Doc Watson

Dad then got contracts to build barbed wire fences for cattlemen and ranch on the Arizona strip.

I remember once when Daddy came home form the strip with a load of Cedar logs in the back of his truck. He was ill and burning up with a fever, yet shaking with chills.

Mom covered Dad up as he lay on the living room sofa where he could keep warm near the stove. She spooned hot soup through his fever cracked lips and placed cold cloths on his forehead. Dad coughed violently and Mom put a mustard plaster on his chest. She was sure he had developed pneumonia.

There was no money for food or medicine.

Elvin had been working for the town's druggist, Doc Watson. Doc had a field out  the street from us where Elvin had been hired on to help. Elvin needed some of the money he had earned and asked for part of his pay. When Doc asked him what he wanted the money for, Elvin said his dad was sick and there was no food.

Later that evening the druggist himself came by the house to check on Elvin's story. What Doc Watson saw in that poor home reminded him of hard times he had known himself in his youth. He stepped through the door to the kitchen and say there was no food. Doc took Elvin grocery shopping.

A few hours later Elvin was returned with not only medicine for Dad but bag after bag of groceries. It was more exciting than Christmas!  There was even a sack of wonderful and rare oranges! The only times we got an orange before was in the toe of our Christmas sock hung Christmas Eve. What a treat.

Today I grow oranges in my yard. My grown children and grand children don't thrill with the picking of the fruit from our own trees and peeling into juicy flesh as I do. Each time I bite into an orange section and get juice squirted onto my face as I savor each bite, i remember the day that kind man came into our home. I am sure he saved my Daddy's life. Then he taught hungry children about going the extra mile. "As ye have done it unto the lest of these, my brethren, ye have done it unto me."

Surely not a Moss Back!

I will never forget Doc Watson. i have had opportunities to emulate the lesson learned that day.