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In 1955, a humanitarian with a medical degree and razor sharp mind eliminated the scourge of polio from America. He developed the polio vaccine and reduced incidences of this dread disease from 18 cases per 100,000 Americans to zero today. A patent on this vaccine would arguably have been worth billions of dollars….but he refused the patent. He was about saving lives, not making millions, making him an exception in the world of profiteering. His name was Jonas Salk. The Jewish son of Russian immigrants, his life can be summed up in few words, a genius who happened to care deeply about the human condition.

I have friends in big pharma. They have enjoyed the rewards of working in an incredibly profitable industry, and a few have demonstrated a genuine concern for the human condition. As a whole, big pharma is an incredibly profitable business with the human condition being secondary to making money. Do not be fooled, there is enormous profitability in treating sickness, as opposed to preventing it.

As an example, consider the newest trend in controlling weight for folks, who for a variety of reasons benefit tremendously from the new GLP medications. These medicines have shown great promise in other aspects of health as well, such as diabetes and cardiac illness. They are also inordinately expensive with many insurance companies refusing coverage. Expense drives the refusal to cover these medicines despite weight being one of the greatest comorbitities we face worldwide with a particular emphasis on America which is, to put it bluntly, fat. If you walk into a pharmacy today, and your insurance doesn’t cover these meds, you will shell out a grand a month to pay for it, give or take. Medicare only covers this stuff if if you have gross sleep apnea or some other indication of impending death.

After a year of low inactivity and the lengthy recovery from shoulder replacement, I am relying on one of these meds until I can get back into the gym. I am also paying handsomely for this privilege. Today, virtually everything from extra catsup with your fries to light ice in a drink comes with an up charge. Document fees on a 50K car fall into this category….you get it.

Thank you, Dr. Salk. You, sir, were not motivated by inordinate piles of money, rather making a difference in mankind. The satisfaction in conquering a dread malady was enough for a Jewish descendent who cared.

Have a great week!

SR

My memory is not what it used to be and two moves ago I dispensed with pounds of old reports from my days as a road trooper, however; I remembered a lesson learned from an old, not too swift, burglar.

I had just come on the air when I learned a service station in Lexington, about 30 miles north had been burglarized. As luck would have it, I fell in behind a well known burglar and thief slipping back into Odessa. I stopped him and noticed burglary tools lying on the passenger side floorboard and the easiest burglary arrest you could possibly make followed. I cannot remember this thief’s last name, his first was Alfred. He was just out of the penitentiary and needing a little cash. I arrested him based on my observations and he soon confessed to the crime with the meager proceeds of his thievery found in the trunk, a neat probable cause arrest.

Alfred was talkative, not a member of MENSA, and we talked burglaries for awhile. One of his skills involved drilling a residential lock to gain entry to a home and he talked about how easily it was done, if you knew just how to do it. He was on his way back to the pen and had nothing to lose by talking about his “trade”.

Last night we left home in a hurry. My hard working wife was in excruciating pain and we were on the way to the ER where she was diagnosed with a non-displaced rib fracture. ER’s, even the good ones, are swamped with patients who, on the dole, crowd the waiting rooms for routine stuff, but can’t pay for it, and this brand new ER was no exception. We left after midnight, pain meds on board and returned home and discovered we were hopelessly locked out as we had left with no house key. Who does this, you ask? Asked and answered.

We ended up in the garage but the entry door to the house was also locked. Sharon casually mentioned my experience and suggested I “drill” the lock. We had an assortment of power tools at hand and after checking for an unlocked window, she googled drilling locks for additional advice. The trick is to start with a small drill and gradually increase them in size until you create a space big enough for the pins to fall out. We got ‘er done and gained entry in about 30 minutes.

I had never done this, but followed the advice we found on YouTube and was amazed at how easy this was. Alfred was right. There are tricks to every trade, even thievery. My business was policing and Alfred’s was thievery. Last night we traded crafts and I owe him a thank you.

Sharon, loaded on good drugs slept well, I am headed out to buy a new entry lock, and all is well. Another factoid, a broken rib coupled with a thoroughly aggravated intercostal nerve can result in terrible pain. She hurt herself a week ago, we ignored it much to our chagrin and met yet another nice doctor.

Have a great week!

SR

Ernest Covington Cooke was born in 1886 in Marion County, South Carolina. He was the son of a Methodist Minister and a successful tobacco and cotton producer all his life. He lived his life on a small farm near Marion where his efforts on the farm began with mule drawn conveyances and ended with a “poppin” Johnny, a small John Deere tractor. He owned not one power tool, but worked out of a wooden tool chest full of hand tools that he built two homes with and three tobacco barns. He was also my grandfather.

E. C. Cooke was the most temperate man that I have ever known, calm in demeanor, always in control and understood that idle time was critical to the soul. He understood the concept of “boredom” a phenomena that we don’t understand today, which has undoubtedly led to the reverse in lifespans we are currently experiencing. Boredom is a misunderstood concept. In the age of electronic, and instant communication, we fill every waking moment with something. Let’s consider alternatives to the mad world we live in.

What if we just respond to boredom by sitting in it, allowing ourselves to settle into the discomfort of being still waiting for something to surface in our disengaged minds.

What, pray tell, is wrong with taking a dull moment and simply ponder or daydream and ruminate on what in this world is worth jarring that inner peace we have just achieved.

What if the daydream ignites a spark that trashes the monotony and leads us to infinite possibilities.

Could this wonderful unoccupied time remind us we are more valuable than what we do and pausing to produce absolutely nothing is okay.

Mr. Cooke was able to recline in the shade of his back porch and contemplate his place in a world that moves at warp speed today. Are we able?

When is the last time you emptied your mind, and let the sounds of a songbird or the babbling of a shoal become the center of your attention. When is the last time you let go of the myriad of problems that we are confronted with? Can you remember the last time you sighed and embraced an approaching thunderstorm or a breeze whispering through pine trees while erasing the pressures of life?

Here is my point. Boredom is an integral part of life. We do not have to rush to the television, a cell phone or tackle a waiting project around the home. I love the pastoral scene encompassing a contented person, on the porch with an old dog for company, likely enjoying a glass of tea possessing a mind kicked out of gear. Behavioral scientists and various eastern clerics have, since the beginning of recorded history, recognized the zen like relaxation that we label as boredom. Take a few minutes, or longer, and enjoy what is around you serving as a backdrop for contentment and nothing else. We have earned this privilege that so few understand.

It is okay to savor the moments of solitude and contentment that we call boredom. When sitting by a fire on the banks of a clear running stream, it is okay to answer the query “what are you thinking about” with an honest reply of nothing really. Just enjoying the moment. Only then can you say you have mastered boredom or at the very least, put it to good use!

Have a great week!

SR

Modern medicine got a tremendous boost during the Civil War. The treatment of trauma was vastly improved, but in reality great strides were made in internal medicine as there were far more casualties that fell from disease than a minie’ball or grape and canister artillery. The study of medicine also evolved dramatically. These advances were accompanied by great strides in the early 1900’s as research amped up, developing antibiotics and related medicines to cure or soothe what ailed you.

Us folks with a little salt on our tails remember the home remedies so prevalent in the early and mid ‘60s. Grandma could treat damned near anything with a little kerosene, mineral oil and merthiolate. When it got serious, paregoric was placed in service, easily obtainable in the corner drug store. A trip to a doctor followed when a dose of ginseng or dandelion root failed to produce the desired results. During this era, our military services were also in the midst of improving medical care to the millions of service men and women. Again, old salts remember the infamous “cold Pack”, a standard issue self help kit when you suffered from a cold or flu or about anything. The cold pack was a small paper sack containing a bottle of “GI Gin” cough medicine laced with alcohol, codeine and or Turpin hydrate, guaranteed to stifle your cough, as well as APC’s (aspirin). Sage old old timers often began a night of drinking with a bottle of the cough medicine thus launching the poor soul into a terrific buzz.

If you watch any television at all (who does not) you have seen a proliferation of “wellness Kits” where one can fork over a couple of hundred bucks and have a virtual pharmacy delivered to your doorstep in a day or two. One such package contains powerful antibiotics that physicians study in medical school in a difficult segment of training called “pharmacology”. Mind you they study at least 8 years to get a MD, DO or DDS degree, and then practice medicine under the guidance of senior physicians for 2 to 6 more years before establishing a practice somewhere. The appropriate use of antibiotics is a part of this training.

Enter the modern day charlatans, akin to the snake oil and tonic salesmen of the 1800’s who hauled bottles of likely dangerous or inert elixirs that would cure whatever ailments one might have. One such kit contains a supply of amoxicillin, doxycycline, azithromycin, bactrim, flagyl, fluconizole, ivermectin and zofran. Really? Antibiotics in particular, are extremely valuable when prescribed by a medical professional, They can also result in significant harm if misused, or not indicated for some vague, self diagnosed malady. What is next? Some sort of hallucinogenic drug and a self surgery kit to remove a self diagnosed appendix or mole on your hand that might be melanoma. If your self help home remedy fails you and you topple over dead, a family member can order up a casket from Amazon or Costco, buy a couple bags of ice to keep you presentable for a day or so and bury you out back. As a side note embalming was another practice that came into vogue during the Cicil War, reserved mainly for officers who fell on the battlefield.

In short, the practice of medicine is fascinating but best left to folks with great intelligence who study its application for years before prescribing the correct medicine that you need. Charlatans are not a good source of medical advice or the use of powerful medicines to further one’s health.

Sorry folks, I am not buying the latest television nonsense, literally or figuratively.

Have a great week!

There aren’t many things in life that are funnier than a novice on a boat ramp, an inexperienced man and wife backing a RV into a parking space, or the insanity of folks facing a snow storm. The weather prognosticators promised us an end of world snow storm. It ain’t happened yet and we have more frost in our frost free frig than on our sidewalk. That’s okay, but here in Springfield folks have more bread, eggs and toilet paper on hand than ever before. We know as we ventured out to have Sharon’s glasses adjusted and mingled with the hoards.

Our venture to Costco was entertaining. We arrived a few minutes early, and were forced to wait with the other common people in freezing temperatures while folks with the high dollar cards breezed in smirking at us poor folks. A gentleman and his wife were shivering in line ahead of us when his wife complained about how long the 3 minute wait was. Her husband answered by saying he has always told her that 3 minutes was a long time. We all had a laugh. Costco has lots of short aisles with merch piled high, thus creating blind corners. Death traps as folks were whizzing around at subsonic speeds with carts piled high with toilet paper. Courtesy does not exist in such dire circumstances and folks lucky enough to avoid a collision glared at each other with deadly menace.

The herd mentality sets in under such dire circumstances. We watched as folks shopped the bakery displays and noted that if someone grabbed a package of double chocolate cookies, the stack would be depleted in minutes by desperate folks who surmised these cookies were necessary when the end is near. The poor guy at the exit had his hands full looking for an unchecked carton of eggs. You could not sneak anything out of a Costco if you tried as everything is packaged in quantities that defy reason. Need a little Benadryl, you have to buy a 10 year supply to get a single pill. Folks eschewed the produce aisles, instead loading up on enough “comfort” food to cause Dr. Oz and his buddy Mr. Kennedy to faint in disbelief. In a final assault on humanity, death lurked in the parking lots where folks who weighed the most drove like maniacs to get a space a few feet closer to the building. These same folks, who should not venture out without supervision, left their carts everywhere but the cart corrals. We always park out in the north forty, as I abhor door knockers, and had to walk by the hurrying hoards. Our tears of laughter nearly froze on our cheeks as we mingled with these folks who have not had this much intensity since negotiating a prom date in high school.

What did our forefathers do when weather threatened. Not much because they had the presence of mind to always be prepared. Their larders were stocked with flour, cornmeal and sugar. Eggs were always available in the hen house and our grandmothers could put on a nutritious and delicious meal without measuring anything, from deserts to main courses of ball jars of green beans and a slab of salt pork. The milk plant was up and running, 24/7 and needed to be fed and milked daily. They went to the feed store in town on Saturdays to stock feed for the chickens, maybe buy a bag of hard candy and fuel the pickup. They took weather as it came, no panic, no mad dashes to stock up. They were America’s first “preppers”, and didn’t know it. What would they say about today’s mass rushes to buy groceries on the advice of our weather folks?

Is it any wonder that folks in third world countries hate us. A land of excesses, never more evident than when snow panic sets in.

SR

Do troopers find themselves in crazy circumstances when the snow flies? Sure we do. We are human, tend to over drive the conditions when called to an emergency, and err in judgement while working. Occasionally, these errors result in tragedy, but most of the time we are able to laugh about them as we drink coffee in front of the fire, years later.

The year was 1978, and my cruiser was a mammoth, gray Mercury interceptor that would run like the wind but, like a freight train, required a lot of real estate to stop. I had just picked up a probationary officer and turned out onto Interstate 70 to begin our day. It was snowing, but the highway was wet, not snow packed. We were called to a fatality 30 miles west of us and I gunned the big Merc and we were off. Wary of the conditions, I throttled back to 70 or so, when the road turned to ice at a crossover marking the turn around for the Highway Department salt shakers at the end of their district. The road went from wet to ice instantly and the Merc wobbled a bit and left the road, down a steep snow covered embankment, coming to rest between I-70 and the outer road. Miraculously, a tow truck saw my Joey Chitwood maneuver and swung around, quickly extricating us and we proceeded to the accident. When the Merc came to rest, my wild eyed probationary officer, asked if he could get out of the car for a smoke. In a calm voice, I told the officer (Trp. Brad Baker) he could. Truthfully, I have never smoked in my life, but felt the urge out of embarrassment. (I didn’t light up). I carefully explained to Brad, that this circumstance was NOT how you responded to a crash. He agreed. Soon, my police “friends” from Odessa, put a nicely lettered sign on the Interstate, noting this location was reserved for 641 parking only.

Another snow storm found me running low on fuel and I chose the outer road to get to the weight station for petrol. The steep entrance was covered in a deep snow drift that I thought I could “power through”. I didn’t make it and found myself hopelessly stuck. In my best radio voice, I requested a tow truck to help a “motorist” stuck in a snow drift. The radio operator answered my initial call, waited a bit, and asked “how bad are you stuck”. I have no idea to this day how he knew, but the whole troop knew I had ditched my cruiser behind the scales. I paid for my lack of judgement in snide remarks from my contemporaries for some time.

The snow of yesteryear delivered many events that were not humerous. On one occasion another probationary officer (Tpr. Bob Bloomberg) was with me when we were called to a suicide in a small trailer outside of town. The snow was flying and it was unbearably cold. It was messy but we worked it, wrapped in image armor, as the circumstances were terrible. I recall a snowy night, colder than a well diggers butt in January, I was called to an assault at another trailer where an intoxicated man tried to get in the door and was met by his wife with a paring knife. She filleted his hands as he tried to beat her and the blood he lost stood in stark contrast to the snow in the yard. In a true tragedy, a rather large man drove off the road in heavy snow, and slid into a box culvert, upside down. We could not see the car, as it was snow covered and blended in with the culvert. A highway maintenance man found him, frozen solid in an awkward position, in his car. The blood in the car was smeared all over the roof and doors, indicating he was injured but alive, before freezing to death. His position made the extrication difficult and it took 6 of us to get him up the snow covered embankment.

It looks like snow this coming weekend, maybe a lot of it. Snow brings out the best and worse in us, and Troopers are no different. I love snow, but am fortunate in that I’ll, God willing, never have to endure the bad times again. My memories are enough.