RIVER CITY JOURNAL: IT'S (SNIFF!) TIME (HACK!) FOR (COUGH!) ALLERGIES

Now that I have them, I am not at all fond of allergies.

And now that it is September, I have enough allergies to choke a horse. Judging from the watery eyes, hoarse voices and general crankiness of just about everyone I meet, I know we have hit the worst of the allergy season.

Some people call it autumn.

Others call it fall.

I call it a pain in the you know what.

When I was a small child, I used to get rashes on my face. A visit to a doctor who did no more than look at me -- although I had thrown up on the way to the doctor's office, assuming I would have to get a shot in the arm or worse -- resulted in this quick diagnosis: orange juice allergy.

Orange juice?

I bet I only drank orange juice once a year. I had rashes on my face a lot more often than that.

We didn't have orange groves on the farm in Kelo Valley. We had milk cows. And well water. And maybe a Nehi grape whenever we went to Des Arc and stopped at Johnnie Collier's service station with the pop bottles chilled in ice-cold water in a big red Coca-Cola cooler with a bottle opener on the side. We were related to the Colliers by marriage, and Johnnie always said "Help yourself" whenever I stood close to the soda-pop cooler and tried to look as thirsty as possible. That Johnnie was one swell fellow.

But orange juice? I don't think so.

I would catch poison ivy just by saying "poison ivy" out loud. And those vicious red wasps would sting me on the foot, which meant I could only wear one shoe until the swelling went down, in spite of the little pink pills Doc Jones dispensed whenever he stopped by on the way to his farm.

But I didn't know what allergies really were. Just think, I managed to live from the end of World War II until Bill Clinton was president and the Republicans took control of Congress before a doctor in Cape Girardeau told me I had allergies. For real.

I don't know whether to blame Clinton or the Republicans. But somebody ought to take the heat.

My wife, on the other hand, has had confirmed allergies forever. As most allergy sufferers can tell you, one of the worst things you can do if you have allergies is have a cat.

So we got a cat.

We got the cat when our older son was 4 and his brother wasn't 1 yet. That black cat was as much a member of our family as any of us.

Several times the allergy doctor told my wife we should get rid of our cat. Each time she let the good doctor know he might as well tell her to throw one of her sons over a cliff.

No way. No how.

Fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your wheezing capacity, that black cat lived 19 years in our house. Now it's not just my wife who has allergies. We both do. I think we need another cat. Statistically speaking, if we had a cat at least one of us wouldn't be suffering right now.

Early last year, a doctor convinced me that a prescription drug would take care of my allergies. It sure did. And kept me from sleeping. And made me feel like I was wearing woolen mittens on my eyeballs.

Other than that, the drugs worked just fine.

I gave up the pills recently. I'm a Missourian. I can live with allergies.

What choice do I have?

Well, for one thing, I could get a cat to sit in my lap when I have the sniffles.

Just a thought.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.