Growing Up Beside the Doctor’s Office

1946. WWII in Europe and the Pacific theaters was over. Dad the Doctor was home from the Pacific. I’d only just met him briefly after I was born in Oregon (1943) where he was taking Desert Warfare training. With the quick end to the African Campaign, he’d left for Tropical Medicine training in Pennsylvania, after leaving Mother and me to spend the war in a Richmond, Va., two-bedroom house with three aunts and assorted children. It wasn’t until my later adult years I learned Dad had gone ashore in Nagasaki, Japan, site of the second Hydrogen bomb and Japan’s surrender and probably the cause of his dying of a rare blood disease from radiation.

Wasn’t long but he’d collected Mother and me, I not being happy at losing the favored spot in one of the two bedrooms, and somehow we were in Southwest Harbor, where, in a story told by Dad, a Bar Harbor boy, it had taken him 22 years before he’d ever come across the ridge (17 miles) to SWH on this 22-mile island. Also wasn’t long before he’d taken some of that Army pay and put a down payment on the Main St. house which was to be our home, his medical office, and Mother’s window on the town of Southwest Harbor. It was a great house, previously a “rooming house in the early 1900s, several rooms, and drawbacks of one bathroom and a miniscule kitchen. Small anteroom off to the side where Chris Lawler used to fill the ice box (How many of you still call the fridge “the ice box?”) from his horsedrawn wagon, and Clark’s dairy (by delivery truck) would deposit the milk and cream.

He’d also bought a used car, Plymouth, probably ’39 or ’40, which he’d park under the back 2nd story porch and which just happened to include several antique, partially-filled cans of paint. One of which was a gold color and with which I started to paint the hood to match the gold Cadillac owned by one of Dad’s colleagues at the Bar Harbor Hospital. He wasn’t all that impressed, but true to the form of our lifelong relationship, most of what I got in trouble for, not that I wasn’t punished because both my sister Suzanne and I were disciplined, he managed to take with a “grain of salt” and allowed my own horizons.

Dad’s offices, a waiting room, medical office, and later an X-ray and diathermy (heat for arthritis) room were located off the seldom used formal dining room. Patients often became part of the family. Mother, a registered nurse, warm and friendly, did some nursing in the office, and would sometimes have a patient/friend into the “kitchen/dining room” for tea or coffee. As we got older, Suzanne or I, whoever might be handy, would on occasion be summoned to the office to console an upset child or help hold one down while Dad performed a procedure, Mother not happening to be there at the time. Not only that, the door to the office had an old-fashion keyhole through which we could spy on the patients (something which became quite “old hat” relatively young).

Dad’s hours went something like this: Between 8 and 9 he would drive to Bar Harbor, do anesthesia work in the operating room, see any patients he might have there, then drive back to Southwest, have office hours from one o’clock to 4, do house calls all over the western side of the island, and be back home for dinner, which generally commenced between 6 and 6:15. We always had dinner together, something we later strived to do with our family. From 7 to 9 were evening office hours by appointment. Then, something I really enjoyed were the house calls to the outer islands by boat. Never forget the aroma of fresh cookies in ferry Capt. Elmer Spurling’s home. Or, the seeming longer trips to Swan’s and Frenchboro with Willie Van Horne when a shotgun would go along and we’d take a few shots at Coot and Eider and the occasional practice round at a “shitpoke.”

Telephone was ever-present in our lives. Original line to the house was a party line with each having a given number of short and long rings. Didn’t work so well with neighbors on the circuit listening in or bothered by the late-night calls. The phone would ring at all hours. During dinner, early morning, while Dad would be trying to catch a nap, Sundays at camp, middle of the night. Then there was Deputy Sheriff Don Sullivan (day job was water commissioner) who might open the kitchen door middle of a Saturday night “Hey Doc.....Doc, wake up...been a fight over at the Center (Seal Cove) dance hall. Someone’s been cut up pretty bad.” He’d get up and go along with Don or in his own car, maybe getting back at daylight from a trip to the hospital.

Dinner table conversation carried the usual family information and discussion, but would have a strong current of medical discussion as well. Interesting patients, cures and procedures, operations would also be discussed between Dad and Mother with Suzanne and I asking questions or popping comments. Soon, if we had a cold or some simple ailment we would go to the office medicine cabinet full of new cures from salesmen, find what we needed, and treat ourselves.

From the early ‘50s, Dad had also taken on the duties of Medical Service for the Coast Guard base in SWH. Having been in the military, he could recognize a slacker. I asked him one time why he had these gallon jars of aspirin, one pink, one green. His reply was if he thought one of the “Coasties” was trying to get out of a duty, he’d give them green aspirin. If they came back he’d give them pink, and if they came back again he’d get serious.

I remember well a late afternoon call, epitomizing a coastal doctor. Came from Swan’s Island. Mid-winter. Dad called a lobster fisherman from Bernard, George Trask, asked if he could take him out to Swan’s. Woman was having a difficult birth. Baby was delivered late in the evening and they started back. George had luckily asked someone else to go along. This was one of the older boats. “Forward cabin” was a triangular piece of canvas. Engine quit as they were abreast of Bass Harbor Head Light. Must have been blowing because as Dad related, “We were off of Seawall when the anchor finally grabbed. The two men got in the skiff we were towing and had to row back to Bass Harbor for help. I crawled forward and tried to wrap up in a piece of old canvas. Never been so cold in my life. When we finally got in, I couldn’t stop shivering. I was scheduled at the hospital for anesthesia at eight o’ clock so drove there directly. Couldn’t get warm. Had to have Julie Grindle, my nurse assistant, hold the syringe. Wasn’t until that afternoon and a hot bath before I stopped shaking.”

Dad chose to end his practice at 59 years old. Seems young to me now. Said with the government moving into medical practices with Medicare it was time for him to leave. “I’ve practiced medicine all my adult life,” he said, “and I’ll be damned if the government is going to tell me how to do my job and how much I can charge for it.”

That year, after trying to collect what he had on the books, he wrote off a total of some $8,000. Twice what I made as a teaching principal that year, and considered he’d done well.

• R E C I P E •

With summer season approaching (snow out the window to the contrary) and more tomatoes on the vines than you’ll ever use fresh, this is one different way to use a few. De-seed and skin enough tomatoes to make a cup or two of meat boiled down. Recipe can easily be doubled or tripled. Add cup of sugar to cup of tomato...I like mine a bit tart so I go with ¾ cup. Add salt and pepper, 2 Tablespoons fresh lemon juice and simmer for about an hour until the juice thickens. Can be canned or kept cold in refrigerator. We enjoy it with cold meats, sometimes on dark bread toast for breakfast.

Fair Winds and Good Roads
– Lee Wilbur