Fast Talk: A trip down memory lane — to the dentist’s office
Jul 29, 2010 | 575 views | 0 
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We all have memory flashes that take us back to our youth.
Some are pleasant memories, and others not so. We remember special gifts and honors received in our youth, but also grievous embarrassments, unpleasant and sometimes painful experiences, verbal and even physical hazings, failings in the classroom and chastisement from both playmates and our parents that obviously left indelible creases in our memory bank.
One of my vivid childhood memories is a trip to the dentist when I was 10 or 11 years old. Our family dentist, Dr. Schoenthaler, practiced in a little burg of about 800 souls some 20 miles over gravel roads from where I grew up. Thus, a trip to the dentist provided more than enough time to really get psyched up before I even got into to his office.
Doc’s office was on the second floor of an old building that also housed my father’s one-day-a-week law office down the hall. To my recollection, the remainder of the second floor — with its 14-foot ceilings — was vacant. Thus, screams and cries of panic didn’t produce results, being absorbed by that ceiling space and the fact that Dad was well down the hall.
I had terrible teeth. This was already a recognized fact in our family before this one memorable trip to see Dr. Schoenthaler. I already knew he never used Novocain, could get his entire hand in my mouth and frequently created an acidic burning smell with that whirling drill of his.
On this particular day, he used a pick the size of a coal chisel, with a mirror in the other hand, to gouge around my ivories, pulling debris from here and there, and pausing only long enough to put down the mirror and make a mark on a diagram of a mouth, all the while leaving his other hand splitting my widely stretched jaws. When I could take it no longer and said “Ahhhh,” he would smile and say, “Just another minute.”
This went on for over an hour, at which point I realized I must be his only patient of the morning. It was then about 11 a.m., when, to my pleasant surprise, he said, “I’ll be right back” and headed out the door.
I hoped he might stumble down the long stairway or suffer some other disastrous fate, but after a bit he was back, with the distinct odor of smoke on his breath. It took me a few minutes to realize that he had gone to confer with my father.
Then the drilling started. He went from one side of my mouth to the other, sometimes boring a few minutes on my uppers, then moving to the lowers. Then he would backtrack and work on the same teeth in reverse order.
Finally, 12-up noon arrived — and he bid me adieu as he headed out the door, leaving me alone. No need to lock it in that village.
Fortunately (I think), Dad showed up about that time. He said he had both good news and bad. The bad was that I had 13 cavities. The good was that Dr. Schoenthaler would get them all filled that day and would resume the process after his lunch.
He did. I was his only patient the entire day.
But what really sticks in the memory bank is the brick building next door. The two buildings were separated about three feet, and from the dental chair in front of the window, I decided to count the bricks I could see. Over and over and over I counted, until I was absolutely positive I could cast my eyes on 168 bricks (some only half a brick as they disappeared from my line of sight. I included those in my count).
When it was all over, the good doctor collected his $3 a filling from my father, then smiled and said, “See you next time.”
My jaw was too tired to smile back.
2 DFCs for Major Martin
After serving overseas for 33 months in the Mediterranean Theater and surviving countless perils, Maj. Louis Martin was killed in an airplane crash near Auburn in late November 1945, shortly after the end of World War II.
The Patterson native was 26 when killed in the crash of an Army transport plane near Auburn. The tragedy took eight lives. He was the son of Mary Martin and had two sisters, Beatrice Wight of Oakland and Evangeline Martin of Patterson, and four brothers, Tom and John of Modesto, Manuel in the Merchant Marine, and Fred in the U.S. Navy.
Louis Martin graduated in the Patterson High Class of 1938 and then attended Modesto Junior College before volunteering for the U.S. Army. He worked his way up in rank, then started his pilot training as a flight sergeant and ended up a major.
In his obituary, the Patterson Irrigator termed his military career “extraordinary.” He piloted C-47 transports through many hazardous missions in Europe, which earned him two Distinguished Flying Cross citations and three Air Medals.
The first DFC came after a hazardous mission at night to land fuel at a secret base inside occupied territory for use by Greece partisans. His was the only one of 38 planes to complete the mission. The second DFC followed a notable feat in bringing a crippled transport back more than a hundred miles after it was damaged when supplies being dropped fouled the stabilizer.
After the war, Major Martin ferried troops to South America, but he was hospitalized for an operation and sent home. After returning from a lengthy illness to active duty, he was required to serve as a co-pilot for a specified time to acquaint himself with domestic regulations. Based at Stockton Field, his transport flight was heading from Palm Springs to McClellan Field in Sacramento and apparently had difficulty locating the field. The plane brushed a hilltop in the dark, trees shearing off the wings. Three crew members and five Japanese-American passengers were killed, with 16 others surviving.
A large crowd attended his service at Sacred Heart Catholic Church for the flyer who had survived war’s many hazards, only to die in a peacetime crash while on a routine flight. Pallbearers were five high school classmates — Capt. John Westlund, Capt. James Glotfelty, 1st Lt. John Gill, Sgt. Manuel Relvas and Sgt. Tony Azevedo, along with longtime friend Lt. Arne Ingebretsen.
Major Martin is remembered on a plaque in Patterson’s downtown Veteran’s Memorial Park.
E-mail of the week
“I thought about the 30 years I ran a business without use of a Blackberry that played music, took videos and pictures and communicated with Facebook and Twitter. Then, under duress, I signed up for Twitter and Facebook so that my seven kids, their spouses, 13 grandkids and two great-grandkids could communicate with me in a modern way.
“I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter, with only 140 characters of space. That was before one of my grandkids hooked me up with Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie and several others that send every message imaginable to my cell phone.
“My phone was beeping every three minutes with details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation. … I was recently asked if I tweet and I said no, but I do toot a lot.”
There was much more, but you get the idea.
More trivia<
When you think about it, life is sexually transmitted.
For the sports fan
Some Americans chortle at the claim that soccer is the world’s most popular sport.
“It is,” they snarl, “only because millions can’t afford the equipment necessary to play baseball, basketball, football or hockey.” All that’s needed for soccer is a ball and a makeshift net.
Yes, that might be true. And aren’t we glad that millions of young people can round up a ball and play soccer? Imagine what those millions might be up to without a sport to play.
And finally...
If you’re like me and your favorite TV programs are “Antiques Roadshow” and “American Pickers,” then you’ve rolled over a few miles.
• Ron Swift is editor/publisher emeritus of the Patterson Irrigator. He can be reached at ronkay@evansinet.com.
Some are pleasant memories, and others not so. We remember special gifts and honors received in our youth, but also grievous embarrassments, unpleasant and sometimes painful experiences, verbal and even physical hazings, failings in the classroom and chastisement from both playmates and our parents that obviously left indelible creases in our memory bank.
One of my vivid childhood memories is a trip to the dentist when I was 10 or 11 years old. Our family dentist, Dr. Schoenthaler, practiced in a little burg of about 800 souls some 20 miles over gravel roads from where I grew up. Thus, a trip to the dentist provided more than enough time to really get psyched up before I even got into to his office.
Doc’s office was on the second floor of an old building that also housed my father’s one-day-a-week law office down the hall. To my recollection, the remainder of the second floor — with its 14-foot ceilings — was vacant. Thus, screams and cries of panic didn’t produce results, being absorbed by that ceiling space and the fact that Dad was well down the hall.
I had terrible teeth. This was already a recognized fact in our family before this one memorable trip to see Dr. Schoenthaler. I already knew he never used Novocain, could get his entire hand in my mouth and frequently created an acidic burning smell with that whirling drill of his.
On this particular day, he used a pick the size of a coal chisel, with a mirror in the other hand, to gouge around my ivories, pulling debris from here and there, and pausing only long enough to put down the mirror and make a mark on a diagram of a mouth, all the while leaving his other hand splitting my widely stretched jaws. When I could take it no longer and said “Ahhhh,” he would smile and say, “Just another minute.”
This went on for over an hour, at which point I realized I must be his only patient of the morning. It was then about 11 a.m., when, to my pleasant surprise, he said, “I’ll be right back” and headed out the door.
I hoped he might stumble down the long stairway or suffer some other disastrous fate, but after a bit he was back, with the distinct odor of smoke on his breath. It took me a few minutes to realize that he had gone to confer with my father.
Then the drilling started. He went from one side of my mouth to the other, sometimes boring a few minutes on my uppers, then moving to the lowers. Then he would backtrack and work on the same teeth in reverse order.
Finally, 12-up noon arrived — and he bid me adieu as he headed out the door, leaving me alone. No need to lock it in that village.
Fortunately (I think), Dad showed up about that time. He said he had both good news and bad. The bad was that I had 13 cavities. The good was that Dr. Schoenthaler would get them all filled that day and would resume the process after his lunch.
He did. I was his only patient the entire day.
But what really sticks in the memory bank is the brick building next door. The two buildings were separated about three feet, and from the dental chair in front of the window, I decided to count the bricks I could see. Over and over and over I counted, until I was absolutely positive I could cast my eyes on 168 bricks (some only half a brick as they disappeared from my line of sight. I included those in my count).
When it was all over, the good doctor collected his $3 a filling from my father, then smiled and said, “See you next time.”
My jaw was too tired to smile back.
2 DFCs for Major Martin
After serving overseas for 33 months in the Mediterranean Theater and surviving countless perils, Maj. Louis Martin was killed in an airplane crash near Auburn in late November 1945, shortly after the end of World War II.
The Patterson native was 26 when killed in the crash of an Army transport plane near Auburn. The tragedy took eight lives. He was the son of Mary Martin and had two sisters, Beatrice Wight of Oakland and Evangeline Martin of Patterson, and four brothers, Tom and John of Modesto, Manuel in the Merchant Marine, and Fred in the U.S. Navy.
Louis Martin graduated in the Patterson High Class of 1938 and then attended Modesto Junior College before volunteering for the U.S. Army. He worked his way up in rank, then started his pilot training as a flight sergeant and ended up a major.
In his obituary, the Patterson Irrigator termed his military career “extraordinary.” He piloted C-47 transports through many hazardous missions in Europe, which earned him two Distinguished Flying Cross citations and three Air Medals.
The first DFC came after a hazardous mission at night to land fuel at a secret base inside occupied territory for use by Greece partisans. His was the only one of 38 planes to complete the mission. The second DFC followed a notable feat in bringing a crippled transport back more than a hundred miles after it was damaged when supplies being dropped fouled the stabilizer.
After the war, Major Martin ferried troops to South America, but he was hospitalized for an operation and sent home. After returning from a lengthy illness to active duty, he was required to serve as a co-pilot for a specified time to acquaint himself with domestic regulations. Based at Stockton Field, his transport flight was heading from Palm Springs to McClellan Field in Sacramento and apparently had difficulty locating the field. The plane brushed a hilltop in the dark, trees shearing off the wings. Three crew members and five Japanese-American passengers were killed, with 16 others surviving.
A large crowd attended his service at Sacred Heart Catholic Church for the flyer who had survived war’s many hazards, only to die in a peacetime crash while on a routine flight. Pallbearers were five high school classmates — Capt. John Westlund, Capt. James Glotfelty, 1st Lt. John Gill, Sgt. Manuel Relvas and Sgt. Tony Azevedo, along with longtime friend Lt. Arne Ingebretsen.
Major Martin is remembered on a plaque in Patterson’s downtown Veteran’s Memorial Park.
E-mail of the week
“I thought about the 30 years I ran a business without use of a Blackberry that played music, took videos and pictures and communicated with Facebook and Twitter. Then, under duress, I signed up for Twitter and Facebook so that my seven kids, their spouses, 13 grandkids and two great-grandkids could communicate with me in a modern way.
“I figured I could handle something as simple as Twitter, with only 140 characters of space. That was before one of my grandkids hooked me up with Tweeter, Tweetree, Twhirl, Twitterfon, Tweetie and several others that send every message imaginable to my cell phone.
“My phone was beeping every three minutes with details of everything except the bowel movements of the entire next generation. … I was recently asked if I tweet and I said no, but I do toot a lot.”
There was much more, but you get the idea.
More trivia<
When you think about it, life is sexually transmitted.
For the sports fan
Some Americans chortle at the claim that soccer is the world’s most popular sport.
“It is,” they snarl, “only because millions can’t afford the equipment necessary to play baseball, basketball, football or hockey.” All that’s needed for soccer is a ball and a makeshift net.
Yes, that might be true. And aren’t we glad that millions of young people can round up a ball and play soccer? Imagine what those millions might be up to without a sport to play.
And finally...
If you’re like me and your favorite TV programs are “Antiques Roadshow” and “American Pickers,” then you’ve rolled over a few miles.
• Ron Swift is editor/publisher emeritus of the Patterson Irrigator. He can be reached at ronkay@evansinet.com.
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