WordWhore

Note to whomever: This is the kind of information posted on Mental Kudzu before it was hacked. Real offensive, huh? The righteous indignation of the Christian fundamentalists must have just risen to a new high after seeing my Aunt Helen and reading about my mom.

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That’s my Aunt Helen in her WWII Red Cross uniform.

So, what do you do with a mind like Ruth’s? Stimulate it constantly. Keep it sharp. Word games, puzzles, and a new journal — not for day to day feelings, this one’s for stories I love to hear. She writes in cryptic phrases, in bits and pieces of sentences because she has arthritis in her left hand, some of the damage caused by a bad case of adult measles in the 1960s. She blames her clumsiness on being left-handed. She’s damn clumsy. Never could ride a bike or swim. Daddy loved her for that, I think. A highly competitive man, he used to get a kick out of beating 30 year olds at tennis when he was in his early 60s. He umpired American Legion baseball even after he retired. But he didn’t want to compete with Ruth in any way except intellectually. They were a perfectly matched pair. Which brings me to a very Ruth story — which includes a perfectly matched pair. Ruth worked at Christ Hospital in Cincinnati in the late 1930s in the administration/personnel office. Here’s a perfect example of how Ruth tells a story. This is from a couple of index cards I found in a desk drawer this afternoon. (really it is)

Kaiser Wilhelm’s personal physician, a Dr. Von Somethingorother, had hospital privileges at Christ Hospital. This doctor went to Baden Baden every winter after WWI to check the Kaiser’s health. (Kaiser Wilhelm was last Kaiser of Germany, was Queen Victoria’s grandson, I think and he had a withered arm. As she died in 1901, he must have been born in 1880? In Lytton Strachey’s biography of her — some quote of her sneering and making fun of the Kaiser) What I remember is that the doctor, who I saw only a few times at the hospital, had a shaved head and a Prussian military appearance. Remember, grandpa’s family came to America to escape being drafted into the Prussian army in the 1700s. The family sent all 5 children here. Four sons and a daughter. One son was blind! And they each had $500. But this doctor, this Von Somethingorother, he was well known for his constantly repeating: "Zalt isss poison!" His hobby was riding a matched pair of horses "Roman Style" — standing bareback, one foot on each horse’s back. I never saw this performance, but many people in town did. He did this feat regularly at horse shows and at the polo grounds in Cincy. Before WWI, German was taught as a 2nd language in Cincinnati. Floyd [her older brother] was fluent in German. Helen [her sister] refused to admit such a thing, but she did tell me that after her stint in the Red Cross following Patton’s Army across Europe, the whole language came flooding back to her when she and a group of American soldiers were sent into a concentration camp to help the victims. The victims were fed by the Americans and usually died. She and the soldiers went to the nearby town and forced the townspeople to come and clean up. To bury and feed the victims in the concentration camp. She told me her buddies were amazed at the German curses and threats that came out of her mouth when she yelled at the townspeople to tell them they must help. Of course, Mother was fluent in both "low German" and "high German". In the 1920s, she had many elderly German friends who came by to drink tea and cry.