1 - Doctor Bowen and Janette

Doctor Bowen, Christmas 1973

      Doctor Bowen was the archetype of a country doctor: he was chubby, somewhat unkempt, and he seemed to perpetually have a wet, half-smoked cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth.  His bedside manner did not always include an excess of tact, and over the years he had his share of detractors as well as staunch defenders.  I never remember him having any kind of secretary, and his office was consequentially a mess, stacked almost to the ceiling with years' subscriptions of detective magazines and old medical journals.

      Janette was the daughter of Aunt Zadie, my paternal grandfather's sister.   Zadie and Janette and sister Louise and their brother Ralph (see Aberdeen Hotel musing) and their extended families all lived in particularly close proximity in various houses on the same block around Aberdeen's Main Street.   Janette was the only one of the Leach family who never married, and thereby lies the tale.

      Doctor Bowen had done part of his residency at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, where he had roomed with a Sandhills native.   When Moore County Hospital was completed in Pinehurst in 1929, his ex-roommate enticed him into joining the team as a resident surgeon.   He subsequently found himself one afternoon  at the Pinehurst Country Club in the offices of a certain Mr. Nelson, one of the village's millionaire movers and shakers, seeking advice about an appropriate place to live.    He had begun his employment living in the hospital, a situation he quickly tired of as he felt it too close to work to maintain any kind of decent privacy.

       It so happened that Janette worked as secretary to Nelson.   These were the early years of the Depression, her family had recently given up the Aberdeen Hotel, and she volunteered that her mother would be agreeable to rent a room in the family home in nearby Aberdeen where the new doctor could find a certain anonymity several miles away from the hospital.

      Doctor B. thus discovered both the Leach family and Aberdeen where he soon set up a private practice which he maintained for the rest of his life.

      I do not know if Janette and Doctor B. were already friends before he arrived in Aberdeen.   I suspect not, as the rather draconian rules of propriety prevalent in little Southern towns of the day would have certainly discouraged the bringing of a boyfriend into the bosom of the family, as it were.  Still, at whatever stage their friendship blossomed into something more, it appears in hindsight surprising that townspeople never seemed to raise the slightest eyebrow.

      After a respectable number of months living with Janette and her family,  Doctor Bowen purchased a handsome diamond ring and popped the eternal question.

Janette ... once a little girl

     Janette was a pleasant enough looking young woman, and she had not yet reached an age to be thought of as an old maid.   So it  probably never occurred to her that she had better waste no time in getting herself to the altar.  She was undoubtedly delighted with the ring, but proposed speaking with her mother before making any official decision.  There is no record of Doctor Bowen's response, other than that he acquiesced to await the family verdict.

      Aunt Zadie was of another era.   She had some doubts that the young doctor's financial means would quite come up to her expectations, and she counseled that it might be in everyone's interest to slow down, to wait another year or so before taking the final plunge.   Janette rather obliviously reported back that she was pleased to be engaged, but that she and her mother felt it best to put off making any hasty, precise marriage arrangements.

      Doctor Bowen, who had been exceedingly patient up until this point, reflected briefly on the turn of events, then retorted : "So be it.  Wear the ring as long as it pleases you, we will be engaged, if that is your wish. But make no mistake about it, it will be a cold day in hell before I ever ask you to marry me again!"

      There was of course no cold day in hell, he didn't, and they didn't!

      From that day on, Doctor B. and Aunt Zadie maintained an at-best polite, often frosty cohabitation.  He nevertheless did become a permanent fixture within the household.  By the time I came along (he delivered me, as he did my twin brothers) I never questioned why he was there or quite how he fit into the family.     

     The Leaches changed houses a couple of times over the years, always in the same neighborhood, and Doctor Bowen made the move along with the rest of them.   In later years, he bought the neighboring house of Ralph (who moved with his family a few doors down), but never lived there.  It just sat empty until he decided a few years later to rent it seasonally to a Danish sea captain.

      Little Polly was Ralph's daughter and Zadie's grand daughter.   Her family lived next door, and as a child she would regale me with tales of Doctor B's eccentric behavior.  She used to laugh about watching him pace back and forth in his room clad only in  boxer shorts, with the ever-present cigar hanging out of the corner of his mouth.  But most memorable for us children was the fact that he always seemed to be counting a seemingly inexhaustible wad of paper money which he would then stash  in boxes and drawers around the house.

      (My grandmother's family had owned the local bank which in 1934 –along with many depression-hit monetary institutions across the country-- closed its doors, never to reopen; and to the best of my knowledge no client's money was ever recuperated.    So it was hardly surprising that those with a steady income like Doctor Bowen in the 1930's would harbor a lifelong suspicion of banks.)

      By the time he died some 40 years later,  nothing had basically changed. Janette never removed her engagement ring, though in later life she would voice to family members her humiliation in wearing it throughout the decades, and she once confided that she felt the need to turn the gem side inwards when they occasionally traveled out of town together.

      At the end of his life Doctor Bowen had only one remaining relation, a nephew to whom he intended to leave a modest bequest.   However, in the days following the funeral, no will had been located, and Janette saw fate just about to deal her yet another slap in the face.

      My main source for this part of the family history is Little Polly.   In her recounting, pieced together over the years, the surviving nephew from South Carolina was virtually in the driveway waiting to claim the inheritance while Ralph ordered the house turned top to bottom until the will could be located.  Janette had seen the artisanal document being written, and the family knew it had to be there somewhere amidst the piles of memorabilia and boxes full of cash and general rubbish.   Rugs and carpets were pulled up, mattresses up-heaved.   Janette, who in later years had developed a penchant for bourbon, was in a state of both grief and confusion, but her brother was fully in charge and determined to protect his sister's (and by extension the rest of the family's) interests.

     The will was ultimately located, inexplicably hidden under someone else's mattress, and Janette was declared  beneficiary of the considerable estate.   A lifetime of unfulfilled dreams of a certain officialization of her situation was finally realized, even though it was too late coming and undoubtedly offered her little satisfaction.

TO PAY OR NOT TO PAY ...

     

Doctor Bowen at his office circa 1955

    My mother never dared ask other family members if they were billed for his services, for fear of calling attention to the fact that we were not.

     For whatever reason, he never charged us for a lifetime of medical attention.  Mother would periodically go into a kind of heavy anxiety, fearing he was going to wake up and send us a bill.   That he or his survivors might one day present an invoice for all the years of office visits, house calls and various operations (Doctor Bowen was considered an exceptional surgeon) for our family of five !

     In those days it was just another example of living in a small southern town where intertwining family ties created privileged codes of behavior.   Like many things growing up in Aberdeen, they were thought best left unspoken.

Your input is welcomed:  frank.pleasants@libertysurf.fr

CROSS REFERENCING … a look at other postings

Doctor Bowen is also mentioned in "Linwood and Doris" from Musings and Meanderings No. 14 and in "A Date With Dephie" from Musings and Meanderings No. 17; Aunt Zadie and the Leach family are also featured in  "Babe Ruth's 60th Home Run" from Hotel Musings No. 26; Little Polly is mentioned in "The Caldwells Come To Paris", Hotel Musings No. 57  (to access, click on highlighted titles).