THE OLD DAYS
By Arthur Vidro
When the summer of 1969 began, our family moved from a big-city apartment building into our own suburban house.
First week there we met our next-door neighbors. Blanche Struve was 44 at the time. The day we met she lifted undersized me high into the air and whirled me about — without asking permission. I weighed 35 pounds and was quite scared.
But I came to appreciate her forward ways.
For instance, shortly after I turned 8, we had this exchange:
Blanche: Are you studying hard in school?
Me: Yes. Why do you ask?
Blanche: Because we’re paying enough in school taxes for you!
That was an eye-opener. Until then I had assumed school taxes were levied solely on folks with kids in school. The notion that childless couples paid school taxes astonished me.
Jack Struve looked about a decade older than his wife. He was a Renaissance man. For instance, I watched him use bricks and metal to build a sun dial on his lawn. After 50 years and several new homeowners, the sun dial remains.
In his back yard, I watched Jack build a squirrel-proof bird feeder. He affixed a sheet of smooth material (Plexiglas?) to a brick wall, to prevent traction for climbing squirrels, then high on the smooth sheet he affixed the feeder.
When Jack sawed off a diseased tree limb, he explained to me he didn’t want to leave the tree with an untreated wound. So, he applied some tar-looking material to the spot of the severing, to help the tree heal.
By nature Jack was a healer. He earned his living as a doctor. Had his own practice as an ear-nose-throat specialist. Blanche at times served as his helper, administrator, biller, bookkeeper, and sort of nurse.
When Jack learned I played chess, he invited me over a few times to play against him. I still have a snapshot of 7-year-old me playing chess with the man.
To his credit, Jack never let me win. But whenever I made a poor move on the board, he would ask, “Are you sure you want to do that?” That was his way of telling me I had better take back that move and come up with a better one. If I didn’t, he had no qualms about capturing my queen.
It made me a better player.
Eventually, chess would be the only team I played on in high school.
I wonder how much of that was due to Jack’s nurturing.
I learned about pets from the Struves.
When we moved in, they had only Squeaky the cat. Soon enough, when a stray cat followed my brother home from the school bus stop, the Struves adopted that cat too and Blanche named him Fosdick (after a character from the Li’l Abner comic strip).
A year or two after we had moved there, Jack bought Blanche a Yorkshire terrier for Christmas. She named him Scamp. Scamp was my first real exposure to handling pets. Didn’t play with him much, though, because we were both shy.
A cat door let the dog and cats go into their fenced-in back yard from a screened-in porch.
After about seven years as neighbors, Jack suffered a massive stroke and was taken to a hospital where he lingered for a spell but never regained consciousness. Right after that Scamp died. Blanche and I suspected it was from missing Jack.
While he was still with us, Jack did something I’ve never seen done since: He made house calls.
Yes, whenever my big brother or I were ailing, he would come over and take a look at us.
Never asked for an insurance card. Never even charged us.
My ears, nose, and throat are among the few body parts that never gave me much trouble.
But one day when my brother was suffering, Jack came over with a portable light to look down my brother’s throat and pronounced the verdict: Tonsillitis.
My brother was taken to a hospital and had his tonsils removed.
I was just 8 or 9 and didn’t follow all the details, but I figure Jack made all the arrangements.
After Jack and Scamp died, Blanche adopted another Yorkie, which she named Pogo (after the comic strip character).
Pogo and I became very close. When I went off to college, he would continue to approach our house, wondering where I was.
When the widow Struve eventually moved to Florida, she gave me many items she was leaving behind, and which I still have:
Two paintings, one of them a pair of Yorkshire terriers (now hanging on our kitchen wall). Until a year or so ago, the missus and I had a pair of real Yorkshire terriers who had their own cat door.
Jack’s framed Hippocratic oath (hanging on a wall above the stand for my unabridged dictionary).
A manual typewriter (which I still use for filling out checks). It came from Jack’s medical office.
I have no idea where Jack’s medical office was. Never saw it.
Didn’t need to.
For he was one of the last doctors who still made house calls.
