Debunking goose grease

Now they tell us! An article in last Sunday’s edition of the newspaper magazine, Parade, says, “Smearing goose grease on your chest and wrapping it with flannel, does not cure colds.”

Above the list of no-nos was a headline, “Don’t Try These At Home,” with sub-headline, “Over the centuries people have gone to extremes to get rid of their sniffles and aches.” Then it lists a few “radical remedies,” starting with the “goose grease rub” and followed by such trusted treatments as “Getting passed three times under a horse’s belly,” “Eating snakeskin,” “Blood letting,” “Stuffing your nostrils with cut garlic cloves,” etc.

This upsetting news was part of a feature on avoiding and treating colds. It cited a new book titled, “Ah-Choo! The Uncommon Life of Your Common Cold,” by author Jennifer Ackerman. The article also said there is still no known cure for the common cold but with new genetic technology, “It may eventually be possible to make a vaccine that can handle hundreds of viruses.”

Being told that goose grease and flannel are useless “radical remedies” took me back to the isolated homesteader’s shack on Camas Prairie, where my mother was taking care of three little kiddies all alone while my Dad was away looking for work during the big depression. Maybe winter of ’33.

Came a miserable streak of weather, about like we’ve had around here this week, and the eldest boy, 5-year-old George came down with something which made him cough a lot, ache and run a fever. Mother was alone and nearest neighbors were old and handicapped … without transportation. Those were days when we had no rural electricity or telephones, no CB radios, and very few had a car. Somehow my maternal grandmother living many miles southeast across the Prairie from us felt a strong concern about how our family was doing. She sent my young Uncle Freddy on a saddle horse to check on us.

Riding a horse in single-digit weather through howling wind and snow tests endurance and courage to the limit, but Freddy showed up shortly after noon. Both he and my desperate mother felt that “Georgie’s” best chance for recovery lay in getting some goose grease. After considerable discussion, it was decided the most likely hope of finding the vital “medicine” was at the Clasby ranch in the far southwest corner of the Prairie, six miles from where we lived. The teenage Freddy made the round trip in less than four hours, returning with an ample supply but at the cost of painful frost bite.

Mother thawed the frozen goose grease on the wood stove then rubbed it on my neck and chest before wrapping my whole upper body in warmed flannel. That done, I was put back in bed surrounded with cloth bags full of heated wheat grain to keep the blankets warm.

Jennifer Ackerman and modern scientists can say what they want regarding the power of goose grease, but I’m not completely ready to write it off as a “radical remedy.” I’ve lived 77 years since my treatment and still going strong; however, I am thankful my mother and Uncle Freddy didn’t know those other cures like passing a patient under a horse three times, and especially that one about … stuffing garlic up the nose holes.

Turning to other current topics, it was hard to believe last Friday’s news about that escaped murder, Tracy Province. New Mexico law officers who caught him and his two killer partners said Province told them that while still on the loose last summer, he developed a unique plan to end his constant panic and running from the law. He asked his escapee friends to take him north to Yellowstone National Park so he could go up on a mountain, shoot up a gram of heroin and let the bears eat him.

Province told officers he was alive only because of “divine intervention.” A voice told him not to go through with that plan in favor of trying to hitchhike to Indiana to see family.

Investigators believe he actually made it up to Yellowstone before changing his mind. According to the Associated Press, a National Park spokesman said it’s certainly possible that Province’s plan might have worked, but it struck him as being improbable.

Obviously, some people who get involved in a murder or two seem to lose all respect for laws against feeding the bears.

G. George Ostrom is a national-awarding winning Hungry Horse News columnist. He lives in Kalispell.