I woke up in the middle of the night, once again with an earache. The earaches were becoming a common occurrence. My ear was getting more painful as time went on and I began to cry. When dad heard my crying, he came into the bedroom to see if he could do anything to help. He pulled the covers closer to my ear, patted my shoulder then went to the living room and stoked up the dying embers in the stove. While the stove was heating he went to the kitchen, took the teakettle from the cook stove and put it over the living room heating stove. He took the bottle of cod liver oil from the kitchen cabinet a and put it in the teakettle to heat. He laid a flannel diaper on the top of the stove to warm it up. The stove wasn’t very hot so it took a long time to get things warmed up. By then my ear was getting more and more painful. When the diaper and oil were warm he came back into the bedroom and put a couple drops of oil in my ear and covered the ear with a warm diaper. None of the remedies worked and I cried myself to sleep. My brother also had many earaches so Mom and dad finally took us to see Dr McCool in Seneca. He had an office upstairs, above the hardware store. We got to his office thru an enclosed stairway on the outside of the building. Dr McCool said both Al and I needed our tonsils out because they were always becoming infected and that’s what was causing the earaches. Mom and dad thought that’s probably best so they set the date for the operation. On the assigned morning mom and dad took us to get the operation. We were seated in the reception room and were the only persons there. The reception room seemed very large and not very friendly, with all the straight backed chairs and the cold linoleum on the floor. The room had a couple of tall narrow windows that looked out to the street. The reception room opened to the room where we would have our tonsils out. The rooms were separated with two tall sliding dark oak doors. The doctor came into the reception room and asked mom who she thought should go first. She said Al because he was the youngest and they couldn’t leave him in the reception room by himself. The doctor took Al along with mom and dad into the next room. I was left in the reception room all by myself when I heard Al screaming bloody murder. He screamed for a minute or two and then silence. I was so scared , I thought Al was screaming because they were actually operating on him ……and I’ll be next. When my turn came I walked into THE room. Al was lying on a sheet draped couch. He looked like he was asleep and he seemed to be doing Ok. He didn’t look like he was in any pain so I was relieved. The operating table was a long narrow wooden table with a white sheet and a small white pillow. The Doctor lifted me onto the table and asked me to lie back and begin counting to ten . . Dad was beside the table while mom was over by the couch with Al. That’s about all I can remember. I don’t remember how we all got back to the car and home but I do know we went home the same day we had our tonsils out. We did get our ice cream the next day but our throats were to sore to eat it. I guess the rest of the family ate the ice cream because we had no refrigeration and no way to save it.