The Little Garage Comes Down
As I type a little stucco garage across the alley from the back of my house is coming down board by board. Besides the man tearing it down, I'm probably the only person noticing and the only one left who cares. No, it's not important and I am just barely sad. I was sadder 2 years ago when the house in front of the garage came to a messy, untimely end.
Sometime about 1930 a country doctor built the good looking 2 story house on the corner, and the little garage on the alley that matched the stucco house. The doctor joined a doctoring group who had set up practice the year before in one of Fort Smith's grand old mansions, the old Dr. Main mansion at the end of Lexington Avenue adjacent to the still smallish Sparks Hospital. This group of doctors opened a competing hospital named The Colonial Hospital to cater to the needs of local miners whose low wages made it hard to afford medical care.
Years before Dr. Charles Holt pioneered the socialist idea of group medical care and idea so radical that for a time he was tossed out of the AMA. But Dr. Holt persisted and by the time my neighbor joined the group, for a small fee deducted from each paycheck, local miners and their families could sleep soundly at night knowing any medical emergency would be met at Colonial Hospital with the presentation of Dad's union card.
As I hear each board being ripped up as I type, I think of the countless times my doctor neighbor must have backed his car out of that little garage in the middle of the night, rushing to Colonial Hospital to care for those injured or killed in a mining disaster. The family living in my house in those days must have grown accustom to hearing the garage door sliding open and his car starting in the night, from the time he moved into his new house until 1952 when Colonial Hospital closed at the end of the King Coal era.
The good doctor parked his car in the old garage for the last time when he died in 1965. His spinster music teacher daughter preferred to park her car by the side of the house. After her death in 2004 the perfectly maintained house sat empty, still the pride of the neighborhood, while the family members fought over what to do with their grandparent's house. At some point negotiations went south and someone in the family attempted to burn the house down. Their first attempt failed, their second attempt succeeded in a spectacular fashion that sent neighbors running in all directions in the middle of the night. By morning nothing was left but the little stucco garage. 
Now the garage is coming down soon to be replaced by duplexes that will house more of Fort Smith's growing Hispanic population. The doctor and his socialist miners hospital are already forgotten. Maybe someday I'll be able to forget his family who declined to the point of becoming arsonists, willing to burn down the whole block to settle a family squabble.
I look forward to next spring when little brown children will chase each other around the newly sodded back yard of their spanking new duplexes. Maybe the old doctor would be happy to see his land has returned to benefit working people, the kind behind the 8 ball, the kind he spent his whole life caring for. Being a coal miner's doctor, he was no doubt used to darker skin and people with little money or social position.
Farewell little single car garage. You're a relic from an earlier era when doctors didn't get filthy rich making 3 dollar house calls. When years before Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama were born there was at least one group with universal health care. Your walls went up at the start of a great Depression and are coming down at the start of another great Depression. The working people are hurting again. We've had another Herbert Hoover in the White House with a 3rd warming up along side Sarah Palin. History does repeat...good luck to us all.
Sometime about 1930 a country doctor built the good looking 2 story house on the corner, and the little garage on the alley that matched the stucco house. The doctor joined a doctoring group who had set up practice the year before in one of Fort Smith's grand old mansions, the old Dr. Main mansion at the end of Lexington Avenue adjacent to the still smallish Sparks Hospital. This group of doctors opened a competing hospital named The Colonial Hospital to cater to the needs of local miners whose low wages made it hard to afford medical care.
Years before Dr. Charles Holt pioneered the socialist idea of group medical care and idea so radical that for a time he was tossed out of the AMA. But Dr. Holt persisted and by the time my neighbor joined the group, for a small fee deducted from each paycheck, local miners and their families could sleep soundly at night knowing any medical emergency would be met at Colonial Hospital with the presentation of Dad's union card.
As I hear each board being ripped up as I type, I think of the countless times my doctor neighbor must have backed his car out of that little garage in the middle of the night, rushing to Colonial Hospital to care for those injured or killed in a mining disaster. The family living in my house in those days must have grown accustom to hearing the garage door sliding open and his car starting in the night, from the time he moved into his new house until 1952 when Colonial Hospital closed at the end of the King Coal era.
The good doctor parked his car in the old garage for the last time when he died in 1965. His spinster music teacher daughter preferred to park her car by the side of the house. After her death in 2004 the perfectly maintained house sat empty, still the pride of the neighborhood, while the family members fought over what to do with their grandparent's house. At some point negotiations went south and someone in the family attempted to burn the house down. Their first attempt failed, their second attempt succeeded in a spectacular fashion that sent neighbors running in all directions in the middle of the night. By morning nothing was left but the little stucco garage. Now the garage is coming down soon to be replaced by duplexes that will house more of Fort Smith's growing Hispanic population. The doctor and his socialist miners hospital are already forgotten. Maybe someday I'll be able to forget his family who declined to the point of becoming arsonists, willing to burn down the whole block to settle a family squabble.
I look forward to next spring when little brown children will chase each other around the newly sodded back yard of their spanking new duplexes. Maybe the old doctor would be happy to see his land has returned to benefit working people, the kind behind the 8 ball, the kind he spent his whole life caring for. Being a coal miner's doctor, he was no doubt used to darker skin and people with little money or social position.
Farewell little single car garage. You're a relic from an earlier era when doctors didn't get filthy rich making 3 dollar house calls. When years before Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama were born there was at least one group with universal health care. Your walls went up at the start of a great Depression and are coming down at the start of another great Depression. The working people are hurting again. We've had another Herbert Hoover in the White House with a 3rd warming up along side Sarah Palin. History does repeat...good luck to us all.
