Fifteen years old

Today TYWKIWDBI is fifteen years old.  On previous blogiversaries I've posted data about the posts (18,127 so far) and the comments (64,100), with trendlines and such, and commentary about blogging.  I had no energy for that this year, so I thought I'd browse my files to see what I was doing when I was personally fifteen years old.  

The location is Leech Lake in northern Minnesota late in the summer of 1961.  The graininess of the enlarged Minox photo makes it hard to discern details, but I suspect there was a paperback book on top of the pillow on my lap.  The plaster casts are the residua of surgery done at the Mayo Clinic in June of that year to correct bilateral flexion contractures resulting from a childhood battle with poliomyelitis.  Those are "walking casts" but my immobility meant that I spent most of my time indoors.  Fortunately for me one of the (I think three) local TV stations was presenting late-nite movies, which I avidly consumed:

Of perhaps greater interest to the general public is a copy of the hospital bill from the Mayo for that surgery:

$375 for the surgery, $50 for anesthesia, $10 to xray the ankle, $4 each for some blood tests, and $5 for the physical therapy consult.  Meds were apparently rolled into another category. 

I note that the prices had increased substantially since my first hospital bill in 1948 (four days in the hospital @ $6 per day).