Alva Review-Courier -

When I was growing up, and for many years thereafter, our family doctor was a man who was very competent. Also, however, he had a no-nonsense sort of personality.

He was blunt spoken. He would tell you what he thought you should do to get well, and he expected you to do it. If you didn’t, he’d chew you out! As a child, I was scared to death of him!

Which gets me to the day I was sick with something approaching bronchitis and I wrote down on a piece of paper the name of the medicine an out-of-town doctor had given me the most recent time I had been sick.

As I gave my regular doctor the p...