"...it was a front"

I'm remembering a Doll Hospital. Well actually it was a soda fountain. Yes that far back. It was a soda fountain stationary store toy shop news stand,...or news agent for folks in the Commonwealth.  It was around the corner from my childhood home in Brooklyn. This in the 1950's.

This was where I got comic books model airplanes, and "Cott" orange soda. "...it's Cott to be Good!" This is also where I saw my first soda in a flip-top can. 

All the kids would buy these with our allowances. 

They looked like beer cans, and we'd feel so grown up wandering about chugging these down imagining it was something else.

But I digress.

The corner soda fountain was also a Doll Hospital. Rather it was a front for one. They didn't actually do brain surgery on the little folks there. Once a week a mysterious lady would come by with a large box. She'd scoop up her patients their particulars, and drive away in a Volkswagen.

The VW is what made her mysterious. 

After all regular folks coloreds included had Pontiacs, and Buicks.

Speaking of Germans. I think she was. That or I'm mixing her up with the nice lady that had the button, and sewing supply store. This on our corner when we lived in Harlem. 

Harlem was mostly German Jewish once. Then with our Great Migration North it became Black. Then Hispanic, and Black. Now Multicultural as whites are moving back along with folks from all over the world.

But I digress again.

My dad would take my sister's dolls to the soda fountain for admission to the,...well "Mysterious" Doll Hospital. This because no mortals outside of the VW lady had ever seen it. 

I had a vision of long rows of beds in white halls filled with bandaged dolls. This with nurses doctors visiting relatives, and candy machines in the corner.

The reality was probably more industrial. 

Perhaps with elements of "Children of the Corn" tossed in. 'But let us draw a veil over this. 

Instead dream of bright happy doll convalescence. Hair restored strand by strand eyes healed with just the right hint of hazel arms legs hands heads renewed! 

At last the awaited call from the fountain. "Your dolls are all better you can come take them home now!"

Happier words never heard by a little girl,...or closeted boy.

There's more. The healed doll, and or teddy sitting at the dinner table. My mom saying she has to take it easy for a while. Which means don't feed her to the dog. Life returns to it's happy routine. Our family reunited.

Mind you there's a whole world of scary internal contradictions, and ghost stories with this. 

However I'm going for a happy ending here.

The End.