Little Memories

Deep in my sub-conscience there are tiny memories which sometimes become vividly alive.  Some of them I have pushed back for many years; they are those which happened when I was ill.  Scarlet Fever was an illness when I was young and anyone catching it would be limited to staying home for many days.  My mother kept me in bed until my fever subsided and then took me outside and set me in the sun in an old chair.  I remember how good that bright sun shine felt on my pale body.  I can even almost smell the cologne she would dab on each ear lobe and how her s brown hair would glisten after she washed it and combed it back to reveal her beauty.  Then there were times when she would dress up in her best dress, put on her make up and prance around our house as if she were going to a prom somewhere.  She was a dazzling sight for all of us when we were young and thought our father had to be the proudest man anywhere around.

Other distant memories are much better and I relish bringing them up time and again; when our mother was home with us and every Sunday my father and she would cook a big dinner of roast beef, mashed potatoes, real bread and butter and laughter and happiness was all around us as we sat down and ate until our bellies were full.  So it is having both the sad and the happy memories of back then when world war two was still raging, and no one knew who would win that war.  It was right after the Great Depression and even having a chicken or two was a good omen. I believe life was like that for many back then, many of the young men who went off to war, never returned home, and if they did, there would be a celebration down in the towns at the Legion and the VFWs...all of them would drink and sing until the early hours of the morning, waking up with a hang over and getting into their old cars and drive to a factory to work some more making parts for weapons for all our young men still at war.

There are little memories I have which spring alive whenever I shave each morning.  My grand father Erve Romaine would try to shave every Sunday morning before going to church at the Pleasant Valley Church just down the road.  After all the chores were done and breakfast dishes had been washed and put away; he would take a towel and drop it into a pot of very hot water.  Then he took the hot towel out and slapped it onto his whiskers while he took a big brush and start whipping it around an old mug filled with soap.  He had a straight razor and a razor strap which hung on the piece of wood by a single nail, and would take the dull razor and begin to push and pull it up and down the razor strap trying to make it as sharp as the one in the barber shop down in Groton, NY.  Then came the moment when he would pull one side of his cheek tight and with his right hand and his right fingers holding the razor he would start pulling down the razor against his white whickers....I held my breath to see if he would be successful without nicking his face and cause a little blood to appear after he made his first pass.  Of course the razor wasn't as sharp as it needed to be, but with patience he would continue, occasionally dabbing away little drops of blood along with the soap.  Then he would wash his whole face off, and put away his shaving gear until the next Sunday.  He looked pretty good to my own eyes, especially after he put on his best plaid shirt and newly washed overalls.

Tiny memories even after I grew up and became a married man myself; trips to the hospitals where Sue would be in labor and I would wait out in the waiting room, pacing back and forth until a nurse would come out and announce the birth of one of our six children.  When John was born in early April, I remember driving through a snow storm to Cortland, New York and was delighted that after Julie and Mary, we now had a son.

I was working in the Smith-Corona typewriter factory in Groton, New York at that time and my shift was from 6 pm until 6 am, six days a week.  It was in a large room where typewriter parts were placed in large drums and in a vast tank they would whirl around gathering a material that plated them with a smooth metallic compound.  At the end of the row their were two drying machines, not very big, but when I had them spinning, I would sit down between them to keep warm.  A night watchman came by every hour and would punch a clock to show that he was making his rounds.  One night I obviously fell asleep but still walked around each barrel and instead of loading the parts into the dryers, I simply dumped them into the middle of the vast tank.  The night watchman saw me do this and shook me awake.  I had been walking in my sleep!  Not only did I work there for 12 hours a night, I drove to Moravia High School to take a class in algebra because I had failed it before, even though I had graduated from that school.  I wanted more than just to work in factories or farm, I had a drive in me to become educated....I wanted to go to college.

I remember when I drove to Lima, NY in my old 1949 Ford and while braking for a stop light I ran into the back end of a pick up truck in front of me;  I jumped out to see that no damage was done to the pick up truck, but a leak had occurred in the radiator of my car.  I quickly chewed a piece of gum and taking it our of my mouth, I pushed it into the little hole in the car's radiator.  I added a little water and continued to drive to Lima, NY.  Carlton Spencer was the president back then, and he stood up and shook my hands, smiling from ear to ear and asked me why I had decided to study at the little Bible Institute set high upon the only hill in Lima, NY.  We chatted for awhile and I told him I had a wife and four children and wondered if I could attend school while working somewhere.  He chuckled and replied, "John, if the Lord wants you here, He will supply all your needs."  That's all I wanted to hear and driving back home I was imagining how I possibly could make a living up there is  that little town about 20 miles south of Rochester, New York.

After I moved our family there I drove north and stopped at a large grocery store and went in and asked the manager for a job; I was hired on the spot.  That night I began to stock shelves right next to the store manager.  We both went back into the warehouse and was busy all night restocking the shelves and in the morning she said to me, "You don't do this fast enough, you're fired."  I was amazed because I had followed all her instructions and worked right along beside her; nevertheless the following afternoon I drove further into Rochester and stopped at the first hospital I saw...I went up a lot of cement steps and entering, turned right and was interviewed by the head nurse, Ms Loveless.  She hired me on the spot.  She had asked me my political affiliation and I answered that I had voted for a Republican that year...she made a phone call to her supervisor and she nodded, and hung up her phone and asked me when I could start.  I reported for work the next afternoon. 

I had worked there two nights with another orderly and when attending an elderly patient, I said to him, "These people seem to be OK mentally, (thinking I had been employed in a mental institution) he said to me, "John, these patients have TB..."  I was so surprised, but nevertheless thought I should stay there...and I did, for 3 more years.  While I was working there a call came out to hospitals in the area to nominate people to come to classes at Strong Memorial Hospital to be trained as Operating Room nurses;  Ms Loveless submitted my name and I took all the required courses and qualified to assist surgeons in their operating rooms for surgery.  All the other students were women and many of the had been trained as LPNs and easily picked up the necessary skills.  I did do well however and was chosen to assist a surgeon for a person with cancer of the colon.  This means that I would scrub in and prep the patient and make sure that all the sterile operating tools were present and that a "dirty burse" was there to weigh the amount of blood that was lost, to go in and out of the room for blood to use in case the patient needed transfusions.  It meant standing on my feet for as long as the operation lasted, and then the surgeon would drop his gown, take off all his sterile clothing and simply walk out of the room.  If interns were present, the surgeon would sometimes tell the intern to sew the patient up as this was usually the easiest part of the entire process.  Of course the Scrub Nurse would have to know which thread was to be used and the proper needles for the thread.  There were threads which would absorb into the skin and would not be removed later on.

Little memories are sometimes big ones when such important times came into my life.  Sometimes I will smell something, or hear an old song and recall a certain look on someone's face or exactly what they said at that distant time.

I trust that as I grow older I will continue to recall these little memories;  they remind me of just how much change has happened over the years and how people face these new changes.  Memory is a gift from God and those who slowly lose theirs is sad indeed...yes very sad.