Whatever happened to...

Whatever happened to mandatory yearly chest x-rays?

I know that when I was a child, we went into a mobile unit out in the school yard that had an x-ray machine in it, and we all had to get a chest x-ray.

You know: "Take a deep breath, hold it -- that is all." Does anyone else remember this?

With all the angst about mammograms, why isn't there any crying about chest x-rays. I think they would be more important to more people than mammograms. Does anyone else agree with me on this?

I haven't had a chest x-ray since -- well, I can't remember how long ago it was I had one. Maybe when I had a stroke in 2001. But I don't remember anything about that day, and Alan doesn't remember what all they did to me. Yes, I said did to me. Should I have said did for me?

I know I had a chest x-ray in 1993 when I had kidney stones and they were setting me up for a kidney-stone-ectomy (I don't know what it's called, but I was sure glad I passed that little bugger before surgery!).

So, as I was remembering things from school in Runnemede, it occurred to me that yearly x-rays were part and parcel of small-town living.

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Update on Cousin Micki

I called my cousin Robert this morning. He lives not too far from Micki and has been sort of looking after her. She is 85. Just before Thanksgiving she had knee surgery. After one of her rehab sessions, she suffered a stroke on the side opposite the one that had the knee repair. I figured since she suffered the stroke on the day I happened to call her, it was the shock of my call that had caused it (just kidding). She complained to me about feeling funny and numb. We both thought it was probably because she had a rough physical therapy session.

Unfortunately, it wasn't.

I found out the following if any of you want to send her a card. Make sure you let her know who you are (how you're related to her) or you're just a friend of Judi Drexler.

Micki Evans
Moultrie Creek Nursing And Rehab Center
200 Mariner Health Way
St. Augustine, FL 32086

If you want the phone number, e-mail me and I'll send it to you. There is only one phone at the facility and they pass is around. Strange, I know. I would love to get her a cell phone, one of those disposible types, but I wouldn't know how to get it to her.

If you want more information on the facility you can go to: moultriecreekrehab.com

Her brother David is going down next weekend to be with her for a few days. After that, we'll have to wait and see.

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Brogan's

This is a very short post.

My sister reminded me about Runnemede Supply -- the hardware store between one string of shops and another bounded on either side by, if I recall correctly, the bakery and Dink's. The hardware store was Brogan's before it was Runnemede Supply.

My father loved that store. He'd peruse it at least once a week seeing if a new brand of clock came in, or a new brand of flashlight was available. My dad collected flashlights. He also collected pens and pencils, but he went to Philadelphia in search of those collectibles.

I was also reminded that one year my dad bought my mother a ladder for her birthday. I have to say that was the last thing he bought her for her birthday from Brogan's (or Runnemede Supply). Can you imagine getting a ladder for your birthday from your husband? I can. Only in my case it was a vacuum cleaner.

Another memory: Brogan's caught on fire one Sunday evening shortly after church. That was the first fire. Brogan's came back as Runnemede Supply. Apparently that first fire while it was spectacular didn't take away the much needed lumber company. After I left Runnemede there was another fire, which decimated Runnemede Supply.

I'm not sure what is there now. Is it still at hardware store/lumber supply company?

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Mrs. Marcantonio

When I was in first grade (at Downing school), after the first week of school, I and eight other children, was taken from Miss Welch's class and put into Mrs. Marcantonio's class. They put the eight best readers into Mrs. M's class. You see, Mrs. Marcantonio was the second grade teacher. And I guess they thought we first graders who could read well, could handle second grade work.

I've written about Mrs. M before. She's the teacher that sent me to the principal's office for mouthing off to her. Remember? I had colored a house and fence white, and she didn't think that was good coloring. And I pointed out (through the school window) that houses were white, and fences were white. She didn't like my lesson to her, so she sent me to see the principal.

Mrs. M had dyed red hair. In my opinion, that made her a "fallen" woman. Whatever that was. I mean who knew what a "fallen" woman was when they were six years old, especially back in those days. But I had been churched enough to know that a good, decent, Christian woman did NOT dye her hair. And because you could see her roots, and really, no one had that color red hair naturally, I knew, and it was common knowledge, that she dyed her hair.

That aside. Mrs. M was a good teacher. She had two bug-a-boos though. She loved giving us "sums". And not just two numbers added together. She would give us 20 or 30 numbers to add up, and then add up again. I learned how to add very well in her class. And to this day, I trust my own addition skills over a calculator. Even when I was using an adding machine, the precursor to the calculator in one of the jobs I held during college, I still trusted my own addition over the adding machine's addition. You see, an adding machine (calculator) is only as accurate as the numbers put into it, if you miss entering just one number correctly, the whole sum for that column of numbers is wrong.

Now, the reason Mrs. M came to my mind today was that I was reading a book in which the children were diagramming sentences. This was another favorite "busy-work" task that Mrs. M had us engage in. I didn't mind doing arithmetic (sums), but I did NOT like doing sentence diagramming. I just had the most difficult time with it.

I am a person who doesn't like to be wrong or make mistakes, and I was always making mistakes with my sentence diagrams. In the end, Mrs. M's insistence that we all learn to diagram sentences was "a good thing". At least, I suppose it was. I can't give an instance in which I have actually used the sentence diagramming skill I learned while in her class, but at least I learned something about sentence structure and word building into thought in her class.

The next year, I was put in with the third graders, although officially I was a second grader. Then when I was supposed to be in third grade, I was actually put in third grade. That was the year I was sent over to Bingham school because Downing was overcrowded.

This time they didn't move us based on reading skills or arithmetic skills or any other schooling abilities. This time they just moved us based on our addresses. Those of us who lived closest to Downing were sent over to Bingham. And it was not just my grade that suffered the split. Every class from third to seventh was split. This meant, of course, that I was taken away from my best friends.

Sometimes you have to wonder what adults are thinking when they make decisions (such as the splitting up of classes). Now days, though, I think they just draw names and shift around the children in classes in that manner. And it seems they do this every year. At least this is what I gather from talking to my grandchildren. Does that damage a child for life, I wonder? Probably not, but I was not happy to be shifted to another school away from my best friend. Of course, best friends do not have to depend on being in the same class to stay BFs, but in this case it was so.

Being moved to the other side of town for school didn't leave many options for finding new best friends, those after-school playmates, but fortunately a new girl moved into town that lived real close to Downing, and she and I became new best friends. That friendship survived until we graduated from high school and went down different paths to different colleges. And while we saw each other at Christmas and once in a while during the summer, we didn't continue the closeness we shared during our growing up years.

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Sunday sayings

Several months ago I started listing "sayings" we had when I was a child. First let me say, that I don't like the word "kid". A "kid" is a baby goat. That said, if I err and say something about myself or my family and include the word "kid" or "kids" in the sentence, I'm not referring to any baby goats. We had no goats. We lived next door to chickens. And we had mice, spiders, cats, a dog, gold fish, and probably snakes. I mean, aren't there supposed to be snakes in chicken coops?

That said, I'm posting a picture of Deb (my sister) and me probably not taken on a Sunday (since I appear to be wearing overalls) and I'm sure we were talking to each other. At least I was talking. Since Deb is very young in this picture, she was probably just drooling and saying ma-ma and da-da. So, I can't say that this picture denotes a "Sunday saying", I just thought it was a cute picture.

Back to Sunday sayings: One saying my sister and I had, which isn't really a saying per se, just something we said a lot to each other since we shared a bed for many, many years, was "Keep to your side of the bed."

I have to admit we probably were struggling with our feet when one of us would say that to the other. Then we'd hear mom or dad walking into the room, or in later years to the foot of the attic stairs, and tell us to be quiet and go to sleep.

Sleeping in a bed with a squirmy person isn't easy. I know this because I often sleep next to one grandchild or another on their overnight visits, but I don't ever tell them to "Stay to your side of the bed." I just endure the squirmy and leg kicks.

The house (again)

My dear mother Rose (and the rest of our immediate family) lived in a tiny house that wasn't our own. She lived there for almost 45 years. The house was the church parsonage.

Anything mom wanted to do in the house, including painting the bathroom, she had to get permission from the church trustees to do. She could buy no new appliances when the old ones broke without their consent, because, after all, the new appliances wouldn't be hers. They belonged to the church. She couldn't buy carpet for any room in the house. Of course, the floors were hardwood (oak) and would be in style now, but the floors were cold, after the coal furnace was replaced.

She really wanted to carpet the attic where Deb's and my room was, but the church decided it was more thrifty (I suppose) to put down plywood and then paint it. It was very, very cold in the winter, and we were constantly fighting with splinters.

This isn't a criticism of the trustees. They had a job to do, and mom was grateful for any and all improvements they allowed.

My dear mother's kitchen was a 10 x 10 square room with a sink and counter (a small counter) on one wall. That wall included the back door, which made the space even smaller, and the sink was in the center of that counter. Since there was no dishwasher (were they even invented yet?) the dish drain was always a part of the kitchen counter.

It wasn't a very convenient kitchen by today's standards, but it was the warmest room in the house, the most congenial room, and we all congregated there and were under foot most of the time. Mom didn't seem to mind, she'd just put us to work.

The stove was opposite the sink. And that would have worked very well except the kitchen table was between the two entities. I guess today that would be considered an island. The refrigerator was within easy reach of the stove.

There was no pantry; not even enough cabinet space to store any groceries, except for cereal, sugar, flour, salt, and olive oil. They were spread through the few cabinets we had, and there was no rhyme or reason to where they were housed. But we knew where they were, and that's what mattered.

Mom's "pantry" was the basement. Basically, it was in a jelly cabinet (which I absolutely loved). Mom also had storage under the basement stairs which contained a large closet -- a closet which my father told us housed the entrance to a tunnel that connected the house to the church. We never found that tunnel, but my father was adamant that it was there. My mom stored her canning supplies in there, and her home-made canned goods as well. So the full jars were put in there after canning season and then as we used up the food, the empty jars were put back in that closet.

The basement also housed a huge freezer which mom and dad purchased when I was in fifth grade.

Now when I talk about the basement, I mean basement. It was an unfinished space. The walls were cement. The floor was cement and very uneven, and full of cracks. But, it was clean. Mom made sure of that. At least once a month mom and I would don our scarves and tie them around our heads, then mom would sprinkle the floor with water to keep the dust down, and we would sweep. I had to make sure that the broom got into all the nooks and crannies of the ceiling, which was basically the flooring for the upstairs.

I had to make sure I got all the spiders out of the corners. And, there were always spiders in that basement. There were always centipedes in that basement. And, there were always silverfish, lots of silverfish, in that basement. Most of all I hated the centipedes (thousand leggers).

We didn't spray insecticide in the corners, but we should have. Dad had one of those old-fashioned debuggers with the long pusher and can on the end of the pusher. I suppose that we could have eliminated a lot of bugs if we had thought to do so, but I think mom would rather spend a day cleaning than smell the debugging stuff.

Me? I have on compunctions about killing bugs in any way I can. I don't like bugs of any sort.

I must add as an afterthought: Where I live now, I have the perfect kitchen (for me) and I absolutely love it. But I must admit that I never had any problem with that old kitchen in Runnemede. And I was thinking that it was no wonder I was such a skinny kid what with the food being in the basement, and my bedroom being in the attic. I got exercise -- built in Stairmaster!

Today's BLOG was written in an e-mail to my daughter when I was remembering how similar her kitchen is to the kitchen in which I grew up. She lives in a house that has a similar floor plan to the house in Runnemede, which makes visits to her sort of like going home

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Still another great shop on "main street"

This shop was the place where dreams were made. This place was on the corner of Fourth Avenue (NW corner) and The Pike. The name of the shop was Palumbo's.



Palumbo's was a wedding gown/prom gown shop. And the window dressing was something from which the dreams were made.



My sister and I both recall how we would wait for the window to change clothes (new gowns put on display).



When I married my bridesmaids' dresses came from that shop. We went in to choose them and took our time.



My gown didn't come from there, though. After all those years of dreaming about getting a gown at Palumbo's, I didn't. I found one that was less expensive and just as pretty at Penney's.



But I remember riding my bike down to just look at the window and when I was riding a bus home from work, I'd take a peek at the window to see if they had changed the contents. Always a treat when the dresses were changed.



Prom season was another time when the window would change, and then after prom season was bride season, then came homecoming season, then Christmas, then it went round again. Always changing, always dreaming.



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