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July 21, 2020
Growing Up In Bandera
By Glenn Clark
The Bandera Prophet
As a kid growing up I don't remember any kind of sickness that couldn't be instantly cured by some of those home remedies my mom had at her disposal. She was a firm believer in things her elders had taught her and her kids were the patients in her home clinic.
A drop of kerosene or coal oil in a spoonful of sugar was a common remedy for a sore throat. If you stepped on a rusty nail, which I did more than once, you had to soak your foot in kerosene. I don't recall but I would guess that the kerosene was probably then saved for further use later on. That's the way things were done back then. The coal oil usually came from that little galvanized can that my Granddaddy Kindla kept for filling the kerosene lamps around his house. I recently found one of those little cans at a garage sale and now it sits in the corner of my computer room with some other reminders of back in the day Bandera.
I once had a wart on the back of my hand near the base of my little finger. I was forever hitting it on things causing it to hurt and bleed. My mom revealed an old wives tale remedy that involved rubbing the wart with an old dishrag and then secretly burying the rag at a place to be known only to me. It was aggravating enough so I thought I would give it a try. Two days later while working on my bike wheel the wart disappeared. I had my bike turned upside down and while spinning the wheel my hand with the wart bumped the spokes and the wart went flying. Coincidence? I'm not one to dwell on details when things are going my way.
Our medicine cabinet had a good supply of Vicks VapoRub and Mercurochrome. I can still smell those odors that leaked out of the cabinet and seemed to fill the bathroom. There was a cute "monkey blood" name given to the Mercurochrome in an attempt to lessen the fear of that stinging burn when it was applied. That never worked on me.
During the winter months the classrooms at St. Joseph's Catholic School were often filled with the strong smell of Vicks Vaporub. Evidently the contents of other medicine cabinets in and around Bandera weren't unlike the one in the Clark household.
Often while Growing Up In Bandera I was the errand boy who did frequent runs to the grocery store for my mom. If she had Vicks cough drops on the list I always claimed they were out and I had to get Luden's cherry cough drops instead. Those things were a nickel a box and tasted like candy.
#239 2020
A drop of kerosene or coal oil in a spoonful of sugar was a common remedy for a sore throat. If you stepped on a rusty nail, which I did more than once, you had to soak your foot in kerosene. I don't recall but I would guess that the kerosene was probably then saved for further use later on. That's the way things were done back then. The coal oil usually came from that little galvanized can that my Granddaddy Kindla kept for filling the kerosene lamps around his house. I recently found one of those little cans at a garage sale and now it sits in the corner of my computer room with some other reminders of back in the day Bandera.
I once had a wart on the back of my hand near the base of my little finger. I was forever hitting it on things causing it to hurt and bleed. My mom revealed an old wives tale remedy that involved rubbing the wart with an old dishrag and then secretly burying the rag at a place to be known only to me. It was aggravating enough so I thought I would give it a try. Two days later while working on my bike wheel the wart disappeared. I had my bike turned upside down and while spinning the wheel my hand with the wart bumped the spokes and the wart went flying. Coincidence? I'm not one to dwell on details when things are going my way.
Our medicine cabinet had a good supply of Vicks VapoRub and Mercurochrome. I can still smell those odors that leaked out of the cabinet and seemed to fill the bathroom. There was a cute "monkey blood" name given to the Mercurochrome in an attempt to lessen the fear of that stinging burn when it was applied. That never worked on me.
During the winter months the classrooms at St. Joseph's Catholic School were often filled with the strong smell of Vicks Vaporub. Evidently the contents of other medicine cabinets in and around Bandera weren't unlike the one in the Clark household.
Often while Growing Up In Bandera I was the errand boy who did frequent runs to the grocery store for my mom. If she had Vicks cough drops on the list I always claimed they were out and I had to get Luden's cherry cough drops instead. Those things were a nickel a box and tasted like candy.
#239 2020