Going to St. Louis

Going to St. Louis

Commencement was the 1st week in June and Internship was to begin July 1. My wife had worked for a Savings and Loan Co. and her boss allowed me to take over payments on one of their cars,
a repossessed 1957 Black Ford convertible, the payment being $35 a month ?forever, as a graduation gift. I had rented an open U-haul trailer, the kind with a tarp, to move our possessions. I planned to stop over in Evansville to rest a few days and pick up a few furnishings from my mother. The trip was made in a down pour and the tarp leaked, soaking 2 boxes of my medical books. I was able to salvage most by drying them in the oven and separating the pages with a knife, but a few were unsalvageable. I left for St. Louis the last of June. The route was a winding two lane highway through southern Illinois. Naturally, I was not adhering to the 55 mile an hour speed limit recommended for pulling a trailer, actually going about 70 while rounding a curve I saw something passing on my right and said “some son of a bitch is trying to pass me on the shoulder”. All of a sudden I saw the trailer, it had broken loose with all our belongings, ending up in a corn field. I drove into the field and checked and saw the hitch had popped loose and I would need a hammer that I didn’t have to pound it in place. So I scrounged around and found a big iron skillet which worked just as well. The safety chains had snapped so I wrapped them around the bumper and proceed the next 100 miles at 30 miles an hour.
A former classmate who was now a resident at the Homer G. Phillips Hospital had arranged housing for me at the hospital. unfortunately it was just for me, he didn’t expect my wife to be coming. So I had to find some kind of accommodations for us and she was 6 months pregnant. I called my Aunt Dot and she had a friend who kindly allowed us to stay at her house and park the trailer in her garage while I luckily found a lady who would rent us a room at $35/month, by the way my salary was $70/mo. This all transpired between Friday June 28th and Tuesday July 1st.
On July 1st we got up early so we could have breakfast together before she dropped me off at the “G’s” so she could have the car. We went to the Howard Johnson’s restaurant at Natural Bridge and Kingshighway and were denied service because of race. My wife at 6 months pregnant was so stressed she vomited all over the floor and we exited to their castigation. It was 7 AM Tuesday morning when she dropped me off at the hospital. My internship awaited me and I was tired, hungry and mad.
The intern class was one of the largest the hospital had ever recruited. I was the only intern that wasn’t from Meharry or Howard so the only people I knew were several IU grads that had preceded me. We sat in the auditorium and chose our first rotation and the Chief residents sat in the back and assessed us like cattle, picking this one and that for their teams I selected surgery as my first rotation and a Chief named Mays Maxwell picked me because his 3rd year was an IU grad. This was probably the most fortunate thing that could of happened to me based on my experience with him. Mays was a swarthy short stocky guy with slicked back hair and wore his shirt open exhibiting a hairy chest and a gold chain with a miraculous medal around his neck. He had a short man’s complex and to him being Chief was the ultimate achievement. As soon as we were out of the meeting he gathered his team of five in his car and we went to Angelica’s uniform store so he could get fitted for his long white chief coats, which had to be hemmed so they wouldn’t drag on the floor. He than proceeded to purchase six. I watched in bemusement little knowing that this little Napoleon would teach me more surgery in 3 months than I could have ever imagined.
I finished my day of orientation and went home glad to be on my way to being a real doctor. I was reminded that we had to round at 6 AM and we would be on call the Fourth of July weekend which started Friday. My internship had begun.