MURIEL’S CIGAR by Carol Creswell

I thought it would be a good joke on Muriel.

My nursing school classmates, back in the ‘50s had been studying or on call all week and that Friday night we needed a good joke.

Confined to our rooms at 10 p.m. while silence reigned, we crept down the quiet polished halls of St. Joseph

nurses’ quarters in Detroit. Bathrobed, curlered, slippered and silently giggling,

 we spied our classmate Muriel’s room straight ahead.

“Have you got the Muriel cigars, Mary Lou?’ Jeanine whispered.  “All of ‘em right here in this pillowcase,” Mary Lou shot back.  

“You ready with the matches, Carol?” I nodded.

“Okay gang, let’s go. Caroline, you knock on the door.’

We stepped into the room, woke Muriel and locked the door.  “Don’t let old Gimpy the hall monitor hear us” whispered Mary Lou. We formed a rag-tag chorus line and lit our stogies.

 Puff puff. Our arms entwined, we we kicked in unison—slippers went flying—and sang the Muriel cigar radio ditty:

“We’re today’s new Muriel, the fine cigar,

“Our luxury lined wrapper is better by far.

“We’re today’s new Muriel, only a dime,

“Why don’tcha pick me up and smoke me sometime?’

Oh the laughter. Lots of inhaling and blowing smoke rings.
After all, they were little cigarillos and not much more than cigarettes and we were 17 and knew everything.

Then came the coughing.  Gasping.  Gagging.

A panicked run for the bathroom ensued.

 We didn’t know enough not to inhale.

Next day---

Muriel, freshly awakened from sleep, laughed herself silly.

She was the ONLY ONE who wasn’t sick on duty that day.

The Eccentric Doughboy by Eileen Wegman

It is never easy to unpack boxes after a major move. It is unsettling to embrace the sentiment attached to each object.  I found an ordinary light bulb in a box the other day. It reminded me of Uncle Clarence and the reverie began.

For the Thanksgiving holiday of my tenth year we all went to Grandma’s for the weekend.  Dad just had to go hunting there in California. Actually, there weren't enough beds to go around. My mother was sleeping with my two sisters in a double and who knows where the other relatives would nap.  After much family discussion, it was determined that I would spend the night in Uncle Clarence's bed, since I was the smallest.

Uncle Clarence’s bed was actually a cot. In fact, it was an army cot. Uncle had rigged it up with a box- shaped tarp surrounding the pillow to protect him from drafts. Compared to our old farmhouse, I never felt any drafts at Grandma’s house.

Hanging down from this canvas tent was a single light bulb. Uncle Clarence read at night. His entire bookshelf was filled with medical books. And what's more, he had memorized most of them. As a self- educated physician, he was the go-to person for any ache, pain or general malaise. The neighbors came over regularly for his advice. He was good at diagnosing their complaints, often mentioning the page of which text the information could be found on. Later, their doctors confirmed what he knew all along.

Uncle Clarence became interested in medicine when he was in the Army, I guess he'd seen quite a need for it there. In fact, his service made such an impression on him, that he kept his World War I uniform hanging on the back of his bedroom door, just in case he'd be called into action again. Occasionally, he'd dust it off a bit, try on the hat, pose for pictures.

Maybe it was his knowledge of the human body that led to his appreciation of the female sex. Not females in general, of course. There was only one that stood out from all the rest who required his ultimate devotion. Marilyn Monroe. Pictures of her surrounded the doorway of his room. He had seen every movie of hers about twenty times. Along with the autographed shots, there were handwritten letters from her. After all, he was the only one who truly understood her. It went without question that Uncle Clarence remained a bachelor. To marry anyone else  would have amounted to adultery.

Clarence kept his life simple. He worked in a box factory, topped at the tavern on the way home for a beer, and brought home tiny bags of bar pretzels for us. Uncle C. took care of Grandma. He religiously stuck to a diet of dried bread and raw carrots for himself, long before such things became popular in California. Uncle was always so very kind to me. I was the only one in the family with blonde hair, and you know who that made him recall.

It was with some guilt that I more or less betrayed him. The unforgivable happened ten years later in Strong Memorial Hospital in Rochester. My aunt and I went to visit a relative who was being treated in the Psychiatric Unit for Depression. A Social Worker called us into her office to get a little family background. She wanted to know if anyone else in the family suffered from Mental Illness. After giving it some thought, I said, "Well, there was Uncle Clarence..............".  My aunt was aghast and never forgave me.

To the family, Clarence was just eccentric.