Characters No. 2 - May 8, 2014

As published in the White River Current - Thursday May 8, 2014

A new couple moved to town a few weeks ago, hailing from Texas, purchasing a home in West Calico Rock.  David showed up at the church bible study one Wednesday night carrying his Greek New Testament and joined into the discussion with real gusto.  He has been a regular ever since and has also joined our Sunday school class and become a frequent visitor to the worship service.  He is a very interesting person and I have really enjoyed our conversations.  In one of our verbal visits he mentioned his wife and said her name was Linda Withay.  I thought, what an unusual middle name, probably passed down from another generation.  I have tried for several years to get the parents of a soon-to-be-born baby to name their new daughter “Reeda Macksine” (kinda rolls off your tongue, doesn’t it?)  It hasn’t happened yet but I still have hopes.  Anita’s niece and husband, Lynn and Larry, named their two daughters “Lynna and Lara” so, you see, it has happened before and is sure to happen again (soon I hope).  Another example is George’s daughter, “Georgia.”  Before I go too far with this, I guess I had better confess that David’s wife is actually Lynda (you know, “with-a-Y”).  I had the good fortune to actually meet Lynda the other day and found her to be a very friendly, outgoing young lady.  Welcome this delightful couple to our community when you have the opportunity.  This is not the first time I have written about my fascination with names.  It was called to my attention at church recently when someone asked for prayer for “Jackie.”  Our pastor inquired if that was a boy or girl.  The point is, some names are used interchangeably with either sex.  Anita’s boyfriend in high school was “Shirley” a name that he shortened to “Shirl” as an adult.  Don threatened to call off the marriage to Maxine if her brother, Francis, didn’t change his name to Frank (he did and the marriage has lasted for over 62 years.)  In the song “Frankie and Johnnie,” which one is the male?  I have known both boys and girls with those names.  Other examples are Billy (Billie), Bobby (Bobbie), Terry (Teri) and many others too numerous to mention and I think you get the point.  You are probably wondering where I am going with this so I will simply segue into the characters series that I started in the last issue.  His son’s name was Beverly who was married to Zela (Wyatt); they were the parents of Janet, a pretty girl who was in my school class in the Calico Rock school.  His wife’s name was Ruth.  I wrote about her in an episode several months ago.  She was a Quaker, a member of the Friends Church, but was a regular attender of our church and was well known by us boys for her lengthy prayers.  The first initial of his first name was a “B” and might also have been “Beverly” but we always called him “Doctor.”  He was a veterinarian.  A few months after the episode described in the last issue concerning our milk cow and her boyfriend, she presented us with a cute little male calf (we had hoped for a female), but there was trouble ahead.  She had a retained placenta, or in cattleman’s talk “she didn’t shed her afterbirth.”  A call was made to the vet and when he arrived, I was designated for the job as veterinarian assistant, a very important position for an eight year old boy.  My granddad put the rope around our cow’s neck and stood at her head to contain her.  My duties were two-fold; I was to stand to the left of her backside, hold her tail in my left hand and a hold a pan that contained a strong smelling soapy disinfectant solution in my right hand.  The doctor rolled up his right sleeve to his shoulder, soaped up his arm and, after reminding me not to turn loose of the tail, took up his position at the rear of our cow and went to work.  After removing the objectionable tissue from the uterine wall and replacing it with a few large tablets of some type of medicine to prevent infection, the job was completed.  A very eye-opening experience for a young boy but a part of my growing up that I will always remember.  I don’t have any memory of other experiences with the doctor, but I did hear rumors of some of his other activities.  Some of the wags even designated a small community a few miles north of here as “Jacksonville” because of his frequent visits.  As I said, those were only rumors and I was too young to understand anyway.