Jager said he had taken his test for his first driver's license in his grandfather's great huge Caddy.
It was a time when the license was typed up and given to the new driver instantly.
Jager, armed with his new license, asked his grandfather if he could borrow the car for a little while.
The response was a firm "NO".
Well that and all this news coverage of the Corona virus took me back to one Christmas when I was a youngster.
I had wakened one morning with a severe bellyache and found when I stood that I couldn't straighten up.
Dad said I was faking it to get out of going to school but Mom insisted that they take me to see the local doctor.
He did some tests and found that my white blood cell count was sky high and that I probably was suffering from appendicitus.
There was no hospital in our small North Dakota town but there was one in another town about 30 miles away.
Now Doc Flath was a single man all his life and he indulged himself with Cadillac automobiles.
So he loaded me into the back seat, mom rode in front in the passenger seat and we drove to Powers Lake.
That was my first ride in a Cadillac and, except for the pain in my gut, I loved it.
When we arrived at the hospital I was surrounded by nurses who had needles in both of my arms simultaneously.
I was in surgery within minutes and my severely ruptured appendix was removed.
I spent a week or so in the hospital as I recall and then was sent home for bed rest.
My bedroom was on the second floor of our house and there I was confined.
I had some kind of drain tube protruding from my body and the doctor would come to our home frequently, pull a section out and snip it off.
It sounds ghastly but I don't remember a lot of pain associated with it.
I was still recovering when Christmas arrived that year and someone carried me downstairs to lie on the couch for the ritual opening of presents.
I look about as bleak in this picture as my grandfather to my immediate right.
My uncle Zenas, who had come from San Francisco, is on the far left next to Mom, and Dad is on the far right next to the Christmas tree.
I'm not sure what my gift(s) were but it may very well have been a magic set.
I was into magic at that time and my first time out of the house after my ordeal was at the annual show put on for the kids of the town by a visiting magician.
By the next summer I was all healed up and, wearing a cape and top hat made by Mom and "with nothing up my sleeves", putting on my own magic shows.
And I was smiling!
Ah, the recuperative powers of youth.
