Remembrance of A Childhood Illness – Part One: Blowing Smoke

I woke up a few days ago with a slight ear ache. By the time I'd had my coffee and surfed the Internet, it was gone, but the twinge in my ear reminded me of a long-ago time during which an ear ache played a major role in my life.

I’ve written in earlier posts about living in Las Vegas, NM in 1941, and about Pearl Harbor and my father leaving home immediately afterwards to work for the United States Army. Out of economic necessity, Mother needed to get a job, and as there was no suitable work in the small (at the time) country town of Las Vegas, she applied for and was hired by an electrical supply company in Albuquerque as a secretary and bookkeeper.

We stayed in Las Vegas until school was out in the spring of 1942, then moved, lock, stock and barrel, to Albuquerque, using the Southwest Trailways Bus Line as both our means of transportation and moving company, shipping boxes of necessities in the luggage compartment between the wheels of the bus. I have to think that our furniture was conveyed in some other fashion, but I have no recollection of that process.

Mother had rented a small house near the downtown area, only a few blocks from her place of employment. I don’t recall very much about the house other than it had a floor furnace and a piano, which was a great delight to us, and we three girls spent hours sitting on the piano bench, playing “music.”

In the fall of 1942, I started the second grade at Lew Wallace Elementary School, which was within easy walking distance of our home. Sometime around Christmas, I began to experience very painful ear aches and to run fever. I was kept at home during the feverish periods, and returned to school as I was able. I do remember that after a while, it seemed I was at home sick more than I was in school.

One of our neighbors was a man we called “Shorty.” I know he was not a young man, at least he was old enough to have escaped the military draft. I believe Shorty had already served in the navy or merchant marine, and might even have been retired, and we children thought he looked like Popeye, since he had many tattoos on his arms and shoulders. Shorty evidently became a friend of the family, because he would sometimes come over to visit in the evenings when I was sick with an ear ache. Shorty smoked Camel cigarettes, and while he ordinarily did not smoke during his visits to our home, he declared that cigarette smoke blown into the ear would help alleviate the pain. I remember him lighting up, inhaling mouthfuls of smoke and blowing them gently into my ear. He would burn up a whole cigarette just blowing smoke. It didn't help.

To be continued tomorrow - I promise. It's already written.