some payment in kind – fresh eggs, a ham, side meat, garden truck, fresh bread, and
so forth. Six or seven arranged schedules of payment; some of those actually met
their promises.
But over seventy totally ignored the letters.
I was upset and disappointed. These were not shiftless peckerwoods like Jackson Igo;
these were respectable farmers and townspeople. These were people for whom my father
had got up in the middle of the night, dressed, then driven or ridden horseback
through snow or rain, dust or mud or frozen ruts, to attend them or their children.
And when he asks to be paid, they ignore it.
I couldn’t believe it.
I asked, `Father, what do I do now?’ I expected him to tell me to forget it, as he
had been dubious as to the usefulness of these letters. I awaited his response with
anticipated relief.
‘Send each of them the tough one and mark it “Second Notice”:
`You think that will do it, sir?’
`No. But it will do some good. You’ll see.’
Father was right. That second mailing brought in no money. It fetched a number of
highly indignant replies; some of them scurrilous. Father had me file each with its
appropriate case record, but make no reply.
Most of those seventy patients never showed up again. This was the good result
Father expected. He was cheerful about it.
‘Maureen, it’s a standoff; they don’t pay me and I don’t do them much good. Iodine,
calomel, and Aspirin – that’s about all we have today that isn’t a sugar pill. The
only times I’m certain of results are when I deliver a baby or set a bone or cut off
a leg.
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`But, damn it all, I’m doing the best I know how. I do try. If a man gets angry at
me simply because I ask him to pay for my services… well, I see no reason why I
should get out of a warm bed to physic him.’
1897 was the year that the Katy ran a line not a mile from our town square, so the
council extended the city limits and that put Thebes on the railroad. That brought
the telegraph to Thebes, too, which enabled the Lyte County Leader to bring the news
to us direct from Chicago. But still only once a week; the Kansas City Star by mail
was usually quicker. The Bell telephone reached us, too, although at first only from
nine to nine and never on Sunday mornings, because the switchboard was in the Widow
Loomis’s parlour and service stopped when she was not there.
The Leader published a glowing editorial: `Modern Times.’
Father frowned. `They point out that it will soon be possible, as more people
subscribe, to call for a doctor in the middle of the night. Yes, yes, surely. Today
I make night calls because somebody is in such trouble that some member of the
patient’s family has hitched up in the middle of the night and driven here to ask me
to come.
`But what happens when he can rout me out of bed just by cranking a little crank?
Will it be for a dying child? No, Maureen, it will be for a hangnail. Mark my words;
the telephone signals the end of the house call. Not today, not
tomorrow, but soon. They will ride a willing horse to death… and you will see the
day when medical doctors will refuse to make house calls.’
At New Year, I told Father that I had made up my mind: put my name in to the Howard
Foundation.
Before the end of January I received the first of the young men on my list.
By the end of March I had received all seven of them. In three cases I did go so far
as to avail myself of the privilege of the sofa… although I used the couch in
Father’s office, and locked the door.
Wet firecrackers.
Decent enough young male, those three, but… to marry? No.
Maureen felt glum about the whole matter.
But on Saturday the second of April Father received a letter from Rolla, Missouri: