[Note: Just tell yourself that all good things are worth waiting for. Like Christmas. And the next chapter in this Arkansas Memories Tour of 2009 saga, which has been so long coming. I should be able to get them to you quicker now for a while. Thanks for your patience!!]
I last left you (see below or here) with this question . . .
“What do you think this building below in Gassville, Arkansas was when the Andrews boys were little kids growing up there and what significance do you think it would have had in their lives – all three of them – with identical problems?”
. . . to which I got some really great comments/responses. Some of you I don’t even know . . . I don’t think. Do I? I’d love to get to know you a little and find out if you’re enjoying this journey. Email me! (But, I digress).
The answers covered a wide range from a church, VFW, pool hall, jail, post office, school, newspaper building, furniture store, Western Auto, hardware store, Masonic Lodge to a doctor’s office (thinking all three of them might have had hearing problems, but those came many years later for two of them, including Tom who has spent way too many years in front of gigantic speakers at music fests! But, I digress again).
One of the answers above is very close, as in hot. But only partially correct. Want to venture a guess as to which one above is closest before reading any further? (And, that means you, Greg, are on your Scout’s honor not to cheat, hoping to win a Finding Direction contest by any means, albeit I don’t have one going right now. Maybe it’s that time of year to do another FD Photo contest, you think, y’all? – But, again I digress, having been away from here for so long and having so much writing in me.)
Actually, I did get one completely correct answer from a loyal reader! But she did not publish her comment, instead she included it in an email note she sent me the other day. Are you ready? The winner of this Finding Direction non-contest (now you’re making me feel bad, Greg, and I’ll have to think of a prize to send her) is my dear friend Susan K D, who wrote:
“I read your last posting and have studied the building pictured there. I can’t imagine what it could have been. I read the comments and can see why some thing it may have been a post office or perhaps a school. It looks to me as if it may have housed three separate entities because of the three doors in the front. Then I wondered if it was a little hospital at one time. I can’t guess anymore as I am not familiar with this kind of country life. I can’t wait to here what it is!!!”
The unlikely looking old building included a doctor’s office, but was mainly the only small hospital in a wide area around Cotter, the next little town to the west, several miles away. All of the rest of us were totally amazed, but the “boys” had lots of memories from there. Some were new revelations to all three of them from each other.
For instance – it wasn’t until we got there that they discovered they had all three had their appendixes (appendices?) out there by Dr. Guenthener. I asked Tom how old the doc was, and he replied, “He was old! I mean, I don’t know, I was a little kid, so thought he was old, but he could have been 20 for all I know.”
They all three remember Nurse Dryer very well, too, but maybe we shouldn’t get into those memories, you think?! Jimmy just said how sweet she was and how he didn’t mind her giving him shots, but no one else could.
Tom(my) clearly remembers falling from a big tree when he was eight years old, hitting a big branch on the way down and breaking his femur bone (thigh bone) in his right leg. Apparently, he wasn’t the best of patients, always getting out to play in his cast(s) and then having to have them replaced after breaking. Dr. Guenther told him after the third cast change (from waist down his entire right leg) that if it happened again, Tom was going to have to stay at the hospital.
Tom bears the really big scars today from surgeries then (the break was so bad they had to put in metal plates and then remove them), all the way down the front of his right thigh.
This little hospital is also the place where Tom’s older brother, Jim(my), came to stay for a while, at first, when he was only 10 years old, after he contracted the dreaded polio, for which then (1949) there were no vaccines. He was completely paralyzed, with only his lungs able to function. (More about all of this later, when we get to Cotter, next time, where the family was living then.)
Greg commented last time about the side and back of the building in the photo and Jimmy remembers that his room was on the first room on that side, but could not figure out quite which window.
Our minds hold of swirls of memories from long ago that sometimes run together, both good and bad. Happiness and pathos. Bittersweet, probably seems the best way to describe what is left in reality.
But, somehow we adjust and hopefully can rise above the past sadness in our own lives in reliving our memories and take them to a new plane, where we can be truly happy in who and what we are, out of all of the memories that have shaped us.
All of the Andrews boys have done that, and quite well. These few days we all had together were wonderful for them in being together as growing older men with their family surrounding them. They looked at the past squarely in the face and have kept the best of their memories, now with a new collection to add to the old.
Next time, we will move on west to the next little town, Cotter. It’s a by way little town now, population 921, with the main road having been moved to pass them by. But we found lots of great people and memories there, so stay tuned.
To Be Continued . . . soon. Like, a day or two!!
Well that would have been about the last thing I would have guessed!
I guess Greg is “nursing” his wounds now.
The identity of the building made me thing of the “old doctor / young baseball player” in the movie, “Field of Dreams.”
I would never have thought of a hospital either. Very interesting! Things have certainly changed.
I should have guessed it! Cornng had a doctors office/clinic. I don’t know that any surgeries were performed there, but there were rooms in the back with beds, and babies were born there in the clinic. Best I remember, mom and baby would go home the next day. At least one of my sister’s young ‘uns was born there, maybe two. Great stories, Dee.