NOTES, lETTERS AND STORIES{C}
Recollections, BY rICKEY bATES
Limited: Unsung Hero's {Listing only, short story Summary articles by request, Full Ariticles Limited to publishing Agreements}
INCLUDING: UNSUNG HERO'S {LISTING ONLY}
EARL LEE, TIPPI HEDRON, LINDA RONSTADT, THE SNOW LEOPARD, THE BEST ADVERTISEMENT IN THE WORLD, JAPAN'S FIASCO, FARM AID TRUE GREEN MUSIC, THE MAGIC OF MUSIC, ERIC CLAPTON, PAUL NEWMAN, BARBARA EDEN, WILLIAM TYNDALE, MARTIN LUTHER, BIBLICAL PRINCIPLES IMPROVES BUSINESS RELATIONSHIPS, THE SCARS THAT MADE HER INNER BEAUTY, MY DOGS ARE ALIENS, DOCTOR TAYLOR C. ESTES (GREAT GRANDPA}.HEDY LAMARR, RONNIE SPECTOR I WILL I WILL, JOHN MELLENCAMP, EARLY CAT STEVENS NOT TOO LATE, WOODSTOCK NOT JUST A CONCERT, WHAT THE HELL IS BOONES FARM?, A PRODUCT TO SAVE A LIFE BY READING, BOB SEGER THE WRIGLEY'S AND POPEYE (THE 3RD ONE), THE HORSES ASS AWARDS, BOEING & LEVI-OOPS AND AHS, ALLOWING THE UNSOLVED, PRANKS FUNNY THEN AND NOW, THAT STILL SMALL VOICE (STOP TALKING HONEY I CAN'T HEAR IT), YOU'LL KNOW IT WHEN YOU HEAR YOUR KNEES KNOCKING, THANKS PROFESSOR ANDERSON, UNIMAGINABLE STRENGTH OF AN ANGEL, THEY LOOKED, SANG & PLAYED GOOD, PLUS I THINK THEY'RE DRY BY NOW, THEY USED MY LIGHTING NORA JONES, CANDY DULFER DO IT AGAIN, THE BLUE MARLINS AND ALIENS DATE, 500 LETTERS CAN'T BE WRONG, TOM WAS THE 2ND MAVERICK TO FLY UPSIDE DOWN, DENY; DON'T MEAN IT AIN'T SO, GOOD WISHES YOU DON'T REGRET, SENSELESS SILENCE IS TOO COSTLY, CREATIVE MAYOR ON THE MOVE, GOVERNOR'S OFFICE INVITES JOAN COLLINS, IT'S TIME TO QUIT JUDO, STEVEN SPIELBURG HAS OUR PULSE, GOD BLESS OLIVER STONE ANYWAY, ADMIT YOU KNOW THE TRUTH, CAN YOU HEAR ME? HOWABOUT YOURSELF?, ROLLING TO FIRST BASE, THE WHOLE WORLD CAN PLAY, YOU PAID HOW MUCH FOR THAT?, YOU DESERVED TO BE HORSE WHIPPED, IF GOD DISPENSED IT.YVETTE MIMIEUX HE DID GOOD. DIAN SAWYER HAS HER PLACE. ANONYMOUS BUT NOT FORGOTTEN, LOST ART, THEY WILL RETURN, THANK YOU NOTES, THE COST OF LOST CONSCIENCE, A GOOD SPENT MINUTE, EMBERS FROM THE CINDERS, SILENT RALLY CRIES, NOT DEAF BUT DUMB, I'LL HELP, JACK... YOU HAD JACKIE, ...NOT ENOUGH TO BE ANIMALS?, SKY CITY REMNENTS, BLUE JACKET TORRENTIAL CLEARING, NATIVE AMERICAN DRIVEN, GAUNTLETS AND GAMCUTS, WOMEN MAKE GOOD MEN. SILENCED VOICES OF REASON, WELCOME ABOARD THE SS STUPID, ALOHA
Reproduction of the article from the
Globe Democrat Story of Dr. Taylor C. Estes
One of his daughters, Ida Belle Estes Richardson-(His daughter/Our "Grandma")
One of her daughters, Shirley Estes-Richardson Bates-(His Grand-daughter/Our "Mom")
Meet "Our Great Grandpa, Doc Estes"
Written by Staff Reporter: 1926
Globe Democrat Story of Dr. Taylor C. Estes
One of his daughters, Ida Belle Estes Richardson-(His daughter/Our "Grandma")
One of her daughters, Shirley Estes-Richardson Bates-(His Grand-daughter/Our "Mom")
Meet "Our Great Grandpa, Doc Estes"
Written by Staff Reporter: 1926
Discovering a martyr or hero in your lineage doesn't change who you are, but it may inspire resolutions more in line with who you hope to become.
The Globe-Democrat Magazine, October 24, 1926
An OZARK DO
An OZARK DO
such degree as few men recover from, he rises straight and unbent as the sturdy oak to mount to his saddle when the summons for aid comes. Off up the rock-strewn trails of the forest-covered mountains sides he spurs, regardless of the stresses of such riding. Of the drain that irregular hours make upon vitality, of the fact that he probably won’t be paid. A true example of the type of general practitioner whose heroic services carried the nation through pioneer days, who braved discomfort, hardship and actual suffering himself that others might be given relief.
But years haven’t left Dr. Estes untouched. Although never tall, he has as yet resisted that tendency of age to shrink and shrivel upon itself. His hair is long and white—faded; yet his brows are bushy and tend to a bit of color, while his luxuriant mustache is still tinged brown. Clear blue eyes gleam at you, but his hearing is poor and conversation has to carried on in shouts. he is thin, but wiry—there is still ample strength in those limbs to carry him long distances in the saddle and bear him to his daily tasks, despite the fact that he treated himself through two cases of pneumonia, two of influenza and one of rabies. Still other trouble had pulled him down, bit by bit, and age and work have their toll, so that his chief necessity when not going forth on an errand of mercy is to rest upon the cot that is the principal article of furniture of the one-room house in which he’s been “camping out” this summer.
Dr. Estes was born in Hendrix County, Ind. son of William O. Estes, a native of Virginia. He received his generstartedal education in the public schools of his day and his medical training at Chicago Medical School. His first practice was sixty years ago in Cumberland County, Illinois, where he remained until the second year after the close of the war between the States. Then he located in Pulaski County, Mo., for a short time and finally found his select spot in the Current River country twenty-five years ago. He has "raised two families," to use his own words and of thirteen children born eleven are still alive and grown up. Two daughters and a son live in St. Louis.
Dr. Estes has been not only physician and confidential adviser to thousands of families, but also during the busiest years of his practice in Pulaski County was ordained minister and evangelist. For two years he was evangelist, and during that time organized churches, converted many, baptized hundreds, including two of his own children. Many times he was called from the church to the bedside of the sick; from the wedding to the funeral. My dear mother toId me to be a man, and that includes all that is noble and worthy, " Dr. Estes says in describing the impulses and motives that keep him struggling year after year, further beyond and the prime of life, chiefly in the interests of others.
The territory appertaining to his doctor's residence extends in a radius of sixteen or more miles in each direction. Of course, he is not, the only physician in the territory and he does not have the burden of going extreme distances to succor the sick. Yet his average trip, he estimates is twelve miles over the mountain tops. Fifty miles is the longest single trip he remembers to have made. In his previous practice in Pulaski county, where there were fewer doctors,-his range was twenty miles in each direction. "It is hard, hard," says Dr. Estes in speaking of his duties. "I am on horseback all the time, and for the last twelve months have been feeling it more and more. I can't make time any more, as I once could; it takes six hours for a twelve-mile trip in this section."
Dr. Estes has worn out many horses during his career. How many, he can't remember. A horse does not, last long carrying a man at all hours over the ridges of the Ozarks. In Pulaski County and in the earlier of his residence on the Current River, it took a stable of six excellent saddle horses to keep him mounted for all his ca11s. Nowadays, however, he keeps but one.
In his blue denim shirt, collar open at the neck, jeans pants held up by galluses, buckskin shoes, Dr. Estes does not look the scientist and physician which he is; yet he never has failed to have and hold the confidence of his community throughout which and in neighboring fields he holds high reputation and is in demand, especially in pneumonia cases.
For this wilderness practitioner has the reputation of never losing any patients of the dread disease. He says of himself that he has a particular style of treatment for this trouble--not so much of the use of drugs as proper care for the patient. He has absolutely banned .opium from his list of medicines for this disease. Pneumonia is very prevalent in this territory, especially during the winter and early spring, for the natives do not always properly protect themselves from the elements when outside and their homes are not always ideal for their protection at the night time. _ A genera1 horror of night air also derogatory to their health during these periods, The doctor contends; and he hoIds, contrary to general mountaineer belief, that night air is far sweeter and purer and more healthy than day air is.
Dr. Estes contends that, treatment of pneumonia is one of his simplest problems, and declares that it is foolish for a doctor to lose a case. He points out that the nation loses too many "big-men --leaders of thought and action from pneumonia.
Recalling the days of the world war and the epidemic of influenza, he told of hardships and struggles to keep up with the disease through his territory. “Almost, everybody in this section of the country had it” he declared. Some homes had as many as six cases at once- The big trouble was to get them to keep windows and doors open. The biggest strain, of course, was getting about to all the cases and watching them through the crisis."
Most of the ordinary practices of the mountain doctor is handling the ordinary illnesses of human beings, with the added number of accidents from falling trees, ax cuts, accidental shotgun wounds and other accidental injuries from lumbering, hunting and fishing; and the many obstetric cases.
Dr. Estes has had the pleasure of helping more than 14OO children into the world, he says. Many of these were twins. One woman whom he attended some years ago had two successive sets of twins and the good doctor counts these children as among the favorites of the hundreds whom he can list as being among his friends. It is in this element of a doctor's experiences that he can find comfort and pleasure, Dr. Estes says, although it always is a pleasure to give surcease to the suffering and health to the sickly. But it is in the helpless youngsters that the old-time general practitioner found his greatest reward for the strains and hardships of the life he was compelled to live. Conditions in the Ripley County country, in the districts outside the large towns and off the good highways, where it always is possible to get doctors quickly, have improved materially in the past ten years, Dr. Estes has found. Not only is there less actual sickness requiring the attentions of a physician, but' health in general is better except for the malaria, which always has been a factor in this territory. There is still much malaria among the inhabitants, but they are gradually improving the condition. Dr. Estes laments, however, that most of the people in the scattered territory wait too long before calling for the physician; as a result, it is either impossible to save them or a cure requires long and heroic treatment.
The 1ack of good nurses also is one of his laments. In the homes, he says, the doctor finds but little, if any, training in nursing and caring for the sick. Graduate nurses, over these many years have been generally unobtainable in that country, although now one can be brought in once in a whi1e. The trouble is, according to Dr. Estes, that the folks at home don't know anything to do for a patient except according to the instructions of the doctor and he can't always be there to give them just when they are needed.
But, Dr. Estes remembers, there has been more done for sanitation throughout the region during the last ten years, with the coming of railroads, than in the twenty five years before that. And the recent construction of new hard roads leading in all directions throughout the Ozarks, he believes, will give further new impetus to the movement and still further improve the basic condition of the people and lessen the strain upon the general practitioner. He finds that there is less sickness in the last few years than during the early part, of his mission and lays the increased good health to the improved sanitation.
His pay? Dr. Estes seldom or never is paid at the time he makes the long, twelve-mi1e, six hour horseback ride to attend a patient. Most Iikeiy such pay as comes will reach him long afterwards and as like1y as not, it will not be in cash. The biggest proportion of patients in such a district as this was, until recent improvements came to it,, cannot afford to pay a physician for saving a life, for it is all they can do to sustain the life that has been snatched form blackness. Those who have surplus crops pay in hay and corn, in wood and forage, occasionally in a chicken or a bit of game. Cash is not a common commodity reaching the physician. And many--far Eoo many, Dr. Estes firmly believes--pay nothing. Yet all receive the same cheerful service, the same rushing about through the night, hidden forests, where leaves and branches strike the rider in the face and try to tear him from his steed, while rocks and creepers seek to trip the horse himself and the angry, wind-driven rain drenches everything; all receive the same careful examination, the same application of medical knowledge and diagnostic skill. The same treatment designed only to cure. It is service, not pay, that leads the general practitioner about the far-flung mountain sides on his errand of mercy.
Yet there must be other compensations, else Dr. Estes would not be so cheerful, so content with his life. . Perhaps it is the hours alone when he can read about, the progress of medicine and the latest developments in the world of that, science. Perhaps it is the research work and experimentation that he can manage--little enough, but some. Perhaps it is the things he writes--for this doctor finds relaxation and amusement in preparing some of his thoughts and experiences for publication. Perhaps it is those 1400 children, many of whom he has watched grow through manhood and womanhood even to their Iast illness.
And as for his own long Iife, Dr. Estes has many reasons. The hearty exercise, the healthy hours in the open, the rigid discipline of simple life and simple food, all have their bearings. There is too, he declares banning of whiskey and other alcoholic liquors, which took place in St. Louis during a drive from Illinois in his younger year, when he broke a bottle on a rock. He doesn't smoke, but chews tobacco. But, believes Dr. Estes, the way to reach age is to do continual good for others.
But years haven’t left Dr. Estes untouched. Although never tall, he has as yet resisted that tendency of age to shrink and shrivel upon itself. His hair is long and white—faded; yet his brows are bushy and tend to a bit of color, while his luxuriant mustache is still tinged brown. Clear blue eyes gleam at you, but his hearing is poor and conversation has to carried on in shouts. he is thin, but wiry—there is still ample strength in those limbs to carry him long distances in the saddle and bear him to his daily tasks, despite the fact that he treated himself through two cases of pneumonia, two of influenza and one of rabies. Still other trouble had pulled him down, bit by bit, and age and work have their toll, so that his chief necessity when not going forth on an errand of mercy is to rest upon the cot that is the principal article of furniture of the one-room house in which he’s been “camping out” this summer.
Dr. Estes was born in Hendrix County, Ind. son of William O. Estes, a native of Virginia. He received his generstartedal education in the public schools of his day and his medical training at Chicago Medical School. His first practice was sixty years ago in Cumberland County, Illinois, where he remained until the second year after the close of the war between the States. Then he located in Pulaski County, Mo., for a short time and finally found his select spot in the Current River country twenty-five years ago. He has "raised two families," to use his own words and of thirteen children born eleven are still alive and grown up. Two daughters and a son live in St. Louis.
Dr. Estes has been not only physician and confidential adviser to thousands of families, but also during the busiest years of his practice in Pulaski County was ordained minister and evangelist. For two years he was evangelist, and during that time organized churches, converted many, baptized hundreds, including two of his own children. Many times he was called from the church to the bedside of the sick; from the wedding to the funeral. My dear mother toId me to be a man, and that includes all that is noble and worthy, " Dr. Estes says in describing the impulses and motives that keep him struggling year after year, further beyond and the prime of life, chiefly in the interests of others.
The territory appertaining to his doctor's residence extends in a radius of sixteen or more miles in each direction. Of course, he is not, the only physician in the territory and he does not have the burden of going extreme distances to succor the sick. Yet his average trip, he estimates is twelve miles over the mountain tops. Fifty miles is the longest single trip he remembers to have made. In his previous practice in Pulaski county, where there were fewer doctors,-his range was twenty miles in each direction. "It is hard, hard," says Dr. Estes in speaking of his duties. "I am on horseback all the time, and for the last twelve months have been feeling it more and more. I can't make time any more, as I once could; it takes six hours for a twelve-mile trip in this section."
Dr. Estes has worn out many horses during his career. How many, he can't remember. A horse does not, last long carrying a man at all hours over the ridges of the Ozarks. In Pulaski County and in the earlier of his residence on the Current River, it took a stable of six excellent saddle horses to keep him mounted for all his ca11s. Nowadays, however, he keeps but one.
In his blue denim shirt, collar open at the neck, jeans pants held up by galluses, buckskin shoes, Dr. Estes does not look the scientist and physician which he is; yet he never has failed to have and hold the confidence of his community throughout which and in neighboring fields he holds high reputation and is in demand, especially in pneumonia cases.
For this wilderness practitioner has the reputation of never losing any patients of the dread disease. He says of himself that he has a particular style of treatment for this trouble--not so much of the use of drugs as proper care for the patient. He has absolutely banned .opium from his list of medicines for this disease. Pneumonia is very prevalent in this territory, especially during the winter and early spring, for the natives do not always properly protect themselves from the elements when outside and their homes are not always ideal for their protection at the night time. _ A genera1 horror of night air also derogatory to their health during these periods, The doctor contends; and he hoIds, contrary to general mountaineer belief, that night air is far sweeter and purer and more healthy than day air is.
Dr. Estes contends that, treatment of pneumonia is one of his simplest problems, and declares that it is foolish for a doctor to lose a case. He points out that the nation loses too many "big-men --leaders of thought and action from pneumonia.
Recalling the days of the world war and the epidemic of influenza, he told of hardships and struggles to keep up with the disease through his territory. “Almost, everybody in this section of the country had it” he declared. Some homes had as many as six cases at once- The big trouble was to get them to keep windows and doors open. The biggest strain, of course, was getting about to all the cases and watching them through the crisis."
Most of the ordinary practices of the mountain doctor is handling the ordinary illnesses of human beings, with the added number of accidents from falling trees, ax cuts, accidental shotgun wounds and other accidental injuries from lumbering, hunting and fishing; and the many obstetric cases.
Dr. Estes has had the pleasure of helping more than 14OO children into the world, he says. Many of these were twins. One woman whom he attended some years ago had two successive sets of twins and the good doctor counts these children as among the favorites of the hundreds whom he can list as being among his friends. It is in this element of a doctor's experiences that he can find comfort and pleasure, Dr. Estes says, although it always is a pleasure to give surcease to the suffering and health to the sickly. But it is in the helpless youngsters that the old-time general practitioner found his greatest reward for the strains and hardships of the life he was compelled to live. Conditions in the Ripley County country, in the districts outside the large towns and off the good highways, where it always is possible to get doctors quickly, have improved materially in the past ten years, Dr. Estes has found. Not only is there less actual sickness requiring the attentions of a physician, but' health in general is better except for the malaria, which always has been a factor in this territory. There is still much malaria among the inhabitants, but they are gradually improving the condition. Dr. Estes laments, however, that most of the people in the scattered territory wait too long before calling for the physician; as a result, it is either impossible to save them or a cure requires long and heroic treatment.
The 1ack of good nurses also is one of his laments. In the homes, he says, the doctor finds but little, if any, training in nursing and caring for the sick. Graduate nurses, over these many years have been generally unobtainable in that country, although now one can be brought in once in a whi1e. The trouble is, according to Dr. Estes, that the folks at home don't know anything to do for a patient except according to the instructions of the doctor and he can't always be there to give them just when they are needed.
But, Dr. Estes remembers, there has been more done for sanitation throughout the region during the last ten years, with the coming of railroads, than in the twenty five years before that. And the recent construction of new hard roads leading in all directions throughout the Ozarks, he believes, will give further new impetus to the movement and still further improve the basic condition of the people and lessen the strain upon the general practitioner. He finds that there is less sickness in the last few years than during the early part, of his mission and lays the increased good health to the improved sanitation.
His pay? Dr. Estes seldom or never is paid at the time he makes the long, twelve-mi1e, six hour horseback ride to attend a patient. Most Iikeiy such pay as comes will reach him long afterwards and as like1y as not, it will not be in cash. The biggest proportion of patients in such a district as this was, until recent improvements came to it,, cannot afford to pay a physician for saving a life, for it is all they can do to sustain the life that has been snatched form blackness. Those who have surplus crops pay in hay and corn, in wood and forage, occasionally in a chicken or a bit of game. Cash is not a common commodity reaching the physician. And many--far Eoo many, Dr. Estes firmly believes--pay nothing. Yet all receive the same cheerful service, the same rushing about through the night, hidden forests, where leaves and branches strike the rider in the face and try to tear him from his steed, while rocks and creepers seek to trip the horse himself and the angry, wind-driven rain drenches everything; all receive the same careful examination, the same application of medical knowledge and diagnostic skill. The same treatment designed only to cure. It is service, not pay, that leads the general practitioner about the far-flung mountain sides on his errand of mercy.
Yet there must be other compensations, else Dr. Estes would not be so cheerful, so content with his life. . Perhaps it is the hours alone when he can read about, the progress of medicine and the latest developments in the world of that, science. Perhaps it is the research work and experimentation that he can manage--little enough, but some. Perhaps it is the things he writes--for this doctor finds relaxation and amusement in preparing some of his thoughts and experiences for publication. Perhaps it is those 1400 children, many of whom he has watched grow through manhood and womanhood even to their Iast illness.
And as for his own long Iife, Dr. Estes has many reasons. The hearty exercise, the healthy hours in the open, the rigid discipline of simple life and simple food, all have their bearings. There is too, he declares banning of whiskey and other alcoholic liquors, which took place in St. Louis during a drive from Illinois in his younger year, when he broke a bottle on a rock. He doesn't smoke, but chews tobacco. But, believes Dr. Estes, the way to reach age is to do continual good for others.
\
We used to read the medical journals and articles of my Great Grandfather's research and treatments. Some were lost in a robbery from my brother's apartment after serving in the Navy.
We're still hoping to find them or locate another distant relative with some
yet to be discovered in a time capsule of treasures.
Doc. Estes "Beyond Current Decency" A true story © by Rickey Bates
The making of the story; The Screen Play Outline, Screen Play First Draft, 5 Minute Producers Pitch
The Casting Calls for the lead, are on your short list of obviously perfectly suited roles.
(3 guesses and I bet you could guess all 3 by your own preference.)
Sponsorship: 5 sources all of which have commercial and/or viable interests in
supporting through ads in commercials, for such a story, dependent upon cast.
We're still hoping to find them or locate another distant relative with some
yet to be discovered in a time capsule of treasures.
Doc. Estes "Beyond Current Decency" A true story © by Rickey Bates
The making of the story; The Screen Play Outline, Screen Play First Draft, 5 Minute Producers Pitch
The Casting Calls for the lead, are on your short list of obviously perfectly suited roles.
(3 guesses and I bet you could guess all 3 by your own preference.)
Sponsorship: 5 sources all of which have commercial and/or viable interests in
supporting through ads in commercials, for such a story, dependent upon cast.
