Polio Across the Alley

Polio Across the Alley 

Buddy Himes' mother caught polio. I was aware of how much adults feared that we kids would suffer polio. I remember scenes on television from the Sister Kenney Institute in Minneapolis. They showed victims confined to "iron lungs" and others trying to learn to walk again at. I remember the summer we were forbidden to run through lawn sprinklers because that might give us polio. Yet, the disease remained a distant abstraction for me until Buddy's mom came home. 

Her arms and legs were paralyzed, but she was kind and welcoming as ever. Each time I ran into the house with Buddy she was in the kitchen smiling and sitting in a chair that was more contraption than chair. It had wheels; cables went from metal frames above her to her wrists. She was still practicing ways to make her pencil-thin arms and hands useful. Buddy seemed accustomed to his mother's predicament. I never got comfortable during my moments in her presence. However, I did not have long before they moved from their house across the alley. They moved to a brand new home at County Road B2 962. 

(c) from date of posting, by Bob Komives, Fort Collins