I thought I might need a heating pad, but was reminded in the drugstore yesterday that technology marches on — BenGay patches, these one-time-use thingies that wrap around the afflicted area with the help of velcro. Oh brave new world, etc.
Still, I felt wistful for the heating pad we had when I was a child. I think it was used for mild earaches because I didn’t have a lot of other aches as a kid. That treatment has probably gone out of fashion, along with taking Coca-Cola syrup for an upset stomach. (We’re from Atlanta and although my mother has never baked a ham in Coca-Cola, she does make Coca-Cola fudge cake which is simply divine.)
So, to summon up from memory: The heating pad was off-green, with a white control box with four plastic buttons — black (off) yellow (cool) orange (medium) red (hot). Red was intense, a region one visited only briefly. Yellow was worthless. Orange was the place to be. The pad had a medicinal smell, like the pharmacy near the doctor’s office, or did I assume its smell was medicinal because its purpose was medicinal? And while it only came out when one was feeling pretty punky, it was somehow cheering, too. That rectangular piece of off-green, positioned beneath one’s head, promised much. The ache would pass, life would resume.
Other childhood sickness rituals — snowballs from the Windsor Hills Pharmacy and having the television brought to one’s room. (A TV in a child’s room, how novel that was once upon a time.) Lipton’s chicken noodle soup with oyster crackers.
What was sick bay like in your youth?
Lysol — both in the spray and that small brown bottle. And when the industrial strength brown bottled liquid Lysol appeared, you were ~sick~. This was war for my mother. Everything you touched or breathed upon while you were sick was sprayed thoroughly and wiped down.
Jeanne
We had the same heating pad, and still have a variation of it. Heck, we even have an old, red hot water bottle. Now that dates way back!
My mother was a strong believer in chicken soup, juice and Vitamin C supplements. I had a cold a few weeks ago, and my French grandmother let me in on a remedy that she said was sure to cure. Put a large glass of brandy beside the bed, and place a sock at the base of the bed, on the mattress. Curl up in bed, and start drinking. As soon as you see two socks, you’ve had enough and you can expect to be drifting off to sleep momentarily.
vicks vapor rub, tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches unless the tummy was off then it was dry toast and tea. we had a hot water bottle that was red and had a screw-in stopper. we took orange baby aspirin and wrapped up in a blanket and watched “dialing for dollars” or on the weekends, the saturday scary movie or thriller theater.
i still do most of those things when i’m feeling icky.
thanks for the walk down sick bay lane
Tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches… that was my mother’s recipe, as well. My twin sister and I had mumps at the same time, sometime in 1971 or ’72; I remember watching a moon launch from bed on my parents’ black-and-white TV, which Mom had put up on our dresser.
TV in bed still feels like the best indulgence in the world.
Ah, the pink pan – a chipped pink tin basin that was brought out of hiding from underneath the kitchen sink if your illness implied the least little chance of barfing. Given my family’s predisposition for weak stomachs, the pink pan got a workout. It’s still a running joke among my siblings, so much so that when I had recent outpatient surgery and my sister came to pick me up, she said she made her 8 year old son ante up his own “pink pan” for the car ride to take me home. How families take care of one another…
And when the girls in my family were sick, my mom always offered her Nobel Prize for Medicine-winning advice: “Comb your hair and put on some makeup, you’ll feel better.”
Ginger ale. My mother used to force it on me, and I hate the stuff. I always felt that I was being punished for getting sick…
one word: mericrome!
Fear not, we still crack out the heating pad.
Mine was *identical* to yours, except for the oyster crackers. Lipton chicken noodle and the TV wheeled into my room. I was in New York, but I swear Laura, sometimes I think we were neighbors.
We had that exact heating pad with the four buttons. I used the red button but put a wash colth between the pad and my ear for the prefect temperature.
A heating pad still has its place in our house – tucked down between my nightstand and the bed. It gets used more now when I’m having one of THOSE damn days when my feet Will Not Warm Up. Interestingly, on advice from doctors and my masseuse, cold/ice works better on much of what aches. Heat always comforts, but it’s not as effective as (shudder) one of those gel packs from the freezer.
Sick bay in my yout’: creepy as it seems, my first memory seems to be the “croup tent” my parents created in my bedroom. I suffered from this nasty as a small child, leaving my parents to always assume I’d be asthmatic and wheezy my whole life, but not – and early memories of sheets taped to the ceiling while a green glass humidifier shot steam into the air is one of my clearest. And the morning I went into mom’s room gasping “Mom, I can’t breathe” and her very calm (and more practical than it sounds) “sit down, and I’ll make you a cup of tea”. I could inhale the steam from the tea, which helped. And 30 years later, I remembered the feeling when I had a weird crisis and couldn’t breathe; turned out my father was in serious health crisis 3000 miles away. But I still made a cup of tea.
Of course, TEA, when I was sick except for that was the drink of choice, that and ginger ale. I drank “doctored” tea, with milk and sugar, which is why it took something like 20 years to realize I DID like tea (after drinking it in enough Chinese restaurants) at least somewhat, but I still can’t drink ginger ale because of the association.
I don’t remember having the tv, but I vaguely think ours was a console and we were a non-tv oriented family. I still stun people by how little I watched as a kid, never really resenting that. I know tons about television from my childhood, but recall NO Saturday mornings in front of the tv, nor most shows. But I probably was content with piles of books anyway. Hmmmm, nothing’s changed THERE.
What was funny about television in my youth was how little was on. Baltimore had a show called “Dialing for Dollars.” You had to know “the count and the amount.” (“The count is four from the top and the amount is $45.”) The host would call someone out of the phone book, ask if the person who answered the phone knew the count and the amount. Great television!
I also loved “Duckpins for Dollars.” In fact, if the old episodes were available on DVD, I could while away many happy hours watching those wonderfully serious women, in short-sleeved blouses and stretch slacks, answer questions about themselves before heaving three balls down the lane. The show was very, very sweet and respectful, in a way that’s almost unimaginable now.
But here’s something I bet you don’t know: Romper Room was from Baltimore. It was franchised, with cities providing their own local cut-ins, but it was born in Baltimore, the brainchild of Bert Claster.
The original teacher, Miss Nancy (Nancy Claster) was a stitch. She loved horse-racing (once owned a horse, in fact) and was a terrific handicapper. I profiled her and got to spend a day at the track with her.
Now that I think back on it, I guess we mostly stayed fairly healthy. Ginger ale and saltine crackers for upset stomachs; Campbell’s chicken noodle soup (and saltine or oyster crackers) for just about everything else. Vick’s vapor rub for colds, of course.
The worst illness I had to deal with was when I came down with the flu at the same time that my baby sister presented us with a meningitis scare (fortunately it was just a scare). The doctor said that, to keep her safe, I needed to be kept in isolation. Now *that* was scary — I couldn’t have been more than about 8 at the time. I was put to bed in the guest room at one end of the house. I did get a TV, and a little bell to ring if I needed something. I was indulged with as many games,toys, and treats as I could wish for, but the loneliness was excrutiating. I still cringe when I remember the time I needed something and no one responded to my little bell. I was sure everyone had gone off and left me (they were just out in the back yard taking care of chores).
I still use my heating pad for a variety of aches and pains. I have a lavender eye pillow that lives in my nightstand and travels with me everywhere in case of migraines. I’ve traded the Vicks for Tiger Balm (the “white” variety with the cloves — yumm!), but still break out the chicken noodle soup occassionally and *always* keep a supply of Saltines on hand!
BTW, Dialling for Dollars was strictly a summer time indulgence. I always wondered why the host never called me (what was his name?? Janis didn’t mention it in her song . . .).
For upset stomach: raw meringue — simple whipped egg white and sugar, sometimes with my choice of food coloring in it. Not baked, but eaten straight from the whipping bowl. Yum. Nowadays, this would be a no-no because of salmonella.
For colds or just a bad day….tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches was my mother’s choice. What do these women know that I don’t? I still have that same meal when I need comfort food.
For upset stomachs…saltine crackers and/or dry toast and 7 up. Now, why 7 up and not ginger ale?
I do believe we had the same heating pad. I’ve upgraded since and have one with three temps and a moisture pad included. It gets used.
I recently tried one of those patches you mentioned, Laura, and they do work. Better yet, you’re mobile and not tethered to an electrical outlet.
We had Dialing for Dollars in the San Francisco Bay Area. The host was Pat McCormick, and the count was how he got your number. The phone book was cut into blocks of so may entries and he called the number that was (for example) four from the top. I imagine Baltimore and other major cities had their own Dialing for Dollars though. I’m sure the one I watched was just for Northern California.
I didn’t know Romper Room was from Baltimore. But I loved Miss Nancy.
Ahhh…earaches and moms hot water bottle treatment really brings back my childhood memories of being sick! And being sick and in bed on a school day was best! Mom would place a hot water bottle on the spot that was giving me grief while dad went to the Windsor Hills Pharmacy to get me a snowball, a large glass bottle of ginger ale and the latest copy of Mad Magazine!
And the TV being brought into my bedroom was the greatest! It felt great laying in bed watching “Lorenzo & Leave It To Beaver re-runs at 9:am knowing that my Dickey Hill School classmates were just sitting down to the school bell ready to learn. After Beaver went off and as Laura stated, dialing for Dollars would come on just before the TV show “Truth or Consequences… A show that made people do all sorts of crazy stuff in order to win prizes! Bob Barker of “The Price Is Right was the host.
But then a knock at the front door would interrupt my sickness, as it seemed to always do? The reality of my great day home from school finally sinks in as the Woodlawn Doctor with a Gestapo type name sinks that huge needle into my rear end! Ouch! I believe his name was Dr. Schlenoff and boy did I hate him!
If I was really sick and tossing my cookies all over the place? Dad would hop in his GTO and go to Westview Shopping Center to the G.C. Murphy’s & Co store where he would buy me a new gold fish to replace that dried up gold fish that’s in the bowl from the last time I was sick! yuck… Boys will be Boys heh heh
Randy,
I can still smell that G.C.Murphy’s — the wood floors and the candy counter, all butter and sugar all the time.
Wow — you got to inverview Miss Nancy?!? How cool is that! For the longest time I thought she really did have a magic mirror and was always disappointed that she couldn’t see me
OK, so now I’m having flashbacks to Captain Kangarro and the Mickey Mouse Club (did anyone else routinely cry when they sang that terribly sad “Now it’s time to say good-bye” verse at the end???). . .
Although I don’t actually remember it, my family has photographic evidence that we spent more than one Christmas with all three kids suffering from what my father termed the ‘two bucket’ disease. In those square B&W photos with the curly-cut edges you can see us in front of the tree, surrounded by torn-up wrapping paper, ripped-off ribbons and brand new toys. If you look closely you’ll also spot, next to each child, a large pot or plastic waste paper basket. It took more than a few germs to ruin our Christmases.
These certainly weren’t our run-of-the-mill sick bays but but I’m sure they were the most memorable ones for my parents.
I hated Romper Room – no one ever saw me in their magic mirror. I did win a Ouija board on Bozo for sending in the most awesome joke ever! My Grandma was there when I opened my prize and threw it into the trash – because well , who sends Ouija boards to 7 year old girls? It confirmed what I always suspected, clowns are from The Devil, and I was not allowed to watch Bozo anymore.
When I was sick, I got to sleep on the couch, eat Chicken and Stars soup, and watch tv. I think it was a bout with the flu that got me addicted to The Big Valley.
I will still have chicken and stars when I am sick