Uh-oh...

[ithacaartist]

Originally Posted by sheepherder

Just browsing for 1900AE's and finally noticed Dave's comment. Wow! I haven't thought about Freddy The Pig in over 60 years! Or The Thinking Machine, or Bookmobiles, or kids book services back in the '50's.

Lol When I was 4, I had the German measles. I was removed from preschool and my grandmother kept me until the end of that school year. This helped my mom, who was a Dental Hygiene Teacher in the Watertown city school system.

Part of recovery included having most of the Freddy the Pig read to me by Nana. The books were originally purchased for my brother Bill, who is 9 years older. He snagged the collection from her estate when the time came and worked at acquiring the titles not included in the collection. "Freddy and Simon the Dictator" is the one I think he couldn't find because it's the rarest, a satirical piece about Hitler--probably similar in tone to Chaplin's "The Great Dictator." Bill went so far as to establish contact with Walter Brooks' widow back in the 90s, and had a nice visit with her.

As an aside, and another example of bygone things that made life better back then, every kid in every NYS school received an annual cleaning and exam, along with fluoride treatments. All schools had a dental chair in the nurse's office. (I remember having a solution swabbed onto my teeth. It came from a bottle with the skull and crossbones on its label.) Mother said that this program accounted for the only professional dental care some kids ever got. She was initially part of a cadre of at least 4 other such "teachers," but all were phased out in the 70s, my mom being the last in Watertown to go when she retired.

Right after Gary Brown became our paper boy, he asked Mother if she remembered him his first collection day. He'd moved to our village from Watertown, so had been under her care for a while. It cracked her up when he drew back his lips to flash his teeth at her, "How about now?"