December 14, 2015
Jack’s Pharmacy on Center Street in downtown Hardin, Montana, had been in business thirty-five years in 1985 when I met Pharmacist Jack Petelin. He was still only about 60. He sometimes hired one of us pharmacists from Billings Deaconess to fill in. He and his wife usually wanted to, oh, I don’t know, probably go take naps. Or go fishing. They were getting on in years. They looked old to me, but then I think they were smokers.
Today I found online a 1984 application for downtown Hardin to become a Federal Historic District, so I read a snippet about Jack’s building. He had bought the place in 1950 from another pharmacist, a man whose first name was Dar.
Me and my baby-boomer classmates graduated in 1982 from Missoula. Back then we had to have about a year of apprenticeship before we could get licensed, so we worked beside preceptors like Jack Petelin.
Jack and his contemporaries were the men and women just out of the service from World War II, and they were eventually practicing in small towns all over Montana. We all knew members of the “class of 1950,” some of whom taught at the university in Missoula or ran the Montana Board of Pharmacy.
Those old pharmacists had influenced me as a child. In the 5th grade I liked developing pictures in my basement darkroom, so pharmacists sold me film and chemicals in Missoula and in Dillon. Their children were some of my fellow students in school. I always liked pharmacists. One of my classmates in the 4th grade declared with obvious pride, “My dad is a pharmacist!” Wow, I thought. I’ll bet he knows all about chemistry.
Jack’s pharmacy was easy to find on a corner. His wife greeted me as I passed between the greeting card display and the long cosmetics counter along the side of the long store. The pharmacy, with shelves of drug products, occupied the back portion. A door led to a back room. You get the picture. Sure, lots of over the counter remedies were on display in the middle of the room.
Jack was garrulous. He showed me where things were. In those days most pharmacies were laid out pretty much the same. Counter, typewriter, shelves. You just had to know if the drug products were alphabetical by brand or generic name. Or both. Jack did both. He showed me the water to reconstitute the kids’ antibiotics. The balance for weighing ingredients when compounding creams. There, on the floor by the wall, were the totes from the wholesaler. Here were the labels for the typewriter. The drawers had thirty years worth of prescriptions, in serial order. A busy day for Jack was about 30 prescriptions, so he got good at talking.
He showed me how to price prescriptions. Cost plus ten percent plus $2 dispensing fee. You figured cost from the letters Jack wrote on the stock bottles. Example: ATTT/C would be $30/100. We just had to remember the code word, “PHARMOCIST.” P = 1, H = 2, A = 3, and so on, to T = 0. I didn’t have to ring up sales on a cash register at Jack’s because they had hired a woman to run the front of the store.
The long skinny store had windows in the front only, despite being on a corner. I don’t know why the side of Jack’s had no windows.Well, that’s not true. I remember several small windows shed light at the back at the pharmacy, closer to the alley. The main store had a creaky wooden floor and smelled like an old building, like an old pharmacy. You know, like iodine, perhaps, or bromine.
I had plenty of time to study the store because no customers came in for hours at a time. I’m almost sure my first day was a Thursday or Friday when business was light. I looked through the drugs on the shelf. Jack said I could pull any that were beyond expiration date. In 1985, or so, the concept of expiration dates was still kind of new. Some of the older bottles at Jack’s had lot numbers only. I pulled them and dropped them into a box for Jack to get rid of later. Some of the bottles looked like antiques. I wondered if Jack had put them back on the shelf after I left.
A pharmacist from Crow Agency Indian Health Service called me on the phone to transfer a prescription. After I gave him the information he said he would probably give the patient a different dosage form of the medication. You know, capsule instead of liquid. “Wow,” I said, “you can do that?” “I’ll just get one of our doctors to sign off on it,” he said. I was impressed.
Hours passed. I perched on a stool behind the counter. In those days, the Board of Pharmacy required that the floor in the area behind the counter be raised, like 6 inches, above the rest of the floor. I studied the street out the front.
Many other antiquated pharmacy rules were in effect, or only recently rescinded: physicians sometimes had written on the prescription not to label with the name of the drug or the ingredients. Another was that pharmacists were not allowed to tell the patient what the medicine was for or tell much of anything else, really. In school one of our professors had said (with a sly smile) that if we were dispensing penicillin and someone asked what it was for, we should say, “It is always used for syphilis.” Not an outright lie, but misleading. Okay, a lie.
Another bit of advice if the doctor had written “do not label,” was to tell the patient the full generic name. Example, instead of “Thorazine,” one might say, chlorpromazine hydrochloride. “They will have forgotten it before they get halfway out the door,” he said. (Sly smile.) That was Doctor Wales. He taught a class called “dispensing.” He graded us on the straightness of the label on the bottle or vial.
He had us mix up a few ounces of codeine cough syrup, but the expectorant was syrup of ipecac, a drug that causes vomiting. I doubt if anyone even tasted it.
A painful memory of working at Jack’s Pharmacy was when a young woman, a Native, came back to the counter and asked me what she should do for her child with a raw-looking sore on his thigh. I suggested bacitracin ointment, which she bought.
I should have suggested that she take him to the clinic immediately for probable impetigo. In those days a doctor probably would have prescribed an oral antibiotic. Just one of those persistent memories.
I’ll bet I didn’t dispense more than a dozen prescriptions at Jack’s that day.
Tomorrow evening a dozen of us meet at Russell Rowland’s for the last session this semester. Semester? Well, we are not enrolled in any college. Ours is a practical course that we wrest good from, each in their own way.
What have I gotten from Russ’s workshop? I mean, it cost a couple hundred dollars! Oh, we all wrote pieces that we exchanged and criticized for two hours each week. On Mondays. Lots of reading. Lots of criticism.
Russ had asked us to buy the novelist Stephen King’s guide to writing. I just reread how King said that a writer should be an avid reader. Even during meals. Don’t worry about offending polite company because if you are a writer, he said, you will soon no longer be welcome. Writers, he said, must be truthful, and so they ruin their chances with the polite.
If that is true, then I can think of three or four quanta over which I have leapt these past weeks. I’m talking breakthrough moments. Each of those times I had written something that I was almost too embarrassed to share.
Two of my stories were about fictional sexual experiences of my late Uncle Bud. I mean, I have no idea what experiences he had, if any. Obviously I had to come up with something. When I wrote a description of him removing the underwear of his girlfriend I felt such shame at subjecting my fellow writers to those details that I skipped the session when I would have had to face discussion. (True, it had been P’s birthday, but we had already celebrated the day before.) I was too cowardly to face my fellows. Of course, when I returned to the group the following week I got the derision I had earned, but it was not so bad, after all. In fact, writing about pulling down panties became sort of a running joke.
I wrote two pieces about my struggle with mental illness in my blog. In each case I had to fight an almost irresistible urge later to delete the posts. But I left them up. Did I get negative responses? Of course I did. Positive too.
The real good, in my view, is that I took risks and I feel tougher for it. I assume that the most polite people are now keeping me at a distance, perhaps, but a different set of slightly less polite people seem to embrace my writing.
That is what I’ve gained from Russell Rowland’s workshop.
I don’t have anything to add today about the Great North Trail. I could probably add information about my brother, Tom Struckman. I don’t know much more about my Uncle Carl Ralph Bonde, Jr., although I have enough background that I could fabricate a story. Oh yes, I will.
What other running themes do I have? The fables. I’ve got the bunnies, the squirrels, the cats, the occasional dog. What else? A few birds, perhaps. Then, there’s Montana. Ah! We have many trails, hot springs, rivers, mountains, expanses. Much grist for tales there. Here in Billings, there’s the downtown. P. and I walk there once in a while.
Last night,. P. and I went downtown to Lilac Restaurant. Although the place was booked, we managed to get a pair of seats at the bar. The bartender is quite personable, quite friendly. He fixed us up with a bottle of rare wine, and a couple of meals that boasted lobster. We finished off with coffee, then went to Arthouse Cinema for a movie. Never crowded, we enjoyed “Meet the Patels.” We often watch movies that are off-kilter, offbeat. We like that. Then we went home to beddy-bye.
I’ve tried to explore sexuality. Yes, I know it’s a sticky subject, but Mark Twain said it’s quite essential. I have to agree with Mark Twain. Who wouldn’t agree with Mark Twain? Everyone agrees with Mark Twain, the greatest writer ever in the United States.
You can’t write about sexuality without mentioning whacking off. Of course. I just finished reading Philip Roth’s “Portnoy’s Complaint.” You with faint hearts, should stop reading right now.
Here’s the deal. Since I started taking Prozac 40mg daily (aka fluoxetine) I have not whacked off. Not even once. Prozac sort of puts the libido to sleep. I discussed it with my friend M.F. once. He noted that since he started taking an SSRI antidepressant, something seemed missing. It was his libido! He no longer whacked off!
Monday I have an appointment for my first visit to a psychiatrist. I’ll let you know how it goes. I’m looking forward to getting some help for this crippling depression I’ve experienced. I’m tired of feeling so guilty, so sad, with such damning self-talk. I have a voice in my head that continually condemns me. Tells me that I am a piece of shit, not worth anything. I know that these are the symptoms of depression, so I have good insight.
I have an understanding of what is happening to me, with my mental health. Although I feel my emotions strongly, I don’t think I am totally at the mercy of those feelings, not yet. God!
My family members, of course, are fearful. Depression is a damned serious illness. Other people who know or like or love me are also apt to become fearful.
I pledge to all that I will not harm myself. I care about everyone far too much for that! I understand that the pain for survivors of suicide persists for generations after the person is gone. I would never, never want to cause that kind of perpetual anguish. Please believe me. I will keep the faith!
The pain of depression is temporary, but it is real, just like other kinds of pain. Thank God that depression is a medical illness. As such it is treatable! Yes, medicine and therapies can make the pain abate! If you have such pain, please let your doctor know! Is it all in your head? Well, yes! Exactly! But nothing to be ashamed of. Let’s get medicine. Even if you balk at the thought of medicating your emotions, give it a try. You can shed it later! Do it for those whom you love. Please don’t give up.
One thing follows another.
A fable for December 12, 2015.
Not far from where we live, a cat groomed herself. “I am both beautiful and smart,” said Felicia. “Nobody is as beautiful as I am. Most people would say that I’m more lovely than even the angels in heaven.” She was so vain she squeezed her eyes shut.
An angel heard Felicias’ boasts. Because angels are kind and patient, she did not get angry at the cat.
“Felicia is acting like a cat,” said the angel, whose name was Rhonda. She added, “Of course, she is not even a tenth as lovely as I am. Felicia is actually, well, plain, compared to me,” she added.
Then Rhonda fluffed her angelic wings to display her loveliness. She stood taller, too. She looked magnificent in her angelic beauty. She got tired, though, later, slumping back when she thought nobody was watching.
Unbeknownst to both cat and angel, a mouse under the porch heard Felicia’s boasts, only the mouse did not share the belief that Felicia was beautiful at all!
On the contrary, the mouse considered her hideous beyond measure. Ugly, actually. Horrible. Perfectly foul.
“Felicia is dreadful,” cried the mouse, whose name was Matt. Becoming more emotional, Matt said, “Felicia is far worse than the devil.”
Satan, in Hell, heard what Matt said, but, as a supernatural being, was neither irritated nor angered. “Matt is laying it down like a mouse would,” he said. “I know I am the most horrid of all,” he added. He adjusted his red wings and flicked his tail with pride. “There!”
Where did that leave Felicia and Matt? No place, really. Felicia had become a second-rate beauty or perhaps half-ugly. The other, Matt, was simply wrong. Gloom settled over them. They felt depressed.
Felicia’s owner then stepped out of the front door and sat down on the porch next to his cat. He petted the cat gently and murmured soothing words. Soon Felicia purred. She felt so much better. She didn’t mind being less beautiful than an angel when her owner petted her. She felt like she was the supreme cat on the porch! She was, actually.
(The mouse beneath the porch was oblivious to the activity.) Matt trotted back down his tunnel, to his family, a mouse family burrowed under the porch: there was mama and 14 naked little baby mice. As long as Matt didn’t go out from under the porch he was safe. His family rejoiced each time he returned to the nest with a morsel in his mouth to share.
Moral: You don’t have to be either lovely or horrible to be terribly happy.
Tom Struckman, about 1964, with nephews Chris and Chuck Angel in Dillon, Montana.
Saturday. Saturn’s day. Saturnine ill humor.
Saturday was a good day for me.
In the 1960s I visited my brother and his friends, Bill and Mary Reynolds and their two cats, Evinrude and Mercedes, on a houseboat in Seattle. A floating house, really. I don’t know if it was floating on oil drums or what. Maybe pontoons. Looked like a bungalow, except it was afloat on a lake in Seattle. Tied to shore, not out on the water. Lake Washington, perhaps. Or Lake Union. I remember that it was relatively late at night the first time I visited the house. It did not rock or move on the water.
What does this experience in Seattle have to do with today? Just this. One pleasant Saturday Tom drove me in his light green 1953 Chevy to Volunteer Park in Seattle. There, we walked out onto a broad lawn to smoke some marijuana. There we could smoke, facing each other, and see the horizon in all directions. Sort of like antelope on the plains who watch for predators. We felt safer. Soon we had the usual fuzzy ornate buzzing wheels spinning in our minds’ eyes. We were stoned. It was Tom’s grass, and it was good.
After a bit Tom walked me across the park to an arboretum where a century plant was — on display, I guess. The plant was just a plant. Whether on display or not. There it was. Itself.
I had a flash of insight, “Hey, it’s Saturday!”
Tom said, “Yeah! Seems like whenever you get stoned, it is Saturday!” Seemed profound, or stupid. By God, it was Saturday. Then Tom gestured toward the century plant.
“Dan, plants are our friends,” he said. “Look, this one is speaking to us. It is saying to us, ‘Thus!’”
I looked carefully at the plant, with its thrusting succulent leaves. They all seemed to say, “thus.”
One of the bigger cats. Mark Fryberger made this “selfie” in the 1960s near Liverpool, where he had just taught John Lennon guitar.
Mark never did take a “selfie,” not then.
In order to regain some equilibrium, yesterday I drove my little truck to the Habitat for Humanity ReStore. To donate it. I really don’t know what to do. Various people have asked me if it is for sale and my answer is always no. Always. Because the thing was so poorly constructed out of brittle, weak materials.
Oh, I can hear you ask, perhaps, Doesn’t it have some good qualities? Good gas milage? Well, I suppose it does. Trouble is, how would I tell? I can hardly read the odometer because the plastic cover is cloudy and its display is in kilometers anyway. Oh, I could do the math, I just don’t feel inclined to do so. I think it gets good milage. The four cylinder, fuel-injected engine is right beneath the cab. Where else?
I got the truck in, maybe, 2009 for my birthday! Our daughter and her family were moving from Billings to Laurel, so I was glad to have a funky little truck. Brand: Tatanka. Yes, it means buffalo. Chinese. I’ve posted a photograph.
Took me about two years to get the title. So the truck had to stay in the garage. The salesman tried to get me the title until he got busted for something else. I think maybe he went to jail for his part in a cocaine ring that involved a dentist. Or else he is in hiding somewhere as an informant. You know, witness protection. Several years ago guy from the Highway Patrol came to our house and helped me apply for a bonded title, the which I got.
Mechanically, the first to fail was the windshield washer, but I whittled a rubber gasket. Then the outer driver side door handle broke off. I whittled a replacement. The inner handle was next. More whittling. Then the brakes failed. I got ahold of a fellow named Buckie LeBoeuf in Sulphur, Louisiana, who sold me a master cylinder. Then the gearshift cable failed. Buckie saved me again. Then the master cylinder again. Buckie. Then the crankcase pulley failed. This took Buckie a couple of months to get a replacement through customs from China.
That’s why I don’t want to sell it.
I taped the boxes and labeled them. Luckily I checked the addresses twice. Also, I made sure each box goes where intended. I put the tape dispenser away and the sad feeling returned. I recalled how my Grandma had gone to great trouble and expense to fix up a Christmas box for my lost Uncle Carl who died from a Nazi torpedo Christmas Eve, 1944, in the English Channel near Cherbourg, France. I transcribed the handwritten letter that Uncle Bud, as he was known, never received.
Mrs Carl Bonde
Kalispell, Mont.
Dec. 12th ‘44
PFC Carl R Bonde 34616683
Co. E 262 Inf. A.P.O. 17803
c/o Postmaster New York, N.Y.
Tuesday Dec. 12th
Dear Bud – Am going to try Vmail. Let me know which reaches you the quickest. It is just a month since we got your last letter. We have written many to you and hope you get them eventually. Hope you get the Xmas box. Dad and I listen to war news and wonder how it affects you. Jordet gave us a tree today and I know you have a vivid picture of how it looks. I am packing Carol’s box to nite so Dad can mail it tomorrow the earliest I have ever mailed Xmas packages. We have already received Helen’s and Corinnes. They write not to pack but you know me or what would you do? Dad wrote you an air mail letter yesterday and told you all the news he could think of. I have been playing Xmas songs on the piano and do fairly well. We are hoping we will hear from you by Xmas. We are going to have the Inter Lake sent to you. Hope you will be able to read this. Am wondering if I write too small. Hope you enjoy new scenery and new friends. Be kind to your buddies. They are all lonesome for home. And may you enjoy Xmas as it is provided for you.
With all our love, Mom & Dad –
[This letter bears a stamp “Return to Sender Verified Base Post Office.”]
December 9, 2015
[Put chunk of wood on the fire.] [Draw glass of wine from box on the edge of the sink on the island in kitchen.] Ah, retirement. Tonight we heard from a fellow whose name contained the word “grim.” He told us some of his experiences in the U.S. Foreign Service. Best of all, I met Kathleen Ely. And I got reacquainted with Rhonda Whiteman and the usual suspects who show up at those things. You know. Russell Rowland. Tom Tully and Barbara Archer. Walt and Barbara Gulick. Tracy Heilman. David Casero was there. I hadn’t met Kathleen before, so that was good. I wondered if they were all intellectuals? Some of them are the real deal. They are intellectual giants.
Todd and I at lunch time are across Redhill Avenue from the Marine Helicopter Base at Santa Ana. See the Volks across the way next to the pickup? Might or might not be ours. We had a friend with one, too. I don’t know what the little building was all about. Picture must have been taken in 1971.
December 8, 2015
I have computer diary I call, “Can’t Leave It Alone,” that I, well, can’t leave alone. Every day or two I add to it. The newest entries are at the top, at the beginning, always. I suppose the oldest entries are down there, somewhere, probably turning to coal, like the ferns and trees of the pleistocene. At this moment I am adding to the drivel. I’m trying to get into a groove. Like uh this. MMM.
So often my paragraphs start with “I.” Contrariwise, if I’m writing about my lost maternal Uncle Carl, all my paragraphs start with “he.” Or, I should say, “He.” I gained this knowledge from my writer’s workshop.
I’m duty bound to forgive you if your paragraphs all start with “I.”
So much news lately has been, at best, troubling. Well, there’s the shootings. This makes me so sad for the families left behind and the victims who must live with terrible wounds. I imagine months, years of rehabilitation and nursing facilities. Great expense. Then there’s the bullshit espoused by the King of Krap himself to lump Muslims into a group to be feared. If I think very much I get feeling down.
I bring up the news because, damn it! I feel like I’m in the Christmas spirit! Two days ago our Senior Minister, at the Church of the Fervently Religious, allowed me to assist him in administering the rite of Communion. Oh, I told my sister all about it. Yes, I embellished it a bit, but I did tell her how I got to lift a cube of bread (delicious, tasted like it was made with molasses) and declare that this was, well, bread! “Take and eat!” Then we all took and ate. This echoed all through our family’s early days of going to church. That is, when our little new family used to go to church together, back in the early 1970s.
In the early years, P. and I lived in a humble WW II-era apartment, constructed just outside the Marine base at Santa Ana, California. Of course, the weather was mild all year there. We had a little oil stove for heat. You turned on the little spigot and heating oil dripped into a little chamber lined, perhaps with sand. Then you dropped in a match and the oil burned and the stove heated up and the place got warm. I think there was an oil tank out there somewhere with copper tubes that ran into each apartment, to the stoves.
Anyhow, P. and I were new parents. We had Todd, an enthusiastic and cheerful baby. What a fun kid! I used to walk him around the sidewalk up and down where the apartments were to introduce him to the world as I knew it. I introduced him to the other GIs that we encountered, such as Corporal Pratt.
Soon we had a second child, Robert. The officer’s wives went bananas. Then we had layettes. Or one layette. Amounted to a bunch of diapers, a rattle, and a blanket. Possibly two diaper pins. P. used to wear a diaper pin on her shirt like a sheriffs badge.
We had no money for entertainment. I mean none. However, on Sundays, the base chapel cost nothing to attend. The price was right, the entertainment was sufficient. Plus, the old officers and non-commissioned officers loved us! I guess we were the only young enlisted families that thought about going to church.
That’s where the minister, a Navy Chaplain really, would lift up the wafer and admonish us to “take, and eat.”
insearchofbud 