Grandma’s Remedies

Grandma suffered from a variety of respiratory ailments. She said she had asthma, and in fact she did, but it was probably complicated by many other factors; no doubt compounded by the abject poverty in which she lived and the smoke and stench from the steel mills and chemical plants and coal mines practically in her backyard. In this she was not alone as most Pittsburgh neighborhoods at the time (1920’s, 1930’s, 1940’s, 1950’s, 1960’s and even the mid-to-late 1970’s) were not much better, though few were worse. She passed away April 1968 at the age of 64 from “pneumonia”, according to the family. I was 14 at the time and surely didn’t need to see the death certificate. I have not checked it out but have no reason to doubt the fact that she probably did die from some type of lung disease, knowing her history.

Her medicines included an over-the-counter cough syrup laced with an opiate as well as aspirin tablets and a home-made tea made with the natural by-products from her home grown oriental poppies as well as a popular “breathing stimulant” known as Asmador. Asmador was made to be rolled and smoked like a cigarette but could also be burned loose, inhaling the smoke, which is the way she preferred it; having never been a smoker. Amador, to the best of my limited research to date, was a mixture of an expectorant, something to make the powder smolder and marijuana, though more marijuana than anything else. This product was produced back in the days when, believe it or not, manufactures were not required to provide the ingredients of their products so thus far I have been un-able to determine exactly what was in Asmador.

I also suffered badly from asthma as a child and only began to out-grow it (more likely just figured out what to avoid) at about the age of 18-20. My parents had me to the doctor’s many times as the episodes were often violent. I was literally unable to breath on a pretty regular basis. Certainly many foods, pollens, over-exertion, even a state of mind could produce an attack. I managed eventually to categorize what had occurred prior to each attack then studiously avoid it. In much the same way I overcame my severe migraine headaches, though for some reason it did not occur to me to use the same process I had employed in eliminating the asthma attacks on my migraines until much later in life (my mid-40’s) when a doctor friend pointed out the possibility to me. Again, using the same process my headaches went from debilitating and frequent to almost non-existent in a matter of months, with a rare (30 Percocet lasted me a year or so) pain pill to help me through the most severe.

Grandma came to see us often and we were also regular visitors at her house in spite of the approximately 16-mile distance between us and the fact that she did not drive or ever own a car; and 16 miles was not an easy journey for my mom, or anybody for that matter, in the mid-1950’s and early to mid-1960’s in and around Pittsburgh, PA. Many were the hills and rivers and creeks to be crossed, and if you were lucky the roads were made of cobblestone, maybe even brick, instead of dirt or gravel; as many roads were then. She even stayed with us for 4 or 5 months while we lived in California, ostensibly to see if the salt air and eucalyptus trees would help her breathing but I’m fairly certain there was another reason, though I have no one to ask now who would even consider giving me a straight answer, assuming they remembered.

I was not only allowed but encouraged to be “with or near” Grandma when she needed to partake of her “Asmador”, which seemed to me to be fairly often. On her good days she would retire to her upstairs bedroom to burn and inhale her “fumes” as she called them, but towards the end, at least the last several years of her life, she didn’t have the energy to climb the stairs just for that, reserving that laborious trip for bedtime or bathroom use only. Grandma just burned it up wherever she happened to be. “You like the smell of the vapors”, she would say to me, rather a statement than a question.

On many, many occasions I was ordered or sent up with her presumably to keep her company while she took her medicine, as the family called the burning of her Asmador. I thought nothing of it, enjoying her company anyway besides loving the aroma and un-knowingly reaping the benefits (?). I always enjoyed those visits with Grandma, and am only now beginning to realize why. I felt good for a long time after she or we left; and without understanding why I looked forward to each upcoming visit.

My homework, all 3 hours of it, would be done in 20 minutes. Perfectly if not neat. Then it was “Tea Time”. The teapot (s) were first heated in the oven to assure that they would keep the tea warm for an extraordinarily long period of time, at least an hour or more. A large pot was very ceremoniously prepared for the guests and a somewhat smaller pot was arranged for her and I. Grandma alone handled this smaller teapot, reverently, though anybody who wanted to pitch in could put together the main teapot, as long as they did it her way. Into the smaller, more ornate teapot went, almost at the end, her “essence of flowers”. Poppy flowers, and did she ever guard that secret recipe. A short nap, at least for the two of us, usually ensued, though not at all times.

Everybody but me knew at the time what was in “Asmador”, though nobody had a problem with me, from birth to age 14-ish, being with her while she burned it and inhaled the smoke, and as I have mentioned earlier, I was encouraged me to be near her at those times. I loved the odor of it, and smelled it for a long time after she passed. We moved into her house (all 7 of us plus Uncle who was already there; 5 rooms, one bath, and a dirt cellar) 6 or 7 months after her passing. Could have been her spirit wandering around her old bedroom or perhaps someone had found and secreted away her remaining supply and was using it; though it would have had to have been 4 or 5 years easily, until I got married and moved out, that I smelled it (or thought I did), strongly at times; or perhaps somebody in the house was smoking a reefer. That thought never occurred to me as the only possible suspects would have been my Mom, my Dad and my Uncle, the rest being far too young to even consider as a possible suspect; and my Uncle was rarely if ever home. He was just back from a stint with the Army, a Para-trooper station in Germany for a few years. He was definitely sewing his wild oats, but weed was not his style, unless I totally missed it, which I doubt.

My Dad didn’t smoke, could hardly even dress himself, his strokes were massive and crippling and were the reason we’d moved from California back to Pittsburgh, PA, into Grandma’s old house. It certainly wasn’t him; I knew where he was all the time, and what he was doing. My Mom? Maybe upon further review but really? My Mom? I did manage to get her to try it during a particularly bad session of chemotherapy a few times, about 12 or so years later; still she seems an un-likely suspect. I usually knew where she was too, but not always.

Perhaps the odors were so strongly embedded in the walls of the old house that if atmospheric conditions were right (hot, steamy, cold, I don’t know) the old aromas would just come back out. They do with pet odors and plenty of other things I’m sure.