This page was last modified 23 April 2001 -- rak.
My name usually is Dick, unless someone is very angry at me, or is being extremely formal, or doesn't know me.
I was born 27 August 1937 at Grace Hospital in Hutchinson, Reno County, KS. Mom and dad lived in Arlington at the old Eaton house on Algona Street at the time.
My earliest memories almost all have to do with my grandparents Kraus. I got to spend big chunks of summer with them on their farm. Sleeping out on the second floor screened-in porch was a delicious luxury, especially when the wind was high enough to make the screen whistle -- which it often was!
The earliest memory that I can date is from age 4. I was sick with a cold or the flu. Grandma Kraus had me under 2 or 3 down comforters "sweating" the cold out, making me drink hot tea. Grandpa was listening to the radio. They announced that Pearl Harbor had been bombed. I had no idea what that meant, but grandma and grandpa were very upset.
It was not until April 2001 that I realized how traditional this cold cure was. In "Medical and Dental Services in Early Mennonite Communites", AHSGR Journal 7.3, p.19, Solomon Loewen describing his father's medical practice in Marion County, Kansas where the Krauses and Beltzes first settled, provides a line drawing of a "Sweating Chamber" used "to cause profuse sweating. After half an hour or so the patient was dried off and placed into a bed. If the fever persisted or would return, another treatment would be given the next day. Many fevers would be gone with one treatment." Well, grandma did not have a "Chamber" but she would sweat a cold out of her eldest grandson whenever needed!
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