What's Under Your Porch?

ALLEN’S LUNG BALSAM

Old Trunks is excited about today’s blog. Let’s start with a little personal history before we get to the product.

Our home is a 1922 two story. It is one of those houses with the heavy oak wood work, built in book cases with glass doors, and a year around sun porch with 10 windows. The house faces south. The six by four foot desk faces east; I watch the sunrise while on the computer.
For what it cost to restore the house we could have lived anywhere in Fargo. The neighborhood, neighbors, and general location seemed to suit us best. That meant plumbing, heating, wiring, …..well, for anyone that has ever redone an old house, you get the idea.

When the electrician was hired to do the wiring, it included a dedicated computer/electronics line in the sun room. The only way to access the crawl space was through the basement. He was not happy. Crawl space means just that.

Nor was Tom when I complained about the floor in the sun room being cold. Never mind that I never wear shoes in the house. And so it came to be that my sweet Thomas wiggled into the space and I fed him rolls of insulation to tack up between the joists.

And that is when he found the empty bottle of ALLEN’S LUNG BALSAM, bottled in Cincinnati, Ohio by J.N. Harris and Company.
We have no idea how heavily etched bottle got there. It may have been in fill hauled in for the front yard, although this part of Fargo is higher and nearly island like. Perhaps the carpenter’s were nipping while building. Maybe the doctor who had the house built had a patient who tossed it in the yard and it got kicked into the area of the porch/sun room. Perhaps this lot was the burning station for the houses already built on the block.
Here is what ALLEN’S LUNG BALSAM can do for you:
The label states:
The Home Physician
For Coughs, colds, Croup, and Consumption

What the doctors say
Drs. Wilson and Ward, physicians and Druggists, write from Centreville, Tenn.: “We purchased Allen’s Lung Balsam, and it sells rapidly. We are practicing physicians, as well as druggists, and take pleasure in recommending a great remedy, such as we know this to be.”

Physicians do not recommend a medicine which has no merit; that they say about ALLEN’S LUNG BALSAM

Can be taken as a fact. Let all afflicted test it at once, and be convinced of its real merits. It is harmless to the most delicate child. It contains no Opium in any form.

Sold by all medicine dealers.

The label also includes advertisement for another product:
PREPARE FOR SUMMER DISEASES

If you have cramps, if you have Colic, if you have Diarrhea, or if you have any summer complaint, --and you are more than likely to suffer in that way before the season is over, --buy a bottle of PERRY DAVIS’ PAIN-KILLER, and secure instantaneous relief after one or two doses. In treating severe attacks of Cholera, bathe the bowels with the PAIN KILLER. Twenty drops of Mr. Davis’ wonderful medicine will cure a child of the worst case of Colic. A bottle of the PAIN KILLER can be bough at any reputable drug-store.

The only other known time our family found a bottle that was kept was when Lone Star Lake was drained so it could be dredged. Rachel and Bud walked on the lake bottom and Rachel brought home an old Pepsi bottle. Someone found a manufactures plate from a car that could be on land or water, called an aqua car. The biggest find after the lake was drained was finding an entire car. If I remember the story right, a man was going to KU. He and his friends got out of the car and it rolled into the lake. He didn't want to tell his dad about it, so the car was left in the water. They contacted the man after the lake was drained.

Treasures with mystery!

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