Editorial

More memories of country doctors

Wednesday, May 21, 2003
Kenneth Kinchen

After last week's article appeared regarding country doctors and their commitment to serving both the well off and the poor, a lady called me to say that Dr. Cope treated her for a childhood illness. I think she said that she was visiting in Kennett, and that her aunt called Dr. Cope, from Hornersville, into her case, because of his reputation of being good doctor. The lady credits Dr. Cope with perhaps saving her life, and she does so with apparent great appreciation, and kind memories of him. I appreciated the lady's good opinion of Dr. Cope, for from all that I can learn, he was deserving of the love and respect that he received.

Last week we were recalling memories of another Hornersville area doctor, and his longtime assistant. Dr. Bond and Miss Mary were a team with a large medical practice. Dr. Bond and Miss Mary continued to serve the community into old age. Miss Mary was a few years younger than Dr. Bond. Some of my personal memories, sometimes selfish, of Dr. Bond shame me now.

The little dapper doctor would often come into Cope's Rexall drugstore just at closing time. I would have just cleaned the grill on which I, a 14-year-old soda jerk, had been frying hamburgers and grilling toasted cheese sandwiches, when Dr. Bond would appear. He was the one customer that I could not say, "sorry, just turned off the grill for closing." No sir, Dr. Bond wrote prescriptions for our pharmacist to fill, and he rented space from the owners of the drugstore. And even I, who was burning to get on with my Saturday night madness, knew that I must greet the good doctor with the cheerful chant of a bitter hypocrite, "good evening doctor." I remember that he would almost whisper his order: "I'll have a hamburger tonight, very well done, and a cherry coke, with not too much ice." That's what he always ordered? But my job was to receive his order, as if there was something novel about it? The good doctor didn't have to tell me to slice the finished product in two equal parts, and that he wanted the insides of the buns spread lightly with butter, and toasted. And it was a given that he would have no dressing on the burger, and that he would have two dill pickle slices, drained of any juice, on the side. Before he would have finished his meal, Miss Mary, who would have just closed the office for the night, would appear.

Their office was more like their home, however, they did have an apartment over what was then called the Farmers' Supply store, to which they would go after hours. The upstairs of that store, which, sadly, recently burned to the ground, was also the site of the Masonic Lodge, Eastern Star, and the Rainbow Girls meetings. The loss of that historic "Kinsolving" building was a tragedy.

Dr. Bond and Miss Mary worked long hard hours serving the medical needs of the countryside. They lived together as a couple, but that was not a topic of gossip, or conversation. How would I know that? Well, after a few months as a soda jerk, "Ab" Langdon, against the advice of my dad, rescued me from "soda-jerkdom" by employing me as an office flunky at the Langdon's Grand Prairie Gin and Mercantile Company. And, next to a real man's barbershop, the most "gossipy" place in town was a cotton gin office, especially on a rainy day. They talked about everything in the book, and their imaginations spawned some pretty salty tales, but never from Ab and Leonard and Son (my dad's nickname) and Arch and Harve did I hear anything about Dr. Bond and Miss Mary "living" together. One wonders now, how it was that a town, so rhetorically charged up with the Ten Commandments, would have left Dr. Bond and Miss Mary out of their gossip? I suggest because the practice of medicine was Dr. Bond's only lawful wife, and because Miss Mary was his skilled medical assistant, and because neither of them was married, except to their work, that the townspeople, in their truest judgement, saw them as servants of a people in need.

No one ever saw any public signs of affection from either of them toward the other. However, in Dr. Bond's later years, Miss Mary would occasionally brush a piece of nonexistent lint from "doctor's" lapel, and as O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) once wrote, such a gesture was, "the universal act of a woman to proclaim ownership" of her man.

Both Dr. Bond and Miss Mary delivered many people into this world, and his skill, and her kindness, and reassurance, lightened the grief of hundreds of families, when that certain time came for their loved ones to "go on home."

Editor's note: Next Wednesday, Kenneth Kinchen remembers the late Dr. R. L. Palenske.

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