This is my 24th post for the April A-Z Challenge. My Uncle Louis Cleage was a doctor. He had a puffy finger on his left hand. It was the result of an accident with an X-ray machine. Skin grafts to repair the damage gave it the puffy look.
My sister and I called it the “puff gunger finger”. You can see the finger on his hand as he plays the organ here. I have enlarged it below.
From a letter written home from Los Angeles by my father in 1944.
P.S. Is anybody sick? I dreamed some sort of nightmare this afternoon about somebody being sick … seemed like Louis had something wrong with his hand or something … probably just something I ate.
My Aunt Gladys assured us that Louis had injured his hand years before this.
Wow, you’re on a roll–already posted X. And what an X it is! To think of all that contact people had with x-rays in the early days. How did your family manage to take and to keep all these terrific photos?!
They kept them in a big box 🙂 Lots of photographers in the family.
I’m not surprised you’re all written out. You’ve had an amazing AtoZ. Tons of info and it must be very emotional too. Brilliant that you have so many family photos. I must find out if anyone’s got any of ours. 2 to go, we can do it!
There used to be an Xray machine in the shoe shop where we all got our shoes as children, and I was faintly annoyed with my Mum, because she never let me have my feet Xrayed in their new shoes (it was supposed to show if they were a fit). Wasn’t she right? Your poor Uncle – but at least he could still play!
Looking back over your family is interesting. My grandfather found a whole trunk full of family letters and spent his retirement going through them and working everything out. He traced the name Stringer back to 1840 and then could trace the family back as far as 1760 through another name. He wrote it all up in a little book, and we can add every new marriage to it, so in a few more hundred years it will be a very old document!
The finger never caused him any problems as far as i could tell.
Creative way to tie in the letter X with a photo! Another great photo too.
I was thinking of using an x-ray picture but then remembered this one.
Oh wow, what an odd accident. I was wondering how X was going to fit in your family history. Perfectly, I see. 🙂
It doesn’t look like the puffy finger stopped him from doing anything.
I expected to see a post about an Xavier in the family!
You’re right, it didn’t. X may be the only letter in the alphabet where nobody in my family tree, including those who married in and their families, has a first or last name that starts with.