Posted by Lynn Dudley
April 11, 2016
Those DeLorean drivers who are out of jail for speeding, let’s go back to April of 1962. Destination: Lincoln School. Spring has arrived, and the crocuses are croaking, the tulips are flowering, and the daffodils aren’t taking any guff off of the snapdragons.
We’re going on a walking field trip to Middletown Hospital. I was so proud! We’d be walking thru MY neighborhood, and I knew about everyone in it. I was 10 and in the 4th grade at the time, and a “horsepistol” trip could be good.
I was sick of hearing “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” and the “Puke of Earl” from being WAY over played. Every Saturday at the YMCA, the Scotch tape was rattling on the radio’s speaker, with those two blood-curdling melodies.
Grab your jackets, cause April can still be a little chilly. Up Central and turning on to Alameda Circle, we passed Sandy Casper’s brick house on the right. We’d been playmates, listening to records and watching the morning kid’s shows, before they moved and the Schramms moved in. I made friends with one of their boys, and the same thing happened (listening to the tunes of the day). Next was the Holman’s house, which had an in ground pool in the back yard. I never saw it filled, as before we moved to Middletown (’55) one of a neighbor’s sons got into it and drowned tragically. Don Holstein’s house was on the corner of Stanley, and they had grandkids visiting now and then we’d play and bike with.
Across Stanley, was the Sutter’s house. The name Ken Sutter comes to mind, as a college aged boy. When I was older, I cut their grass sometimes when they were on vacation, and they had one of the first garage door openers, run by a key switch on a pipe down the hill by the street. Across the street, taking up half the block, was the Ranck house/mansion. Later, Dr. Sawyer moved in, and daughter Ann was our age and an occasional playmate.
Back to our side of the street, was Charlie Hook’s place, complete with putting green, pool and tennis courts. Their granddaughters from France visited every Summer, I spent a lot of time up there. On around the circle was the Terry’s half-timbered house. Mike had been in our Cub Scout den, and next to them, the big white columned house on the corner at Central, lived the Detchers: Eric and Mary. Mary was in my grade, and Eric a few years older, and our paperboy for a while.
OK, Let’s quit dilly-dallying around and get up the hill to the hospital. The original building had been added on to, but the 7 story building was a few years away. Once past the receptionist, they showed us one of the emergency rooms, all set to go at a moment’s notice, except for the kid who sneezed. Then it was down one of the halls to the patient rooms, with their heavy doors, door handles you could open and shut using your arm and brass plaques on many doors in memory of loved ones, or furnished by various local businesses. Some were private rooms, some had two beds. Then there were a couple of wards with six or eight beds.
They showed us the nursery, where the newest souls crossed the portal to this world, and the children’s ward, outfitted with TVs from Ruth Lyons, lots of distracting games and puzzles, and walls painted with murals by Ginny Reese, daughter of Dr. Walter Reese, one of the most skilled surgeons in the area.
They took us up to the top (4th floor) where the operating rooms were, and just as you got off the elevator, there was a bronze plaque, dedicating the operating rooms to Dr. Reese. He was nicknamed “shorty,” as he stood on a wooden (but sterilized) coke crate to reach the operating table. They didn’t take us down the hall, understandably.
Any little cough or sneeze wouldn’t be good. Back downstairs, at the nurse’s stations, were the autoclaves, where stuff got sterilized by steam, and the shut-off valves for vacuum and oxygen were located for the whole floor. The lower level had the commissary, preparing food 24 hours a day for staff and patients, the nuclear medicine department, with the really nasty cobalt 60 isotopes, and close by, the X-ray department and film lab.
The switchboard with three operators was down there, and under the entrance (as I recall) was the lab. All the test tubes, flasks of blood and other bodily fluids, microscopes and paperwork, it was a busy place. I got a whiff of probably ether, and my knees went weak, and I was out like a light. Formaldehyde has a distinctive “sweeter” smell to it, but I remember waking abruptly to the whiff of smelling salts, and I was ready to take on any alligators that came down the hall. Embarrassed, I rejoined the group, but I missed the blacksmith’s shop where they straightened bent needles.
They sent us back to school with a do-it-yourself lobotomy kit, and it was back to class. Little did the hospital staff know, that 12 years later, I’d be behind a radio microphone, drumming up business, making people sick!
Middletown Ohio Memories 