Janice Doppler
Polio Pioneers
All the grownups are scared, real scared. Lots of people, mostly kids, are catching polio—your legs stop working and you might have to live in an iron lung for the rest of your life. You might even die. Momma told my little brother and me the stream behind our house is “polio water” and we should never go near it. Chuckie’s mommy told him the same thing. Irene’s too.
None of us go near the polio water, not even once. Instead, we play in a field at the end of our block of brick row homes. It is a secret because our parents might not let us cross the street. None of them say the stream there is polio water. We decide it must be safe since it comes from pipes under a bridge.
muddy hands the splash of a stone startles a snake
A doctor named Jonas Salk invented a vaccination he believes will prevent polio. My classmates and I line up outside the school nurse’s office to get ours. The girls wear dresses, the boys ironed shirts. We wait quietly because we know vaccination is a fancy word for shot and we know they hurt. We’ve had lots of shots to be allowed to come to school−tetanus, diphtheria, whooping cough, smallpox.
When I get home from school, the dining room table has two cloth napkins and tea cups used only when friends visit. Momma brings a matching pot filled with cocoa and a plate of still-warm chocolate chip cookies. She says I am lucky because only second graders are allowed to get polio shots this year. She doesn’t explain why.
mama's kiss on my swollen arm streaming tears
Note: In 1954, 1.8 million second graders called Polio Pioneers served as research subjects in a medical experiment to test the safety and effectiveness of the Salk vaccine.
About the Author
Janice Doppler is a retired school teacher and administrator living at the edge of a Massachusetts forest. She placed second in the Porad Haiku Award in 2021 and 2022. If she isn’t doing tai chi, watching or carving a bird, or writing poetry, she is studying Chinese philosophy or eating chocolate. Her debut collection of haiku and haibun is Stardust.