Don Amend

This week’s cold weather has awakened my inner bookworm genes. So, over the last weekend, I visited the Apple bookstore and loaded three fine books to the over 200 books, which since they are in digital format, I can carry them all anywhere I go.

By the end of Sunday, I had already read the first chapter of each book, the better to decide which one to read  first. I couldn’t decide, so I’m rotating among the three, reading a chapter or two before moving on to the next one. 

As usual I’ve chosen books that deal with history, especially American history. The first one picked was “Crusade in Europe,” General Dwight Eisenhower’s book about World War II in Europe. 

The second book was “Our First Civil War,” by history professor H. W. Brands. The war in question was our first, the Revolutionary War that freed our nation from Great Britain. We forget sometimes that many of the people living in the colonies back then did not want to be separated from the British Empire, and many of them had property confiscated and forced into exile when the war was over. 

The third book was one that some would find objectionable. The book “Myth America,” is a collection of essays about how some of our beliefs about our nation’s history are on shaky ground. Among the issues discussed are our beliefs about immigration, voter fraud, Confederate monuments and police violence.

The most interesting of the books I’ve read recently, though, is the poignant story of LeRoy Wiley Grisham, a young man living on a small plantation in Georgia during the Civil War, “The War Outside My Window.” His family was wealthy and their plantation benefited from slavery. He began writing a journal in 1860 when he was 12 years old and ended it in `1865,  a few weeks after the war ended.

LeRoy is an invalid. When he was 8 years old, one of his legs was badly broken when a     chimney collapsed. It never healed properly, even though he had access to the best medical care available at the time and was taken north to consult with the best doctors. It left him  crippled. To make matters worse, he was afflicted with something even worse. He is afflicted with a  chronic cough, open sores along his spine and persistent fever among other health problems. His symptoms suggest that he had tuberculosis, which was a leading cause of death in America at the time, and often claimed the lives of young people. LeRoy is doomed to be one of those young people, but he doesn’t know the truth until a few days before he dies.

The first entries in his journal describe a trip north to Philadelphia  with his father to consult with doctors about his son’s condition. LeRoy notes that the doctors do little but give him more medicines to try and sends him and his father home. Once there, LeRoy begins to record his experiences and observations, such as the weather, and he describes the filling of a tooth and detailed instructions he was given to care for the tooth. He also lists 32 books he has read and and notes receiving a box full of books. He will fill much of his time reading all sorts of books and any newspapers that he can follow the progress of the war.

While he is for the most part bedridden, he is sometimes able to go outside by way of a wagon custom-made for him and pulled around the gardens around his home by a slave boy about his age. He even hunts the birds in the garden, including one occasion when he shot a dozen robins. His mother baked them in a pie for his dinner, which he enjoyed very much.

His journal also reveals that he had considerable control of the medicines he took advantage of to control his pain and help him sleep. This included doses of alcohol and toxic plants that were available in that era.

To pass the time and keep his mind busy, LeRoy read voraciously, challenged friends and family members to numerous games of chess, tackled arithmetic lessons and followed the war going on around him, expressing his opinions about various generals and criticizing their decisions.

He also spent time studying literature from the Presbyterian Church, which his family belonged to, and while he could not attend church, near the end of his life he gave public testimony and united with the church.

As you might imagine, LeRoy’s story reminds me of my own condition, but more than that, his struggle reveals the vast difference in medicine between his life and mine. Compared to him, I have nothing to complain about, and I will never again feel sorry for myself.

Congratulations

In closing, I congratulate PHS student and Powell Tribune intern Gabby Paterson for her thoughtful and well-written column in last Thursday’s issue. As a parent who raised two children, one of whom is now an elementary school librarian, I always believed that it was my duty to be aware of what they were reading, and if I ever had a question about a book, I would read it along with them. But I never had to do that, because I trusted their judgment, and they never let me down.