|
| |
Dave Wood's Book Report
10/12/05
Fifty years ago I had a college roommate from Spooner,
Wisconsin. He was poised, very bright, a good writer, a
debater, the only kid in our house who had shucked his
navy blue FFA jacket for a trench coat. I thought he was a very cool dude, especially the year he came back to Eau Claire
driving a 1935 Packard he had purchased at the estate sale of a rich old
lady in Spooner.
John
Durand
had a barely
perceptible limp. But as far as I knew that didn't impede him a bit.
I
was wrong. I just found out when I read his latest book, "Behind Enemy Lines" (Puzzlebox Press,
P.O. Box 765,
Elkhorn,
WI
53121, $15.95).
John
's limp was due to polio, a disease he contracted in 1942, when
he was six years old. Many readers younger than I
won't know much about polio, but folks my age and older will
remember it well. Until the development of the Salk Vaccine
in the 1950s, every late summer brought the polio epidemic to our towns and villages. No one knew quite what caused this
crippling disease, so to make sure we didn't catch
it, our parents quarantined us, wouldn't let us
go to movies, or do strenuous exercise. When I lived with my grandmother, she pulled the shades all over the house and
didn't let them up until the frost came.
And every year in
every little hamlet people contracted polio. Some ended spending the rest of their lives in iron lungs, others
hopelessly crippled dragging huge metal casts along
with them, like
President
Franklin
Roosevelt. Others who were lucky enough to be treated
with the Sister
Kenny
method of warm, moist towels and massage would recover completely; others, like
John
Durand, would end up with a limp.
In "Behind Enemy Lines"
John
tells his story in a very fetching way, with humor and understatement. He tells of the special schools and
retreats and treatments provided to polio stricken children by the state of
Wisconsin. He tells of the friends he made, the nurses with whom he fell in puppy love.
His title comes from the fact that his treatment spanned much of
World War II and his fascination with that war, its airplanes, soldiers and secret
agents. I laughed out loud when John
was sent to live in a foster home in Superior, so he could be close to the special school he had to attend. At night, when
the adults were asleep John brought his stash of cigarette butts he'd stolen
from his landlord, opened the window and blew smoke out the little round holes
in the storm window sash. He was a secret agent, you see, behind enemy lines,
wondering if he would ever make it home safely.
So
there's lots of fun in his memoir, as he limns the curious mores and folkways of
Spooner, the railroad town that was fast becoming a popular resort area. So
"Behind the Lines" is more than a medical memoir; it's a slice of
Americana
told with brio.
But there's lots of sadness, too.
John
never had to drag along one of those heavy metal casts through life, but he did
drag along some very heavy psychological baggage. That's because he was
DIFFERENT from all of his buddies in school and on the street, couldn't play
high school sports, couldn't be in the National Guard. Setbacks like that,
despite his poise and brightness, made him feel inferior. The feeling dogged him
through life, hurt his career, led to a divorce from a lovely woman. He finally
sought counseling in middle age and was told to examine the nooks and crannies
of his life. And the life of his eight brothers and sisters and parents who
coped with poverty and bad luck for much of their lives.
The
result? A very, very interesting book about an important era in the life of our
country.
John
was helped
through college with government funding for polio victims. What a good
investment! …
Dave
Wood
is a past vice-president
of the National Book
Critics Circle
and former book review editor of the Minneapolis
Star Tribune.
His syndicated Book Report reaches more than 350,000 readers in Minnesota and
Wisconsin.
|
