February 11, 1999

One of the most prominent physicians around the Wool Capital is a guy named Ralph Chase. Native to San Angelo, he has spent his professional career doctoring on sick children without any regard to the part of town the kids lived in, or country of origin of the parents. His clientele range from the coin-short barrio to hombres covered in dough seven inches deep on all surfaces. I fit in the Doc Chase legacy for having been a volume customer for his early pediatric practice as the father of eight children.

Eight patients under one roof was a matter of important business consequences for the oldtime Angelo pediatricians. Doctors then valued the epidemic potential of large families. Doctor Chase and his colleagues realized such a mob of kids, scattered from the playing field in the Noelke backyard up to the 4H barn and over to the schoolhouse, spread a lot of germs in a school the size of Mertzon's.

Modern-day healers have a much different view. The advent of fertility drugs may well turn pediatrics into a booming business. Eight births staggered over a dozen years can't start to reach the drama of octuplets. These modern mothers could shell out one whole branch of our family tree in a single hospital visit.

After the children grew up, I hung on, hoping to cash in on his rising fame. Granted, about the only chance a herder has of sharing in an associate's success is to sell a dumptruck load of gravel to run the foundation for his statue in the park, or maybe enjoy a few fried chicken dinners at award ceremonies.

But as I reported before, I tried to persuade him to endorse a wind colic medicine, or put out Doctor Chase's quick-dry diaper rash salve. Ninety percent of the Spanish-speaking households in the Wool Capital knew him by name or reputation. Had he listened, we could have bottled a baby salsa so popular it'd have made the Heinz baby food folks think they had been struck down by Planned Parenthood in the first inning of play. (The "salsa" was a conflict of interest, as he taught many a Maria and Josephina how to feed their children to prevent an anemia that once ran rampant in the Mexican people.)

One thing I knew better than to try was to talk him into a ranch deal. He may not have seen the future of cashing in on baby formulas or brass safety pins, but he sure wasn't a prospect for throwing off his hard-earned money on a horse ranch or a papered cow operation, like a lot of Angelo doctors.

Most of the time in our letters, I remembered to omit reference to the current and continuous eternal miseries befalling my grand calling to the West. But a few weeks ago, I strayed off into a litany of catastrophes of fallen markets and failed thunderclouds in an e-mail letter of such graphic sorrow, Doc's long ago oath to heal and comfort mankind was activated.

He replied in what was to be his first online diagnosis: "You have confusion of psyche, or what is known as psychasthenia. This malady of mind was found mainly in wives who lived in dugouts in the drouths on the Great Plains in the 19th Century. The wind, sun, snow and blowing dirt these people had to face left them addled of brain as they struggled to live."

I whipped back a reply: "Two points in your diagnosis, Doc, prove you are wrong about my problem. One is I don't live in a dugout. I only write about people who once lived in dugouts. And two, it doesn't snow often enough in the shortgrass country to suit me. Snow enriches the ground. You'd know this if you didn't use all your spare time giving away free medical service to poor people." (I really had him on the last count. Like I have told him hundreds of times, if his itinerant patients had income taxes and property taxes to pay, they'd forget about being sick. Instead of "a war on poverty," what this country needs is "a tax on poverty.")

The "net cooled," I suppose is the way to say the exchange of e-mail slowed down. Good thing I am exempt from jury duty because of advanced age, or his diagnosis would be grounds for a contested exemption. The part toward the end of his diagnosis about "being addled of mind as they struggled to live" is heavy stuff. I can't honestly say I object to his charge. I do become awful jumpy once the winds start blowing dirt ...