By Mack Williams
For the Salisbury Post
I studied voice at Appalachian State University with Hoyt Safrit, another native of Rowan County, specifically, China Grove.
I told Mr. Safrit and both the minister and choir director of my home church, St. Paul’s Lutheran, that I would like to sing a solo at the Christmas Eve service. Mr. Safrit had already worked with me on “O Holy Night.” My minister, Pastor Floyd Bost, and choir director Charlie Ritchie asked me to sing it first for them. Afterwards, they were very pleased and complementary.
I told Charlie that I was somewhat nervous, never having done this before, and Charlie bolstered me with words to this effect: “Don’t be nervous; no one else in the entire congregation can do this!”
A few days before Christmas, I developed a nagging cough, so I went to see Dr. Frank B. Marsh, our family doctor and one of the truly good souls of this world. Dr. Marsh prescribed “Old Mr. Boston.” Old Mr. Boston comes in a bottle, not found in a drugstore, but always in a “liquor store,” an ABC store.
I must tell you something I truly believed as a small child. I honestly believed the ABC store to be the place from which my paper, my pencil, my ruler and all of the rest of my school supplies came. Later on, I learned differently, of course.
Getting back to Old Mr. Boston. Old Mr. Boston is the legal version of moonshine remedies for coughs and colds. The moonshine versions did not differ greatly from Old Mr. Boston, except with Old Mr. Boston, the appropriate taxes to the federal government had been paid. Both had whiskey with dissolved rock candy and a little bit of honey and lemon peel. It was said that it would stop a nagging cough, as I was soon to find out.
Dr. Marsh’s prescription for Old Mr. Boston came not from his pen, but solely from his lips. Even in an age before the term “paper trail” was used, no physician would put down on paper that he was advising a trip not to the drugstore, but to the liquor store instead.
After hearing his prescription, the next strange scene was set in motion. My mother never learned to drive. One time, she took driving lessons, ran into a tree, and immediately abandoned all hope of ever operating an automobile. I, however, could drive, but was 19 years old, still two years away from being able to legally make a purchase from an ABC store. I drove my mother to the ABC store, where she purchased and gave to me what was illegal for me to purchase.
At Appalachian, it was a fairly common occurrence for an underclassman to get an upperclassman to make a purchase from the ABC store for him. I think I am somewhat safe in my assumption that it was out of the ordinary for an underclassman to drive his white-haired mother to the ABC store to make a purchase for him. But after all, it was “prescribed.”
Christmas Eve came and I poured some Old Mr. Boston into an empty cough medicine bottle (which actually had a real prescription taped to it, complete with dosage information, etc.). I took a few sips earlier in the church service and the “medicine” was living up to its reputation; it was working, the cough had gone away. I sang “O Holy Night” with no problem.
Pastor Bost loved to sing and would often join the choir in the choir loft. Since this was Christmas Eve, there was a selection of many hymns of the season to be sung by the choir and congregation. During the course of one of the hymns, Pastor Bost began to cough a little. I was greatly tempted to offer him some of my “medicine.” I guess the “good in me” wanted to help him and the “Devil in me” wanted to register his reaction to the contents of that bottle.
Both the “good in me” and the “Devil in me” lost out to the “timid in me,” and that “medicine” never reached Pastor Bost’s lips.
If you’ve got a Christmas tale to share with Post readers, e-mail it to news@salisburypost.com or send it to P.O. Box 4639, Salisbury, NC 28144.