I had a couple of old buddies. One was veteran of The Bulge and Jacque was an old caver. The two of them got to talking about their athlete’s foot. John had it bad. He froze his feet in The Bulge and nearly lost them. However, they eventually healed up, and about the only lasting complaint was a nasty case of chronic athlete’s foot. John was on 20% disability payments from government for his feet– only man I knew that got a check from the government and got to park in handicap spots over athlete’s foot.

So one night Jaque and John were talking, and as middle-aged men do, the got to talking about their middle-aged complaints. John started bitching about his feet. Jacque said he had a cure:

“Flours of sulphur.” sad Jacque.

“What’s that?” asked John.

“That’s the old name for it.” replied Jacque. “It’s just pure sulphur in powder form. I get it from the druggist. I put a sprinkle of it in a clean tube sock and then bat it around a little to mix it up, and then I wear that as the first thing touching my feet. Within 2 weeks, it’ll cure athelete’s foot.”

John thought Jacque was nuts. He probably was, but Jacque explained that he’d gotten athlete’s foot from slogging around in caves in wet soggy army surplus combat boots. I was a caver too at that time, and that was the preferred footwear: Vietnam era jungle combat boots. Jacque convinced John to give it a try. John didn’t like going down to the VA hospital anyway, so he decided to give the flours of sulphur a try. Jacque was mostly a Kentucky hillbilly, and it seemed he’d gotten the cure from the coal mining side of the family.

It worked. Jacque and John got together and John got a lesson in how to apply the sulphur to his feet and went home and gave it a try. Within a couple of weeks his athlete’s foot was gone, and I don’t remember hearing him complain about it again in the remaining 10 years of his life.

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