Scarlet Fever and Eyeglasses

Scarlet Fever and Eyeglasses

I had previously mentioned that Mom had scarlet fever when around 6 years old, and how she nearly died….because an awful lot of people who had scarlet fever did die. Well, obviously she survived, but the fever affected her eyes far more than anyone guessed.

She nearly got run over when in the road at some point while still very small (grade school), because she didn’t see the car coming, and apparently this provided the impetus for her parents to have her eyes examined.  Naturally she needed glasses, and the prescription was pretty strong.

Shortly afterwards she went out into the backyard with her mother, and she made some sort of comment about being able to see the flowers or some such…and her mother cried, because she never realized how bad her daughter’s eyesight was before the eye exam. 

Manual Typewriter

Growing up in Churchville, my dad used a manual adding machine that required him to punch in the number and then pull the lever to get to the next line. It looked sort of like this one: 

(Anyone else remember these? LOL) 

…and my mother used a manual typewriter (long after electric typewriters had been introduced, but hey…if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!).

Since she was secretary for several different women’s’ groups, she still used that typewriter quite a lot while I was growing up, even though at that point she didn’t work outside the home. And she typed at least 80-90 words per minute.

Honestly, sometimes it sounded like a machine gun was going off in the dining room.