Saturday Memory

October 26, 2024

It was 1945. I was not yet 8 years old. On a Saturday, the movie matinee I saw was “The Mummy’s Curse.” I saw all the Mummy movies and I still recall the mummy’s name: Kharis. That day, I won the door prize—a box of Hershey Milk Chocolate bars. I remember all the kids applauding as I received the prize. Very exciting. On the following Monday, I was in the hospital with acute mastoiditis—an infection of the mastoid bone behind the ear. At that time, penicillin was not yet widely available, but I was treated with several shots of penicillin a day. They were not painless, and I still have a vivid memory of the pain in the butt where the shots were administered. On the bedside table was a radio which was on all the time and on top of the radio sat my prize—the chocolate bars.

When I was well enough to eat them, I discovered that they were all a melted, gooey mess. It was a vacuum tube radio in those days and got hot.

Nonetheless, I licked my prize with abandon. ?