I used to hear old folks talk about this, but I never thought it would happen to me.
Sure enough, I believe I have surely crossed that line over into their camp. Now, I’m not admitting that I’m old. I do have family members and friends who are older than me, but, honestly, not as many as I once had. I have realized, quite a while back, that I have more years on this earth behind me than I do ahead of me.
I used to look forward to the days when I could retire from working full time and slow down a little. I retired from full-time almost five years ago, but I am as busy as ever. I may be even busier, but some of it is not doing the same things I used to do. Part of that may be because I can’t do some of those things anymore. Part of it is because I don’t want to do some of those things. I also have so many appointments that they eat up much of my time. Many of those appointments are with my doctors. Like a car that has gotten older, as we get older our body parts have to be tuned up, patched up, taken out and sometimes replaced.
When I was growing up in Rainsville, Alabama, we only had two doctors, but not both of them at the same time. Dr. Sanderson was the first one, but since he moved to Arizona when I was about 3 or 4, I don’t really remember him. Then Dr. William Gibson came and served as was our doctor the rest of my years in Rainsville.
I moved away in 1975, but Dr. Gibson kept his practice until 1995. He passed away in 2024 at the age of 97. The decorated World War II veteran kept me upright and running when I was kid… no matter the problem. When I was chewed up by a Doberman Pinscher, it was Dr. Gibson who stitched me up and put me back together.
He was kind of like our Doc Adams on “Gunsmoke.” “Gunsmoke” was a staple at our house. It came on the air the same year I began breathing air. Dr. Adams was the only doctor in Dodge. That wasn’t a problem, because he could fix just about anything. He was a general doctor, surgeon, counselor and something of a psychiatrist, especially where Festus was concerned.
He patched up Matt Dillion more times than Miss Kitty could handle. During the 20 years that the show aired, Marshall Dillion was shot in both arms, both shoulders, both legs, both sides of his torso, in the chest, in his back, and his forehead was grazed three times. All total, he was shot around 56 times, but amazingly, he never died from any of them. That was because of Doc Adams. He could treat, cure and fix almost any problem, but that was the magic of television.
In these days of specialized medicine, we don’t have just one doctor who does it all. Now, I’m not complaining, because I’m still here and I can still see, partly because of some of those doctors. I don’t have just one doctor anymore; I think I have nine of them. It seems like I visit one of them every week. My social calendar is taken up by doctor visits! The good news is that in the 1870s, when Doc Adams practiced, the average life span in America was only around 40, but today the average is approximately 79! That gives me plenty of time to visit all nine of my doctors!
Bill King can be reached at bkpreach@yahoo.com.
