion that poor old George has been deceased now for forty or fifty years and that there may very, very few people around those parts, if any, who even remember him. When we were his neighbors he was already a middle-aged bachelor, an only child who would never marry and who had promised his mother he would never drink alcohol.
He didn't have a car. George drove an old Ford tractor, the small grey kind, up and down the valley visiting everyone and spreading gossip like a town crier. He was a talkative, friendly, and basically benign guy because, of course, no one told him anything they didn't want spread all over. He was likable and somewhat rotund because he hung around until you invited him to eat.
George's place was interesting because my friends and I could sneak through the woods and down to the backside of his barn, shielded from view from the house, and snoop around and even play in his hayloft undetected. If George was on his tractor out in the fields or gone altogether, we could probe around more daringly and once we even went into his house.
George lived like you might expect. Old antique furniture, old beat-up utensils and appliances that you wouldn't even think worked. He had a wood cookstove, a kerosene heater, and an old studio couch that was his bed, right in the kitchen.
There were other rooms, and we peeked in. They were full of cobwebs and old furniture that looked like it came out of an old western movie. The glass in the windows of his house was wavy and the paint was all flaked and peeled off the sashes. It was really something. We kind of looked at this adventure as detective work; we were half expecting to find dead bodies or some kind of evidence of debauchery.
George would sometimes let me ride on the fender of his tractor, but he would drive very slowly. He was a cautious person who wasn't going to make any big errors. But he wasn't going to let anyone into his life either.
He would appear around mealtime. Al and my mother were good to him, but got tired of being pestered sometimes and would hold off on dinner until he had left.
From my bedroom window I could see the road about a mile down the valley and sometimes I would time how many seconds it took from when his tractor appeared until his arrival out of the hollow just below our place. I had a notion that this time was intimately related to his speed, and for a while I fancied myself a traffic cop and would write him little tickets. I wonder what he thought of that.
Sometimes George Kindhammer would drive his little Ford tractor into Hokah to get groceries and supplies. That was a big undertaking because it was a couple of miles to the highway and then five or six more to town. The little tractor was slow and I doubt he went much over ten miles per hour. It would consume pretty much his entire day, because he had to stop for coffee and gossip at least twice going and again coming back.
About five years ago I had some time on my hands and drove the car over to Pfeffer Valley. It was kind of poignant and sad. Our house was there as well as the out buildings, pretty much as I remembered. I drove up Larry and Tommy Langen's driveway and hailed a guy who looked about my age.
It was Larry. He remembered me, of course, but it wasn't like we slapped hands and broke into tears at the reunion. He lived there now and his son was young and into bow hunting and just had to get up in the woods. We talked about five minutes or so and it seemed Larry was kind of in a hurry, so I bid my farewell.
I stopped halfway to Hokah at the farm in the bottoms where my friend Roger Johnson and his little brother Donald had lived. There was a person living there but he didn't even know who they were, so the farm must have changed hands a few times. I mentioned George Kindhammer and he perked up. He had known George and knew that he had passed away some time before then. I explained who I was and he told me that George Kindhammer had mentioned the little kid who used to live next to him and had commented, "I wonder what ever happened to that little guy."
Al Botcher's farm in Pfeffer Valley was the next to the last one on the road. From the end of our driveway the road continued about a hundred and fifty yards up a small rise and the pavement ended. There was a barbed-wire fence across it which detached on one side so the fence could be dragged back, allowing passage. The road continued to crest the small rise, but was a dirt road now and at the bottom, a couple of hundred yards further, it opened into the yard where George Kindhammer lived in an old unpainted, somewhat dilapidated house.
I am of the opinion that poor old George has been deceased now for forty or fifty years and that there may very, very few people around those parts, if any, who even remember him. When we were his neighbors he was already a middle-aged bachelor, an only child who would never marry and who had promised his mother he would never drink alcohol.
He didn't have a car. George drove an old Ford tractor, the small grey kind, up and down the valley visiting everyone and spreading gossip like a town crier. He was a talkative, friendly, and basically benign guy because, of course, no one told him anything they didn't want spread all over. He was likable and somewhat rotund because he hung around until you invited him to eat.
George's place was interesting because my friends and I could sneak through the woods and down to the backside of his barn, shielded from view from the house, and snoop around and even play in his hayloft undetected. If George was on his tractor out in the fields or gone altogether, we could probe around more daringly and once we even went into his house.
George lived like you might expect. Old antique furniture, old beat-up utensils and appliances that you wouldn't even think worked. He had a wood cookstove, a kerosene heater, and an old studio couch that was his bed, right in the kitchen.
There were other rooms, and we peeked in. They were full of cobwebs and old furniture that looked like it came out of an old western movie. The glass in the windows of his house was wavy and the paint was all flaked and peeled off the sashes. It was really something. We kind of looked at this adventure as detective work; we were half expecting to find dead bodies or some kind of evidence of debauchery.
George would sometimes let me ride on the fender of his tractor, but he would drive very slowly. He was a cautious person who wasn't going to make any big errors. But he wasn't going to let anyone into his life either.
He would appear around mealtime. Al and my mother were good to him, but got tired of being pestered sometimes and would hold off on dinner until he had left.
From my bedroom window I could see the road about a mile down the valley and sometimes I would time how many seconds it took from when his tractor appeared until his arrival out of the hollow just below our place. I had a notion that this time was intimately related to his speed, and for a while I fancied myself a traffic cop and would write him little tickets. I wonder what he thought of that.
Sometimes George Kindhammer would drive his little Ford tractor into Hokah to get groceries and supplies. That was a big undertaking because it was a couple of miles to the highway and then five or six more to town. The little tractor was slow and I doubt he went much over ten miles per hour. It would consume pretty much his entire day, because he had to stop for coffee and gossip at least twice going and again coming back.
About five years ago I had some time on my hands and drove the car over to Pfeffer Valley. It was kind of poignant and sad. Our house was there as well as the out buildings, pretty much as I remembered. I drove up Larry and Tommy Langen's driveway and hailed a guy who looked about my age.
It was Larry. He remembered me, of course, but it wasn't like we slapped hands and broke into tears at the reunion. He lived there now and his son was young and into bow hunting and just had to get up in the woods. We talked about five minutes or so and it seemed Larry was kind of in a hurry, so I bid my farewell.
I stopped halfway to Hokah at the farm in the bottoms where my friend Roger Johnson and his little brother Donald had lived. There was a person living there but he didn't even know who they were, so the farm must have changed hands a few times. I mentioned George Kindhammer and he perked up. He had known George and knew that he had passed away some time before then. I explained who I was and he told me that George Kindhammer had mentioned the little kid who used to live next to him and had commented, "I wonder what ever happened to that little guy."
Tuesday, July 7, 2020
Lorraine (Lathrop) Boltik
Lorraine (Lathrop) Boltik
Even though my parents had been divorced and I had zero contact with my father, who had moved to the Omaha area and then Iowa, my two grandmothers had always been, and remained, rather close friends.
Because I would spend weeks with Lill and Lee at the farm in Sparta during the summers, there were times when Lill would drop me off to visit Grandma Clara and other times when Clara would visit us all at the farm.
My dad's brother, Donley, lived in Iowa somewhere and perhaps that had some influence on my dad's moving there. I don't know for sure.
Clara had a daughter as well as the two boys, however, and she and her husband lived right in Sparta probably not more than a mile from where Lill and Lee had lived before buying the farm.
Aunt Lorraine, like my Uncle Donk, had a bunch of kids. It was as though Clara's three children had declared a contest to see who could have the biggest family, and my dad lost badly.
Aunt Lorraine was a very sweet person and my mother and her were quite close early on. Aunt Lorraine's husband was named John, I believe, and I cannot remember ever meeting him. I do not think I ever was with anyone who actually visited Lorraine at her house, but sometimes Lorraine would accompany Grandma Clara to visit Lill at the farm, and sometimes one or two of her older children, would come along as well.
Lorraine's oldest was named John but was called "Jack". He was a few months older than me. His younger brother Tony was a bit younger than I was. I liked them both, but in reality they were both far ahead of me in maturity, as were their sisters Betsy and Barb. There were more children to come but I would not be around Sparta and somewhat of a divide took place.
This divide was destined to take me far from any contact with either of my sets of grandparents and I would even be unaware of Grandpa Dudley's death when the time came.
As years went on Lorraine's younger children would be born. Some I had contact with, such as Patrick and some I don't believe I met until adulthood, such as Mary, and DJ I do not think I ever have met at all. I am also unclear as to when Lorraine's husband John left--whether he passed away or whether they divorced. Since I was an only child to begin with, this was a great loss to me but I didn't realize it at the time, partially because of my mother's life being in turmoil.
Later, when I would visit Grams (Clara), she would, with great excitement, try and fill me in on what CC was doing, what Betsy was doing, Barb had a boyfriend, DJ got a wonderful report card, and so forth. She was always so positive about them and doubtless she told them that she had had a visit from John Lee. She would call me John Lee. I was only Jiggs or Jiggsy to relatives on my mother's side.
I had a lot of confusion because, after all, I was just a child, and she was talking about cousins from both Donley and Lorraine, as though I would have that all down, which I didn't at the time.
I have a lot of my mother's writings, stories she recollected about her youth written at a later age. Some of them are quite wonderful, but a lot of them expose an emotional and maturational impasse which she ran up against. I recognize it in myself when I look back at my youth.
My mother was emotionally stuck at an early high school level and she fell back to that level in her relationships with others all her life. She perceived, even as an adult, other women as competitors for male attention and she would be very aggressive toward them. This would occur with her sisters as well as colleagues in the workplace and I will discuss it as I go along. It was quite tragic since she tended to see other women as enemies.
Lorraine and a few of my mother's partying friends were exempt from that fixation, because they were not a threat to male attention, not that my mother couldn't find that if the situation presented itself. My mother always spoke fondly of Lorraine; I cannot remember her ever saying anything bad about her. I think that for a short period of time, after the war, Donley, Lorraine, my father, and my mother and her siblings constituted a group of fairly close friendship, visiting one another's parents and going out to party.
The nice picture of Aunt Lorraine shown here was pirated from her daughter, Betsy's, Facebook page. I saw her on and off over the years and as she got old her voice began to sound exactly like Grandma Clara's. Perhaps it always did, but I only noticed it later. She had the same passive calmness about things that Clara did--the same accepting philosophical approach.
When Aunt Lorraine arrived, a few years ago, at her final illness and was at the care center north of Sparta I went to visit her. She was reeling from her illness and I thought that perhaps she was only responding to me out of habit and that she might not even recognize me. After all, I wasn't in her everyday life very much.
When she appeared very tired and it was time to go, I hugged her and told her goodbye and that I loved her. "I love you too, Jiggs," was her reply.
There is more than a little liklihood that Aunt Lorraine thought that it was her brother, my father, that had visited, and he, like Uncle Donley, had preceeded her in death.
Even though my parents had been divorced and I had zero contact with my father, who had moved to the Omaha area and then Iowa, my two grandmothers had always been, and remained, rather close friends.
Because I would spend weeks with Lill and Lee at the farm in Sparta during the summers, there were times when Lill would drop me off to visit Grandma Clara and other times when Clara would visit us all at the farm.
My dad's brother, Donley, lived in Iowa somewhere and perhaps that had some influence on my dad's moving there. I don't know for sure.
Clara had a daughter as well as the two boys, however, and she and her husband lived right in Sparta probably not more than a mile from where Lill and Lee had lived before buying the farm.
Aunt Lorraine, like my Uncle Donk, had a bunch of kids. It was as though Clara's three children had declared a contest to see who could have the biggest family, and my dad lost badly.
Aunt Lorraine was a very sweet person and my mother and her were quite close early on. Aunt Lorraine's husband was named John, I believe, and I cannot remember ever meeting him. I do not think I ever was with anyone who actually visited Lorraine at her house, but sometimes Lorraine would accompany Grandma Clara to visit Lill at the farm, and sometimes one or two of her older children, would come along as well.
Lorraine's oldest was named John but was called "Jack". He was a few months older than me. His younger brother Tony was a bit younger than I was. I liked them both, but in reality they were both far ahead of me in maturity, as were their sisters Betsy and Barb. There were more children to come but I would not be around Sparta and somewhat of a divide took place.
This divide was destined to take me far from any contact with either of my sets of grandparents and I would even be unaware of Grandpa Dudley's death when the time came.
As years went on Lorraine's younger children would be born. Some I had contact with, such as Patrick and some I don't believe I met until adulthood, such as Mary, and DJ I do not think I ever have met at all. I am also unclear as to when Lorraine's husband John left--whether he passed away or whether they divorced. Since I was an only child to begin with, this was a great loss to me but I didn't realize it at the time, partially because of my mother's life being in turmoil.
Later, when I would visit Grams (Clara), she would, with great excitement, try and fill me in on what CC was doing, what Betsy was doing, Barb had a boyfriend, DJ got a wonderful report card, and so forth. She was always so positive about them and doubtless she told them that she had had a visit from John Lee. She would call me John Lee. I was only Jiggs or Jiggsy to relatives on my mother's side.
I had a lot of confusion because, after all, I was just a child, and she was talking about cousins from both Donley and Lorraine, as though I would have that all down, which I didn't at the time.
I have a lot of my mother's writings, stories she recollected about her youth written at a later age. Some of them are quite wonderful, but a lot of them expose an emotional and maturational impasse which she ran up against. I recognize it in myself when I look back at my youth.
My mother was emotionally stuck at an early high school level and she fell back to that level in her relationships with others all her life. She perceived, even as an adult, other women as competitors for male attention and she would be very aggressive toward them. This would occur with her sisters as well as colleagues in the workplace and I will discuss it as I go along. It was quite tragic since she tended to see other women as enemies.
Lorraine and a few of my mother's partying friends were exempt from that fixation, because they were not a threat to male attention, not that my mother couldn't find that if the situation presented itself. My mother always spoke fondly of Lorraine; I cannot remember her ever saying anything bad about her. I think that for a short period of time, after the war, Donley, Lorraine, my father, and my mother and her siblings constituted a group of fairly close friendship, visiting one another's parents and going out to party.
The nice picture of Aunt Lorraine shown here was pirated from her daughter, Betsy's, Facebook page. I saw her on and off over the years and as she got old her voice began to sound exactly like Grandma Clara's. Perhaps it always did, but I only noticed it later. She had the same passive calmness about things that Clara did--the same accepting philosophical approach.
When Aunt Lorraine arrived, a few years ago, at her final illness and was at the care center north of Sparta I went to visit her. She was reeling from her illness and I thought that perhaps she was only responding to me out of habit and that she might not even recognize me. After all, I wasn't in her everyday life very much.
When she appeared very tired and it was time to go, I hugged her and told her goodbye and that I loved her. "I love you too, Jiggs," was her reply.
There is more than a little liklihood that Aunt Lorraine thought that it was her brother, my father, that had visited, and he, like Uncle Donley, had preceeded her in death.
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