Time For a Change...

While perusing another of my blogs, I chanced upon this one from December-05. I think it is cute and, having recently concentrated mostly on politics and religion on this blog, decided it is time for a change, perhaps a smidgen of levity.

"Tracey called a few minutes ago and wanted to know how to find something on the internet. I, of course, gave her the standard answer: ‘Type it into google.’ That always works for me.

Googling things is a lot like staying well was when I was a kid. Now when you need to know something, you call on Google. When I was a kid, to stay well, my sisters and brother and I took “Calatabs” and “Black Draught.

The calatab was a small, round slick pill. (No one ever knew what was in it) It shouldn’t have been hard to swallow but it was. When you tried to gulp it down, it went as far as the top of your throat and stayed there all day. I’ve eaten as much as a whole loaf of Kilpatricks bread trying to get the calatab to go down but it never worked. I think it eventually just melted away.

The Black Draught was worse. It was in a flaky, grainy but very fine powder form and to do any good, it had to be taken into the mouth dry and washed down with a glass if water. I remember how hard it was to get all of the powder down. Sometimes it took up to three glasses of water to get it all down. It was bad enough to gag a maggot! I think I was only sick once or twice in my childhood.

I never took cuts or abrasions home either. I did for a while when I was very young, until I realized merthiolate burned much worse than the skint place hurt.

Merthiolate was a red medicine in a little bitty brownish/reddish bottle. It had a cap that screwed onto the top and attached to the underside of the cap was a glass applicator than went down into that bottle of liquid fire. I’m sure the reason Merthiolate was in such a small bottle was, if there was too much in a bigger bottle, it would break out into flames and burn up. It was that hot!

There was another medicine a lot like merthiolate. It was called, “Mercurochrome.” I asked my Mother once why we didn’t use that one and she said it wouldn’t do any good because it didn’t burn! Go figure! Made sense to her."

Later...