Chuck 9

Cresson TB Sanatorium Remembered

Chuck 9

Photo 1 Men's Unit 2

"Top Of The World, Ma! I Finally Make Meals"

And then came the day in late March of 1956 when Dr. Boustani told me that I had made meals. It wasn't totally unexpected since I had by that time had four months of negative sputum cultures. But this news changed everything! "Making meals" meant that you would be allowed to move out of the ward and into a building called a Unit which consisted of small rooms, almost like college dorm rooms, housing two people each. The room was sparsely furnished, basically just two beds, two dressers and a clothes closet. Bathrooms and showers were located in a locker room on each floor. The men's building was named Unit 2 (shown at right). I would be able to wear street clothes and eat in the dining room, men and women together. The name for this whole process was shortened to "making meals" or "being on meals". If everything went well, it meant you would soon be discharged.

The first thing I did was to use the pay phone in the solarium and make a collect call to my folks to give them the good news (no cell phones then). I told them to bring all my street clothes, which had been neatly packed away for the past year, with them on their next weekend visit.

I still had a few days to go before the weekend and I used that time to make the rounds in the ward and say goodbye to my friends. I had both a feeling of elation at making meals and at the same time sadness at leaving friends I had made in the past year. I knew that once I was out of the ward there was a very good chance that I would not see them again. That's because there were two distinct populations of patients at the san.

The first consisted of patients who had active TB and were confined to the ward. The second was those patients who had made meals. Once on meals, a patient rarely went back to the wards to visit friends for fear of exposing themselves to people with active TB. It was just a basic precautionary measure and quite understandable.

Photo 2 Tom, Me & Mom on Saturday

The next weekend my folks and my brother Tom drove down for the weekend, arriving on Saturday afternoon and staying overnight at a motel in Cresson. The first thing I did on Saturday was change into my street clothes. I couldn't believe how weird it felt at first, like being able to stand with my hands in my pants pockets or wearing a belt or having to tie my shoelaces instead of donning slippers! We went to my assigned room in Unit 2 and put all my stuff away. After that we had lunch in town, the first meal we shared together in almost a year. Later we took a walk around the san grounds to see all the buildings. I was seeing most of them for the first time, even though I had been there for almost a year! The next morning we attended church services at Grace Chapel. Photo 3 below shows all of us dressed in our Sunday clothes. That's the steeple of Grace Chapel in back of me in the photo on the left. All in all it was a wonderful weekend celebration, since we knew that my discharge was just a matter of time.

Photo 3 Dressed For Church at Grace Chapel

Photo 4 Patients in the Dining Room

A New Routine

Being on meals was like getting out of prison and almost back to normal living. It meant sharing a room with one person instead of sixteen and having some privacy. Meals were taken in the dining room with your friends, including female patients. The only females I had seen for a year were nurses. It took a while to remember how to talk with young girls my age again. I had to watch my language at first because it had coarsened over the twelve months in the men only ward (it's a guy thing). Photo 4 shows patients on meals with trays in the dining room food line.

Photo 5 Mrs. Inez Wilson

As part of my rehabilitation, I was assigned to work three hours in the morning Monday through Friday in the san general store. The work itself was not very strenuous, but being on your feet for three hours took some getting used to after having spent a year lounging in bed. My boss was Mrs. Inez Wilson, a former TB patient who stayed on to work in the store and eventually became the store manager. I enjoyed the job because I got to meet a wide variety of people including patients, staff and visiting family members. As I recall, I was paid a small wage for my time.

And that money came in handy since I was allowed a pass on the weekends to go into the town of Cresson. It really didn't matter so much what I did when I was in town, just that I was free to do it. My usual routine was to take a walk in the downtown area, do some window shopping, have dinner in a restaurant and take in a movie. One of my favorite places to eat was a small diner that made the best stuffed pork chops. I went to the movies numerous times, but the only one that I can recall now is "Picnic", with William Holden and Kim Novak. I guess this proves that Kim Novak was truly unforgettable, at least to an eighteen year old male.

My good friend Jim Hammond and I made meals at the same time and were joined at the hip for the next five months until I was discharged in August 1956. We ate all our meals together in the dining room, with Mike Jez often joining us. That's the three of us below taken outside the dining room. My pant cuffs are a little short for me because I was still growing taller during the twelve months I spent in the ward.

Photo 6 (L) Me & Jim Hammond (R) Me & Mike Jez

In the afternoon, after we finished our morning san jobs, Jim and I would take hikes through the surrounding woods and go exploring. There was a high water tower located south west of the san which we would climb because it offered a spectacular, if dizzying, view of the entire san area.

Our explorations soon led us to the strip mine and mine shafts on the east side of the grounds. We spent many an afternoon roaming the strip mine and exploring in the mine shafts, especially in the warm summer months. Click the following link to see a description and aerial photos of the strip mine and coal mine operations under the san grounds.

Cresson Coal Connection

Photo 7 WSAN Radio Station in 1958

Jim and I also volunteered to run the music request program over the san radio station, WSAN. Twice a week in the evening we took requests from the patients and played their songs. One of us took a turn as announcer at the microphone while the other one ran the turntable. It was really a shoestring operation, but a teenagers dream come true to be on the radio. In 1956 the requests were a mixture of standard pop tunes, instrumentals and rock 'n roll. Here's a sample of the top hits of 1956:

Tennessee Ernie Ford.....Sixteen Tons

Dean Martin....................Memories Are Made Of This

Nelson Riddle.................Lisbon Antigua

Elvis Presley...................Heartbreak Hotel

Perry Como....................Hot Diggity

Morris Stoloff.................Theme From "Picnic"

Elvis Presley..................Hound Dog

Gogi Grant.....................Wayward Wind

Pat Boone......................I Almost Lost My Mind

Guy Mitchell...................Singing The Blues

Elvis Presley..................Don't Be Cruel

Jim Lowe.......................Green Door

And by the way, the radio station was in the basement, right next to the morgue as I recall. Kinda spooky.

My trips into town were always made on Saturday, as Sunday was reserved for attending Protestant services at Grace Chapel and for visiting with my family. Photo 8 is an inside view of the chapel.

Photo 8 Inside of Grace Chapel

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