FROM ANOTHER ERA

It's been said that there aren't any good old fashioned family doctors anymore because there aren't any good old fashioned families anymore. Be that true or not, with the passing of Dr. Penton Wilson last week, there is one less good old fashioned country doctor in this world, who was from another era.

Doc Wilson will be remembered by hundreds, as a fiercely independent and yes. often times unorthodox physician, old Doc practiced his unique style of medicine until they made him quit and then he did it on the side for as long as he was able. there's an old joke that the American Medical Association ordered psychiatric tests for one of it's members who was caught making house calls. If there is a kernel of truth to that quip, Doc Wilson may have been the one who inspired that gag.

Stories abound in and around this area of this kindly man from Georgia who was our only Doctor for so many many years. Stories about house calls in the middle of the night to remote places in the middle of the jillikens, on more than one occasion risking his own life to cross flooded low water bridges in the old cars he was known to nurse down these country roads long after most mechanics would have given up on them.

Doc was by no means perfect, an affliction all of us share and most admit, but he was dedicated. Toward the end of his long career he sill practiced out of his makeshift motel rooms, dispensing remedies and advice or giving "treatment" on his bench-like examining room table. He could sew you up with the best of them, the old timers say, as well as your dog or horse if they needed it.

He was famous for his "sliding fee scale" long before such practices were given that name, but rather than filling out endless forms about your family's current financial situation or entering reams of data into a computer, which he never owned, he seemed to base it simply on how much you had on you.Or how much he thought you could afford.. Doc may also have been the one who inspired the story of the practitioner who give one of his male patients six months to live. When the man hadn't paid his bill halfway through the following year, the doctor gave him another six months. Doc Wilson took a lot of IOUs, many do doubt still uncollected.

There are undoubtedly more tales of Doc Wilson's escapades than there are Medicare drug plans today,way too many to list, but almost everyone who has one says, "He helped a lot of people." Many adding"...whether they could afford it or not." Admirable epitaphs with which to leave this world.

I can still hear him say "now my little Lady or my little Man ","can you tell me where you hurt or what brings you in today?