WARE COUNTY  GA  Biography  Dr. J.L. Walker

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WIDOW OF WAYCROSS PHYSICIAN RECALLS OLD DAYS IN LIFE OF A COUNTRY DOCTOR

Editor's Note: Mrs. J. L. Walker, now in her 89th year,
recalls the days when the practice of medicine was a
Social science but not a SOCIALIZED one. Her narrative
causes one to wonder if socialized medicine would produce
such men as this doctor she tells about.

By Mrs. J. L. Walker "Hello! Is the Doc here?" This
question often echoed through the halls of our home and
was apt to come from a man or a boy on a horse at our
gate. One night this call became imperative, "I want you,
Doc, right now to my wife. She took sick two days ago and
now she is about dead." (We wondered why he had not come
in day-time two days earlier.)

When asking where he lived, he replied, "out beyond the
Ohoopee River. You have to cross the pond and if you
don't know about the place you will be stalled. I'll be
there when you get to the pond to keep you from getting
stuck in the holes. I'll hitch your horse while you
dress."

Doctor found his horse and buggy at the gate but the man
had gone! Knowing Johnson county's landside, but not so
well acquainted with the swampholes, he hastened as fast
as his horse could travel to reach the place of his tryst
with the man who was to guide him through the pond. Still
the man was gone and he was left to cross the treacherous
place alone. He drove in and soon found the horse and
buggy stuck as fast in the soft earth as Bre'r Rabbit was
in the Tar Baby. So the doctor dropped his lines and was
sitting in the buggy, pond-bound when the sun arose.

With the advent of light, the man came calling. "Is you
there?" He soon found that there was no doubt about the
doctor's being there. The day that had begun so
annoyingly continued to be a busy one. Finally, settling
down for the night with the hope of not having a call,
Dr. Walker closed his eyes to the world. He needed rest,
but fate was against him. The usual call came in a
startling way. "Hurry, Doc, my oldest young-un is about
to choke to death and I have got to have you right away."
The man said he lived ten more miles beyond Mason's
Bridge, off the road apiece, past Squire Rawles' on the
left-hand side of the creek. The Doctor went and after
getting off the rambling road several times he reached
the country farm house.

Later the Doctor had to ask the court to collect the
bill. In the courtroom, the farmer gave as his reason for
not paying. "This bill just ain't fair. It ain't fair to
change me $15 when I only live 15 miles out and anyway,
all the Doctor gave my boy was a pill and a powder and a
little vile of draps."

One night while alone, waiting and hoping Dr. Walker
would come soon, a call at close range of the front door
sounded, and as usual I opened the door. two men, untidy
in dress and crude in manner, entered our home uninvited
and took seats in our best chairs. One asked how long it
would be before the Doctor would be at home. I answered
with an intuitive fear in my heart, that I was expecting
him to return at any moment. They asked if I had any
money, I told them I would see, and walking to the back
door I pretended to call the servant Dave, (who had gone
an hour before) to come, that someone wanted to see him.

While out of the room, I heard dogs barking and men
talking; the strangers, too, heard and nearly knocked me
down getting out the back door. The police from Tennille
with their trained dogs were chasing the desperate
criminals who had escaped from the Tennille jail. They
caught them a few blocks away. The year 1886 was a bad
year for farmers. Crops failed all over Georgia and
Johnson county came in for her share of the misforture.

One morning we found our horse lot full of broken-down
mules and horses, eighteen in all. During the night these
animals were driven into Dr. Walker's enclosure and left
there with a note on the gate signed by the owners,
telling him to accept the animals from nine of his
friends, who could pay him in no other way. They went on
to say that they had nothing to feed them on so didn't
want them "noway." Later other horses were tendered him
in payment of bills and with these additions he soon had
a drove of horses that would have done credit to a real
horsedrover.

When farmers failed financially, disaster overtook the
Doctor also, for among his best patrons were the country
people. During the days that followed, since the drove of
animals had become his, he made up his mind to leave
Johnson county. Having heard that there was a little
town, called Waycross, in Ware county where horse and
mule trading was brisk, the Doctor decided to move his
family, human and animal, to Ware. He hired some men to
drive his stock, and he set out at the head of the drove
in his buggy pulled by faithful old "Bill."

About six miles from Waycross, Dr. Walker saw a light in
the darkness gleaming from a house in an avenue of trees.
He called, asking for shelter for the night but was told
that they never took horse-drovers in for lodging.
Although Dr. Walker told the man he was a medical doctor
and not a horse-drover, the man was not fully assured of
that fact and was obdurate. Dr. Walker told him he hoped
some day to make him regret his lack of hospitality. He
later attended this selfish old countryman through a long
spell of illness and when the farmer was well on the road
to recovery, Dr. Walker told him that he had once refused
him shelter in his home on a dark, rainy night.

In Waycross, we found a four-room house and bought it for
$800, later adding rooms and sleeping porches onto it and
I still call it home, having lived here for over sixty
years.

Dr. Walker had busy days, for he not only answered calls
in Waycross but Hoboken and other adjoining towns. He
also did practice for sawmill people at Waltertown six
miles away. We had no paved roads and very few good
bridges, often having to ford streams in shallow places.
It would consume an entire day to go to Hoboken to see a
patient and return.

I have never been able to understand why more people
become sick at night than in the day, but they do. One
night a man came and in an excited way exclaimed. "Doc,
you are wanted out beyond the fair ground to see a sick
man. Come right away." The Doctor had been to see many
sick patients during the day and had a feeling for his
horse. I really believe he was an honorary member of the
Society of Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. If he wasn't
he acted like he was, for he walked the mile or two to
see the sick. He was met at the door by the patient who
told him he had a little twitch in his left eye and
wanted him to look at his eye and tell him what caused
the unpleasant things to happen to him. His patient was a
friend and the doctor did not charge him.

Another time the Doctor had just come home after being
lost in the dark timbered bottom lands of the Satilla
river. He had roved around in the darkness for two hours,
during which time he had left his buggy several times in
order to find the road, and got himself covered with mud.
It was a warm summer night, dark as pitch, and
threatening to rain. He had taken off his muddy clothing
and was preparing for the rest he so much needed when the
familiar, "Hello" came from the front gate. I went to the
door and asked what was wanted. The man said he wanted
Doctor Walker oue just across from Cow House Island in
the Okefenokee Swamp to see a woman. He was asked by the
Doctor to give him the symptoms of her illness. The
Doctor would send her some medicine and next morning
would go to see her. The man did not know the symptoms,
knew nothing except she was very sick and he feared that
she would die if she were not relieved that night.

By the time Dr. Walker and his pilot had started, the
rain began to pour down in torrents. The thunder pealed
and the lightning flashed and blazed every second. The
very earth shook and trembled with the shock of the
storm. The Doctor rode through this war of the elements--
this pitched battle of Heaven's artillery--with nothing
to guide him but the lighting's flash and the instinctive
knowledge of the scrub pony, that the messenger rode.

They finally emerged from the dim road in the forest and
the Doctor, noting a light ahead, knew that their journey
was nearing an end. When they reached the house he was
told that the lady was better and that he need not come
in.

Time passed on and so did the nights come and go, only a
few of them spent in unbroken sleep, but many of them cut
into fragments. I learned to accept the broken nights
philosophically and gracefully. It is all of one's life-
time.

A doctor's wife had her duties along the line of his. I
found that it was imperative that a record of his calls
be kept--never overlooking to give him important
messages, never failing to see that his belated meals
were kept warm, never forgetting to be at the door to
greet him when he was expected home from a long tiresome
country trip.

In those horse and buggy days not only the doctor would
be weary but Bill, his horse, would be jaded, and
sometimes I would have to go hunt for Isaac, the stable
man, because he did not stay as close by as I did to look
after the comforts of the poor, tired horse.

Physicians' wives are denied many privileges which other
men's wives may enjoy. If anyone needs a big savage dog,
it is certainly the doctor's wife, who is so often left
alone without a protector in the night. Yet she is one,
the very one, who cannot have a dog because he would bite
the people who come at night for the doctor just as
quickly as he would a burglar or tramp. Since the
universality now of telephones, people, of course, call
more often than they go for the doctor in person, so I
suppose a doctor's wife today can have a dog.

A loud kocking once called me to the door to see who was
there. "The Doctor is wanted right away out over the
railroad a hollow and a half from Old Nine." When the
Doctor finally found the home of the patient, he beheld
dogs in the yard, and told the man of the house to shut
the dogs up. The man assured him that the dogs were
harmless and would not bite. The Doctor opened the gate
and the "harmless" dogs demolished one pants leg and left
the print of teeth in his leg.

The Doctor found these people too poverty stricken for
him to make any charges for his visit. He not only
received no remuneration for the call but left a part of
his pants with the dogs. I always felt after that episode
that I should be allowed to have a dog. What if he did
bite a patient?

Dr. Walker was a great believer of the Holy Scripture and
often in his mind was the admonition, "Inasmuch as ye did
it unto the least of these, ye did it unto me." He never
turned down one who was without funds to pay the doctor.

After becoming a phyisican he never had but one vacation.
That was when he consulted a specialist about failing
eyesight. The specialist told him he needed rest along
with other things. He took his advice and he and his
friend, A. M. Knight, took a trip to Waukegeha, Wisc.

He returned in a great state of improved health, but like
the brook he then "continued to go on forever." After
life's fitful fever was over he entered into rest and
sleeps in the garden of memories among friends that he
loved. Undoubtly he served his time and generation well
and now that he has gone from us, we can catch an
inspiration from his useful life and feel that because of
his having spent his fleeting years here on earth this is
a better world.

SAVANNAH MORNING NEWS, Sunday, March 27, 1949, p. 24

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