The Last TOMfoolery

This all started back in August when I was walking my walker down the hallway and my legs went rubbery.

The pain in my back that I had been tolerating turned out to be something more serious than I thought, and after a surgery to inject some plastic into the bone cavities, I had hoped to be more mobile.

The doctors found some speckles of bone fragment around my spinal cord, and another surgery followed, with the hope that soon the feeling would return to my legs and I'd be on the road to recovery.

It's not a road for the faint of heart, I have found out.

In fact, to my conservative bent, there were too many left turns.

Through some more complications that I will spare you, dear reader, the sordid details, I was feeling an exceeding amount of pain, especially when nurses and aides helped me roll over in bed.

Finally, doctors discovered an abscess in my chest cavity, and off we went to Kadlec Medical Center for another surgery, this one promising to be the ticket to getting back home.

Like Ronald Reagan, I didn't care if the surgeon was a Republican or a Democrat. I just wanted to recover.

Well, while the doctors and nurses doctored and nursed, I wasn't taking the high road. I'd been flat on my back for several weeks and it wasn't much fun. Though nearly all my working life was spent on my feet, this was getting to be a little too much to tolerate.

When another surgery was proposed, Anita and I decided that this program wasn't going to be solved in 60 minutes, even without commercials. Weary of being a pin cushion for well-meaning medicos, we opted to step away from further treatment and come home to Dayton General, closer to our beloved Waitsburg.

It's a time when you find meaning in your life's choices.

We chose to move from Colorado to Waitsburg in 1963, looking for a community with a newspaper and a Presbyterian Church. Here we found a town that was everything we could want.

Publishing The Times was challenging and fulfilling and, in spite of my scant study of economics back in college, the little paper provided a good living and, more significantly, a wonderful life. We'll never forget the 1964 flood, going to state in 1969, and the yeoman's duty of faithfully printing a weekly newspaper.

Anita taught school, we raised our kids, Charlie, Peggy and Loyal. At one point in 1971, all five of us were at school: I taught journalism, Anita taught Third Grade, and the kids were a senior, a freshman and a seventh grader.

Charlie became a teacher, Peggy a registered nurse, and Loyal followed in my footsteps, with a happy detour into aviation.

Our home, the big "stone" house on Coppei Avenue, became a base for the comings and goings for not only the kids, but passels of their friends. And we enjoyed many events, holidays and even a few trying times in that wonderful home, besides having many friends in the community like the McCaws, Danforths, Kenneys, Davis's, Hulces, Huwes, and many others.

Anita and I felt we had happened upon "God's World" in this little burg, which waves lushly green every spring, like watching the waves of the ocean. They turned golden, and a month or so of dust, rumbling wheat trucks and not seeing as much of our farming friends gave way to the start of another school year.

In the winter, the fields are tucked in, hopefully under a protective blanket of snow, and we rejoice with the holidays, Thanksgiving for God's providence, and Christmas, for the gift of His Son.

I have felt winter these past several weeks, but know that, with spring, green leaves and new life will emerge. I won't be there when it comes around, but I'll be with you all, my beloved family and friends in this little corner of Heaven on Earth.

[Editor's note: Former longtime Times publisher Tom Baker passed away on Monday. We will have much more to say about Tom's legacy in next week's issue.]