Sugar Coating

Sugar Coating

Noel Laflin

3-26-18

Sixty-five years ago today, American medical researcher Dr. Jonas Salk announced that he had successfully tested a vaccine against polio.

I was three months old, to the day.

Ten years later, I remember standing in a very long line with my family waiting to get the new Sabin polio vaccine via sugar cube. I think half the population of Anaheim passed through the new Sycamoe Junior High cafeteria that day.

I'd attend my first dance there two years later, hear my first lecture regarding the evils of marijuana, eat my lunch just outside its doors over five hundred times, and practice for a play on the stage where a neighborhood band had once entranced a couple of hundred young teens with their rendition of 'House of the Rising Sun.'

But my first and most lasting impression was of that long line of friends, family, neighbors, and total strangers standing like congenial congregants awaiting to partake in our new scientific communion together.