The operation in July took five weeks to recover from. Mertzon was my choice for confinement, to be close to the post Office and the bank, as part of the restrictions were not to drive an automobile. Each week one of my sons or daughters-in-law came to relieve a friend, who was doing all the grocery shopping and supervising the necessary household tasks.

After being home a few days, I was able to walk two miles in the morning coolness. At that hour, town dogs are asleep from the exertions of howling all night, so there's no danger from that quarter. The few mutts that were active shied away from my path. Most likely, they were overdue at home from a night's prowl of flushing range chickens, or perhaps running sheep on the irrigated farms across the river. But just in case a watchdog overstepped his responsibility, I wore a Boy Scout whistle around my neck for protection. (I learned in such abundant cur territory as Mexico and Central America that a blast from a whistle will halt all except the most savage breeds. At least, a whistle offers a chance of summoning help.)

Once the walk ended, my breakfast was served off a tray on the front porch. Only unhandy part of sitting on the front porch was that the coffeepot was in the kitchen. Sometimes I'd have to wait 10 minutes for a second cup. By then the rice cereal softened into a messy mush of bananas and milk. Two or three times, the wait was so long, I considered blowing a few blasts on the whistle. But a story restrained me.

Years ago, an old coot of a dentist in San Angelo took to his bed at an early age from a strange illness brought on by a simple gall bladder operation.

You see, his poor wife nursed him day and night. Her parents bought the groceries and paid the bills. At first, he was content to stay in a bed placed in the downstairs parlor, but sensing the convenience of his location, he demanded to be moved upstairs. By then, moving him was no easy task. Under the luxury of his long convalescence, he weighed over 250 pounds. Further, the bed frame was antique oak and required three strong men to maneuver up the stairs.

Once situated upstairs, he demanded his mother's copper dinner bell to summon his wife or her aged mother to wait on him. Acoustics in the high ceilings of the house added resonance to the clanging dinner bell. The missus tried to take in boarders to supplement her income; however, the incessant ringing so disturbed the diners that the idea failed.

Stricken by the cacophony, her only companion, a Collie dog, stayed under the house and refused to come out until nightfall. Children fled from the premises, maddened by the bell. A yellow canary, a prince of a singer, molted in her cage, until one morning she dropped dead from a wretched collapse of her voice box. Members of the Missionary Society stopped coming; new ministers came for one visit and never returned.

The poor lady seemed doomed to suffer the same fate as her canary. But one Sunday after demanding the choicest pieces of a large filleted catfish, plus all of the fried roe, her patient choked on a fish bone and died alone upstairs in his bed, or that was the attending physician's report on the death certificate.

Listed in the inventory of his modest estate was an unusual entry: "one copper dinner bell, no clapper, thus no value." The widow, so it was told, lived a long, happy life, comforted by her Collie dog and nourished by her favorite food, fried catfish.

Sitting alone on the front porch, I fingered the whistle. Nurses and family start out eager to aid the sick and the ailing, yet as the cases wear on, patience thins.

"Whistles hold a pea that might turn deadly if swallowed in a cup of coffee," I thought. After reviewing the story, I became a model patient, willing to wait and be waited upon. Old Doc's bell clapper, by the way, must have rolled into a crack in the floor, as it was never recovered.

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October 5, 2000