James Etheridge

I’m a Boomer. I was born in June of 1955, so that makes me a Generation Jones. I don’t really know what a Generation Jones is, but I do know that Boomers like to brag that we’re tougher than the generations that came after us because we drank straight out of the water hose, played games outdoors as opposed to video games indoor, looked up things in a dictionary or encyclopedia when we wanted to learn something, and baloney sandwiches were considered fast food. Every generation pretty much goes on and on about how the one after them has no idea how easy they have it compared to what they went through. That always has been the case and most probably always will be. But we Boomers had at least one thing that separated us from the milquetoasts who came after us. We had mercurochrome.

Mercurochrome was in pretty much every medicine cabinet in every house before, during and for a short time after the Sixties. We didn’t have urgent care clinics. We had Aunt Hurricane. Doctor Knight, as she was known professionally, was our local pediatrician. She was my friend Butch’s aunt. Aunt Hurricane got her name from her days playing semi-pro softball on a barnstorming team known as the Lorelei Ladies. As a doctor she stitched, patched up and cared for many an injured or sick Gresham Park Kid. She was boisterous and funny and had a wonderful manner with children. No matter how banged up you were or how poorly you felt, Aunt Hurricane always made you laugh and feel better.

Mercurochrome was a red liquid that came in a dark brown bottle with a dropper and burned like hell when applied to a wound. It also had an ominous looking label that contained every type of warning except for a skull and crossbones. Cuts, scrapes, abrasions or anything else that was a result of playing outside was dealt with by running home, having your Mom wash it with water and douse on a few drops of mercurochrome. You would then clinch your teeth and wait for the fire to subside. Then she would it with a Band-Aid and you were out the door and back into whatever was going on outside.

While mercurochrome was a standard first aid remedy for minor injuries that required a little more attention than just applying dirt to it and walking it off, the more serious boo-boos required merthliolate. Merthiolate wasn’t just mercurochrome on steroids. Merthiolate made mercurochrome feel like cherry soda. Unlike mercurochrome, merthiolate contained alcohol and you knew it as soon as it hit the skin. Merthiolate could send the toughest and most grizzled backyard warriors into a screaming and crying conniption fit for at least a few minutes until the fire calmed down. During the whole fit of wailing and gnashing of teeth, your mom would be telling you it was alright, that the burning would cause the healing. That was easy for her to say because it wasn’t being poured into an open wound on her knee or elbow. Come to think of it, I don’t ever remember seeing either one of my parents ever use mercurochrome or merthiolate.

Another over-the-counter first aid remedy was Bactine. Bactine was a spray-on medication that famously advertised “No Sting.” It said so right on the can. That was one of the biggest lies in marketing ever concocted. Granted, it didn’t have the searing painful heat of mercurochrome or merthiolate, but Bactine still stung like hell. “The sting means it’s a-workin’”, my mother would say as she liberally sprayed it on my knees white my hands had a death grip on the sides of the toilet. “Y’don’t want it t’git infected, do ya?” she’d ask. “Here, let me a-blow on it.” That would do absolutely no good whatsoever. “Maybe I ort t’take ya up to see Doctor Knight.” I didn’t need to see Aunt Hurricane for a skint knee. “Just put a Band-Aid on it and I’ll be good to go,” I’d say. Many times after a mercurochrome, merthiolate or Bactine treatment, I’d vow that next time I’d just use the old tried and true method of rubbing on of dirt and walking it off.

Rubbing dirt on a scrape and continuing to play was most probably not an old wives remedy that my mother would have approved of. But, she had a number of them, some that I still strongly believe in and some that still puzzle me to this day. The first was eating bowl of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup when I had a cold. I don’t think it really cured anything but it sure made me feel better. Nowadays it’s homemade chicken and vegetable soup or chicken and dumplings. Any of the aforementioned will work, and I swear just the aroma of the soup cooking can cure most ills.

But, a few of the my mother’s first aid treatments were and still are are downright perplexing. The one I really don’t get was that whenever I got a knot on my head, she would put butter on it. It didn’t ease the pain and didn’t make the knot go down, but every time I cracked my noggin, I got butter rubbed on it. She would also put butter on a burn. It seems like butter would be the worst thing to put on a burn, due to the oil it contained. Maybe it would fry the burn and cause it to scab up and heal quicker.

Everybody knows the old cold meat on a black eye treatment. I think the idea was that the cold temperature and the soft flexible texture of the meat would mold to the contours of the eye, constrict blood vessels and reduce swelling. We didn’t have enough meat to spare for black eye remedies, so it was usually an application of a towel full of ice cubes. That was always fine with me because I was content to just let a black eye shine. For a ten-year-old boy, a black eye was like a badge of courage, especially if you had scrapes on your knuckles, because that showed you gave as much as you got.

Mercurochrome and Merthiolate are long gone from medicine cabinets today. They were both removed from the shelves in the late Nineties, due to their mercury content. The FDA classified them as untested or not generally recognized as safe and effective. Untested, my skint knee. Mercurochrome and merthiolate were not only well tested in the Sixties and Seventies, they were a way of life. There are enough scars on septuagenarian knees and elbows that were treated by those two remedies to fill volumes of medical journals. Other well-tested remedies were dirt. Cold meat. Bactine. Butter. Band-Aids. Aunt Hurricane. It’s a good thing Aunt Hurricane’s office was open on Saturdays. But never on Sundays. Everything was closed on Sundays. On Sundays were on our own.