One Cold Winter Day

One Cold Winter Day

Today as I listen to the news I hate to hear that the Covid-19 cases are going up. This is mostly due to people avoiding taking the vaccine. Now some people can’t take it due to being allergic to some ingredient of the vaccine or have other health related issues. Many are afraid and the fear is actually putting them at risk of dying and possibly infecting others who may also get very ill or die. Then we have the politics of it all. Of all things to get political over taking a vaccine should not be one of them. Some people of color have had horrible relationships with the medical industry. I am old enough to remember when most of the doctors in my inner city community were not people of color. These people depending on their knowledge about us or other people of color would sometimes treat us as though they were doing something very special and we needed to be very appreciative and show it! They were making a great sacrifice to come down here to the ghetto to serve you!

My family was spared this treatment when it came to the two of us. Dr. Rose our family doctor was a very friendly man and loved being a doctor. A lot of his patients lived in what was called the ghetto at that time. He was not overly concerned about traveling into the inner city to his patients. We lived in Milwaukee and one very cold winter we had the flu. The high fever made me and my younger sister feel like we were on fire! Our mom had to change our bed linen several times a day due to us sweating so much. Yes, we were in the same room. Most children shared rooms in the early 60s. If you did not your family was very well off or probably wealthy.

It had snowed a lot and the streets were very difficult to navigate. We heard on the radio that everyone should stay at home unless they had an emergency. All the schools and many of the businesses were closed. The streets were very icy and the snow was several feet high. The snow plough had been down our street so it was clean enough for cars drive on it. However, if you had to go to someone’s door you had to climb up a very high bank of snow that resembled a small mountain. Our family doctor who lived several miles from our house came to take care of us soon as my parents called him. It must have seemed like a journey across the artic to get from the suburbs where he lived to a place a few blocks from downtown. Back then the

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inner city was very close to the downtown business district. Most people in my neighborhood could walk from their apartments and homes to down town. Most of the people who lived close to downtown were working class or poor. Most of the government subsidized housing was close to down town. Although there were many nicely kept modest homes and apartments in the area it had a bad reputation due to its location. Most of the people who were the bosses where they worked had moved to the suburbs. Many of our white neighbors had moved out. Our schools were almost all black and or Latino with a few people from other places you would hear about on the news called refugees.

Dr. Rose made the arduous journey to our house to take care of us. Our high temperatures were making us sweat a lot and at times we were so weak that our bodies were limp like rag dolls. My sister who was a very gitty talkative child was barely able to be heard as she whined. My moans were so low you could hardly hear them. It fell eerily silent in our home due to our illness. Usually we would run around, jump across the beds in our room, tumble on the floor and toss our toys around. Our room would sound like a baseball stadium filled with cheering fans. It was so quiet you could hear the floor boards squeak as my parents walked across them. My mom paced around the room with my little sister in her arms holding her tight to calm her as she whimpered. My dad looking worried as he kept peering out the window. You could tell he was waiting for someone. Since I was too large at age eight to be held in my mom’s arms like she held my sister, she instead would hold my limp body up and talk to me as we lumbered around the room. “It will be alright, no you are not going to die dear. You will be well soon baby,” she repeated continuously.

Dr. Rose finally arrived checked us out. He was so kind and gentle. His deep soothing voice like that of a storyteller was calming. He then wrote a prescription to the neighborhood pharmacy. My mom called it into them. He went to the front room and talked to my parents for a while as they waited for the pharmacist to call. My dad left for a while and returned with the medicine. Dr. Rose gave us the first dose of the heavy pink creamy portion that tasted like peppermint. We went to sleep soon after swallowing it.

In a short while we could sit up, talk a bit and we were not as hot as we were earlier in the day. Dr. Rose told our parents, to have us drink plenty of water, take the medicine three times a day and walk some around the house when we were not sleeping. It took a day or so for us to recover and begin to return to our usual noisy shelves, running around the house and tossing toys all over the place.