At 98, Eddy still whistles while he works…. and what a job he’s done.
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Stone-cutters fighting time with marble, you foredefeated
Challengers of oblivion
Eat cynical earnings, knowing rock splits, records fall down,
The square-limbed Roman letters
Scale in the thaws, wear in the rain. The poet as well
Builds his monument mockingly;
For man will be blotted out, the blithe earth die, the brave sun
Die blind and blacken to the heart:
Yet stones have stood for a thousand years, and pained
thoughts found
The honey of peace in old poems.
— Robinson Jeffers
His soul stretched tight across the skies
That fade behind a city block,
Or trampled by insistent feet
At four and five and six o’clock;
And short square fingers stuffing pipes,
And evening newspapers, and eyes
Assured of certain certainties,
The conscience of a blackened street
Impatient to assume the world.
I am moved by fancies that are curled
Around these images, and cling:
The notion of some infinitely gentle
Infinitely suffering thing.
Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;
The worlds revolve like ancient women
Gathering fuel in vacant lots.
— Eliot
I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my soul,
I lean and loafe at my ease observing a spear of summer grass.
My tongue, every atom of my blood, form’d from this soil, this
air,
Born here of parents born here from parents the same, and their
parents the same,
I, now thirty-seven years old in perfect health begin,
Hoping to cease not till death.
— Walt Whitman
The scientists are in terror
and the European mind stops
Wyndham Lewis chose blindness
rather than have his mind stop.
Night under wind mid garofani,
the petals are almost still
Mozart, Linnaeus, Sulmona,
When one’s friends hate each other
how can there be peace in the world?
Their asperities diverted me in my green time.
A blown husk that is finished
but the light sings eternal
a pale flare over marshes
where the salt hay whispers to tide’s change
Time, space,
neither life nor death is the answer.
And of man seeking good,
doing evil.
In meiner Heimat
where the dead walked
and the living were made of cardboard.
Gerard Van der Leun
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One of my favourite books is The Boy and the Bubble Gun, by Paul Gallico.
98 and still workin’. At something he enjoys and finds challenging. Take away a man’s livelihood and he starts to die.
I saw Jim back in June and was walking with a cane and had lost considerable weight. His speech was soft but clear and he had nothing but good words to say, as always. I have known Jim for 15 years.
In 1966 Jim Brester graduated from college and set up his own veterinarian office over here on 135 in Bean Blossom, about 1.5 miles from our house. We had 2 dogs and I met Jim shortly after we moved here. People came from hundreds of miles around for Jim’s vet service and the parking lot at his place was always slammed hard. There was always a several hour wait to get in. They didn’t take appointments.
I took both dogs to Brester’s to get full examinations and shots, total cost was $40. Both dogs. Once, one of our mutt’s had a problem, don’t remember what right now, but after I put her up on the table Jim stood in front of her, out s hand on top of her head and the other on her side and stroked her gently. Then he bent down to her level and looked in her eyes. Before my very eyes I saw a Vulcan mind meld occur. As he stared in Lady’s eyes his head turned slightly to the side, like he was reading an unheard message from her. The he stood upright, grabbed a glass syringe from the cabinet and triple loaded it with some chemicals, bunched up the skin on her shoulders and gave her the shot. I asked him what was wrong and he said she had an ear infection. Then he grabbed a cloth, applied a solution and deeply cleaned her ears out which were full of a brownish material. In a few days Lady was her same ol’ self and Brester had charged $15 for that service.
5 years ago an out of state woman wasn’t happy with the primitive service she received at Jim Bresters place and lodged a complaint with the state. In hours, through social media, hundreds of people jumped to Doctor Bresters defense. The state dismissed the complaint. A year later someone else filed a complaint so the state inspected his place and decided it was not up to par with where it needed to be. They didn’t have a $500k xray machine, etc. To do all the things the state demanded meant Bresters place would never again be his dream.
See, Jim Brester got up early every morning and made the rounds out through the many farms in the area, checking in on sick cows, pregnant horse, immunizing every kind of farm animals and peoples pets. He also supervised all the animals at the 4H clubs in the area as well as judged animals at the county fair for the past 40 years. The care of animals was the reason Jim Brester got up every morning.
Unwilling to “update” his made-from-scratch business to be something he didn’t want or understand, 78 year old Jim shut it down. Within a month a chain vet company bought the place, filled it with airheads in white coats and quadrupled the prices and everybody had to have an appointment. I took my mutt Shannon there last year and a basic exam and a rabies shot cost $80.
When I talked to Jim this past summer the shine was gone from his eyes. He still spoke kindly like always but I could tell things were different now. They took away his reason for living and when you stop living you start dying.
Keep working Eddie!
http://www.bcdemocrat.com/2020/12/23/goodbye-doc-well-known-veterinarian-passes/