The Most Beautiful Town in America 3

            ‘If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop diggin’.’
                                                                                            Cowboy Proverb


The holes in American Old West dentistry were deep and dreadful.  Like three feet into a wolf. Dental trauma was an everyday part of life. In an era of poor nutrition and worse chewing tobacco, there were few toothbrushes, and plenty of pebbles in the food. Good preventative care didn’t exist. There were no x-rays, so there was no way to see into the jaw. Western dentists had no electricity. The only way to inspect the mouth was during the day, with mirrors to direct sunlight into the back of the throat. There was no anesthetic and, although ether and nitrous oxide and morphine had been introduced back East, no Wild West dentist would have met their acquaintance. And few Wild West dentists had real qualifications. Most were barbers or blacksmiths, or shingle charlatans. To the cowboy with a problem, it didn’t much matter. Abscesses, broken teeth, wisdom teeth, and jaw infections caused such intense pain that people took any chance to get relief. Tooth problems couldn’t wait. Luckily for me, in the most beautiful small town in America, after my fish taco lunch, I didn’t have to.
The most famous Old West dentist had been John Henry ‘Doc’ Holliday who, on March 1, 1872, at the age of 20, had met the requirements for the degree of Doctor from the Pennsylvania College of Dental Surgery.
Doc Holliday was 5 feet 10 inches tall, and weighed about 160 pounds.  He died of tuberculosis, at the age of 36. His last words, for a man of such distinction, were rather unremarkable. Damn this is funny.
His friend, Wyatt Earp, who had once seen him place a ten thousand dollar bet on a single card, described him well.

   ‘Doc was a dentist, not a lawman or an assassin, whom necessity had
   made a gambler; a gentleman whom disease had made a frontier
   vagabond; a philosopher whom life had made a caustic wit; a long lean,
   ash-blond fellow nearly dead with consumption, and at the same time
   the most skillful gambler and the nerviest, speediest, deadliest man
   with a six-gun that I ever knew.’

My Sandpoint dentist, back in the grove on Ontario Street, was 5 feet 10 inches tall, and weighed about 160 pounds. He had ash-blond hair. But he was dressed in a blue jumpsuit, like a pilot, and wore sunglasses, like I had just caught him on the ski fields on Schweitzer Mountain, above the town.
“Damn this is funny.” He said, looking at the x-rays his technician had just handed him. He had introduced himself as Bob, seemed quite comfortable calling me by my nickname, and didn’t flinch from the smell of fish and habañeros. He pronounced roots as ‘ruts.’
“Well, Wink.” He said. “A long time ago, someone cut two of the ruts off this back molar, and now you’ve chipped out a chunk of what was left.” My life flashed before my eyes, and my VISA card branded my backside, inside the wallet in my back pocket. I prayed for rain. Never ask a barber if you need a haircut.
Water began to circle around in the porcelain sink next to me, swirling like water round a stone. Chief Joseph spoke to me directly. For a short time we lived quietly. But this could not last. White men had found gold in the mountains around the land of winding water.
“Luckily for you, the tooth is still structurally intact.” Said Bob. “I wouldn’t crack nuts with those ruts, but it should be OK. I’m just going to grind the sharp bits off, so it doesn’t cause you any problems. This won’t hurt, because the other guy killed the nerve when he cut off your ruts.” The muzak played Handel, and I gave thanks. He was done in a few minutes and, with a flourish, ushered me out of my chair, like a barber would have done.
“How much do I owe you, Bob?” I asked, my back pocket still scorching my butt a bit. He waved me towards the plump and pleasant receptionist, and goodbye, like Doc Holliday would have done. Why should I obtain by force that which I can obtain by cheating?
“She’ll take care of you.” He said.
Robyn had been waiting patiently. She joined me at the counter.
“That’ll be forty dollars.” Said the receptionist. My VISA card danced with joy. Doc Holliday’s cousin had been Margaret Mitchell, who had written Gone With the Wind. And so were we.
“I know where the shops are.” Said Robyn. We headed downtown. Big colourful murals decorated the most beautiful small town in America. Welcome to Sandpoint. The themes were trees with elaborate rut structures, and sun and clouds, and local activities like logging and skiing and cycling and hiking and farming and stump ranching and hunting and fishing and the Kalispel Sand Place Indians. There were narrow brick alleys held together with graffiti and puddles and power lines. Flower boxes of begonias and geraniums lined the shops. The Art Deco theatre marquis, across from the second-hand bookstore advertised a choice of two features. Romantics Anonymous French Comedy, and The Hunt for the Pend Oreille Paddler. The Sand Creek mall deserted itself, as the rain came down.
A small statue outside commemorated David Thompson, the greatest land geographer who’d ever lived. He had come out from England in 1784, at the age of 14, committed to a seven year apprenticeship in the remote northern Hudson Bay Company fort of Churchill, copying the personal papers of explorer Samuel Hearne. It was here he lost his left eye. Thompson became a fur trader and, in 1797, joined the North West Company, to survey the Canada-U.S. boundary along the water routes from Lake Superior, to my hometown on Lake of the Woods. A decade later he had crossed the Rockies and mapped the Columbia basin, establishing the first trading posts in Montana and Idaho. In response to John Jacob Astor’s plan to send a ship around Cape Horn, to establish his fur trading posts of Fort Okanagan and Fort Astor, Thompson was recruited to navigate the full length of the Columbia River, passing The Dalles barrier with less difficulty than Lewis and Clark, and claiming the country for Great Britain. George Simpson’s disappointment with the loss of everything below the 49th Parallel, would have nothing to do with the intrepid efforts that David Thompson had applied. Despite a career of mapping almost four million square kilometres of North America, a fifth of the continent, Thompson would die in Montreal in 1857, at the age of 86, his accomplishments forgotten, his reputation among the First Nations as Koo-Koo-Sintm, The Stargazer, fading into one-eyed obscurity. There were few Canadian contributions to the American West that were as farsighted and visionary.
The sun broke back through the clouds, and Robyn and I took a long walk along the Pend Oreille shoreline, looking back at the lakefront resort decks, full of diners and wedding celebrants. As we drove across the causeway, the adjacent railroad bridge produced three Northern Pacific locomotives, pulling a hundred cars of momentum, and the long reflected resonant blasts of horn, bouncing wounded herds of history, behind us.
Dingdingdingdingdingding…
Robyn and I waited under the moose muzzle and antlers over the fireplace in the bar, until they could seat us on outside on the deck, overlooking the lake. A peregrine falcon soared above our sunset through the pines, the Cobb salad, and the vegetarian strudel.
It was another wedding venue in Sandpoint, and a group of adjoining tables was celebrating. The bride’s family was celebrating. The groom seemed less committed, and his children were busy with the condiments, salting and peppering their new family’s drinks, when no one was looking. We left, as the sun hit the horizon.
Back at Talus Rock, we made arrangements with Elsa to leave early next morning.
“There’s yogurt in the fridge.” She said. “Where are you heading?”
“Mon-taw-na.” Said Robyn. Elsa looked puzzled.
“Montana.” I said. The puzzlement subsided.
“Have a nice trip.” She said.
On September 8, 2004, the leader of Aryan Nations, Richard Girnt Butler, died in his Idaho home, from heart failure. Kate Smith sang God Bless America, in the background. Just before his one last sweet terminal event, Butler and his traveling companion, porn star Bianca Trump, famous for her explicit interracial sex scenes, had been arrested on an outstanding forgery warrant. Wilderness and war, and love and loss.
Out in the vast great room, was the other traveler, bluetooth talking to his laptop. He paused long enough to wave goodnight. I asked him where he was from.
“New York.” He said.
“Why?” I said.
“That’s where I get my nuclear energy.” He said.
I didn’t tell him how close he was to Forever and Ever.
Dingdingdingdingdingding…