You can't hide anything in Oberlin

I love hav­ing been born and raised in Ober­lin. I’ve always loved being a small town girl, even with the inher­ent “every­one knows every­one else and tells every­one else every­thing” neces­sity that goes along with it.

For me it started early. I began work­ing at my aunt and uncle’s insur­ance agency, Sperry-Gorske, when I was 12. That, of course, is located on South Main Street. What was right across the way? The Tap House. It was the only place in town that served 3.2 beer in what was oth­er­wise a dry town.

Now, I loved her dearly, but my Aunt Helen was def­i­nitely not one to reckon with. Each day we would go to The Cam­pus Restau­rant for a cof­fee break. One day she announced that I would not be get­ting hot choco­late because it was time for me to start drink­ing coffee.

“And you won’t be get­ting any cream or sugar in it. You’ll learn to drink it black because there won’t always be cream and sugar available.”

No ques­tions or protests were allowed and I drink it black today. Now my Aunt Helen believed firmly in the “dry­ness” of Ober­lin and, as a tee­to­taler her­self would have been appalled to see or learn of her lit­tle Patty going into the Tap House.

I’m now 60 years old and still look over my shoul­der toward Sperry-Gorske when I go into The Feve.

Under Aunt Helen’s watch­ful eye Sperry-Gorske was often “infor­ma­tion cen­tral.” My mom, sis­ter Paula and I had a very bad auto­mo­bile crash in 1956. My mother was laid up for well over a year, patched together by plates and pins, bone grafts and the like.

Aunt Helen posted a black­board in the win­dow of the insur­ance agency so every­one could stay abreast of Mom’s progress.

Mom’s health seemed to be on dis­play in this micro­cosm called Ober­lin through­out the years. One time, while relax­ing at Vermilion’s com­mu­nity pool, one of my Ver­mil­ion friends approached me to express her con­cern that mom was in the hos­pi­tal. Since I hadn’t told any­one in Ver­mil­ion, I was sur­prised, until I heard that Chris had run an errand in Ober­lin and while wait­ing in line had over­heard sev­eral oth­ers say­ing what a shame it was that Doris Gorske had gone into the hos­pi­tal. The world shrunk that day.

In later years, as an adult, I did quite a bit to take care of my mom as her health began to fail. Each week we trekked to the gro­cery store together. We often went out to lunch. I had the lux­ury of teach­ing for only half days then, so I had the flex­i­bil­ity to spend a lot of time with her. There were times, how­ever, when I wanted to slip in and out of town with­out tak­ing time to visit. It was impos­si­ble. Some­one, some­where, would always see me, call mom to report and I’d be laid out my next visit for not hav­ing stopped in!

That brings us to present day. Most of you prob­a­bly already know that I had an acci­dent in Hawaii. My sources tell me that rumors are run­ning ram­pant about the cir­cum­stances of my injuries. It’s time to set the record straight.

Joe and I had taken a group of orphans snor­kel­ing because no one else cared about them. Dur­ing the sojourn my keen pow­ers of obser­va­tion drew my atten­tion to a shark that was swim­ming men­ac­ingly toward one of the orphans. With Her­culean effort I punched the shark directly in the nose with my foot. Although he limped away in penul­ti­mate fear, my foot ric­o­cheted onto a piece of coral, shat­ter­ing my ankle.

At least the orphan was saved…OH, wait a minute…that’s the story my daugh­ter wanted me to tell. I guess it might be a bit exag­ger­ated since the truth is that I took two steps onto a cata­ma­ran, my feet slipped out from beneath me and I slammed my left foot into the dock that was only inches away.

I dis­lo­cated my foot (it was at a 45-degree angle to my leg — really ugly and scary look­ing) and broke my ankle in three places. I spent four days in the hos­pi­tal in Hawaii where I had surgery and ter­rific care in a small hos­pi­tal much like Oberlin’s.

We flew home first class, thanks to a travel insur­ance pol­icy, where I had to sling my leg over the con­sole between us to keep it ele­vated. We are now at home where I am ensconced in the recliner with Joe as my atten­tively won­der­ful care­taker and Luke, our beau­ti­ful dog, as my con­stant companion.

Now you know the rest of the story; I do like the orphan ver­sion bet­ter, though. Don’t you?

Posted by Kathleen Willbond on Feb 16 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.