Don't stick your tongue on the frozen pipe.

If you have lived in a cold area, you have probably been warned about touching or licking a freezing metal rod. Muriel had personal experience and told all of us NOT to stick your tongue on a frozen pipe. When she was young she had done just that. In seconds her tongue was frozen to the metal fence. Reports that I have heard from people in this predicament state that if you try to pull your tongue away, you will leave a layer of skin behind. In Muriel's case a kind and wise adult came to her rescue. He went and got a bottle of alcohol and poured it over her tongue. The liquid which does not freeze at 32 degrees F or 0 C thawed the ice holding her tongue fast to the metal. She was able to pull her tongue safely off the fence/gate. Needless to say, I never was tempted to find out if my tongue would really stick to a freezing pipe. I was sure that no wise adult would show up to rescue me.

I hope that perhaps John or Margaret have some additional remembrances about this story from when Mom was a small girl.

Christmas in the 1920s

Muriel Isabel Toole was born on November 20, 1922. She was the fourth of five children born to Archie and Ruby Toole. The oldest was Aletha. Next came Hazel and then Archie. Margaret was born just eleven months after Muriel so they were frequently referred to as the twins.

When Mom was still a child The Great Depression swept across both the United States and Canada. Mom told us of a Christmas Eve when her mother took the only money she had to the store to buy presents for her five children. She had 25 cents. I don't remember what all of the presents were. I think that one of them was a balloon. I remember as a child thinking how fragile a balloon was. It would not be long before that one present would disappear from the child's life.

I think that Grandma Toole passed out at the store because she had not eaten for a long time. She was a tiny woman all of her life.

A more happy and humorous Christmas story from Mom's childhood was about Archie. He decided that he was too old to believe in Santa Claus. He told his parents about his disbelief. On Christmas morning when all of the children awoke there were only four stockings filled with treasures waiting for them. When Archie discovered that there was no stocking for him, he was so disappointed and sad. Soon a stocking appeared for the unbeliever. His parents told him that Santa had filled his stocking but had simply left it in another part of the house.

Christmas

My memories of Christmas are happy ones. I don't remember having any sad ones or ones when I was disappointed. Our Christmas stockings always had a Mandarin orange in the toe, miscellaneous hard candy and Cracker Jacks. I loved the orange and the Cracker Jacks, but the hard candy was always fuzzy with lint from the red stocking. I remember wishing that the candy was chocolates instead. MMMMThe two gifts I remember from when I was small were a life size baby doll and a navy blue dress that was satin and was so beautiful. The other gift I remember is a stuffed toy for John. I think it was a Teddy Bear. Our dad kept saying that Johnny was too old to have a stuffed toy, but there is was on Christmas morning. Dreams do sometimes come true. During Christmas vacation we played board games and always had a jig saw puzzle to put together. I remember that my brother Ted was so good at putting the puzzles together. I always felt a little envious. I wished I could find the pieces for the great big puzzle.

Having surgery

In 1958 or 1959, we were told by our parents that Mom was going to go into the hospital to have a lump removed from her breast. We lived in Thornton, Ontario at the time. Of course, I was completely ignorant of what this actually meant to my parents. They treated it as if it was nothing for us to worry about. Only as an adult would I realize that this must have been a huge event in my mother's life. She was in her mid thirties and was about to undergo surgery to have a lump removed from her breast. At that time, women went into the surgery not knowing if they had breast cancer or not. If they did not have cancer, they woke up from the surgery and were reassured that the biopsy of the tissue showed the lump was benign. If the biopsy proved that the tissue was cancerous, the woman would wake up without a breast or two breasts plus the muscle tissue under her arm/arms would have been removed. At that time, I don't believe anyone had the option of having a biopsy and then deciding later what kind of treatment she wanted for breast cancer. I never asked Mom how she felt about that "simple" procedure. Even though I was aware of how traumatic this surgery was for women, I do not think that I even remembered that moment standing in the kitchen in Thornton and being told Mom would have surgery. She was certainly a courageous woman. She showed that strength and courage frequently in her life.