Your 2012 Generations Profile in Sunday’s issue was a pleasure to read. The lady that has had Alzheimer’s since she was in her early 40s is a poignant story. Both alarming and beautiful, it has left me with a fresh sensitivity, a shiny new awareness and much gratitude that Alzheimer’s has not crept into the lives of my loved ones. Thank you for covering it.

After reading that story I flipped around the edition and saw the photo of the old sanatorium hospital. A childhood memory from 1954 popped right up. For as long as I can recall, I thought that sanatorium was a strange name, a little scary actually and that the building itself looked like a perfect place not to go.

Several years later when I was a 10-year- old tomboy, street urchin, I learned I had to go there to have my tonsils out. I was terrified. That was fortuitous, as no sooner than I was rolled into what looked like torture chambers by two nurses in starched, hideous headgear and white unattractive dresses and thick-soled, lace up white shoes, they plopped a mask on my face and told me to blow into it. On the first breath, the ether consumed me, and I came up slugging and dodging the mask as they attempted to try again. The warlords in white restrained me and instructed me to blow in and count backwards from 10. I don’t think I made it past eight.

The experience was unforgettable, and it begs this next Natchez fable. Six weeks later, still in fifth grade, I fell at Braden playing second base. Dr. Killelea had been in town about 15 minutes, and that’s where my parents took me.

He took X-rays and announced my leg was broken. He pulled out a familiar looking mask. No, sir, no, sir, I don’t care if I’m crippled, I can’t take the ether. He said OK, but that it would hurt, and I had to be still. He put a wooden stick in my mouth to bite to endure the pain. I growled and groaned the entire time. Finally, it was done. He gave me gum and a bravery certificate.

I kept flipping through the stories in Profile. Up pops the Malt Shop picture and story. Allow me to relate my first Natchez memory.

One of the ways our parents appeased my two sisters and me about moving to a new town we’d never heard of, Natchez, was telling us there was a drive-in walking distance from where we would be living and it had soft ice cream that came out of a machine and made a swirl.

We arrived in Natchez at dusk in June of 1950. Daddy woke us up as he turned left off St. Catherine Street onto then Pine Street and drove straight to the Malt Shop. So, I can swear on a stack of Bibles it’s been there at least 61 years.

These are just three tales among thousands in the naked city.

Good work, Democrat Staff, on this year’s Profile. And congratulations to Randy Maxwell and all the unsung heroes.

 

Jack Kelly

Natchez resident