Old Man and Old Lady Wolf

...not meaning any disrespect by calling them that ... that is just the way they were always referred to. I grew up in a tiny farming community in Kansas. The Wolfs house was several doors down from us. I always remember them being 'old' ...Old -- but great attitudes, great senses of humor. They were Germans from Russia and my adopted Dad and his family traveled with them from Russia to America.
Old Man Wolf owned a blacksmith shop...it stood on the end of the row of about 6 stores (5 on the opposite side.) The blacksmith shop always fascinated me...the whole place was utterly BLACK...because of the soot, the burners where he heated up the plow shears and fixed horse shoes. (This was back in the late 50's.) Old Man Wolf always wore overalls and a baseball cap...His skin was wrinkled and the wrinkles had been stained with the black soot. He never wore a protective mask of any kind. He used an abacus in his little office room. I always thought that was neat. He breathed that sooty stuff into his lungs 6 days a week for over 35 years. He finally quit working at age 80.
He smoked Camels...at least a pack a day. And he drank a lot of beer and whiskey. He used to have this joke/saying: "If something hurts you, you drink a half pint of peppermint schnaps and then rub the bottle where it hurts."

Old Lady Wolf's figure was very rotund! Typical German cooking was the order of every day. Plenty of meat and potatoes, lots of milk and heavy cream, butter, etc..Bacon grease always on a can on the stove. We could almost walk on the coffee! She loved her old gray tabby cats who made themselves at home atop the kitchen table and she thought it was funny when they would sneak bites off her plates. Once in awhile we would have supper with them ... my mom just about passed out, difficult for her to tolerate the cats as 'table guests.' She used the same dishpan of water...lasting her all day long..using only a bar of Ivory soap...it was pretty gross by the end of the day.

She always made Old Man Wolf wear a shirt when he sat in front on the  TV. "If you can see them, they can see you!!" she'd scold him in German. (I think she might have been far ahead of her time on that one, eh??)

Anyway. Point of story. One day Old Lady Wolf developed an ulcer on her left leg below the knee...it was awful looking. Her visiting son insisted his mother go to the doctor (nobody went to the dr unless they had a broken bone or was almost dying..literally dying). So. She did. The open, draining ulcerated sore was about the size of a 50 cent piece. He gave her a prescription for some medicine and she about had a FIT because it cost $4.00. But, she grudgingly used it and was to get 2 refills.

While grocery shopping one day she came across something that looked JUST LIKE her clear blue liquid medicine and it was only 13 cents for a whole quart!...so she bought it, grumbling that she wished she would have known about this before. The ulcerated sore still had not closed and showed little signs of healing....She used this __WINDEX__ on her leg faithfully three times a day. She BELIEVED it was the same stuff as her Rx. During her required return trip to the doctor 3 weeks later she took the empty Windex bottle along to rub under the dr.'s nose. Dr. Eitzen was more than shocked. By all medical standards she should have lost her leg... he wrote up a report...it was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.  His article was entitled: "Mind Over Medical Matter." Her leg had totally healed leaving on a small round scar. OF course, the story spread for counties around.

Neither one of them lived what we now called a 'healthy life style'....The Old Man continued drinking and smoking til the night he died, in his sleep, at the age of 89. She died of 'natural causes' also 2 years later at the age of 87.

What they DID have was a positive 'healthy' attitude toward life...never once fretting about what they consumed, breathed in, did or did not do. Their positive belief systems reigned supreme. I always think of this as a very positive story. Hope you enjoyed it...astounding as it may seem!
Betty