Chapter XXII: How To Git Skint

DURING MY MANY YEARS OF PRACTICE I had patients from all walks of life. One incident that now comes to mind occurred at a time when the government insisted on prying into everybody's affairs. I had to call one day on a woman who lived on a little two acre farm north of the Jewish cemetery. She complained bitterly of a government inspector with too many questions.

"He asked me how many eggs I sold last year," she said, "and how many I expected to sell this year. Also how many chickens I sold and how many I planned to raise. Then he asked about the pigs. I was so mad that I told him, 'See that old sow under the apple tree yonder? Well just go and ask her. She's pregnant and knows more about it than I do.'"

There is also the memory of a pawnbroker who had a store at the corner of 5th Avenue and Broadway with an amusing sign on his door. It read: Come in here EN GIT SKINT. The capitals were his.

There have been three major tragedies since I came to Nashville. The first occurred at 12:10 AM on the morning of November 5, 1912, when the southeast corner of the reservoir gave way and 25,000,000 gallons of water poured down the hill toward the fairgrounds. The wall of the reservoir at that point was at least twenty feet thick. Many houses were destroyed or torn loose from their foundations and carried along on the flood. Of course there were numerous injuries but thankfully no loss of life.

On March 22, 1916, a building near the river in East Nashville caught fire. There was a strong wind blowing and burning embers carried through the air, spreading flames across the city. The fire raged for three days and 648 buildings succumbed to it. This time there was one death, but only one.

The third tragedy occurred on the morning of November 9, 1918, when two trains of the Nashville, Chattanooga & St Louis Railway collided on the curve east of the bridge on White Bridge Road. I do not know how many doctors went out to help, but there were many of us, perhaps as many as thirty. It was a ghastly and heartrending sight, the poor people pinned in the carnage and begging for relief. About all we could do was to give them hypodermics to relieve their pain until the wreck could be cleared away. It was the worst railroad disaster in the history of Nashville. Over 100 people were killed.

But there are other memories of a happier note. On June 20, 1910, I married Ruby Ray Riley of Brooks, Kentucky. The ceremony was performed by Dr Egbert Smith in the Second Presbyterian Church in Louisville. After a reception at a local hotel, we boarded the train for New York en route to a ship sailing for Bermuda. In Bermuda we stayed at Hotel Frascati on the north shore overlooking the reef. Weather was perfect and the sea was smooth both ways. Upon our return we lived at 303 29th Avenue for three years. It was while we were living there that our son, Clinton E Brush, III, was born at the Woman's Hospital. Dr Cowden did the obstetrical work and during the first year I had to call on three different pediatricians. We had tremendous difficulty in finding a proper diet for Third.

In December 1910 a patient gave me a live turkey. The house at 29th Avenue had a rather large garden fenced in with chicken-run wire. Since we were not ready to cook the turkey, and since there were no freezers, I clipped his wings and turned him loose in the garden. Work sent me traveling and when I came home about two weeks later, Ruby asked me to kill the turkey so she could dress and cook him the very next day. I went into the crisp moonlight and chased that bird past the point of exhaustion. Every time I got near him, that bird would spread his wings, come racing past me and run to the other end of the garden, some fifty feet away, with me stumbling over the rough frozen ground behind him. Finally in desperation I pulled up a bean pole and, holding it like a baseball bat, I approached. As he came by again, I swung with all my force and wrapped his neck around the pole. He was one dead turkey.


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