{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/1j9765c907/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Dr. Judson Hout"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine.  Disclaimer:  The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker’s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice. \u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2016-12-01 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Oral History"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Sam Taggart (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Format"]},"value":{"en":["Video file"]}},{"label":{"en":["Keyword"]},"value":{"en":["Rural Medicine","Arkansas","Family Medicine","Family Physician"]}},{"label":{"en":["Subject"]},"value":{"en":["Judson Hout, MD (personal name)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English (primary)"]}}],"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eThis item is protected by U.S. copyright and related rights. It is being made available by the Center for the History of Family Medicine as its rights-holder for noncommercial use, including sharing and adapting the work. No permission is required for noncommercial use so long as attribution is provided. All other uses require permission from the Center for the History of Family Medicine. \u0026nbsp;Disclaimer: \u0026nbsp;The views presented in this broadcast are the speaker\u0026rsquo;s own and do not represent those of CHFM or the AAFP Foundation. The information presented is for general, educational, or entertainment purposes and should not be considered legal, health, financial, or other advice.\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Center for the History of Family Medicine"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/246/original/CenterForHistoryFamilyMedicine_2c_RGB.png?1773344256","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/293/422/small/JUdsonHoutM..mp4_1759331448.jpg?1759331451","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - JUdson_Hout_M..mp4"]},"duration":6165.39257,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/293/422/small/JUdsonHoutM..mp4_1759331448.jpg?1759331451","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/293/422/original/JUdson_Hout_M..mp4?1759331425","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":6165.39257,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422/transcript/84868","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Dr. Judson Hout Interview Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422/transcript/84868/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Interview with Dr. Judson Hout     \n\nGood evening; it is 12/01/16 and my name is Sam Taggart.  We are in the home of Dr. Judson Hout and Mrs. Carolyn Hout in Camden, Arkansas.  Thank you very much for inviting us into your home and agreeing to sit through this interview, both of you.  The best place for us to start is the beginning.  Let’s start with where you were born.  \n\nTell us about when you were born and the circumstances of your birth as well as who delivered you if you know or remember. \n\n“I was born in Newport, Arkansas on May 22, 1935.  I was born at home. We lived in a quadruplex apartment.  My apartment was on the top floor and my mother said she was in labor for 48 hours.  I was the first child and Dr .Stevens was the doctor who delivered me and he lived just cattycorner from us.  My head was so molded that my mother said when she saw me she cried because she thought I was deformed.  It was bad times; I mean everybody was really poor.  My dad told the story, he was a lawyer, and he told the story of somebody coming in and paying him $5.00 on their acct and he called my mother and said, “Get ready, I’m coming home.  I’m going by the grocery store and we’re going to have a good meal tonight.”  So, he went to the grocery store with a $5.00 bill and bought two t-bone steaks, two potatoes, a head of lettuce, a loaf of bread, and a bottle of ketchup and got $4.20 back in change.  My mother had them on the stove and got ready to turn the steaks over and the gas got cut off because they hadn’t paid the bill.   So, she took it over to Dr. Stevens’ house and finished cooking the steaks; that‘s how poor we were.  We had to move to Tuckerman, my father’s home town, because we just couldn’t afford to live in Newport.  I don’t remember any part of Newport, but I can remember back when I was two years old in Tuckerman.”    \n\nHow many brothers and sisters did you have?\n\n“I had one brother who was younger than me by 3 ½ yrs and he died 7 years ago.  He was a smoker and that got him. ”\n\nCarolyn, where were you born?\n\n“I was born in Newport, Arkansas in 1937.  I lived there all my life except for a couple of years when my father opened a business in Union City, Tennessee.  We left here in the 7th grade, I believe, and we moved back to Newport in the summer before I entered the 10th grade.  The doctor who delivered me there at Newport, I believe, his name was Dr. Harris of Harris Hospital.  My mother was a Newport girl, born and raised.  My father was from the Judsonia/Searcy area.  I have one brother, Carl Lindsey Jr. who lives in Searcy, Arkansas now.  Judson and \n\n\nI have known each other all these years and we actually, I have to say this, I actually fell in love with Judson when I was 9 years old and he was 11.  Our parents took a vacation together to Harding, Arkansas and even though we went separate ways when he graduated from high school, we ended up back together but we hadn’t seen each other in 37 years.  We have now been married for almost 25.”\n\nWonderful.\n\nLet’s go back to your early childhood; talk about some of the memories you have.\n\n“We lived, the first memory I have, is the house we lived in.  It had four rooms and no bathroom.  It had a hand pump in the kitchen sink and I was always told, “If you pump some water, be sure to leave some in this coffee can to prime the pump with.”  We had a little lead lined icebox that set out on this big square and the ice man brought a block of ice by every day or two.  We did have gas and electricity.  We had an outdoor bathroom.  Tuckerman was a town of maybe 1,200 people.  My grandfather Hout was Mayor of the town for a while and president of the school board.  In fact, he did farming and was in the real estate business. There was a grocery store and the owner of the grocery store was named Top Ivy and there was a meat market and the owner of the meat markets name was Dad Dahl.  Top Ivy had his grocery store in the ground floor of my grandfather’s business.  My grandfather had an office upstairs and I can remember the candy in there was always open and not in bags.  It was in these bins and he had a penny scoop, a nickel scoop, and a dime scoop.  If you wanted a pennies worth of candy, you’d scoop it out and put it in a bag and there you went.  Dad Dahl, I can remember had a big wood burning stove in the middle of his store and he had a cracker barrel.  The crackers were just loose in the barrel and he had a pickle barrel.  The pickles were in vinegar just floating in the barrel.  I can remember by his front window, he had a big stalk of bananas that were hanging there.  If you wanted to buy some bananas, he would pick them off for you.  There was a black-Smith shop and a lot of businesses.  I can remember a haircut that I would get.  There was an African-American man who had a dirt floor in his barber shop and his chairs sat on a wooden pallet.  A hair cut was a quarter and he had a shine boy in there and shines were a nickel.  My father told of working after school in the ice-house for a dollar a week; I thought that was….Bud Parrott when he lived with us in Newport, he was paid $5.00 a week.”\n\nExplain the name Bud Parrott.\n\n“Bud Parrott was an African-American man who was single and apparently grew up in the Tuckerman area.  My father apparently knew him at a young age and he hired him to sort of babysit my brother and me as well as keep up the yard.  He worked in the house some and had a servant quarters out back.  He lived in a room out there and had a little bathroom, but it did not have a bath tub in it.  He, I guess, took a bath in a washtub.”           \n\n\nIn 2010, you wrote a fictional novel about this man.\n\n“I did.  I used him as the hero of the story, but it’s totally fiction.  Nothing about it really happened.”\n\nCarolyn, what about your early childhood; any memories you want to share?\n\n“My memory is not as good as his, but my father owned Lindsey’s Tire and Supply Store on Front Street there in Newport.  It had a little bit of everything.  There was a little bit of a hardware store, appliance store, Goodyear tires, and a lot of hunting and fishing equipment.   My father was an avid fisherman and hunter and this was where a lot of people would hang out and always talk about their fish stories or hunting stories.  In fact in high school, Judson worked for my father.  Next door to my father’s store on the corner was Hurley’s grocery store, which belonged to my grandfather.  You know, I just remember that Newport at that time was a booming little country town where stores stayed open on Saturday night until 9:00pm and the country people would come in and be walking up and down the sidewalks there in Newport shoulder to shoulder; that’s how booming it was then.  It was just a wonderful time to be growing up.”\n\n You were talking about fishing and hunting, but most of our viewers won’t know, that Newport sits right on the bank of the White River right after the Black River joins the White River.\n\n“I was just going to say growing up you spent a lot of time on the river, boating and water skiing; that was basically what we did then.  It was our source of entertainment.”\n\n“Once Carolyn and I were by ourselves in a boat upstream and she had to be home by a certain time.  We got in the boat and started back and were 2-3 miles away when the boat stopped.  We couldn’t get it to go and so, I tried paddling and that wasn’t getting us fast enough; so I tied a rope around my middle and jumped in the river and started swimming.  I was pulling the boat and she was paddling until finally, somebody came along and pulled us back.” \n\nSo, talk about the ethnicity or the origins of your families and how did they come to be in Newport or Tuckerman?\n\n“Ok, my great, great, grandfather was named Peter VanHouten.  He migrated to the United States from Holland.  He settled in either Eleanor or Indiana; I’m not sure, but I think it was \n\n\nIndiana.  His son, George, anglicized his name to Hout; he dropped the Van Houten.  He had a job working with Herbert Hoover when Herbert Hoover was a civil engineer surveying government land in North Arkansas.  They were in Arkansas for months and months and my great grandfather George backed his money with a business man there in Tuckerman.  It was cold winter time and the job was through; he was wearing a bear coat and went to collect his money.  The guy didn’t have it, he had spent it and there was an argument.  The man shot my great grandfather in the abdomen and the big thick coat saved him.  But, they said he was going to die.  They telegraphed his wife, my great grandmother Julia, and said, “You need to send someone to get the body because he’s going to die.”  She sent her 12 year-old son on a train, Judson Nathan Hout, Sr. to pick up the body.  He got there and of course, he hadn’t died.  Of course, he wasn’t able to move back home because it took about a year to recuperate.  So, my grandfather then got back on the train; some people in town raised the money, and he went back and got his mother, brother, and sister and brought them to Tuckerman and they settled in Tuckerman.  My mother’s family, my great grandfather Ike and Idea Wood of Paragould.  Idea, my grandmother was half Indian.  They had five children, one of whom was my grandmother who married a man named Floyd Williams.  I think his family came from England or somewhere around there.  They were in multiple businesses; live stock businesses, mule barn, grocery stores, real estate, and my grandmother died young.  My grandfather remarried and I spent a lot of time in Paragould with him.  That’s about all I know of our family.”    \n\nWhat about you Carolyn?\n\n“Well, he knows more about his family than I actually know about mine.  As I said earlier, my mother was born and raised there in Newport.  My father came from the Judsonia/Searcy area and what I think is so neat about my father is they lived in a house on the banks of the Little Red River.  My grandfather was a boat builder and my father would help him.  One of the great things on Sunday afternoons was they would take some of the ladies from; I believe it was, Galloway College over in Searcy boating on the Little Red River.  My grandfather was a great deal older than my grandmother.  He fought in the Spanish-American War and I have a picture of him upstairs in his uniform.  My grandmother was just a little country girl from out in the country there at Judsonia. That’s really all I can tell you.”    \n\nWhat kind of boats would he build; John boats or steam boats?\n\n“Well no, not steamboats; just regular wooden boats.”\n\nJohn boats, flat bottoms.\n\n\n“John Boats; he must have been very skilled in it because that’s what really started his livelihood.” \n\nLet’s talk a little bit about starting school.  Well, one other question; we talked a little bit about family here, did you think of yourself as being surrounded by an extended family when you were a little kid?  Did you have a lot of family members around you\u003e\n\n“Yes, I did.  I always looked forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas because that was family time.  We had aunts, uncles, and cousins and we would spend that time together around the dining table.  So, I grew up with that and….”\n\n“I did too. My father had a younger brother who was only 8-9 years older than I was and he had four sisters.  They all lived in Northeast Arkansas and we were always together at Christmas time, Thanksgiving, and times like that.  Then my mother’s family in Paragould, I spent a lot of time in Paragould in the summer.  I loved it over there hanging around the barn and poking the cows.”\n\nThey were farmers?\n\n“My mother’s family, no they had the live stock business and the mule barn.”\n\nThat’s right.\n\n“They had these ole mules and I thought I was helping my grandfather tear down a mule barn one time that was right behind my grandfather’s house; but I was just getting in his way.  I was just a little guy, but I watched him teat that barn down.”               \n\nLet’s go back to a story that you already told me prior to the interview about the beginning of school.   You told me about the first day you started school and I would really love to add it in this interview.\n\n“I started school in Tuckerman, Arkansas in 1941.  My teacher was a very pretty lady named Ms Babbs.  There were probably 6-7 boys in first grade and 4-5 girls; a small class, but it was a 12 grade school.  It went from 1st grade through 12th grade and after the end of the first day of school, there was an assembly. The superintendent, Mr. Fullbright, was the master of ceremonies and he spoke, then the principal of the school spoke, then the president of the student counsel spoke, and the president of the senior class spoke.  I don’t know how many people spoke, but at the end of it they asked if anybody else wanted to speak.  I thought, “Well they all did; I might as well.”  So, I raised my hand and he told me to come up.  I walked out on the stage and said, “This is my first day of school and I look around and there are only three pretty teachers in the whole school; but my teacher, Ms. Babbs is the prettiest.”  Everybody \n\n\nlaughed and I thought, “What are they laughing about?”  He told me to go back to my seat and he said, “Does anybody else have anything they want to say?” and my friend Buzzy, Buzzy Shaffer raised his hand.  He said, “Well, come on up Buzzy.”  Buzzy walked out on the stage and stands there with his hands behind his back looking out in the audience and said, “Amen” and he walked off; that was my first day of school.”   \n\nSo what was your experience of going to school in Tuckerman or in Newport your first few years of elementary school?\n\n“Tuckerman, I don’t remember much about.  I know there was a lot of corporal punishment.  My grandfather was president of the school board.  We didn’t have lunchrooms and I had to walk home for lunch every day.  I always stopped at my grandparent’s house on the way.  He had a bunch of daughters and was sort of a bullish man; you know, a masculine man.  I’d come in and he’d say, “How was school today Judsey?” I’d say, “Well, I got a whooping pop.”  He’d say “Well, that’s the way to be, by God.” About the 4th or 5th time I came by, I started whimpering and crying and he said, “Well, what’s the matter with you boy?”  I said, “Oh pop, that old teacher whipped me again.”  He said, “By God, I’m going to go fire her” and my grandmother made him stop.  Well I think about that time, my dad had decided that we needed to move back to Newport, because no telling what my grandfather was going to do.”\n\nWhat about you Carolyn; your first couple of years in elementary school?\n\n“Those years were spent at Walnut Street School in Newport, which is since been torn down.  I just remember the smell of the old oil floors.  I think it was three stories.”\n\n“Actually it was four stories, but there was an attic that was never used.”\n\n“It had a stage and I don’t know, I can’t really think of anything specific other than it was just wonderful being able to grew up there in that town.  Friends that I still have now from those days, we go back for the reunions every year.  It’s just been……I mean we were very fortunate to live in the time that we did.  It was just an easy happy go lucky time and we didn’t have the stuff that goes on in the schools now, you just accepted whatever it was and life was just simple, beautiful and easy then.”\n\nDo either one of you have any particular adults, school teachers, preachers, parents, or grandparents, in those early informative years who had a big impact on you as you grew up?\n\n\n\n“All my teachers did; particular my math teacher in high school, Ms. Gaddy, and also my Latin teacher, Ms. Irma Shockner; I really like them and did very well in their classes.  They were strict.  Ms. Gaddy had eyes in the back of her head, we thought; because she could tell somebody to sit down who was out of his chair without looking back from the blackboard.  On about out 10th reunion after graduation, Ms. Gaddy was there and she said, “I bet you all thought I had eyes in the back of my head” and we all said, “Yeah, we did” and she said, “I put chalk dust on the edge of my glasses and it made a mirror and I could look and see what went on behind me.” Ms. Elisabeth Irvy was an old maid, heavy, who taught English Literature and was really a lady; but she was tough.  My friends put a tack on her seat one time and she sat on it.  You could tell she started to flinch a little bit, but she never said a word.  She sat the whole class o n the pin and when she got up, she reached back and pulled it out and placed it on my friends desk.”\n\nWhat about you Carolyn; any people in the community or parents who had a big impact on you pushing you in one direction nor another in life?\n\n“Well, probably the greatest influence I had in my life was my mother. She was always teaching me how to be….she always wanted me to be nice to everyone and kind.  I don’t know what all to say about her, she was just always there for me and influenced me to be what I am today, really.”\n\nJudson, what kind of things caught your attention in school?\n\n“Oh, athletics; I was more involved in basketball, mainly.  We had a really good football team and my senior year, we had a great basketball team; we won 33 games and lost 3.  We lost the state tournament, but we had already won 4-5 tournaments.”              \n\nTuckerman is still a great school for basketball isn’t it?\n\n“No, they have never really been good; but, I think ours was the best team they ever had.  Now football, we were a good football team.”\n\n“One of the things about when we were in high school, Batesville and Newport always played on Thanksgiving afternoon.   You never had your Thanksgiving dinner until football was over and I don’t know how long this tradition went on; but, I know they don’t do that anymore.   It was the most fun day of the year for all of us growing up then.  Of course, Judson was a football player.”\n\nI think you had said that ya’ll first moved from Newport to Tuckerman and then from Tuckerman back to Newport.\n\n\n“In the middle of my first grade year.”\n\nYeah, so you ended up spending your school years in Newport; I thought you had said that.  Were you good at athletics?\n\n“Yes, he was.” \n\n“Well, I did alright.” \n\nWhen you were in football what position did you play?\n\n“I played center and linebacker.  I was 6’4; I’ve shrunk as I’ve gotten older and weighed about 165 lbs even though I put 180 on the roster.  We were playing Wynn and we tied that game 21 to 21, but I had my best game that game.  I was in the shower when the coach came in and said, “Put a towel around you right quick.  There are two coaches from Mississippi State here to talk to you about playing football over there.” Well, I put a towel around me and went out and when they saw how skinny I was, they backed off.  They said, “Coach Warnerman said that when you would like to try out, you are welcome to come and try out.” I never did want to play. I had some AICs schools, Arkansas Tech and Hendricks talk to me about playing there, but by that time I knew what I wanted to do and it was go to the University of Arkansas.  I was hoping to get a scholarship at the University of Arkansas to play football, but I was not offered and so I said, “My football career was over.”  Basketball, I was the starter for two years; the 6th man in 10th grade.  I was a pretty good basketball player.  We had a fellow one year behind me who was a actually a great basketball player; he was the star of our team.  But, we had a great basketball team.  I hated track.”\n\nYou hated track?\n\n“I hated track, but they made us go out for track.  If you didn’t go out for track, you couldn’t play football.  My senior year, I didn’t go out for track.  Carolyn and I ran around together then.”\n\nYou didn’t have to worry about it at that point then.\n\nYou dropped a comment there about five sentences ago; you said, “I already knew what I wanted to do.”\n\n“There’s a funny story about that; I had always thought I was going to be a lawyer.  My father was a lawyer, my brother ended up being a lawyer, and both my sons are lawyers.  But, I wanted to start being on my own and I had never thought about medicine until our senior annual came out and my friend Sarah Parish, who was the editor of the annual, wrote the class prophecy which was a spook.  In it she said, “Judson Hout will be a famous surgeon and a rival of the Mayo Brothers.  Even now, he can cut a watermelon open” and you know I thought, “I’ve never thought about being a doctor.”  So I went down to Harris Hospital and talked to Dr. \n\n\nRaymond Harris and Dr. Jade Jackson and asked them if I could hang around.  Dr. Harris let me watch operations and Dr. Jackson let me watch him deliver babies and I thought, “You know, this is what I want to do.”  By the time I graduated, I knew where I was going.”\n\nBased on a spook in an annual?\n\n“Yeah, that put the idea in my head.  I never thought of it before.   I was always sort of scared of doctors.”\n\nWhat about class work; was there any particular classes in school, you mentioned Latin, was there mathematics, science, or anything like that?\n\n“I loved mathematics; that was my best subject.  I made good grades and never had any problem with grades.”\n\nDid you work outside your home?\n\n“Yes; in the summertime, the first job I had was at Southern Cotton Oil Company and my father drove across the Newport bridge and saw me hanging over the side of one of  these big chimney heads about 200-300 feet off the ground with a guy spraying a hose down on me and I was taking the sides off and he made me quit that job.  I got a job then at the Coca-Cola Plant bottling Coca-Colas; that was after the 9th grade.  In the 10th and 12th grades, I worked as a life guard at a swimming pool.  Also in the 12th grade, I worked every Saturday with Carolyn’s daddy at Lindsey’s Tire and Supply.”\n\nHunting and fishing were a big deal.\n\n“Fishing wasn’t then, but hunting was; duck hunting and bird hunting.  They did a lot of that.  Sam Walton of Wal-Mart had the Ben Franklin store a block from her dad’s store.  He had a fishing camp out on the river and he would let us boys use it sometimes when they weren’t using it.  We’d camp out on the river and fish.  In duck season, I went duck hunting with her daddy I can’t tell you how many times.  But, I didn’t start fishing until I was in the military, which was many years later; but I got bite by that bad.”\n\nYou guys grew up conscious wise during WWII.  What can you remember of that?  Did you have any relatives in the war or anything that had an impact on you?  What were your feelings or thoughts about the war?\n\n“I had two uncles by marriage; one of them did not get into combat, but he was in Quam and the other one had bad nightmares; Charles Star.  He was in the barracks and they had all their guns in the center of the barracks in stands and he had nightmares one night and he walked in his sleep got his rifle and put a bandana on it and went over and kicked a Mexican guy out of his bunk thinking he was a Jap and was chasing him going to stick him with that gun.  They all ganged up on him and he jumped out the window, but it was a second floor window; so he \n\n\nbroke his leg and they discharged him.  My father’s younger brother was in the Calvary and he did not do well.  He was a little intellectually impaired, so they discharged him.   So, nobody in my family was really in combat.  The war times were sort of scary, but we were young and we didn’t worry about it.  We knew what the little ration books were and what the stamps were and you couldn’t get bubble gum or this and that.  At the end of the war, the grocery about a block from my house announced that they were going to have bubble gum on Saturday and the kids all lined up, but they wouldn’t let us have but one piece.  So, it was…..my mother knitted scarves and socks in that mustard color for a service man and we had a victory garden in our backyard; my parents kept it plowed up and planted.  There was a lot of canning and that sort of thing.”\n\nAny of your families, did illness or disease play any role during you growing up?  Do you remember people being sick?  Polio was a big deal in that time frame; do you remember any of that and did it have an impact on you?\n\n“Well, I remember one little girl who got Polio.  I can’t remember her name, Jane Cash; she had Polio.  We had to be careful; you better not go to the swimming pool, there if was polio in town and that sort of thing.  We just didn’t really have any worries; you know, we’d slip off and skinny dip in a bar ditch somewhere and our fathers would find out about it and make us have a Typhoid shot.”\n\n“I didn’t do that.”\n\n“Slip in the pool hall and play pool and they would catch us and we’d catch hell about that.”                                           \n\n I would be remiss, because I know about it if we don’t bring this up a little bit; but Newport had a reputation of being a relatively wild town particularly the highway out towards Tuckerman.\n\n“Yeah; the Bloody Bucket at Campbell Station.”\n\nThat’s right; the bloody Bucket and the Bear, if you remember the Bear.  It may have been after your day, but did you frequent any of those places?\n\n “No, I tell you I was pretty straight laced.  I never went into Silver Moon Club for example.  My brother used to ride around town with Elvis Presley.  I came home from college and he said, “Boy, there is the neatest guy that comes to Porkys and the Silver Moon” and I said, “Man, if you go to the Silver Moon, daddy’s going to kill you.” He said “Daddy doesn’t know about it.  This guy comes over from Memphis and he’s got a Cadillac and by midnight, we were riding around until daylight.”  I said, “What’s his name?” and he said, “Elvis Presley.”\n\nBy this time, you were in college right? \n\n\n“I was in college and came home for Christmas when he was telling me that.  I thought, “Well who in the hell is Elvis Presley?”  \n\nSo what got you, you had already said, “I want to go to the University.”  What was the idea there?  Why did you want to go to the University?\n\n“It was the University of Arkansas, the best school in the state, and I wanted to go to medical school.  I knew my chances of getting into medical school were best there.  You had to have nine hours to get into medical school, you had to pass the Medcat, and you had to pass an interview; after two and a half years, I was admitted to med school and I didn’t ever finish at the University.  I did three years there.”\n\nYou graduated from high school in what year?\n\n“1953 and then I went to med school in 1956; I graduated there in 1960.”  \n\n Were there any teachers in your brief college career who had a big impact on you?\n\n“Not really, I don’t even remember any of their names; except for, I think his name was Worthtime who taught Western Civ.  I’m not going to mention this guy’s name, but he was a fellow who I played football against in high school and we were in Western Civ together.  He walks by and tapped me on the shoulder and told me his missed his final test and all that was on it was his name.”  I said, “Man, you’re going to flunk out” and he said, “Oh no, I won’t flunk.”  He turned in a blank paper and I worked like everything; I got a C+ and he got a B.  So, I remember Worthtime for that.”  \n\nCarolyn, how about you?  What did you do after high school?\n\n“I went to Denton, Texas to what then was called Texas State College for Women.  I lasted one semester and hated it.  I ended up at the University of Arkansas and finished there and graduated from there.”\n\nWhat did you want to do?\n\n“I started off in Nursing at TSCW and the reason I went to TSCW was because out high school counselor said that they had a wonderful nursing program there through Parklin Hospital. in Dallas, Texas.   I thought that I wanted to be in nursing, but I flunked Chemistry and was told I’d have to take it again and thought, “No, I’ll just change what I was going to Major in.”  Then, I changed to Business and when I flunked Business Math, they said I would have to take that again and I said, “No, I’ll just \n\n\n\nchange my Major.” So, I Majored in Elementary Education and finally made it.”         \n\nWhat year did you graduate from there?\n\n“1960.”\n\nSo, Judson you went to college and took what you had to take and got into medical school; was there any question that you’d get in?\n\n“Well, yeah; most people from Newport, or the people who I had known, had either gotten in or gotten in and flunked out; so I was sort of uneasy about it.  When the first ten were accepted for the class of 1960, which started in ’56, I was included in it and I was shocked.  I thought, “Well, I’ll probably flunk out” because everybody else in Newport had, but I didn’t and ended up somewhere in the top 30s in my class.  I’m not sure exactly where I ended up.”\n\nWere you in the old medical school?\n\n“I started out in the old school and we were the last class to start out in that school.  Dr. Jeff Banks taught us Gross Anatomy and when we finished Gross, by six months, we then transferred to the new building.”      \n\nWhat was your impression of Jeff Banks?\n\n“I thought he was the greatest guy that ever lived.  He died right before the end of our freshman year.  They had our class and people volunteered to be sort of an Honored Guard of the casket and I was one of them.  Dr. Banks never had his door closed; you were always welcomed in.  He was tough, but he was an educator.  He was a great man.”\n\nWere there other teachers that had an impact on you at that time?\n\n“When I was in my clinical years, Dr. Ted Pannus in pediatrics; I was very impressed with him.  In fact one summer, I had a clerkship, an actual job, helping one of his residents and one of the associate professors with their research paper on EKGs on premature babies.  Then Kermit Prince in OB; I really liked him.  My favorite one had a tragic ending; Dr. Hon Slunburger.  He taught pathology and he was involved in a car wreck a year or two after I graduated.  He ended up a vegetable and was in a nursing home in a coma for probably 15-20 years before he finally died.”     \n\n So you started medical school in what year and finished in what year?\n\n“I started in 1956 and finished in 1960.”\n\n\n\nNow after you got there, how long was it before you realized you probably wasn’t going to flunk out?\n\n“After I made it through the freshman year, I thought, “Man this is a breeze.” I was fifth in my class after my freshman year.  I mean, I thought, “I have to study hard.”  I was married at that time and in my sophomore year had my first child; I don’t want to really get into this too much, but I had to be mother and father both to that child.  So, I didn’t study as much because I took care of the baby at night. “\n\nLet’s do this now so we won’t have to think about it later; how many children do each of you have?  What are their names and how old are they?\n\n“I have three.  Gay is 59, Greg is 56, and John is 48.  Gay was a model and lived in Paris for 20 years.  She now lived in Fayetteville now and works at T.J. Max.  Greg has his own law practice in Rancho Bernardo north of San Diego.  John is an attorney with the Reddick Moss Firm in Little Rock.  He had 21 years in the prosecutor’s office.  Gay has two children who are grown.  Greg has two sons in law school at Fayetteville and another in college in San Bernardino.  John has two boys in school in Little Rock.”\n\nCarolyn, how many children do you have?\n\n“I have three; my oldest is Marla who is 50 years old and lives in Conway.  I have two sons Rick who is 48 and Brian who is 43.  Both of my boys live in Dallas and they are in the oil and gas business.  My daughter does work in Conway; she works for the hospital foundation; the money raising end of it there.  She has four children.  One son has two children and the other son has three.  So combined, we have 16 grandchildren.” \n\nThat’s a lot.       \n\n“All of her grandchildren were born after she and I were married, so they have always known me as their grandfather.”\n\n“He is paw.”\n\n“All three of our children care deeply about each other.”\n\nSo now you have another extended family, all of you together.  \n\nSo at what point did you start thinking about what you wanted to do in medicine?\n\n\n\n“I knew from the day I decided that I wanted to be a physician that I wanted to be a general practitioner in Newport, Arkansas; that was my plan all the way through the military and everything.  But, I went back about 7 months before I finished my military to finalize the deal and it fell through.  I’m not sure I know why it fell through, but I think there was……what they told me was that there was politics involved.  They were on one side of it and my dad was on the other side and they felt like my dad would be trying to run their business; that’s what they told me.  So, I had to look for somewhere else and I found Camden.  It was the best thing that ever happened to me.”\n\nSo you have been in Camden the rest of your life up until this point?\n\n“Yeah.”     \n\nAlright; so you finished medical school and did an internship.  Where did you do your internship?\n\n“Hillcrest in Tulsa and it was a rotating internship; it was very intense.  There were only seven interns and there were residents.  The head of the program was Dr. Francis Pruett who was one of Isenhours doctors and when he had his heart attack out in Denver, or Colorado Springs, or wherever it was.  It was very intense.  It had a lot of OB; I had two months of OB and delivered 145 babies in two months.  I got a lot of experience there and then I went into the Air Force.  I volunteered because there was a doctor draft and was assigned to a really top secret base called Bossier Base, which was on the backside of Barksdale and was a nuclear weapons base.  I maintained and supplied them.”\n\nIn what year was that that you finished your internship?\n\n“I went in in ’61 and finished in ’63.  I was the only physician on the base.  We had a dentist and a lawyer with 50 officers and 450 listed men with 200 dependants.  I was responsible for the medical care of all of them; plus a bunch of other stuff having to deal with nuclear weapons.  I got to travel to Albuquerque two or three times, to Los Vegas Lake Mead Base there once and the most interesting travel that I had was to Fort Knox, Kentucky where there was another base like ours but the Navy had it.  The commander of that base was Captain John Buckley who later was an admiral and ended his career as head of Juan Tombo base.  He was a Medal of Honor winner and there was a movie with Robert Montgomery and John Wayne called “They were Expendable” and it was the story of Lieutenant Buckley, at that time, getting McArthur off of _______ during the war. I had an interesting two years; very interesting.”        \n\nWere you prepared to do what you did when you got there?\n\n“No, I got orders for Bossier Base and couldn’t find out where Bossier Base was; it was extremely a top secret base.  In fact, the name of the base had been restricted until two years before I got there because a Senator in a hearing let it slip and so, the cloak was off it.  When I \n\n\nfinally got there, I had that top secret clearance and my dad had called me in my internship and said, “I don’t know what’s going on, but the FBI are here asking questions about you” and wondered why.  Well, I had top secret clearance and the first week they sent me to Albuquerque for three weeks to learn all about nuclear weapons.  When I left there, I could take an atomic bomb apart and put it back together in 30 minutes.”\n\nThat sounds like a skill.\n\n“Well, I mean everybody there could.   You had to be able to do it and know how to do it.”       \n\nSo when you got through with the service, you were thinking about going to Newport and politics got in the way; where did Camden come from?\n\n“Ok; when I left Newport that weekend after I found out I was not going to be able to go there, I stopped by the Med Center and talked with the Dean, Dr. Larsen, and told him that I wanted a town of about 10,000-15,000 that had one hospital as I did not want to get involved in hospital politics.  He gave me the name of about six physicians around the state and one of them was Jim Guthrie in Camden.  I wrote Dr. Guthrie a letter and within a week had a phone call from him inviting me to come here for an interview.  I came and liked what I saw, liked what they offered me, and agreed right then; I have been happy here ever since.”\n\nWhen you came here how many physicians were here and how big of a hospital was it?\n\n“The hospital had 150 beds.”\n\nWow.\n\n“I went in with Dr. Jim Guthrie and Dr. Ellie Drury.  Guthrie was about 10 years older than me and Drury was about 15 years older.  The money that came in was just divided up.  When I came in, I was just salary and had to work into a partnership.  The hospital did OB.  I did not do surgery.  I did acute orthopedics like a broken arm and stuff like that.”\n\nDid you have surgeons here in town?\n\n“Yeah, we did; we had Jack Jamison who was a Board Certified surgeon.  There was another fellow named Paul Hendly who was sort of a practically retained surgeon who came from Eldorado and did some surgeries.  Office visits were $3.00.  Office visit with any shot was $5.00.  House calls were $5.00.”\n\nDid you do a lot of house calls?\n\n“45 my first month.  A hospital bed semi private room was $8.00 and a private room was $10.00.  The hospital was segregated then with a colored wing and a white wing.  The \n\n\n\nobstetrical delivery room was separated. The hospital actually did away with that segregation about the 4th or 5th year I was here.”\n\nAround ’68 or ’69?\n\n“Something like that.”\n\nWhich year did you come here?\n\n“1963.”\n\nSo right on the cusp of Medicare and Medicaid?\n\n“Medicine came on in 1965 and we thought that it was going to ruin medicine.  We hated it coming in and turned out; it did anything but ruin medicine.  But, we lost Dr. Drury because of it because he had had a lot of older people who were poor pay and we divided money up equal.  He felt like he could make more money off Medicare and he didn’t like the way we were dividing the money up.  We carried him for a couple of years, so he left because he didn’t want to share that money.  He since has been long dead.  After my first year, a classmate of mine in med school, Larry Kilo, came here and practiced with us.  He stayed here about 10 years and then he went on to Searcy.”\n\nI remember him.\n\nWhere you prepared for practice?\n\n“Yeah, the best thing that happened to me was my experience….well in Tulsa, I got a lot of experience and learned a whole lot.  But my experience of being the only physician on the base and having four _____ working for me and taking care of people, I just had a general practice on that base; it prepared me for this.  I had no problems stepping in.”    \n\nWhere there any scary moments in that first few years?\n\n“There was an extremely scary moment that happened on a house call.  The patient was a man who was an alcoholic and I sort of liked him.  He went by a nickname, Peck.  He had come in the office and had an undisplaced fracture of his leg and I put a long leg cast on him.  He called me about","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422#t=0.0,690.0"},{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422/transcript/84868/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"one night while I was in bed and said that he was in a great deal of pain and could I come by and give him a shot for the pain.  So, I got out of bed and went to his house; the door was ajar and he said, “Come on in” and I opened the door and looked and he was in a recliner chair, drunk with his legs up, and he had a gun in a holster.  He had a 22-six shot in a holster and a chair side table over here with a magazine opened face down.  He said, “Come here and sit down” and I said, “No, I think I’ll stand.”  He put his hand on the gun and said, “God dammit, I said come sit down.”  So, I sat down and he started telling me that he was going to kill me because I messed his leg up.  I knew that if I showed fear, he might and I was scared.   I tried to \n\n\nkindly talk to him and thought, “You know, if he tries to pull that gun out of this holster, I can get to him and over power him” so, I wasn’t…….I had a plan.  We talked for an hour and forty five minutes and he sobered up.  He finally said, “Ok” and I told him that I’d send him to the VA the next day to let them give him a second opinion and he said, “Ok.”  He then took the holster off and gave it to me; the gun and holster, and I thought, “Should I call the police? No, I’m not going to, he was just drunk and I’ll see how he is tomorrow.”  I started to go out the front door and he said, “Hey doc, I bet you thought that was the gun I was going to kill you with, didn’t you?”  I said, “Yeah,” and he said, “That would’ve been the biggest mistake you ever made; this is the gun I was going to kill you with” and he flipped the magazine over and had a cocked 45 sitting there where all he had to do was pick it up.”\n\nWow.\n\n“If I’d moved to get that gun, he would’ve shot me; my knees got weak.  But, I didn’t report him to the police and I did send him to the VA.  They told him that they didn’t need to do anything that he needed to leave the cast on just like it was.  He came back and got involved with AA; I got him in AA and he and I became good friends.  Over the years when I’d get an alcoholic patient, I’d call Peck and he was there Johnnie on the spot to help that guy.  I can’t tell you how many people he helped before he finally died.”     \n\nLet’s talk about some of the more eventful things that happened to you that first few years of practice; interesting or scary stories.\n\n“Ok, Dr. Guthrie felt like I ought to rent a little house in sort of a blue collar area because he didn’t want it to look like I was making too much money; well, I didn’t want to do that.  I wanted the house out in ________ addition and it was a small house, but it was brand new and 1,400 square feet.  So, I bought it for $19,000.00 and my house payment was $119.00; that was ok with him.  But, I had been here about 6-7 months and the Buick place was right down close by with a brand new electric 225 Buick in there that I really liked and I wanted it.  So, I told Dr. Gutherie that I was going to buy it and he said, “Oh no, you can’t do that; that would be too ostentatious and people will think that you’re making too much money.”  I’m driving an old beat up Oldsmobile with the breaks gone and I want that car.  So, I thought, “Well, the only thing to do is to call my dad and ask him for his advice.”  I didn’t want to make Dr. Gutherie mad, but I wanted that car.  So, I called and he was out at duck camp and my mother gave me the phone number out there.  It was on a Saturday afternoon and he came to the phone.  They had all been partying, hunting, having a few beers, and stuff like that.  I said, “Dad, I need your advice on something” and he said, “What is it, boy?”  I said, “There’s a brand new electric 225 Buick at the Buick place here and I want to buy that car, but Dr. Gutherie says that I really shouldn’t buy it because it would look bad.”  My dad said, “Well, can you afford the car?” I said, “Well, I can’t pay cash for it, but I can pay it out.”  He said, “But, you can afford it?” and I said, “Yes sir, I can afford it.” He said, “Well, let me ask you something; if you were a young man who had a family \n\n\nand moved to this town and you didn’t know anybody in the town and there are only two doctors in the town.  You couldn’t find out anything about them, but one of them drove a brand new electric 225 Buick and the other one drove an old beat up Oldsmobile; which one would you go to?” I said, “Well, I guess I would go to the one with the new Buick” and he said, “Buy the dam car.”  So, I did and Dr. Gutherie just shook his head.  Another thing that happened that first year; I don’t know if you all knew that there was a lady here who was a widow of a very prominent man and she was very well known in National politics.  I got a call and was invited to her house for dinner one night; this was in December and it was a cold night.  So, my wife and I go and when we get there, we see Dr. Bob who was prominent and three doctors from the M\u0026S clinic and two of their wives.  The whole reason for the party was to talk me into leaving Gutherie and Drury and coming over there to their clinic.  They pressured me and pressured me and I kept saying, “I got a contract and I like where I am; I’m going to stay, blah, blah, blah” and they finally gave up.  By","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422#t=690.0,4200.0"},{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422/transcript/84868/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":", I was pretty hacked because I had been set up.  About","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422#t=4200.0,4200.0"},{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422/transcript/84868/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":", Dr. Bob was pretty drunk and I said, “Well mame, I appreciate the invitation; but, I’ve got to go home.  It’s getting late.”  She said, “Well alright, but you’ve got to take Bob home” and I thought, “Oh man, that drunk guy” but I said, “Ok.”  He gets in the car in the middle, my wife on one side and I’m driving, and we go around the block and when we come to where the street butts into Washington Street and Main Street down there; right across the street after you turned right was a Kroger store.  In the parking lot of the Kroger store was a parking lot circus and staked out at the very curb by the street was the biggest elephant you’ve ever saw.  It had its ole trunk going around blowing steam out and Dr. Bob says, “Look at that God dam elephant” and I don’t know why I said this, but I said, “I don’t see any elephant.”  He said, “You don’t see that dam elephant?”  I said, “Dr. Bob, there is no elephant there.”  He said, “There is no elephant?” and I said, “No sir, there is no elephant” and he said, “Oh God, I’ve got to stop drinking.”  I never did tell him there really was an elephant there.”\n\nI’m trying to remember Bob’s name, I know what it is.\n\n“Bobby Robbinson.”                  \n\nSo you come here and start out as the young guy in town and soon other people starts joining and you are no longer the young guy in town, but somewhere in the middle.  Talk a little bit about that.  Did you become an important cog in the wheel in the practice of medicine in Camden?\n\n“I don’t know; I mean I was quite successful and I got involved in the local community.  I was in the Rotor’s Club and I was a senior warden at the Episcopal Church.  I coached little league baseball and was chairman of the planning commission for a number of years.  I was on the school board for 13 years and the final 2-3 years, I was president of the school board.  I was on the school board when we consolidated with Fairview and became candied to Fairview; that ended my term on the school board.  I saw a lot of patients and I did a lot of OB, but I really liked \n\n\nold ladies.  There was an old lady who came in one time and she was just as cute as she could be.  I examined her and she said, “Well, how’s my heart?” and I said, “It’s as good as mine” and she said, “Well good.”  She left and went out to pay her bill and I was walking down the hall when I heard our receptionist say, “Well Miss So-and-so, how did the doctor say you were doing?”  She said, “Oh that doctor said that he’d give me anything in the world if his heart was as good as mine.”  Then I had another lady and I called her Lucy; she was quite old.  She had grown up in Newport and her father was a lawyer there and gave my father his first job as a lawyer.  She graduated from high school at Newport High School in 1906 and always said that she was the salutatorian of the class, but she was also last in her class; because there were only two.  She was quite an unusual lady.  I don’t know if this is true, but the story was that she bought a turkey one time for Thanksgiving and had it in a pen out in the back year.  Well, the turkey wasn’t eating, she called the turkey farmer and said, “Look, you’re going to have to take this turkey back; it’s losing weight.”  He told her, “Miss Lucy, don’t worry about the turkey, it’s just lonesome away from the flock.  It’s will start eating.”  Well, she got to feeling bad about the turkey being lonesome; so each afternoon she would put it in the front seat of her car and drive around town so it could see people.  Her husband was quite old and they were patients of mine; I’ll call him George.  He was 88 years-old and was in a nursing home dying.  I got a call from Miss Lucy; she was a real short lady, but was a firey lady.  I got a call about","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422#t=4200.0,4200.0"},{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422/transcript/84868/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"in the morning and she said, “Judson, come quick; George is dying.”  So, I go to the nursing home and sure enough he is dying; but it takes about 30 minutes, so I sat there with her.  She said, “Do you know the story of George?”  I said, “No mame, I don’t.”  She said, “Well, George’s father was a physician with the Missouri Pacific Railroad in St. Louis and he never married.  When he was 65, he retired and moved to Newport.  He got bored and opened up a little office and hired a 25 year-old woman to be his nurse.  When George’s father was 67 and the nurse was 27, a romance developed.  They married and when George’s father was 69 and the nurse was 29, George was born.”  She stopped and didn’t say anything else.  She said, “Well, don’t you get the significance of that?” and I said, “No mame, I don’t” and she said, “George’s father was born 10 years after George Washington died.”  They had his funeral and it was in May; the sun was shining bright in the day and she showed up to the funeral dressed solidly in white from her hat to her shoes.  Everything was white and I said, “Miss Lucy, how come you’re all dressed in white?”  She said, “I came to celebrate his life and not morn his death” and I thought, “Now you know, that’s really something.” They had had the bishop here at the Episcopal Church to tell us about a priest he was sending here and had a big dinner after the service.  The bishop was describing this priest and said that he was an erudite.  Miss Lucy said, “Bishop, did you said that he was a morphadite?” I’ve known some funny people.”                                     \n\nJudson, It is obvious that you’re a ________; you love telling stories.  Curiosity, I know you write and I want to talk about that a little bit; but when did you start writing down your memories?  When did you start recording your memories and what was the impetuous for that?\n\n\n“I never recorded them.  I started writing fiction about 20 years ago.  Another doctor and I had the contract for the emergency room here and we supplied the physicians to work the emergency room.  Part of the agreement was that we had to work 4-6 nights a month each.  So, I worked a Monday night and a couple of Thursday nights a month.  Things would quiet down around","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422#t=4200.0,4260.0"},{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422/transcript/84868/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"or","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422#t=4260.0,4275.0"},{"id":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422/transcript/84868/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"and there might not be another patient until around 2:00am, but after about 2:00am, there was nothing.  After several years of that, I couldn’t go to sleep for a couple of hours and then go to sleep again there; so I said, “Well, I’m going to do something.”  So, I decided that I’d write a book.  I wrote a book I called, “Sweet Hope” and it was based on mine and Carolyn’s love affair.  It was not any good; I had my brother read the manuscript and he said, “I think that you can probably do better than that.”  I thought, “Well, I’ll try something else.”  I got the term “Sweet Hope” from the poem “A Maude Muller” where it says, “For all sad words, a tongue repent, the sadness leaves, it might have been” and it goes on and says,” all well for us all, there is some sweet hope that lives…blah blah”  so I used the “Sweet Hope.”  Then I wrote one called……my brother was a lawyer and he had told me about some bottled up, messed up, attempted bank robbery up in Shirley, Arkansas.  So, I thought, “Well, I’ll just write some fiction about that.”  So, I started writing and it took me six months or so and I wrote “The Boys from Possum Grape” and my brother read it and said, “You’ve got a winner now.”  I thought, “Well, this is pretty ballsy; let me see if I can write something seriously.”  So, I wrote “The Bud Parrott” story.  Word got out that I wrote books and I’d get a letter from New York or I’d get a letter from Salt Lake City wanting to read my manuscript.  I’d send it to them and they’d send back saying, “I want to publish your book.”  The New York Company said, “It will cost you $12,000.00 and we’ll give you 100 books in hardback and you sell them.  When you sell them, we will print some more.”  I said, “Wait a minute, I don’t want to do that.”  Salt Lake City came back with $5,000.00 and I didn’t want to do that; so, the manuscript sat aside for some time and Lynn Rowland who had the “Book and Frame” shop downtown said, “I wish you would let me sent your manuscript to a publisher I know” and I said, “Well, it won’t do any good, but go ahead.”  So, she sent it to Ted Parkhurst of Parkerhurst Brother’s Publishing.  Nothing happened and about 2-3 months later I get a call at the clinic saying, “This is Ted Parkhurst’s office and I want to publish your book.”  I said, “Well, how much is it going to cost me?” He said, “No, I am a royalty publisher.  I’ll give you a contract and I’ll publish your book.  If it sells, I’ll pay you some much royalty every six months.”  So, he published it and low and behold, it won the national award from reader’s favorite.  So, then later on I wrote “Miss. Carrie” and “Miss Carrie” is my favorite one.  It is about an old lady and a young boy and the friendship that they had.  But, that’s all the writing that I have done; I’ve not done any more and I wish I had.  I wish that I had written down all the things that have happened to me, innocent things from each day, and put it down 30, 40, or 50 years later; but I didn’t have the foresight to do it.”\n\nDo you keep a journal?\n\n\n\n“Well yeah, but about all I can remember are the things that I have told you all; there are other things that have happened, some things sad and some things not so sad.”\n\nTell us about your photography.\n\n“I started doing that just on a whim and I ended up having a dark room down at the clinic and I would eat supper and then go down there and start developing.  I did color prints, black and white, and sepia tones.  Sometimes one or two o’clock in the morning, I’d finally go home.  I really enjoyed doing it and then a friend and I opened a business in Memphis called “Fromax One Hour Photo” in Hickory Ridge Mall.  We started and got involved in that and I quit shooting pictures.  That did well for a while and then it didn’t do so well; the competition killed it and we got out by the skin of our teeth by selling it.  But my photography, I was over it.  By that time, I was doing wood work; but that was long ago.”\n\nSo are you always doing something?\n\n“Yeah, in 1984 or ’85 was when I was through with photography.  I wouldn’t know how to do it now.”                                 \n\nLet’s get back to the talk of medicine; let’s talk about the gratifying parts of the practice of medicine.  \n\n“Medicine to me was much more gratifying before the government and insurance companied took over.  It was one on one; doctor and patient.  You got to know your patients.  You knew where they lived and went into their homes doing house calls.  You worked harder.  You delivered babies.  You had happy people.  I think people respected physicians more then.  I can remember going out to Los Angeles to a CME thing and there was a good looking, Greek origin physician; a big guy, handsome who gave a talk and he was talking about physicians were no longer thought of like they were.  He said, “When I started out in medicine, I walked down the hall and nurses would stand up.  I was “Dr. this” and “Dr. that”; I was treated like a Greek God and now, I’m just a God dam Greek.”  It is sort of that way.  The physician is delegated to a role of being on a team, sort of.  So many people get involved; nurse practitioners are going to do this, social workers are going to do that, speech therapists are going to do this, schools are always wanting evaluations for this, that, and the other, and papers to be signed.  When I started and for the first 25 years, there was just the doctor and the patient.  I gave up OB when I was 57 years-old when I felt like they ought to build a grandstand in the delivery room because all these people were going to watch you deliver the baby.  When I delivered, it was a nurse, me, the patient, and I got to take the baby out to welcoming, happy, people.  Now, they all want to be in there watching and I didn’t like that.  It was simple.  There was a fee for an office visit, now there are 10, 12, or 14 fees and there is a lot, you know, people got their computers now with templates.  I think there is a lot of fiction writing in medical charts because the templates say some things that you may not have examined, like the eyes, ears, noses, and throat; but it says \n\n\nyou did.  Based on what that computer says and what the template puts down based on what your charge is is what the government or the insurance pays.  Before you put a patient in the hospital, took care of them, and sent them home; you tried to do it as expeditionally as possible and take care of your patient.  Now, somebody is going to tell you how long you can keep them in the hospital and if you go over that, somebody is going to chastise you for it.  So, I happily retired seven years ago.  I had started a chemical dependency unit in 1984 and in 2003, I gave it up and then another doctor gave it up in 2013.  The administrator talked me into coming out of retirement and going back to the chemical dependency unit and I‘m doing that now; I like that very much.”\n\nI only have qualms and I’ve only known you for a few hours now, but the “happily to retiring.”  When did you start thinking of retiring? \n\n“Carolyn and I have been married for 18-19 years. I had given up the emergency room and I had given up OB.”\n\nDid you enjoy the emergency room by the way?\n\n“No, I did not enjoy it at all; but somebody had to do it.”\n\n“We usually said when medical records became computerized…..”\n\nYeah, the EMRs.\n\n“Yeah; when they started talking about the computer and you know, you’re going to sit there and look at your computer rather than your patient; I said, “That’s it, I can’t take it anymore.”  I still use paper charts in the chemical dependency unit and somebody transcribes it and puts it in the computer.  I E-sign them, but……” \n\nHow many people were in your practice at the time you retired?\n\n“Ten.”\n\nAnd you had grown from two.\n\n“When I started out, we had three physicians, three nurses, a lab technician, and a receptionist.  When I left, we had ten doctors and ninety employees; it took all ninety of them to fill out everything that had to be filled out and do everything.”\n\nWhat was your clinic called?\n\n“Ouachita Clinic when I started and we took a couple of other guys in from another practice around twenty years ago, or not that long, maybe twenty years ago and we changed it to “Ouachita Valley Family Clinic.”\n\n\nSo you practiced family medicine from ’63 until when?\n\n“Until I quit in 2010; I practiced through the year 2010 and on December 31, 2010, I retired.” \n\nAnd you did the emergency room while you still had a family practice?\n\n“Yes.”\n\nThat sounds like a lot of work.\n\n“I would go to work at 6:30 or 7:00am on Monday morning.  I would go to the emergency room at 6:00pm and then go home at 8:00am to take a bath on Tuesday morning and be back at the office at 8:30am and then go home at 5:00pm.”\n\nLet’s talk about how your family adapted to this.\n\n“Well, my first marriage was not a happy marriage.  My wife had bad emotional problems and it ended in divorce with me having custody of my children.  My second marriage was no happy at all.  So, I don’t know whether they accepted it or what.”\n\nHow about the children?\n\n“The children did fine.”\n\nDid you encourage them to go into medicine?   \n\n“No, I told them. “Decide what you want to do; you know, you may not like medicine.”  My oldest son, the lawyer who has a fantastic practice, said, “You know, I should have thought about going into medicine with you.”  I don’t know why; he may have been just saying that for me, because he’s doing great in his law practice.  He has his own firm and…….so, I don’t know; it’s just too much government and too much insurance company telling you what to do or you know, “We’re going to do this.”  “You can go ahead and you can keep the patient in the hospital, but we’re not going to pay for it.”  Well, $400-$500 a day in the hospital now, the patients can’t afford that.”       \n\nWhat one, two, or three things have changed life, not just in medicine, but changed life in your adulthood more than anything else?  And this goes for you too Carolyn.\n\n“Computers; home computers.”\n\n“Iphones.\n\n”The Iphones”\n\nWhich is a computer.\n\n\n“Life is good.”\n\nWhat kind of impact did that have on your day to day life?  You already mentioned the MRs.\n\n“Yeah, well it really hadn’t changed my life too much; I just adapted and don’t know how I go along without a home computer now and I don’t think I could live without my iphone.  But life is good and it’s better now for me than it has ever been.  I have no pressure, no significant pressure, and a happy marriage with plenty of income; I just don’t have any complaints.” \n\n“And a lot of fishing.”\n\nA lot of fishing; so, that is your hobby? \n\n“Yeah.”\n\n Where do you go fishing?\n\n“Usually ponds; I have a friend who has a pond down in Stevens, about 5-6 acres loaded with fish, and that’s about the only place I fish now.  My dearest friend, he and I fish with a Bass Pro, Mark Davis, over at Ouachita several times over a year; 5-6 times this year.  He takes us, but that’s the only time we get on a big lake anymore.  I used to fish on big lakes, but not anymore.”\n\nYou use a casting rod, worms, spinner baits?\n\n“Casting rod; yeah, all kinds of baits”\n\nFly fish any?\n\n“I have up at Gaston’s for drought, but don’t do that very much.  I just primarily bass fish.”  \n\n Have you and you can interpret this question any way you want to, have you been well compensated for what you have chosen to do with your life?\n\n“Yeah; very well.”\n\nHow about you Carolyn?\n\n“Are you talking about financially?”\n\nAnyway you want to interpret it.\n\n“All I can say is that it is probably the last 25 years of my life that have been the best.  Financially, happiness; it has just been a great 25 years for us.”\n\nWe focused on him a lot; how long did you teach?\n\n\n“Oh, I never did teach.”\n\nYou never did teach.\n\n“I got that degree.”\n\nYou got that degree and never did teach.\n\n“When married, she was the head of the ……”\n\n“I was Director of First United Methodist Church Daycare in North Little Rock.”  \n\nSo you did teach?\n\n“I did have a staff of 25 and we had about 150 children.  It was my degree that got me that job; so, I finally passed something I could use.”\n\nBut you had known this guy since grad school.\n\n“Oh, we grew up together; yes.” \n\n“And we dated; I mean we were going to marry, but there was a misunderstanding after I went off to college; she didn’t get a letter that I had sent here.”\n\n“Oh, that’s a whole another story.”\n\n“That’s a long story and we won’t go into that; but had she got that letter, we would’ve married back then.”\n\n  Is there anything unusual or unique about Camden, Ouachita County, that you saw in the practice of medicine that people outside this area wouldn’t necessarily see on a regular basis?\n\n“It’s just a regular town.  When I first came here, the international paper company had a large mill and they pretty much ran things.  They owned the country club and had 2500 employees; it was…….and when they left, the town went into a deep funk for 2-3 years, but it’s come back pretty well.”\n\nWhat’s the economic base now?\n\n“Military plants, ammunition plants; that sort of thing out in east Camden.”\n\nDo they employee a lot of people?\n\n“Yes; Lockey Martin probably has 1200 employees.  Aira Jet probably has 500-600; there are several companies like that out here now.”\n\n\nHow many doctors are here now?\n\n“I’d say maybe 12; no, 15.”  \n\nIs there anything else you would like to share? \n\n“I want to tell you a story.  Years ago, I looked on the door of my examining room and I’m going to use the real name of these people; the name of the lady was Cora Horn for me to see, a new patient.  I went in and she was sitting in the room.  She was a frumpy little ole lady; obviously very poor.  She had on a gin gum dress that was worn and fragile and beside her was a man named Doug Yan Horn.  He had on overalls and a khaki shirt fraid at the collar with broken shoes.  He had knarled hands with a lot of teeth missing and a metal hat; like a WWI helmet.  They had driven in in an old village truck.  I went in an introduced myself and asked, “What can I do for you, Ms. Horn?”  He spoke up and said, “There is nothing wrong with Ms. Lilly”; he called her Ms. Lilly and I never knew why, but he said, “I just wanted to bring her in and let you met her.  I wanted to look at you and see if I thought you were good enough to take care of her.”  I was impressed with that and so, we visited for a while.   I thought, “You know, that man has dignity.”  He was destitute, but he had dignity.  So, he finally said, “Well, you’ll do” and they left.  I took care of her for several years until finally she just wore out.  I had her in the hospital and she was dying.  Mr. Horn stayed right by her; I mean, he never left her bedside.  Finally she died and they took her to the funeral home.  I didn’t see him for a while and he came in one day and brought me some tomatoes.  They were really good tomatoes and he brought me some really big pears; he called them pineapple pears.  We got to talking about his garden and by that time, I had a garden.  He said, “You need to come out to my house and see my garden” so on the following Sunday I went out there.  I found it outside of Bearden and it was a dilapidated house; several of the rooms the roofing caved in with only two rooms that were dry, a bedroom and a kitchen.  It was disholved and I felt so sorry for him.  When I looked at his garden, I took a bunch of pictures and I have those pictures that I took of him that day; he had a fantastic garden.  I said, “Mr. Horn, what do you do with all this?  You can’t possibly eat all of this.”  He said, “Oh, I take it to Bearden on Saturday at the gazebo and I give it away to all the poor widow women.”  I thought, “Oh, that’s really nice.”  We got to talking about Ms. Cora and I asked where she was buried.  He said, “She’s buried on the outside of Fordyce.”  I said, “Well, I guess when you die, you’re going to be buried next to her?” he said, “Oh no; I’m not going to be buried there.”  He said, “When Ms. Lilly was dying, she motioned to me to come here.  When I bent down, she whispered in my ear and said, “Bill, I never loved you.  I only married you to have someone take care of me.  I always loved Joe.”  He was her first husband. “I want you to promise me Bill, I mean promise me; when I die you will bury me next to Joe.”  I sort of got a little chocked up and he said, “So, I did; I buried her next to Joe.”  I said, “Mr. Horn, are you’re going to be buried next to her?”  He said, “Oh no; I’m not going to be buried next to her husband.  She didn’t love me and that’s fine; they can throw me in the ditch, I don’t care.”  I never saw him again after that day and I think that he probably was embarrassed that he told me that and he just didn’t feel \n\n\nlike facing me again knowing that.  That was the saddest thing that ever happened to me and I will remember it to the day I die.  Mr. Horn finally ended up dying in Fordyce in a nursing home and I don’t know what happened to him.  I never saw him again.”\n\nThat is sad.\n\nWhat did you think the future of medicine would be when you got out?\n\n“When I got out?”\n\nOf training; your internship.\n\n“Oh, I thought it would stay like that forever.  You know, you make house calls and you’d know your patients; they’d love you and you’d love them.  You’d carry your medicine bag unlocked in your car with narcotics in it and you didn’t have to worry about it.  You’d have a little chart about this big having one word; tonsillitis RXCR byclini.  Prices might go up, but it would never change and boy, was I wrong.”            \n\nWhat do you think the future of medicine holds?\n\n“I think it is going to be primarily the majority of physicians is going to be women.   There are going to be a lot of mid-easterners.  Men are going to go into things like finance, petroleum, oil, and legal.  When I graduated med school, there was one physician in my class, Joshua Nelders.  Now, the majority of the graduated of med students are women.  Most of the women doctors that I have seen who came into family practice; you know, they are mothers and have families.  The ones that I have seen do not seem to want to work as hard as we did and I went to work sometimes at 5:00am or 5:30 and got home at 5:00pm and was happy with it.  I think there are going to be more and more government control and more and more insurance dominating how medicine goes.  I don’t think that it is going to be as fun as it was.  When I started, medicine was fun.  There was just sort of a feeling about it that….you got a call and maybe had to get up at night to go to homebodies’ house and you hated to get up and go, but you were glad you could.  When you got there, you enjoyed seeing them and they were so appreciative of you.  Now, oh I guess in the last year or two, I made maybe two house calls just for old friends or something.  When I left, you did not know your patients like you did before.”    \n\nNow my last question; I want you both to pretend I’m not here and you are talking to your great, great grandchildren.  To whom you are probably just a picture on the wall; what would you like to be able to say to them about yourself or about what you would hope for them?\n\n“I’m going to let him go first.”\n\n\n\n“I’d say I did my best.  I tried hard.  I like what I did and hope I left people better off than what they were when I had my encounter with them.  I hope that they can find something to do with their lives that are as emotionally rewarding and financially rewarding as what I found.”\n\nCarolyn? \n\n“I would like for them to be kind and thoughtful people.  Find something in life that is worthwhile and makes them happy regardless of what it is.  Just enjoy life and hopefully be in a position that you can do that.”          \n\nThank you folks; this was a wonderful interview.  That concludes our interview.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://centerforthehistoryoffamilymedicine.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2312/collection_resources/161592/file/293422#t=4275.0,6165.39257"}]}]}]}