The snowball fight took place atop Mrs. Feldon's garage roof.
A fence separated Mrs. Feldon's garage from her backyard neighbor. First we would climb onto the fence, balancing on a post nearest to the garage while using nearby shrubs to stabilize ourselves.
Next, we'd lean across the gap between the fence and the rear wall of the garage and grasp the edge of the sloped roof. At this critical stage in the maneuver, the body formed the hypotenuse of a right triangle, if you get the picture. The year was 1949.
Jerry, 9, and yours truly, 10, were seated on top, facing each other - about three feet separated us. The morning rain had soaked the previous week's snowpack. Every kid on the block knew the meaning and consequences of such weather on the making of a hand-packed snowball. No longer was it categorized as a snowball. It took on a revised, upgraded, more sinister name: Iceball.
An iceball weighs more than a similarly sized snowball. An iceball also packs in less time. And it causes more pain to anyone unlucky enough to get nailed by it.
An unwritten rule of snowball vs. iceball fights says that iceballs must not be aimed at a kid's face. All kids understood why.
Jerry and I started a simple fight with tiny iceballs. Several were flung back and forth, hitting our chests and arms, some missing by a mile as we yelped with glee.
Then Jerry let fly a direct hit to the right side of my head. The iceball impacted my right ear with the force of Jerry's 9-year-old pitching arm. And at a distance of three feet, it stunned me.
I called off the fight and headed home, shaking the icy snow from the side of my head.
Once indoors, I sought the aid of my mother. Mom was a medium-sized, second generation Pole. She was strong.
"Ma, Ma, where are you? I need help with my ear. It hurts."
Mom came running immediately upon hearing me cry and caterwaul about an earache.
"What happened?" she asked.
I proceeded to tell the story, employing the abridged version. While I was talking, mom was undressing me, trying to examine my injured ear. She could detect a reddening of the lobe as she used cotton swabs to wipe away the impacted ice stuck in the ear canal.
Although mom was not a trained nurse, she was an experienced dental assistant, so she was very attentive to medical matters.
Earaches were typically treated with warm, camphorated oil. Mother heated a teaspoon of the oil over a flame - it could be the heat from a lit matchstick - and soaked a small ball of cotton in the oil, gently pressing the unique-smelling cotton ball into my ear canal.
After the treatment was completed, I was given hot cocoa, dressed in sleeping pajamas and told to sit quietly on the front room davenport.
Rather than subside, however, the earache progressively developed into an infection. An immediate appointment was made for me. By now, I was ajitter with all sorts of frightful thoughts. I'd never been to a specialist, and this doctor was called an "eye, ear and nose" specialist.
Upon entering the doctor's examination room, a strong, sweet odor wafted through the air - an familiar scent. A table was covered with a white cloth surrounded by a floor lamp, an overheard light, two white cabinets, a sterilizer, tanks of gas (nitrous and oxygen) and assorted instruments, some quite sinister-looking.
I thought it looked like the laboratory in a Dr. Frankenstein movie. It was unsettling.
"Be still!" someone said.
Out of nowhere, a nurse appeared and quickly, without my permission, placed a device over my nose and mouth. Ah, this must be the mouth and nose part, I thought.
I didn't understand what was happening. The nurse reached for a container of medical ether and dropped some onto the mask, asking me to breath in normally. I experienced my first panic attack. I was really, really scared.
"Breath in normally," the nurse requested. I thought: What the heck does that mean?
I fell into a deep sleep before I had a chance to tear off the mask to ask my question. I was under, as the medical folks like to say. My procedure was completed in record time. I went home to recuperate.
Not surprisingly, Jerry and I never returned to the roof of Mrs. Feldon's garage for snowball fights. Yet we remained friends for life (he died of throat cancer at age 55). My hearing in that ear never returned to normal, and I still have trouble with confined spaces.
Bernie Sadowski is a freelance writer living in Magnolia. Write him at mageditor@nwlink.com.[[In-content Ad]]
