I will never forget our family days at the beach when I was a little kid and my mother would yell out to me while I played in the surf, “hazte gárgaras con la agua salada para que se te quite el catarro ese!” Of course the last thing I wanted to do was gargle with the salty water washing up on Crandon Park Beach in Key Biscayne, which was usually rife with assorted organic, inorganic, and other materials that defied classification.
I never put much stock in my mother’s theory but lo and behold, it turns out that she, and every other Cuban mother out there at Crandon Park Beach, was right.
Now I am waiting for the medical study to prove that you have to wait three hours after eating before taking a shower or swimming.
Salt water not only cures colds, but it will heal cuts. Never fails every time I go to the beach.
About the “waiting three hours after eating to go swimming”, well I think we’ll just have to chalk that one up to “Great Cuban Health Myths”.
What about the garlic sewn in the pouch near the collar? Sure kept vampires and werewolves away. Didn’t do much against colds though. And I am sure I smelled like garlic bread to my friends.
I don’t know which was worse Pototo, the garlic smell or being smothered in Vee-Vapo-Roo.
not just a cuban home remedy. My dad who was from Uruguay said the iodine in the ocean cured everything.
Growing up in a cold weather state we became alcoholics in grade school. Coming home from school on a cold day meant a shot of Bacardi. Man did that burn.
Pototo at least you got rum. When I had a bad cough, they gave me a spoon of scotch …. I like it now, but then, didn’t have the pallette at 6
My mom recommended salt water gargling for a sore throat. Of course, she called it a “cura de caballo” or horse cure.
I must be part Cuban after all. In addition to the copious amounts of salt water my parents made me gargle with when I was sick, my Sicilian grandmother used to slather me with veevaporoo and then cover it with a piece of flannel which she then pinned to my pajamas. I actually like the smell now and I think of her when I use it.
As for drinking as a cure- my other grandmother made me do shots of ginger brandy for cramps. It burned like hell and didn’t take away the pain but I didn’t care after the second shot.
Hey, Claudia, I got the vicks vaporoob too, only topped with reams of toilet paper.
toilet paper just absorbs the veevaporoo, flannel helps “cook” you. As for swimming, its because all the blood is in your stomach digesting food and not enough goes to your extremities, giving you muscle cramps. We only had to wait an hour.
according to Mami El Vi (she’s on a first name basis, forget the Vapo-Ru) cures anything from a backache to a hangnail. She’s currently working on her 80 year old age spots with it. I’ll let y’all know the results as soon as her experiment has come to fruition.
So can I blame the fact that not only was I slathered in “Vee-Vapo-Roo” and my mother made me eat the stuff, on my mother’s Cuban friend? In our house whiskey cured everything.