Earaches and great grandpa

I woke up with an earache yesterday.  As a kid I used to keep an earache during most of the winter, but really haven't had much problems with them in my adult life.  I stood looking in the medicine cabinet, trying to determine what to self medicate with, when I got to thinking about my great grandfather.

I was a lucky kid.  I had grandparents and great grandparents in my life.  My mother's grandfather, my great grandfather, was one of the more interesting.  He was born and raised in a time of few doctors, and more importantly little money for paying doctors.  Insurance didn't exist. You paid your own bills and if you didn't have it, or couldn't borrow it from someone, you did without.  So, you didn't go to the doctor for a mere earache.  You saved your money for big things and treated the small things with folk remedies.  He was full of different folk remedies.  Some may have worked and some, I know for a fact, didn't.

I made the mistake of letting him know my ear was hurting one day while I was visiting.  He told me he had just the thing and took me out onto the screened in porch.  He reached up onto the top shelf and pulled down a mason jar full of little black beetles.  He called them, 'Betty Bugs,' and they were the little black beetles you find in saw dust piles.  According to him, they had one drop of  fluid in them and you broke them in half and dropped that fluid into the ear and it would stop the earache.  For the record that folk remedy does not work.

My ear was still hurting when mom came to pick me up but I told him it was fine.  I suspect that is the way of most folk remedies.  Better to say that you are fine than to get more bug guts put in your ear.

I took an aspirin, put a little warm oil in my ear and closed it up with a cotton ball.  My ear is feeling much better today and no bugs were harmed.  Thank you great grandpa.  At least I didn't waste my time with 'Betty Bugs.'