Notes from Dr. Sam

Good Day,

I hope this note finds you well.

Many of you know that I was born and raised on a farm in east Arkansas, two miles east of Augusta, in the White River Bottoms. Actually, our home was three miles east of the White River and four miles west of the Cache River on a farm called Gum Ridge. My father’s family farmed rice for the Conner Company of Augusta. 

The farm was about 2,000 acres, most of which was wooded when I was born. When Dad returned from WWII, he and Mom married and moved into one of the tar paper shacks near my dad’s shop. We lived in that house for the first eight years of my life. 

Tar paper shingles covered the tin roof of the little house, which sat up on triangular concrete blocks. I can clearly remember looking through the floor of the living area and seeing the ground below. A large pot-bellied woodburning stove warmed the place, which in the early years consisted of two rooms: a kitchen and a small living area. A narrow front porch, covered to keep the firewood dry, opened to where an outhouse stood about thirty yards off. When I was around four years old my father built an additional room, where we all slept.

This was in the days before television, but we did have a radio on a small table in one corner of the living room. I recall sitting in a padded rocker listening to The Shadow Knows, The Lone Ranger, the Louisiana Hayride, and the early morning Farm Report.  

I never knew for sure, but I think my mother must have insisted that we move into town and a proper house. I can remember it was a big deal to move to town and my father saying that he and the bank had paid $6,000.00 dollars for the house on Spruce Street in Augusta; a two-bedroom stucco and brick house with an indoor bathroom, a living room, a dining room and a kitchen. We were now living large. 

When I first started school, I took the bus into the school in Augusta. For the first two years, I was unaware that those of us who lived in the country and used wood heat stoves smelled different from the other kids in school. When we moved into town at the beginning of my third year, we had gas heat in our new home; it was then that I realized the other kids from the county had a different aroma.

My parents were wonderful people, and I don’t ever remember wanting for anything or feeling deprived, before or after we moved to town. 

Today, I look at the wonderful home on the lake that Ms. Annette creates for our life and realize that it isn’t the opulence of a home that makes a difference; it’s the love and attention that makes a house a home.  

Have a good journey,

Sam

 
Dr. Sam Taggart is a retired doctor/writer/marathon runner who practiced in Benton for 45 years. He recently released For Every Family, A Family Doctor: a history of the modern Family Medicine Movement in Arkansas. His other books include Country Doctors of Arkansas, The Public’s Health, With a Heavy Heart and We All Hear Voices.