Gypsy Cure
When I was an infant in 1912, I am told I began one day to have terrible nightmares. Every night I would wake up screaming, for no apparent reason. Ma and Pa didn’t know what to do. They took me to all kinds of doctors, without receiving a cure or even a diagnosis.
Finally, however, some Gypsies came through town. Ma took me to an old Gypsy woman, who lifted the evil spell with some incantations. It worked- from that day on I had no more nightmares!
A Wonderful Pacifier
Also when I was a baby, Ma and Pa hired an Irish nursemaid to take care of me, and to take me for walks in Franklin Park in my pram. We lived in Dorchester in those days, on Burnside Road, in a house that Pa had built. Later on we moved to a house on Lyndhurst Street, just over the fence from the Fitzgeralds. Ma told Mrs. Fitzgerald not to let Rose marry that Joe Kennedy, he’s no good.
I was apparently quite a fussy baby, besides the nightmares already mentioned. One day, however, it occurred to Ma that I had been awfully quiet the last few days, and that the nursemaid seemed quite satisfied with herself. However, it was then discovered that the whisky cabinet seemed rather depleted, and there was a smell of whisky around the pram. Little Ernie, they discovered, was quite drunk.
The nursemaid was fired on the spot. They took me to the doctor, who found that I had developed an enlarged liver from the alcohol. It was a long time before I was back to normal.
George Dietz with Ernie and Clara
Dr. Griffin
When I was about two years old, in 1914, I contracted pneumonia, and my lungs got very weak. There was no antibiotics in those days; the only treatment was to go to a ‘fresh air’ sanatorium.
Our family doctor in Dorchester recommended that they go to see Dr. Walter Griffin, a young doctor who had opened a new TB sanatorium in Sharon, Massachusetts, a small town about twenty miles south of Boston. Very few Jews lived in year-round in the town at that time, although there was a popular Jewish summer resort there, the Sunset Lodge, at Lake Massapoag.
Dr. Griffin suggested that my health would improve if they moved to the country air of Sharon. Ma and Pa took Dr. Griffin’s advice, and so it was that the Dietzes moved to Sharon, for the next fifteen years.
About sixty years later, in the early 1970’s, I read one day in the paper a story about the celebration that the town of Sharon was having for Dr. Griffin, who was now the oldest licensed MD in Massachusetts.
I took a drive down to Sharon, and paid him a visit.
I drove up to the house where the doctor had always lived and had his office, went in, and said that I wanted to be examined by the doctor. Soon I was ushered into the doctor’s examining room, which looked much the same as it had in the twenties, with all kinds of antiquated instruments.
Dr. Griffin came in. He was about ninety-five years old. “Now what seems to be the trouble?” asked the doctor.
“Don’t you remember your old patient, Ernie Dietz?”
“Wait a minute . . . yes, of course!”
We talked about the old days for a long while. “Of course,” said the doctor, “I don’t have many patients these days. I suppose I am getting a bit on.”
On his way out, I talked to Dr. Griffin’s housekeeper.
“He hasn’t actually seen any patients in years,” she said. After all, who would go to a doctor ninety-five years old? Every day, however, I dust the examining room, and lay out the instruments; and Doctor Griffin gets dressed in his old-fashioned doctor’s coat, and waits for a few hours for patients to come in, and thinks about the old days.”
Clara
In Sharon, I was always kind of thin and small, and would sometimes get bullied by the other kids in school. It didn’t help that Ma always insisted that I wear fancy clothes and Buster Brown ties.
Clara, my big sister ( she was one year older) was always my great defender. Tall, with a strong right arm and an attitude to match, she would pound the daylights out of any boy who bothered me, and they would be scared to touch me again once they had encountered Clara’s fist.
I Raise Chickens, And Lose My Appetite
At the house in Sharon, Pa loved to play the gentleman farmer when he wasn’t running his painting business. He bought a bunch of chickens, built a chicken coop, and put me in charge of them. I fed them, cleaned the cages, and exhibited them proudly at 4-H club fairs, winning prize ribbons for them. Pa even built a real playhouse for us in back, with screens and everything; Charlotte’s mother Hattie would even stay in it when she came to visit.
One day, however, Pa invited the shochet (the ritual slaughterer) to come over, while I was in school. Pretty soon, the chickens were in the stove, and when dinner was served, and realized who dinner was, I suddenly wasn’t very hungry.
My Friend and I Go for a Drive
When I was about ten years old and living in Sharon, my best friend’s father was quite rich, and had gotten a beautiful new Packard automobile.
My friend said, “Come on, I’ll take you for a ride in my dad’s new car”.
“Are you sure you know how to drive that thing? “, I asked.
“Of course, it’s easy. I’ve seen my Dad do it a million times,” assured my friend.
They cranked it up, jumped in, and started heading down the street. The car started going faster and faster. Pretty soon we came to the top of the hill, and started heading down it.
“Can’t you stop this thing?” I asked, getting panicky.
“No”, said my friend, “My legs are too short to reach the brake pedal!”
“We’d better jump!” I said, for we were now headed straight for a tree. We jumped back into the rumble seat, and there was a tremendous crash. The car was totaled, but we boys were unscathed.
When Pa and his father found out about it, we were both in a lot of trouble. They were both grounded for a month, or worse.
Fourth of July Fireworks
As in most small towns, there wasn’t always a lot to do in Sharon for excitement. To celebrate the Fourth of July one time, the kids- the usual gang of town delinquents- found a horse pulling a wagon full of hay, and set the hay on fire. The horse, terrified, took off. Fortunately, it had a lot of horse sense, and headed straight for Lake Massapoag, where it doused the flames itself.
Pa Runs Afoul of a Traffic Light, But Not of the Law
One day in the early 1920’s, Pa and I were riding down Blue Hill Avenue through Mattapan Square, on the way home to Sharon.
Pa, in then fashion of Dietz men, was driving a bit fast. While heading into the Square, he plowed into a traffic light pole, knocked it over, and kept going. “Pa!” I asked, “Aren’t you worried someone saw you? They’ll have you arrested!”
“You’re right!” said Pa. By way of a side street, he circled back, and parked a block away from the deceased traffic light, where a crowd was beginning to gather. He walked up to the policeman with me in tow and said, “Geez, now who in hell did this?”
“We don’t know,” replied the policeman. ”The guy was going so fast, no one could get his license number!” “That’s terrible!” said Pa, “That guy ought to be arrested!”
We walked back to the car and continued home, satisfied that we were in the clear.
Uncle Sam, the Communist
Pa, as a boy in Latvia, had a cousin Samuel Dietz, the son of his father’s brother. Samuel, a real yeshiva bocher, was well known as a Talmud scholar, who would spend all day arguing fine points of the law.
After a while, however, like many of the other Dietzes, he left the shetl, joining the Communist party.
Sam eventually came to America, and went Columbia Dental School, got married, and lived and practiced dentistry in South Norwalk, Connecticut. Dr. Dietz had five children, four girls and one boy. When our family used to drive to New York, which in the 1920’s took several days, we used to stay overnight at Sam’s house. Sam and his fellow radical friends would spend all night arguing over fine points of Communist dogma, with exactly the same enthusiasm as they used to argue Talmud back in the shetl.
Grampa and Frada
George had an older sister named Frada. In Latvia, Frada was quite proper, and her little brother Shlomo Yaacov (Pa) was a hellion.
Frada got married in Rezekne, to one of the richest young men in the village. They had a beautiful wedding coach prepared. Just before they were going to get in, Pa stuck the horse’s rump with a pin. The horse took off, and ran through the village without the wedding couple.
Later, in America, Frada used to visit her little brother, now in his fifties, at the house in Sharon. She still treated him like the younger brother, and never let him forget what he had done to her wedding. She used to spit when she walked by a church.
Every summer Frada would visit us, and we all loved her. She and her children lived in New York. When she came to Boston, she would also visit her doctor, the famous cardiologist Dr. Samuel Levine, who lived on Hobart Road in Chestnut Hill.
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Dr. Bernard Lown, in his book, The Lost Art of Healing, credited Dr. Levine with teaching him everything he knows today about bedside manner and listening to patients.
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