One of my Dad’s favorite pranks was to have someone chew a piece of bark from a prickly ash tree; he called it “Pepperwood tree.” He also liked to have someone with a toothache crew the bark; or, in the case of my brother and I, make us chew it. I remember, with a shiver, how it would make my mouth so numb I couldn’t spit, and it taste so horrible. I am convinced, after much study, that Dad's cure from “summer complaint,” after almost dying with it when he was a baby, was the result of prickly ash bark and not slippery elm bark.
About 3 years ago I was suffering from bursitis that had plagued me for over a year. The pain in my shoulder had become so severe I couldn’t sleep; my shoulder so stiff I couldn’t remove my billfold from my hip pocket.I had to start carrying it in my front pocket.
I was trying to work in the garden one morning after a sleepless night, and under much pain when I observed, growing in the fencerow, a prickly ash tree.Suddenly childhood memories flooded my mind. If it would numb my mouth so I couldn’t spit what would it do to my shoulder?