Something drastic must be done for our low bracket Directors.
Let's do it—and soon.
I shall anxiously await your composite solution for the
situation.
Fraternally, but apprehensively, Yours,
BEWARE DOCTORS AND WATCH THE COWS
To Heather Anderson, a granddaughter.
July 18, 1953
My dear Heather Bloom: What is our Heather doing in a hospital? They are not places for young ladies. Hospitals are traps for old people with sore backs and failing minds and memories whom doctors inveigle into these medical spider's webs for reasons best known to themselves.
Some folks, mostly older women, glory in their hospital records.
Each trip is carefully recorded and verified with unimpeachable
evidence, and is to the owner the same as a home run is to Stan
Musial.
There was a time when a young fellow, about your age now, cut his finger with a knife. What happened? Mother took a look. She washed the layers of dirt off with good old common cold well or cistern water, soused the finger in turpentine, then wrapped it in a clean, boiled white cotton rag, tied it round and round with Clark's white No. 70 thread, told him to keep it as clean as his conscience would permit—and in 48 hours it was well. Now what happens? The neighborhood is alerted, the ambulance called with orders to ring the gong vigorously enroute, doting grandparents are deluged with telegrams and telephone calls, the cigarette- finger stained family doctor is called and frantically urged to meet the ambulance at the back door of the hospital. He does. He inspects the knife gravely, sends it to the laboratory to check whether it has cut bread made from wheat infected with the dread wheat cholera or has come into contact with tuleremic pork plasma, etc. The case is too serious for him alone so he calls co-counsel. The poor little feller by this time is so bewildered he doesn't remember whether he cut his finger or wet his pants.
Grandpappy is grubbing and piling deadened thorn trees, piling brush, logs and dead limbs, spading-up locust, thorn, elm, osage orange and wild crabapple sprouts . . . and otherwise disporting himself in one of the big pastures north of town. . . Earlier in the year, a quail would perch on that big southeast corner post of the pasture. You would know he was there because he would whistle that shrill "Bob White, Bob White." If you weren't too anxious to work you would stop and try to figure him out. . . Once I was working diligently near the east fence line. All at once I realized a squirrel was barking at me. I kept still and located the sound, but I never got to see the squirrel. But I did see birds, woodpeckers, blue jays, rain crows and robins flying into a certain rather small tree, and I knew what that meant at this time of year—a mulberry tree. I tried to work toward it, easy like. When I got there the squirrel was gone but the mulberry tree and its ripening berries were right there where the sound came from. . . Where there is plenty of grass, cows never get hungry. They eat about all the time just to keep from getting hungry. If you see cows lying around in the shade, you know that all is well.
But you have to keep tab on your livestock wherever they may be. Inside the highway gate, but some distance away to the east, was an open tool shed. . . Day before yesterday, as I drove in the pasture and passed reasonably close to this tool shed, I saw a young calf in the shed on top of the hay. He'd weigh 100 to 125 pounds. I didn't stop. I thought he'd work his way out the same way he worked in. That evening as I went by, I forgot about any calf. Next morning as I went by, I was thinking about other things, so I didn't look in for the calf. About mid-afternoon, when I was working within hearing distance of the tool shed, I heard a cow bawling. It was the bawl of a cow that had lost her calf. When I came out, I stopped near the shed, walked over and looked in. There was the calf on the hay, and silent as your Uncle Frankfurter when he broke the stock of my shotgun. I went around to where he had gotten in and went in the same way, climbed up over the five or six feet of baled hay and then down toward him. He ran over the bales faster than I could climb. Back and forth, around and around we went. Finally I got him in the south part of the shed. He was tiring and I was already tired. He looked at me. I sort of fell toward him, giving out a big yell. He got a big scare and climbed those bales toward the hole he got in through like a mountain goat. When I got out the same way, he was half a quarter away and going strong. He must have been a hungry calf by the time he found his ma.