Story: Destiny or Just Dumb Luck?

***

1

The day after Richard Nixon was elected President, I started looking for a job abroad.  I was committed through the next summer, 1969, but I thought it was time to go as soon as I could.  I told myself it was likely to be a permanent emigration.

Sure enough, in early September, there I was in New York City, climbing aboard a somewhat worn Atlantic cruiser, headed for my new job in south-central France.  There was no one to see me off, so I was lost in a quiet reverie as I walked up the gangplank.  It was about noon.  I hadn't thought about lunch.

"Welcome aboard, sir," the Purser said as I reached the top of the gangplank.  I showed him my passport, and he told me my cabin number and showed me on a little diagram how to find it.  It turned out to be on E deck (down under water, the least expensive way to travel).  He added that the first seating for "luncheon" was scheduled for directly after we steamed past the Statue of Liberty.  That was my "seating."

I dumped my hand baggage - a little grip or valise - in the cabin.  There was no one else around at the time, but there were three other empty berths.  I went right back up to the part of the ship the Purser had recommended for the best view of the Statue of Liberty.  One couldn't miss that, could he?  The deck wasn't too crowded, so I was able to move right up to the rail.  The view at that time was of the pier and the busyness of freeing up the big ship to take off... not to mention the skyline of the lower half of Manhattan.  This was all pretty heady stuff, even for a grizzled 28-year-old like me.  Was I an adult yet?

After twenty minutes or so, as we sailed by that iconic monument, I was still lost in my own thoughts.  I was thinking I was probably the only one on that deck who was saying to myself how ironic it was for us to be admiring this mighty symbol of all the best about America - about the United States - at a time when the country itself was going to the dogs.

So I looked around at the others.  Standing next to me at the rail was a smart-looking young woman in a neat, khaki trench coat.  She seemed absorbed in her own thoughts too, and our eyes did not meet.  But when I went down to the dining room a half-hour later, it turned out that all the single young people on board had been seated together... and she ended up next to me.  Her name was Teri.

2

Two weeks later, I was sitting in an out-of-the-way staircase in the basement of American Express in Paris.  I was hot, tired, hungry, and most of all frustrated.  What I should do next? I wondered.

After arriving early that morning at the Gare de Lyon, Paris's station for trains from the south, I had taken the Metro to the modest little street in the student district, la Rue de Rennes, where I'd told Teri I remembered from my JYA in Paris a whole row of decent but moderately priced hotels.  Since I hadn't heard from Teri in the week I'd spent in my new home city, I just started looking for her at the first hotel on the left side of the street, coming from the Metro.

At each of the eight little hotels, I explained I was looking a friend.  Everyone was most cooperative, but no one had seen Teri.  Most did have rooms available. 

It was a warm mid-September day.  My little grip felt heavier every time I left each hotel.  When Teri was nowhere to be found... "I know she said the 20th," I said to myself, "That's today."  

"Something must have happened."

It dawned on me that, wherever she was staying, maybe Teri might have read in her little guidebook that the American Express office over near the Opera across town had a message service where you could find or leave messages.  I got back on the subway and headed over there.

The basement was crowded and stuffy.  As I waited in the particular line for the names in the alphabet that included my own, I jotted a note on a little scrap of paper I ripped from a tiny notebook in my shirt pocket.  "Where are you staying?" I wrote.  "It's almost 1 p.m. now, on Thursday.  I'll check back here to see if you have left me a message at 4 today and at 10 tomorrow morning.  Ron."

There was no message.  Teri's last name started with a different letter from mine the line for which was down the counter a station or two.  But the young woman who waited on me was nice enough to take my little note down to her colleague at the right spot.  I thanked her and looked around for a place where I could observe the crowd for a while, and rest my legs, and cool off, and figure out my next step.  Along the wall behind us, there was a little staircase going to an office door. 

I flopped down there, nearly out of hope, wondering again if I could have screwed up somehow...  when Teri walked in!

3

"Well, I never thought you would actually come!" Teri said a little later while we had a sandwich at the grand Cafe de la Paix next door.  "I know how it is."

"So, on the ship when we talked about getting back together in Paris... You didn't think I meant it?"  I found that hard to believe, but I laughed gaily.

"Oh, you meant it at the time," she said, laughing in her turn.  We were both happy to be together again, after all.  "But you get to a new place, start getting settled..."  She shrugged.  "I didn't think much about it."

I'd been thinking of little else, myself, but why mention that?  I was telling myself she'd been thinking it was too good to be true... so she just went on with her vacation.  When I'd had to get off in Le Havre while she went on to England, that was it, for her.  The five days on the ship had been fun... but life goes on.

When she arrived at the Paris train station last night, right there in front of her she saw a tourist office with signs - in English and other languages - saying they could find a hotel for her.  That seemed too great to pass up.  They had respected her expense limits, the hotel was nice, that was that.

She'd been to Versailles on a tour that morning, and on returning, the bus made a stop at American Express.  On a whim she got off.

And there I was!

4

Teri's original plan was to spend three days in Paris and then move on to Geneva for three days, before ending her four-week vacation in Italy.  I toyed with the idea of going to Geneva too, but I wasn't exactly sure when I was expected at my new job.  We ended up staying four days in Paris, when Teri headed off to Geneva for only two days, and I went back to the one-room apartment I'd rented in my new home city.

We'd exchanged addresses, of course.  I fretted over how long I should wait to send my first letter so that it would just get to Wisconsin in time to meet her coming back from Europe.  It was after all a good thing I'd checked in at work, since my French employers had been a little anxious I might not show up, but the work itself did not actually begin right away, so I could concentrate on finding a grocery store, a self-serve laundry, the nearest Post Office, and start a local bank account.  That all took about a day...

I took long walks down by the beautiful, wide river that flowed right through the center of town.  Like Teri's and my time in Paris, it was sunny and warm.  But I was busy wondering where in Italy Teri would be each day and what I should say in that important first letter.  I had the lightweight blue, special "air letter" paper unfolded on my little desk under my only window, but I didn't want to write until the day I would send the letter off.

5

When I hadn't heard anything from Teri two full weeks after she would have returned to Wisconsin, I was getting impatient.  I sent her a cheery airmail post card:  "How was your return trip?  How's everything going?  I've started on the new job.  A few surprises.  Nothing bad!  Please let me know you're okay... OK?  Ron."

First-class mail to the U. S. was supposed to take about three days, maybe four, so I thought a reply could come in ten days, two weeks...

When a full month had passed, with no mail from Teri, I was sure I must have had the wrong address.  But there it was, in her own hand-writing, on the page I'd torn from my little notebook ...  What could I make of that? 

To be honest, it never occurred to me that maybe Teri had just been stringing me along.  Maybe it was good to have a companion going from one tourist attraction to another - the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame cathedral... - but a long-term friendship may have been another thing altogether?  No, I didn't think of that, frankly.  Maybe she was sick?  It was more than impatience I was feeling by then (but less than self-doubt, I guess).

6

"The gentleman would wish to send a cable to the United States?" the postal manager asked me politely.

"Yes, if you please, sir,"  I replied, equally politely and correctly.  This was the second person I had spoken to in the nearest Post Office to my apartment.  I realized that my upset must have been obvious to them from my manner, the strain in my voice, and the expression on my face.  But I could tell it myself mainly in my uncharacteristically bad French accent.  I was thinking of what I would say to Teri so much that it seemed to be hard to switch to French.  To myself I sounded like an American trying to speak good French, rather than - my usual pose - a European raised in France speaking his native tongue.

I was upset because another two weeks had passed with no word from Wisconsin.  When the morning mail that day - about 9 a.m. - had brought nothing from Teri, I walked straight from the mailboxes near the front door of the building, outside and to the left across the square, and down the two blocks to the Poste.

A pleasant young woman seemed concerned that I - evidently - was feeling an emergency, when she responded to my inquiry about sending a cable, "Yes, sir.  One moment, if you please."

Then she had returned with the man, who I presumed was her supervisor.  "You know the precise postal address in the U. S.?" he asked as he sorted through papers behind the counter.

"Yes, sir."

"Please write the name and address here and your message here," he said, pointing.

"In English?" I asked.

"But yes, monsieur," he replied in a reassuring tone.  "No one will know what you write."  And he smiled and nodded.

I wrote:  "Teri:  I have written you twice but had no reply.  Please cable if you are well.  Ron."  I had edited the message down - saying "twice" instead of "a couple of times," for instance - in order to reduce the number of words.   I didn't know how much this was going to cost.

It seemed like a bargain, after all, when I paid.

7

Then, it seemed like in no time (since everything really is relative), a letter from Teri came.  It was not effusive, but friendly. 

"I had been meaning to write sooner.  There was no reason for you to worry.

"Things have been busy here.  I am moving to a new apartment with my friend Joanie.  I must have mentioned her.  It is much nearer my work in Milwaukee.  Joanie is a teacher.

"Have you made many friends?  I'll bet you have been busy too.  I hope the job really is going well.  What were the surprises anyway?"

That was the tone, more or less like our conversations on the ship and in Paris.  I was still puzzled about the long delay, but I relaxed... and enjoyed the long-range conversation.

I wrote back that day, and in a couple of weeks there was another letter from her.  And a pleasant sort of rhythm set in.  I never found out if she replied to my letters on the very day when they arrived.  Probably not, but they came pretty soon.  Once in a while, we got out of sync and letters crossed in the air mail.

After a while, she actually sent me something I had never seen before, a little camera that you could only use one time before sending it all in to be developed.  "Use it to take some pictures of your apartment," Teri had written.  "I want to see what it's like.  Take a lot.  There's no reason to waste any."

Before I had my friends at the Poste send it back, with customs stamps and everything, I photographed about every square inch of the apartment.  I stopped short of snapping the primitive toilet and the cramped shower down the hall.

8

In February, Teri had another vacation coming.  She and another high school friend had found out that the cheapest way to travel was to sign up for a ski trip.  The first stop was on the French side of the Alps, not far from where I lived.   She came to see me before joining the group with her friend Kate.  Then we both went to Chamonix and then on to Grindelwald, Switzerland.

This time she wasn't surprised when I met her at the train station.

When I finished work that summer, I went to Wisconsin.  We got married.  We did return to France, where I had another one-year job. 

But then, we came home... just about 40 years ago.

***

Corporations Are Not People, Are They? (essay)

***


Do you find it difficult to distinguish business corporations from human beings?  It seems hard to believe, but apparently some do.  Let us think about this...


The American Declaration of Independence says,

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

1

The first truth self-evident to our forefathers was "that all men are created equal."  Today, we would expect them to say something like "all people" instead of "all men."  Did these men mean to exclude people of color (like slaves) - as sub-human - and women - as insignificant in public affairs?  Did even Thomas Jefferson mean to do that?  Probably, they did. Yes.

To be sure, slave-owners could feel affection, even love, for some of their slaves, but that kind of affection was to them more like their sympathy for their trusted animals than like their feeling toward other human beings.  Yes, our forefathers - like John Adams - could "remember" and respect "the ladies," but  they surely thought that public affairs (especially war, which they were at that time promoting) was a realm for men only.

The Fourteenth Amendment of the supreme law of our land, the U. S. Constitution, puts to right one part of this central sentence in the Declaration by stating:

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

American slaves had already been emancipated when this amendment was ratified, so when it was, ex-slaves and other men of color were hereby ordered to be treated like everyone else.

Later, the Nineteenth Amendment set straight the second part of the Declaration's central sentence by saying:

The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.

Women may not be prevented from voting, because they are citizens.  Women, like men of color, will be treated like everyone else.  So, whatever our forefathers may have intended by saying, "All men are created equal," we have known since 1920 that both all men and all women are equal under U. S. law.

Thus, today we would read the Declaration's central sentence as though it said, "All human individuals ( or 'All people') are created equal, [and] ...they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights..."  And, of course, other rights - many of them addressed in the first eight amendments to the Constitution - are not innate but are granted to all citizens, not by the Creator but by the laws adopted by legislatures.

2

Business corporations are not "human individuals"; they are not "people."  That truth must be as "evident" as those truths referred to in the Declaration. So, whatever "rights" corporations may have, they are not endowed in them by a divine Creator. Corporations' rights are granted by law (if indeed corporations may be properly said to "have rights" at all).

Nor are corporations, of course, citizens. No one has ever suggested that corporations should be allowed to vote, for instance.


Now, as we know, the first amendments of the Constitution, or the "Bill of Rights," confer fundamental rights on U. S. citizens.  These include:

the right to follow any religion of one's choice

the right to speak one's mind without danger of legal punishment

the right of the press to do the same

the people's right to meet

the right to petition the government for redress of a grievance

the right to own firearms (reference is made to the need for militias)

the right to say No to an order to house soldiers in your home

     and

in amendments 6, 7, and 8, a significant number of rights related to allegations of crime: such as the right to be tried by a jury of one's peers, the right not to have your privacy invaded by government officers unless ordered to do so by a court, protection against cruel and unusual punishment, the right to a speedy trial, and so on.

These rights are granted to citizens by the U. S. Constitution.  Additional rights may be granted by federal laws, such as patent laws or laws relating to interstate commerce, or so long as they do not conflict with federal law, by specific states' laws, such as the right to marry or to operate a school.

3

Corporations come into existence for a wide variety of reasons, but they would not exist if they did not have some legal rights, implied if not expressly stated.  All corporations may enter into contracts, for instance, such as renting or owning a building, and they are legally bound to fulfill the obligations they take on through contracts.  A corporation may own property, of course, and it would be against the law for anyone - even government officials - to take their property without paying just compensation.  Corporations may incur debt, in  fact would often not exist without this privilege, and they are held responsible for their debts.  Corporations are liable to be be taxed, and they may be sued (for illegal discrimination against employees or customers, for example).  Finally, like people corporations can be punished for breaking the law, such as by committing fraud, breaking a contract, or even manslaughter.


These corporate privileges and responsibilities are all necessary if corporations are to exist at all, and all of these particular privileges are also rights and responsibilities of human individuals.


Perhaps because these fundamental "rights" adhere both to people and to corporations, corporations are sometimes and in some ways considered "legal persons," even though they are not human beings, as the first Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court famously wrote of corporations:


“A corporation is an artificial being, invisible, intangible, and existing only in contemplation of law.  Being the mere creature of law, it possesses only those properties which the charter of its creation confers upon it.”

Corporate charters are granted by states.  Whether explicitly stated or not, some of the essential corporate rights - such as the provisions pertaining to contracts and to property, corporations' being subject to criminal law and to taxation, and their being guaranteed due process of law - are also guaranteed to citizens, that is to human individuals, by the Constitution.

On the other hand, of course, as one might assume, the Constitution also grants rights to human citizens - such as the right to vote - which are not granted to corporations.

4


So, not all of the rights granted to citizens are granted to corporations.  The Constitution says that "the people" elect representatives to serve in the government; it does not say "legal persons" elect representatives, nor of course does it say that corporations should do so.  Some rights granted to citizens, in other words, are explicitly granted to human individuals exclusively, such as the right to keep and bear arms:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.  [emphasis added]


Keeping arms is "the right of the people" (not of legal persons).  "Thank goodness," we might say: imagine entering a corporate headquarters - a high rise, say, on Sixth Avenue in New York - and seeing everyone carrying a sidearm and finding the word "Armory" over a large steel door in the back, flanked by men with AK-47s!


Other provisions of rights in the Constitution, on the other hand, are stated in the passive voice, leaving it unclear whether these rights are granted exclusively to human individuals or also to "legal persons." 


This is the case with what we call the right of free speech:


Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech... .

Although it may seen clear to many of us that only human individuals can literally speak, this section of the first amendment does not say explicitly whose speech may not be "abridged," as the following phrase later in the same amendment does:


Congress shall make no law ... abridging ... the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.  [emphasis added]


State legislatures or the President and  the houses of the federal government are not prohibited by the Constitution (or anything else) from passing laws saying explicitly that certain "legal persons" do not have this right.


So, unless we want to grant corporations the right to vote - by using their resources to guarantee the election of only those who will do their bidding - then, we should push our representatives to pass a federal law saying that the Constitution's guarantee of freedom of speech applies not to "legal persons" but only to human individuals.  Or is common sense no longer useful to the common good?




***

Childhood Treats, etc.

***

1

It is clear to me now, looking back, that I was an odd child... and I liked it that way! 

If just about everybody I knew preferred one thing, I said (having first convinced myself) that I preferred something else. This peculiar effort to seem "special" extended to almost everything.  When just about all the boys I knew, for instance, were especially looking forward to the next Hopalong Cassidy comic, I focused all my attention on waiting for the next Red Ryder.  On Sundays, a bunch of us used to take the half-hour or so between Sunday School and Church to make a quick trip to a drug store two blocks away for a "cold drink" (as we called a soda); when the fad was for everyone to order a cherry coke at the soda fountain, I had a vanilla coke instead.  And later, when everyone was using ballpoint pens, I always used the equally-new ink cartridge fountain pens.

But, as for candy: when we went to the movies - which cost at that time 7 cents for each child - of course a few of us would get a box of popcorn, but as I recall it now, most seemed to prefer candy.  Milk Duds were the most popular, as I think back, with Junior Mints as a back-up.  Some would get Dots, and everyone who did gave their licorice Dots to me (since no one else would eat licorice).  I think it was later when M & Ms showed up, to great acclaim...

But as for me, I always bought... Bit-O-Honey. 

I know I did that because no one else I knew would eat Bit-O-Honey at all.  It wasn't just that I wanted it all to myself either; I sincerely tried to convince the others they should share in my delight.  No, the real reason was I had to be different, didn't I?

At a candy counter, if someone bought a Baby-Ruth, I pointed out that I preferred Oh Henry but they were harder to find where we lived in the depths of Texas.  Get the point?

2

But my fondest memories of all those thoughts of childhood candy are focused on the one summer before junior high when almost everyday, I went with one friend of mine - a guy nick-named by his parents Dos in order to avoid calling him "Junior" - to the best swimming pool in town, one of the few that opened at 9 a.m. seven days a week even though many days we were the only ones there at that time besides the lifeguards.  Our Moms took turns driving us out to the pool around 10 and then picking us up at 11:30 or so in order for us to be home in time for lunch.

Ordinarily, especially in a public venue, both Dos and I were rather inhibited.  But something in that cold spring water seemed to liberate us, and every day we did cannonballs off the diving board, or tried flips (and sometimes flops) and other silly plunges and splashes, howling and cheering all the way.  What must have those cool, handsome, tanned and well-muscled, 16-year-old lifeguards have thought of us two lunatics?

Anyway, this went on - believe it or not - for over an hour, every day.  Ten or fifteen minutes before the designated mother was to pick us up, we would drag our shivering and exhausted selves up the beautiful green hill from the pool to the street level... and stop by the candy-vending machine.  Dos introduced me to a special treat: the white chocolate covered Zero bar.

Now, that was perfect!  No one I knew (other than Dos, of course) had even noticed the Zero bar before.  I had one most days, although I would sometimes vary the series with another unusual choice, which I introduced to Dos (who was unimpressed): the Payday bar, covered with peanuts without chocolate. 

What's that?  No chocolate coating?  How could anyone want that? I imagined my friends asking, as I crunched my Payday, waiting for one of our mothers.

3

Some kids liked the straightforward milk chocolate Hershey Bar; I didn't particularly.  Others wanted Snickers or either Almond Joy or Mounds; I liked the flat, semi-sweet chocolate Mars bar.  Some liked Milky Way; I preferred Three Musketeers.

I mentioned earlier that when someone expressed a preference for Baby Ruths, I claimed to prefer the Oh Henry bar.  That one I confess I knew was not true, but the contrarian habit on these delectable matters was too strong to break, apparently. 

I had an interesting experience with Oh Henry many years later in France.

I had met an eminent French university professor, who for some reason seemed to have taken a liking to me.  M. W----- was a well-known French scholar of modern American literature, and maybe he enjoyed hearing Americans talk as part of his cultural education.

Well, one day M. W----- called and asked me to drop by his office at the university.  It seemed to suit his imposing position that he sat on his side of the wide dark wood desk in a big cushioned arm chair while his visitor was left to perch uncomfortably on the edge of a little light-colored straight chair.  On this occasion, he gestured that I should lean forward so he could show me the papers he was working on.

It turns out that M. W----- was working on a translation of Cane, which I learned was a novel written in the 1920's by a Harlem Renaissance figure named Jean Toomer.  M. W----- asked me to read a particular paragraph, which was about a kid walking along a littered railroad track, apparently in an urban area.  Describing the trash stirring around in the breeze, Toomer mentioned an old Oh Henry wrapper.

M. W-----, naturally, knew O. Henry as a popular writer of short stories, like "The Gift of the Magi" and "The Furnished Room."  What an O. Henry wrapper could be, he just couldn't figure out.  I believe he was embarrassed to ask me, but of course he couldn't translate what he did not understand.

It actually took me a minute or two before I had figured out the somewhat elliptical syntax.  Then I explained to M. W----- what an Oh Henry candy bar was.  (No, he didn't say he preferred Baby Ruth!)  Once he got it, by the way, he quickly changed the subject, and speaking in English, he asked:  "And what in the world is 'near beer'?"  Even though M. W----- was a known connoisseur of wine, not beer like those Germans, he was still offended to think that Prohibition had made Americans reduce the natural alcohol content in any drink.

5

When folks visited Mother or Dad at home when I was young, they would be welcomed into the living-room and offered a "cold drink."  At a soda counter, that meant what we now call a soda.  But in a private home, it might mean iced tea (which we called "ice tea" as though it were frozen) or even iced water.  In the home refrigerator when I was growing up, there was usually a six-bottle carton of Dr. Pepper or now and then RC Cola, and sometimes when I was being pampered there would be my own choice, Orange Crush.

It was always hot enough to make us thirsty two or three times during the day.  At most once a day, maybe after supper, we could have a cola or an Orange Crush.  But most of the time, we just grabbed for the flat-sided bottle Mother always kept full of iced water.  Sometimes there was also a pitcher of ice tea, but we had to ask before swilling any of it down; it took a long time to brew up some tea and then cool it down to the right sipping  or gulping temperature.  We often had milk at meals, and iced water was always available.

Once in a great while, Dad would be a little later than usual arriving for lunch.  That would be because he had stopped at a stand along his usual route to and from work to pick up some hamburgers for us.  It was a local chain that he preferred (as all of us did).  There must have been five or six scattered around the town.  There just weren't any national chain restaurants in my hometown, especially not for just hamburgers.  And these places weren't really restaurants either.  You went up to a little window and told the man or woman what you wanted, and after a few minutes, a brown paper bag would come out the window, and you paid and went away.  There was no indoor seating, only - sometimes - one or two wooden picnic tables jammed up against the outside wall of the stand.  The best one, where Dad stopped on the way home, was called Somewhere, serving Someburgers.

A hamburger anywhere in my hometown included lettuce, tomato, pickles, mustard and mayonnaise, and - unless you said otherwise - a big slice of onion.  The Someburger was a little bigger than the average and had more pepper on it than most.  Boy, would I like one now.

Were these fast-food stands? Well, you didn't have to wait very long, I guess.  But the kind of stand that served real cheap little patties on buns with ketchup, mustard, and pickle (onions? I guess so, chopped up real fine) did not appear at home until I was about ready to graduate from high school, and that place too was entirely local and was called 2-K's after the husband wife owners.

My family did not go out to eat very often, except after church on Sundays.  Then, we would usually go to this particular coffee-shop like, sit-down restaurant that was famous for its home-cooked fried chicken.  They always served biscuits and clover honey from Waxahachie, Texas, 100 miles or more to the north.

There was no pretending I preferred anything besides these family favorites, but on really hot nights when Dad would take us to that special (local) place where you could get an ice cream cone right in your car, when everybody else had chocolate or strawberry, or maybe peach, I would always get lime sherbet.

6

And then, what about the over-the-counter medicines we always seemed to have around?

My parents seemed to get what they called "sinus headaches" often.  They always had aspirin around, particularly Bayer in the little tins or St. Joseph in the same-sized cardboard containers.  But the pain-reliever of choice in the Derrick household became, and stayed, Anacin.  For years the ads for Anacin stressed that Anacin had two, not one but two active ingredients.  I don't think we figured it out that taking a regular aspirin and drinking a cup of coffee would have the same result, since the special ingredient was caffeine.  (It worked too.)

My Mother always liked to have diet control handy.  I don't think I ever chewed on an Ayds, as advertised by Arthur Godfrey (between Lipton tea ads), but that became another standard in our house.  Vaseline, of course, was always on hand.  For those skinned knees and other little scrapes, Mercurachrome was always around, since we didn't know at that time that mercury posed a health threat.  I also remember once in a while Dad's applying a bright purple fluid to splits in the skin between his toes (a typical problem in hot, humid climates).

We must have had cough drops around too, but I don't remember the favorites.  I did have a memorable experience in high school, though.  I had gone all the way through junior high with this one big guy.  He was a starting lineman on the football team, which by our junior year in high school (in Texas) was a big deal.  He was generally considered a nice person, but I didn't know him well and was a little intimidated by him.

Well, we had one class together, probably the required Texas History.  R--- sat right in front of me, so that the size of that huge frame was obvious to me all the time.  One day during class I had one of those nagging coughs.  I just couldn't get it under control.  After 15 or 20 minutes, when our teacher turned around to the chalkboard, R--- turned around to me and said, "These things really work" as he handed over a little box of something I'd never seen before: Throat Disks.

I didn't hesitate to pop one of these flat, little brown disks into my mouth, but immediately wondered if I'd made a mistake.  Could Mr. Nice-Guy R--- be playing a little trick on me?  The Throat Disk had a sharp odor and taste that moved right up my nose.  (I knew years later that one of the active ingredients was chloroform!)  The taste itself was kind of good, but utterly new.  Was I going to be the laughing stock of school by the end of that hour?

Before I got through wondering if I had been tricked, though, the cough was gone.  And it didn't come back.  R--- started moving to the door after class, but I got to him, thanked him, and noted that the Throat Disks had stopped my cough once and for all.  He just treated this whole thing as just normal, it would seem.

7

Unguentine, remember that?  In our house we usually had some around in case of little burns... What caused burns?  I don't remember, but we had some; I remember that.  I also don't remember why we sometimes had Absorbine Junior on hand.  Campho-Phenique was always in the medicine cabinet, primarily to treat my many fever blisters.  Benedryl was the typical prescription medicine to address my perpetual allergy problems.

And... oh, I hate to remember it.   Mother kept in the refrigerator a little bottle of Cod Liver Oil; what was that for anyway?  We kids did hate to take that stuff.

It's surprising to discover now that looking back on all of those things - the smelly or foul-tasting medicines right along with the burgers, soft drinks, and candy - is all equally pleasant.

And oh, by the way, when there was the big argument among my friends about which was better, Spearmint or Doublemint?  My own choice of chewing gum ... was Clove.

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