TOOTHACHE CURE
Aug
11
Toothache Cure Worked!
I do remember. Bo had stomach issues and since I’m a nurse, I was consulted. They were passing through Seattle and it was not serious enough to go to the hospital emergency nor was it convenient to find a doctor. My husband, Sam, suggested, “Dee, why don’t you try the ’’Toothache Cure' your Grandpa taught you?”
I had used it once, with seemingly okay results, but I was skeptical and questioned, "Why would a Toothache Cure work for a stomach issue?”
Sam shot back, “I know you won’t tell me exactly how it works, but I can guess and since it’s not ingested and doesn’t touch the person, why not try?”
Embarrassed to be acting like a Medicine-man, I needed to know Bo’s age and Sam went to get a sheet of copy paper I needed. I performed the ritual - cutting pieces of paper and placing them in a glass of water. Sam set the glass of water on our kitchen windowsill. After some more visiting Annette and Bo went on their way and we never knew the results at that time.
Grandpa lived to age 90 and showed me the secret one day in the 1970s before he died. He explained in Japanese, “This is a special secret that no one else knows and I am choosing you to learn this 'toothache cure’. I believe in it, but there is better medicine today so I don’t do it much anymore.
Grandpa explained more about his family. My father was a second son and would not inherit any property. So, I was adopted by this Samurai and his wife that didn’t have any children. I learned this secret from my adopted father. I don’t know where he learned it, but it had been passed down for many generations.”
Sam was particularly intrigued and excited for me to be bequeathed this gift because he remembered a time when he was 4-years-old and living in Renton, WA. His brother, Fred, got a bad tooth ache. Sam recalled, asking Mr. Tsukamaki to perform his ritual, was the answer. I asked Sam’s mom about it and she confirmed that it was known among the Japanese farmers in the Kent, Auburn Valley that my grandpa would help. She explaining, “No one could afford to go to a Dentist in those days."
Between practicing Toothache Cures, Grandpa Tsukamaki was one of the 100 Japanese Dairy Farmers who supplied as much as 1/2 of Seattle’s milk supply around 1920 until they were discriminated out of the business by the Alien Land Law and the big milk companies refusing to take their product. Then he worked at farming until he helped set up two of his sons with the ONTARIO FISH MARKET grocery business in Eastern Oregon, where I was born.
Our families were not incarcerated because Grandpa had migrated several of us beyond the restricted zone in 1937. The Ontario Market serviced many Japanese Americans leaving Minidoka and restarting their lives with the opportunity for row crop farms created by the Owyhee Dam for that Eastern Oregon, Western Idaho community.
I lived with my grandpa off and on until I was11-years-old and I remember the glass of water sitting on our kitchen windowsill a few times. By the late 1940s and early 1950s, science, doctors and dentists considered these ancient remedies quackery.
Now, in the 2020s, more and more of these remedies are being embraced because modern medicine doesn’t have all the answers. Acupuncture practitioner, Nancy, tells me there is a direct path from our teeth to our stomach.
Thanks Annette for sharing with me the TOOTHACHE CURE worked!
