Page A4 / The Joan De Arc Crusader / Saturday, December 24, 2016

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Dr. Bladon’s magical drawer
By J. Bueker

     Life was good for a kid on Joan De Arc Avenue back in the day, but of course there were always the occasional rough patches. For instance, like all other youngsters who ever drew breath, we always absolutely dreaded our periodic visits to the dentist.
     Dr. L.A. Bladon was his name, and our family dentist maintained a thriving practice for many years in the cozy little Westown Medical office building, due west of Westown Shopping City across 28th Drive.
     Dr. Bladon was a nice man and a fine dentist, but there was only so much he could really do to mitigate the agonies of 1960s dental treatment. The awful numbing of the Novocain and the excruciating drilling on young teeth were intensely unpleasant experiences that we simply endured. However, there was one mildly redeeming feature of a trip to Dr. Bladon’s chamber of horrors and that was his solid commitment to institutionalized child bribery.
     Inside Bladon’s office proper, just beyond the waiting room door to the immediate right, stood one of those large, metallic dentist’s cabinets, the kind with about 30 different drawers of various sizes, each containing an eclectic variety of dental tools, paraphernalia, supplies, and God-knows-what else. After enduring the merciless numbing, drilling, and stern chastisements regarding our less than stellar brushing habits, and immediately before our departure, we were led by Dr. Bladon to the dentist’s cabinet for our well-deserved reward.
     The very bottom drawer of the cabinet was the charmed one. The space therein was filled with delightful inexpensive toys of various sorts, probably procured from the nearby T.G & Y. five and dime. These were goodies typically near and dear to the hearts of youngsters in the 1960s, things like balloons, jacks, marbles, plastic toy cars and the like. Frankly, this was scant compensation for the agonies we had just undergone in the dental chair, but hey, it was certainly preferable to bupkis.
     My most definitive recollection of Bladon’s toy drawer is circa 1964 or ‘65, when I was a rather precocious first grader. After a particularly traumatic session of dental treatment that day, I was brought to the magical drawer and enthusiastically peered inside. Being a huge fan of army play at this point in my young life, I was quite excited to notice a small box full of plastic army men occupying one corner of the drawer.
     Well nothing to think about here, the choice being obvious. I happily reached into the drawer and extracted the box of Marx warriors, already anticipating the fun times I would have back at home setting them up and devising combat scenarios with my neighbor buddies. However, Dr. Bladon abruptly interceded.
     “No, no,” said the good doctor, “just take one or two of them. You can’t have the whole box!” The dentist and my mother then shared a hardy laugh together at my expense, amused at my naïve and thoughtless toy soldier avarice.
     I was stunned and genuinely perplexed by this surprising stricture. Had I just heard the man correctly? Did he not understand the nature of armies? By definition, they are composed of more than two individuals; typically many, many more. What sort of lame army play can one have with just TWO army men? They shoot each other dead, and then boom, play time is over. I began to consider the disturbing possibility that my dentist might just be a retard.
     With little choice, I contritely placed the box back in the magical drawer and selected the two coolest army men to take home with me. It was a very dispiriting experience, however. I’ve never forgotten it.
     My final visit to Dr. Bladon’s office was perhaps a dozen years later, when I was a college student suffering with a massive toothache. I remember the old dentist’s cabinet was still there, although I wasn’t shown the magical toy drawer on this occasion, if indeed it still existed. Instead, I received a generous dose of nitrous oxide that day, which I enjoyed very much; much more so than the two cheap plastic army men from yesteryear. I felt like Dr. Bladon had to some degree redeemed himself.
     I still feel like the guy owes me some army men though. Some dentist visit wounds never do quite heal. You know the drill.

My father the weather guy
By J. Bueker

     This year marked the 50th anniversary of my favorite childhood birthday.
     That would be the day I turned all of 8 years old, and it’s really the only birthday from my early years that I can clearly recall, no doubt because the series of events that ensued were of such a peculiarly memorable nature. At any rate, I cannot allow 2016 to slip away without sharing a brief memoir of June 18, 1966.
     The story actually begins on the night of the 17th. I was naturally in a highly excited state, anticipating my big day and carefully ensuring that it was the primary topic of family conversation that evening. My mother, from whom I clearly inherited my predisposition for nostalgia, began wistfully to recount the events of the day of my birth back in Detroit, those 8 years preceding.
     Being the fourth and final child born, my arrival in the world was apparently a relatively routine affair. In fact, the whole thing evidently slipped my father’s mind entirely, and Barbara had to remind him to take her to the hospital for the blessed event. The one detail of Mother’s story that did rise above the mundane was the interesting fact that it rained in Detroit that day. Hard. It rained all day and it rained into the night.
     My father, ever the jokester, saw this as a splendid opportunity to mess with his kid. As Mother concluded her narrative, Carl immediately remarked that we should probably plan for rain the following day, since it always seemed to rain on my birthday. Indeed, the man announced that he was quite confident this would unfortunately be the case. I was very dismayed at this suggestion, yet Father persisted in teasing me about the imminent rainfall, causing me a significant degree of unease as I headed off to bed.
     Now any local meteorologist will tell you that the odds of rain falling in Phoenix on June 18 are about 1000 to 1. It. Never. Happens. The 18th of June is infallibly hot, arid, sunny, and cloudless. And of course Carl knew this perfectly well.
     So when I awoke the next morning and glanced out my bedroom window, I stared in utter disbelief. Rain was falling on Joan De Arc Avenue.
     Exceedingly distraught, I angrily stormed into my parent’s bedroom and demanded an explanation. Carl was so surprised and so amused to see that it actually was raining on my birthday, that he didn’t stop laughing for about 10 minutes.
     I was crestfallen. How could this happen? And how could the man have possibly foreseen this tragic turn of events? Mother of course tried her best to comfort me, but it took quite some time to allay my anguish.
     My horror at Father’s improbable weather forecast gradually subsided as I was presented with my birthday gift, an item which over the years has achieved legendary status among boomer toy collectors: the Man from U.N.C.L.E. Napoleon Solo gun set. This was quite simply the coolest toy on earth. Little did I know how valuable the thing would eventually become; I probably immediately discarded the box it came in, which alone is worth around $1000 today (if you can find one).
     The day following my birthday was a Sunday, and almost as memorable as the big day itself. I was made to understand that my Grandma and Grandpa Swaggerty had acquired a wonderful “educational” gift for me, which I would receive at their house that afternoon. I could not imagine what it might be; when we arrived, I was presented with a very high-quality globe of the world. It was beautiful. The happiest aspect of this part of the story is that the globe still remains in my possession and is quite well preserved. Credit for this circumstance goes to stepfather Don Stewart, who took a fancy to the orb and preserved it in his den for many years thereafter.
     Taken together, my two outstanding gifts helped me forget the trauma of the rainy birthday. The irony of the whole story lies in the fact that, growing up in sunny Phoenix, I have always loved rainy days and looked forward to them quite enthusiastically. Still do. Perhaps I was perturbed by my father’s sly implication that rain coinciding with my birthday was an ominous and foreboding omen of some kind. What a card.
     Well, I don’t look forward to my birthdays quite as much now as I did back in 1966. But when June 18 does roll around, I invariably think back to that day 50 years ago, still marveling at my father’s incredible meteorological prognostication. And yes, I’ve checked the records.
     It hasn’t rained in Phoenix on June 18th a single time since.

_________________________________________________________________________________________________ JDA

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