|
|
|
||||||||
| Archive | |||||||||
|
Coming of Age in America
Part 2 |
|||
|
In going south to Louisiana they had to travel with a good bit of gold, which was a risky thing to do. However, when they arrived they managed to find some property they believed would be good farmland, so they bought it. Then they had to travel back to Winston County to get their families and the belongings they had left behind. Not wanting to risk being robbed while carrying all that gold back with them to Fearn Springs, they decided to bury it beneath a large old oak tree on the land they had purchased. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Unfortunately while they were up north getting their family a hurricane made landfall on the coast and spawned a few tornadoes that just happened to rip right through the property they had procured. While tearing up their land the tornado also ripped out that large old oak tree and took it far, far away. When everyone returned nothing looked the same as when they had left it. It’s been said that they searched the land over for years and years, never finding their lost gold. Of the Fosters left behind in Winston County were the folks of my direct lineage. Thankfully, my father met my mother in town before he was drafted and they corresponded throughout the war. They married after he was discharged in December of 1945 and he brought her home to Calvary Community to live with him and his widowed mother. Apparently that was a surprise for both the ladies. My father confessed to me in later years that he had made a terrible mistake. He said having two women in the same kitchen was like mixing fire and gasoline and not expecting an explosion. Anyway, within two years us boys began to make our appearances and the house became even more crowded. Doctor Silas W. Pearson was the doctor that delivered me. I was the third of three boys and when I was born someone said they overheard one of the nurses say, “Oh my, the poor woman has given birth to another boy!” I know she wanted a daughter, but it was strike three. I was their last child. My aunt, Mavis Foster, named me Richard Louis Algood. Louis after my paternal grandfather, Louis McCray Algood, who had been named after Louis Winston who had surveyed the county and town in the early 1830s. The town became Louisville, after Mr. Winston. And the county became Winston, also named after him. So technically, my grandfather and I were named after our hometown. Doctor Pearson was old when I was born. But then again, when you first arrive on Planet Earth everyone is old. Right? He was a country doctor in every aspect of the word. When he was a young man he told his father he wanted to become a doctor and his father said he would send him to medical school under one condition, he could never refuse to treat someone because they couldn’t pay. He never did. When he began his practice he rode a horse to make house calls. About the time of the Great Depression, he built two long brick buildings on the west side of town where he could store bartered items. If people could not pay in cash, they paid him in produce or what ever they could. He would take anything they could afford to pay him. If they had nothing, sometimes he would send them out to the buildings with a note for food. It’s my understanding, the man who worked at the buildings would look at the note, go inside and come out with vegetables or clothing or whatever they needed. Doctor Pearson took care of his patients. His first office was where Winston Furniture Company is presently located. By the time I came along he had a clinic on South Church Street that was located on the second floor of the Strand Theatre building. On the front of the building was an old medical symbol for well being that is rarely seen anymore. It looked like a backwards Swastika symbol. Nowadays, people driving through may look up and mistake it for one, but it isn’t a Swastika. I cannot imagine how on earth a pregnant woman about to deliver a baby made it up all those steps years ago. It was probably just as difficult going back down after the delivery. That was where I began my life in 1952. My mother was tough. She had to be. I remember the time she told me about having her tonsils taken out when she was a young girl. Her sister, Auline, walked with her to the doctor’s office where she said he “pulled” her tonsils out. Then she walked back home afterwards. Now that’s one tough kid. I was in the hospital for a week after they took mine out. Mother came from a long line of tough women. Her grandmother was tough, too. When she had her teeth pulled, the dentist rode out to her house on a horse, set a little dental chair up on their front porch and handed her a bottle of whiskey. When the whiskey was beginning to do its job, he pulled all of her top teeth. He was nice enough to give her a break so she could go inside and cook him lunch. After he ate and it had time to settle they went back out to the porch and he pulled all her bottom teeth. Like I said, those women were tough! Doctor Pearson was still making house calls when I was little. However, he was doing a little better by that time. He was driving a Cadillac. (More horsepower.) The last time I remember him coming out to our house was the winter before I started first grade and I had the flu. I was in my parent’s bed when he walked into the room and took out his stethoscope. The bedroom was cold, so he walked over to the gas space heater and held the stethoscope out to warm it up before attempting to place it on my chest. It cracked. He never complained. He just smiled and said, “Well, I needed a new one anyway.” He was white headed with a receding hairline and had big puffy purple bags beneath his eyes from lack of sleep. I think he looked a lot like the actor, George C. Scott, when he portrayed General Patton. I was still young when he passed away in 1965, but I remember folks saying half the county turned out for his funeral. He was very well respected. The clinic he was using when I was born, later became my uncle’s pool hall that he named The Hangout. By that time Dr. Pearson and David Wilson had joined forces and moved to a new building on West Main Street. Mother didn’t like for me to go upstairs to the pool hall. She said there was smoking and cuss’n up there and I had to stay away from there. When I was older, I went anyway. It was actually pretty tame by today’s standards. The age of the country doctor has long since passed and you would be hard-pressed to find a doctor that makes house calls in the twenty-first century, much less barter for his fee. By the way, I have no idea what was showing on the big screen downstairs the day I was born, but An American in Paris starring Gene Kelly won at the Oscars that year.
_______________
|
|||
