Letter: Column brings back memory

I got such a kick out of your opinion article of Dec. 29 titled “The emergence of bathing” that I thought I would pass along this memory.

The year was 1955, when I was 12 and my brother was 8. My mother had just been diagnosed with polio and was in an iron lung at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. My brother and I were quarantined and could not go to school for fear of spreading the disease.

My father spent every waking moment, when he was not working, traveling back and forth to the hospital to spend time with my mother. My brother and I were sent to live with a number of different relatives for a period of weeks. I can vividly remember spending time at my Aunt Mildred’s house in Lincoln, Mass., taking our weekly baths in an old canvas tub in the middle of the kitchen floor. Water was heated on the stove and poured into the tub as the water cooled so we wouldn’t freeze.

Thank you for the trip down memory lane, even if this memory is a bit sad because of the circumstances. Just think about it; 1955 was not that long ago.

Sandy Orton

Peterborough

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