SOLO 50

In the beginning of July, 1943 I was born in Old Herman Hospital in Houston, Texas. I was big baby with long arms, big hands, and a pointed head. My mother Jennie told me the hospital used a rubber mallet to reshape my head. Sounds awful but it worked. The total hospital bill was $58.50. World War II was killing off many of our young boys. The United States decided to award any boys born on July 4th with a $100.00 savings bond. This of course was to encourage the birth of more boys to replace those lost in the war. My mother went into labor on July 4th and if I had been born then, I would have received a $100.00 Savings Bond. But at last I was stubborn. I emerged on the July8th and lost the Savings Bond. My parents never let me forget my tardiness and finally after many years I gave them a hundred dollars to stop reminding me. That was the last time I procrastinated. Thereafter everything I have done is timely. Growing up in West University Place, a suburb of Southwest Houston, I remember the house on the corner of Marquette Street, one story, with two bed rooms, a kitchen and breakfast room , study, living room and a porch. No air conditioning just a enormous attic fan. When my sister Margie was born, I was moved from the bed room to the porch where I lived until my parents sold the home. At least the porch was screened in and there was always a breeze from the enormous attic fan. Unfortunately the attic fan and porch caused me to have allergies for which I had to have treatments later on. Jennie was a housewife having been the head of the Counsel House in Houston, a gathering place for youth, where she met my father, J.P. , a college student at Rice Institute ( now Rice University). After they were married my father taught in high school as well as my mother. My father’s expertise was math and my mother’s speech, English and debating. My mother always was proud of her debating classes in high school. One year her class beat President Lyndon Johnson’s debating class from a rival school in a city wide contest. Probably why Lyndon Johnson gave up teaching and went into politics. In those days it was usually a one car family and more than often one would take the city bus. I recall riding with my mother on the bus and on one occasion I decided to run to the back of the bus to sit. This caused the bus driver over his speaker to demand I return to the front of the bus immediately. I did not understand but my mom explained the back of the bus was for the black people. “ White people don’t sit there “ she said. That was my introduction to discrimination and I never forgot that incident. I feel that incident made me more compassionate for those that were less fortunate. I also recall my dad telling me that when he was a teenager and riding the bus down town past city hall, he witnessed the Ku Klux Klan tar and feathering a black man. At the time I thought he had made that up but as I grew older and read more, I realized that this really happened. After all Houston was more like the South than the Southwest. When I was six, I started weekly injections for my allergies and it did help. My mother would take me to the allergist once a week until I was old enough to be dropped off. She would drive me to the Medical Arts Building, drop me off in front and I would take an elevator to the twenty second floor. After my injections, I would take the elevator back down and wait for my mother on the street. We arranged the time around my watching Superman after school on our black and white television. On one occasion after I had my injections, I boarded an elevator with two older women carrying umbrellas ( It had been raining that afternoon). As the elevator descended, it stopped between the eighteenth and seventeenth floor. The older women became hysterical and beat the elevator door with their umbrellas. I told them to stop that we were between floors and they could not hear the banging. A voice came out of the speaker in the elevator saying to stay calm, help is on the way. I added we have air conditioning blowing through the vents and the lights are on so just be patient. An hour went by and the voice kept reassuring us. Finally after two hours the women were panicking again. I tried to calm them down but suddenly the air stopped, the lights went out and the intercom silent. All three of us were yelling at that point. Without notice the top hatch of the elevator opened and a ladder descended. The rescuer helped the first woman up the ladder and then the second, and finally me. They had jammed open the elevator door on the eighteenth floor and we were able to climb out over cables. After that incident I walked up and down twenty two floors . I never rode the elevators in that building again. At least the walking was good exercise. I was told that I would out grow the allergies but eighty one years later I am still taking injections. What I out lived were three allergy doctors. When I was six I was ill for several months with a disease unknown to the Pediatrician. At the same time my cousin from Allentown, Jeff , had the same illness. Later when I went to a specialist and he x-rayed my spine, he said that I had polio. Fortunately for me it only caused a slight curvature of the spine. My cousin was paralyzed from the waist down and had to be in a iron lung (breathing machine ) for two years. He recovered enough to breathe on his own but the paralysis never went away. Then on my eighth birthday I stuck a sharp end of a Mother’s Tongue plant into my right eye and had to be taken to the emergency room to remove the piece that had broken of f in my eye. Years later I found out the broken piece caused an undisclosed problem with my cornea for which I had to apply special eye drops four times a day. When I was nine years old I got Scarlet Fever. If not properly treated, Scarlet Fever could do permanent damage to your heart. One afternoon I was in a room sitting on a window seal when I fell out and dropped a story landing on some bushes. I was rushed to the hospital and fortunately had not incurred any further damage to my heart. Later on I would discover that I had afib, a heart condition which causes the heart to vibrate violently. It is possible the Scarlet Fever caused this result. My parents always said it was a wonder I survived my youthful days. I felt all the misfortunes made me stronger. The house in West University Place had a lightening rod in the shape of a rooster on top. My mother collected roosters crafted out of ceramics, metal pieces and wood carvings from all over. After she died, I gave the rooster collection to all the people that knew her. In the kitchen the towels had roosters on them. Even some glasses had roosters in a barn yard depicted. One stormy day I was at the kitchen sink getting water from the faucet when a lighting bolt stuck the rooster on the roof and part shot through the kitchen window, piercing the glass in my hand and hitting the wall clock knocking it to the floor. It happened so fast I did not realize how close I came to being struck. The water in my glass boiled and the clock was on the floor smoking. My mother rushed in and could not believe her eyes. Somehow I was spared. We could always replace the clock. not so much me. Another time I was at an amusement park which had the usual rides and a coin toss to win a colorful chick for ten cents. The proprietor greased the plate upon which you tossed the dime making it almost impossible to win. I asked my dad for a dime and tossed it on to the plate miraculously winning a colorful chick. We raised that chick in a pen at the back of the house. The chick turned into a rooster that we gave to my grandmother. Roosters some how always appeared for my mom. To her it was good luck. She would always kid that if there had been a rooster in the maternity ward, I would have been born on the July 4th. That summer my Uncle Maurice Radoff who was a buyer for R