My Sister, Happy Birthday

Mine was the unique ability to, if humanly possible, goof up. With several acres to play in and shoes to wear, I would go barefoot and find that one nail to step on. A firecrcker I lit didn't explode. I went to eat and, upon returning, picked it up and lost my thumb nail and two finger nails. I lived a mile from school with sidewalks most of the way but I found trash piles to jump, ice to skate upon, a canal to drop into and play, and occasionally a small altercation with one of my schoolmates. I started from school with some books: they didn't reach home when I did. My ability to mess up was only exceeded by one thing. My one sister's ability to make things right.

She was born in September of 1918 and I teased her many times by saying Germany surrendered because they learned that she was coming. Not quite five years my senior, I have a picture of her, with a pillow to assist, holding me in a rocking chair when I was a tiny baby. My Mother never failed me in any way but it seemed I had a second mother in my sister. First it was both Mother and me down with pneumonia when I was two. A neighbor lady stepped in and helped but, I'm told, Sister looked after little brother and helped as best a six year old could do.

When I lost my books on the way home from school, I had no idea where but sister backtracked me. "Did you jump this trash pile or run through that pile of leaves?" "Did you walk that pipe across the canal?" "Did you drop from that pipe into the canal?" "Did you go under that bridge?" "Why were you chasing that girl?" What were you fighting about and who won?" Each time she found my books and got me out of trouble. There wasn't much money and books were expensive.

If I was hurt, sister would come to my rescue and help me to the house where mother would administer first aid. Coal oile (kerosene)was a prominent treatment in our first aid medicines. It was both antiseptic and analgesic---and, if you inhaled to much, I believe it was also an anesthetic. Sister and the rocking chair made everthing better.

Rumors have the tendency to be very inaccurate. When I had the accident with the firecracker, my sister was married and living in a small town nine miles away. Her neighbor came home from grocery shopping in the big town and asked, "Did you hear about that boy (gave my last name not knowing my sister's maiden name) who got his HAND BLOWN OFF?" I'm quite sure that nine miles set a new speed record for a Modet T Ford. I was sitting on the porch reading a book with a bandage on my hand when it came down the road with steam from the radiator shooting at least twenty feet in the air. I still had all my appendages.

Our closeness continued thoughout our adult life and I was in the ICU with her when she daparted this world several years ago. Happy Birthday in Heaven, My Dear Sister.