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The Way it Was: 'Good old days' weren't always so good

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September 1, 2010

 

by John Straka

Today’s column is about my father’s older brother, known to me as my Uncle Joe. He was just an ordinary man, very much like all the other men of his age. I write about him for two reasons. First, to show younger readers how the lack of one medical discovery affected his life and the lives of millions of men and women like him. My second reason is to jog the memories of older people to the fact that in some ways, the “good olde days” were not so good.

Uncle Joe was born in 1878 and died at age 48 in 1926, when I was 9 years old. I remember he was a very nice man who lived with my Aunt Stella, off Harvard Avenue near Washington Park in southeast Cleveland. They had four children ranging in age from about 16 to 26 and most likely the two youngest boys were living at home with them.

Uncle Joe worked in a factory that made things out of wood, such as windows, doors and staircases. His job had no benefits, no paid sick days, no hospitalization insurance and no unemployment insurance. When he worked, he got paid. If he couldn’t work, he didn’t get paid.

Uncle Joe caught a cold and tried to work through it, but it got worse and he had to stay home in bed while Aunt Stella rubbed his chest with a mixture of camphorated oil and goose grease and fed him hot chicken soup and beef barley soup known at that time as “flu soup.”

After several days, he felt a little better and against the wishes of his wife and family, he went back to work, weak as a cat and just dragging himself around. Barely an hour on the job, he got a large sliver of treated wood jammed into his finger.

The shop nurse removed the splinter, washed the wound and probably put some iodine on it and bandaged it with a strip of cloth because modern antiseptics and adhesive bandages had not yet been invented. By lunchtime, his finger was badly swollen and obviously infected. The nurse sent him home with instructions to see a doctor. 

The doctor put him into the hospital and when the infection spread up into his hand, a surgeon opened the wound, cleaned it and applied medication, probably more iodine, or maybe peroxide or carbolic acid. Penicillin had not yet been discovered.

The infection spread into his hand, past the wrist and started up his arm. Several surgeries were attempted to try to stop it. He had what was called at the time “blood poison.” Soon, the surgeon said the arm would have to be amputated. His wife and family were shocked. How could a one-armed carpenter support himself and his wife? He would be a cripple for the rest of his life.

No! No amputation, they said.

I don’t know how long it took, or how many surgeries it required, but with his arm cut to ribbons, the infection was stopped and Uncle Joe faced a long recovery to regain his strength and heal his surgical wounds.

In his weakened condition, Uncle Joe contracted pneumonia and died.

I remember his funeral. The wake was held in the living room of his house, with Uncle Joe in a grey military uniform maybe from the Spanish-American War. He had a huge white bandage covering his left arm.

I remember his burial in Calvary Cemetery, on a hillside just past the tunnel that runs under the railroad tracks. It was with military honors, with flags and rifle fire.

Aunt Stella lived as a widow for 40 more years. 

From time to time, I’d visit the graves of my parents, my wife’s parents and my grandparents and my Uncle Joe and Aunt Stella. Then, after not visiting the cemetery for a while, I went and couldn’t find my Grandma or Uncle Joe’s graves.

I contacted Calvary Cemetery, and with the information they gave me and my trusty GPS, I found Grandma and Grandpa Straka. Now I’m waiting for the same kind of information to help me find Uncle Joe and Aunt Stella’s graves.

By coincidence, I noticed there is a controversy about printing ballots in Spanish and a news article mentioned people who are “one-way” bilingual. 

Aunt Stella and her family were like that. I never heard her speak one word of English. She spoke only Bohemian and her family, including me, responded in English. Surprisingly, it worked.

This story leaves me wondering. Would amputation have saved Uncle Joe? Maybe not. Would antibiotics have stopped the infection? Most surely yes.

If his pneumonia had been prevented, would he have been able to use his cut-up arm? Maybe.

How many other people died of minor injuries back then?

 




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