The Old Wooden Wagon

     I couldn’t stand up. I tried and tried, but I just couldn’t.  I was four years old and scared and confused to the point of frantic crying. My leg felt like it was made of sponges or springs or something. That’s the best I can do to describe it. By the way, that was almost 77 years ago now, and yet, one night recently the memory came powerfully surging back into my psyche. I don’t know why, but it was very detailed and very vivid. It’s not like I haven’t thought about it through the years, but this time was different for some reason—more real, I guess.

     Why that night? I have no idea other than the fact that I had just injured my leg in the snow as I was going up on the porch—same leg (left), same place (femur). I suppose that could explain it.

     What happened back then was that I was on the playground at the Milton H. Allen Elementary School in Medford where I grew up. I was being cared for along with a little girl my age as our parents were watching the drum and bugle corp practicing on the adjacent field. My sister was the head majorette and the little girl’s brother was a drummer.

     We were on the seesaw—a big heavy wooden seesaw made with thick planks for seats—the kind they don’t make anymore, for good reason. The little girl got tired of doing that so she got off while I was up in the air. The seesaw went slamming down and crushed the upper part of my leg, which, of course, was the reason that I couldn’t stand up. But in my 4 year old mind, I didn’t know what was wrong with me.

     I was taken to the hospital where my leg was set, and I spent six weeks with my leg in a traction that was suspended from the ceiling in my hospital room.  Certain memories have stayed with me through all those years since—memories of hospital smells and sounds, the doctor who repaired my leg (Dr. Lee, a Chinese doctor), the layout of the room with a large window facing out to the hallway, my sister and her friend who would bring me ice cream (they went to high school in the same town where the hospital was), that when I was upset the nurses telling me that my mother was working downstairs in the kitchen, which, of course, she wasn’t. I don’t remember how the food was other than sometimes I would get Junket, for those of you who may know what that is. 

     All that time my parents were under pressure to bring me home because friends said that it was a shame to keep a little boy in the hospital for that long. But thanks to my parents for listening to Dr. Lee—who told them that if they took me home sooner I would have one leg shorter than the other—I was kept in until the proper healing had taken place.

     When I did get home they put me on the daybed in the parlor, and when they opened the back screen door, in came running a puppy. I named him Butch. I had him until I was 17 years old.

     Sometimes my sister would put me in an old wooden wagon with squeaky wooden wheels and take me around town. All in all, I not only survived it, but in some ways I suppose I benefited from it, besides the puppy. My father used to say to me frequently, “Son, you’ll never regret the experience.” 

A Day At Gimbels, Long Ago

     One day when I was about 12 or 13, my mother and I went to Gimbels in Philadelphia. I don’t remember the occasion, but I think it was around the Easter season, probably to buy me some clothes. There are several things about that day that boggle my mind when I think back to it.  

     The first is that we had lunch at Horn and Hardarts, which was a fascinating experience for a small town kid. Horn and Hardarts, for those of you who are not familiar with it, was a self-serve type of restaurant, where you chose what you wanted to eat from behind a series of glass compartments. Could be a sandwich or pie or any number of other lunch-type food. I certainly don’t remember what I had, but it was a kind of a forerunner to choosing your food at a WAWA, except that it was already made and there were no such things as a computer from which to make your selection.

     The second thing was that my mother somehow got us there. Thinking of her in her later days with her anxiety and confusion states of mind, it is an amazing reality to think that she was once young and quite able to make such a thing happen. I believe we must have gone into Camden and taken the train across the Ben Franklin Bridge into center city. As best as I can recall, she was not the slightest bit intimidated by how to make it happen.

      The third thing were the wooden escalators with their clickety-clack sounds taking you up to the second or third floors and beyond. Talk about stepping back in time, they still stand out in my mind as something that smacks of earlier days before I was born—like the days I would have witnessed in old-time movies of Charlie Chaplin or Laurel and Hardy at the Saturday matinees in Medford movies.

     Then, the fourth and final thing of that day, was futuristic. We waited in line to enter a room that had one of the first colored televisions on display. I can still recall the excitement I felt, since at the time, such a thing seemed like a fantasy world. As little by little, step by step, we got closer, my anticipation grew, imagining the color being as vivid as on the screen of a movie theater. But then, once we were inside, great disappointment set in—not much reward for waiting in line for such a long time. At best, the picture on the TV could only be described as faintly tinted in pale reds and greens. We exited the room shaking our heads and saying, “Well, that certainly wasn’t worth it. We don’t need to get one of those.”

     Now all of this probably sounds pretty incidental to you. And, it is of course. It makes me wonder, though. My mother lived to her mid-eighties and, by then, she had her bouts with anxiety and confusion, so it’s interesting to remember that, at one time, she was young and able to do things that, while not necessarily big and adventuresome, were nonetheless of a very competent and independent nature. 

     It’s good to consider the fact that a lot of elderly people we see everyday who seem to be struggling to make sense of life and seem helpless to function within the ordinary day-to-day world, were once young and alert and very able to keep pace with life.

     Or maybe I’m just thinking about that since in February I turn 81.