All evening long I worked on the lad but it didn't help much. By midnight his condition was touch and go. If the boy was to pull through, we had to get him to a hospital, and soon.
The nearest hospital was in Norfolk, nine miles on the other side of Battle Creek, which was blocked. It looked as if the boy might die. I picked up the phone and called Art Rodekohr, the county commissioner of roads.
I told Art of our predicament. "It's a matter of life and death." I said. "Can you get the road to Battle Creek open by morning?" Clear eleven miles of that snow by morning!" "Yes, by morning, or it will be too late." "I'll do my best," Art said, "But I can't get it done that quick. No one could."
Shortly before daybreak we decided to take our chances on getting through to Norfolk. We had to, as Curtis was pretty low. We bundled him up and put him in the Sebastian car and headed down the lane and out the main road.
It had been cleared as far as we could see, and farther, and all the way to Battle Creek. We got our patient to the hospital and he got better there fast.
That afternoon I hunted up Art to thank him for clearing the road. "don't thank me," he said. "I didn't have anything to do with it." I said, "What do you mean?" "Well," Art said, "That night you called me everyone on the party line was listening in. They passed the word and 150 of the Sebastian neighbors turned out in the dark with their teams and scrapers. By the time my crew and I could get to the job, the road was cleared."
The story of Dr. Baker's experience is symbolic of the country doctor's devotion to his hippocratic oath. Dr. Tanner had his Jeff Jackson and team of horses and was ever ready to answer a country call regardless of weather, and Dr. Rudloff, in winter months, had one or two men at his beck and call to go with him on country calls on a stormy wintery night. Someone to help him get through the snow to reach his patients, there were times too when he had to resort to a borrowed horse for transportation to reach his destination -- sometime leave his car and walk.
Now with graded and graveled roads and even paved roads kept open by county and state highway patrolmen; and two well maintained hospitals twelve to fifteen travel minutes away from his office of home, the life of a country doctor is not what it used to be.
In the early days a number of dentists would make one or two day stands, first in Mr. Hurford's Drug Store and then later in Dr. Tanner's office. This writer well remembers his first visit to a dentist which was to Dr. Condon of Humphrey who made a one day stand every week or perhaps every two weeks in Dr. Tanner's office. I believe it cost fifty cents to have a tooth pulled. On must visualize that those men wen through to reach.
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