In the mid-1940s, my family moved from Palo Alto to Richmond, Calif., and lived in housing that was built to accommodate families coming from across the country to work in the shipyards during World War II. These were large sheetrock buildings that had 12 units per building. There were a lot of kids in the housing complexes, and we had all kinds of games — red-red-rover red-rover, hide-and-go-seek, Annie-Annie over and kick-the-can — all of which I played enthusiastically.
One of the games I excelled at as a 7- and 8-year-old was marbles. Whether it was shooting marbles out of a large circle, “holesies,” or “chasies,” I was one of the best. One of the advantages I had was the large warts on the shooting thumb and index finger of my right hand, which greatly enhanced my shooting accuracy.
Alas, it wasn’t to stay that way, since my mom decided the warts were too unsightly and had to go. She eventually took me to our family doctor to have them removed.
Back then, an electric cutting torch of some sort was used to burn warts off, and I remember it felt like fire going through my hand as the doctor cut them off. After the removal of the warts, bandages were wrapped around my hand to keep it sterile until it scarred up. Our doctor, Dr. Rankin, would best be described as similar to Norman Rockwell’s famous painting of a doctor holding up a stethoscope to a little girl’s doll. He was a kindly older doctor who was quite sympathetic to my plight — having to remove one of my greatest assets as a marbles big-shot.
