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Steve Sleightholm
Steve's Venezuela Memoirs
Paregoric
Steve Sleightholm's Venezuela Memoirs
Paregoric
I sit here holding a small bottle that we keep in the medicine cabinet. It is
the soother of the worst kind of pain and discomfort inflicted upon people who
live in tropical climates or who may eat at a Denny's.
It is used as a short-term treatment for symptomatic relief of acute diarrhea
and abdominal cramps. It contains a very small quantity of anhydrous morphine
--- THANK YOU GOD!!!!!
Who has lived in Venezuela and not had recourse to use Paregoric? No one I
should think.
Everyone in my family was introduced to Paregoric early in their life when the
first fly landed on something we subsequently placed in our mouths. Do you
remember our parents telling us to not to eat anything outside without it either
being something you peeled or was fried and eaten immediately. Do you recall
that when you opened a bottle of soda or any beverage for that matter that the
first thing you did is wipe the black streak of dirt off that the cork left
where it made contact with the bottle? Also, do you remember that you learned to
tilt your head back and hold the bottle in such a way that it never made contact
with your lips when you drank?
Do you remember the agony, the pain, the time spent laying on the floor in the
bathroom next to the toilet if you could get to one -- it was time to die!! If I
were to attempt to explain the sensation it would be as though someone were
trying to split me from the bottom with a log splitter and that you could
anticipate each pending stroke of the sledge hammer.
You would plead with your mother for relief and she became an angel bringing
forth the magic nectar -- “THE BOTTLE OF PAREGORIC” and places that teaspoon
full of brownish soothing fluid in your quivering mouth as the tears rolled down
your cheeks. And that you learned to associate the flavor and smell of Paregoric
with an exquisite pleasure. Only kids who suffered dysentery and were healed
with Paregoric, like the flavor and its odor.
Well, I sure as hell did and do to this day.
No flies lived long in any house we lived in. We would not eat anything that a
fly knowing landed on. We also would not eat any fresh vegetables that my mother
did not first soak in diluted bleach. You see, Mom was formerly a lead nurse at
a New York City Hospital when Dad and she met and married. She knew how to fix
hurts and avoid misery. Mom fried everything or baked it or broiled it if it
that did not come out of a can, we even ate fried left over spaghetti with fried
eggs on top -- not a bad concoction either.
We learned early that there was nothing formerly living or that came out of an
animal and was deposited on the ground that did not immediately become the host
to maggots by the zillions and then new flies competing for the food that you
put into your mouth. Yeeeeccchhhhh!!! I hate flies to this day and I have
trained our two indoor Siamese cats to hunt down and eat any fly that enters our
house and escapes my attention.
“Good girls Heidi and Jessie.”
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