Jason, I think it’s time you and I had a little talk. I realize you’re not from Bath County. You‘d be a better man today if you had been raised in Hot Springs, or any one of dozens of other small towns and villages that are tucked into the hills and ’hollers.
You may not have as much money as you do today, but you'd be a better man.
When Hillary Clinton coined the phrase, “It takes a village...” she could’ve been talking about Bath County. I wasn’t just Cliff and Lee Nelson’s son, I was the county’s son.
I could go to Dr. and Mrs. Myers’ home in the morning before school and play pool and ping pong, with their boys Dennis and Gary, and spend the nights at Robert Shaver’s house down in Healing Springs. When I'd occasionally make the trip over the mountain to Milboro, I could pick from over a dozen homes to visit and be treated like one of the neighborhood kids.
Not because of who I was, but because of who they were. Open, friendly giving, caring people that actually knew what it meant to give the shirt off their back.
Back then, healthcare wasn’t fancy buildings with false facades -- by the way, I think that’s a great symbol of what describes so many people that have settled in Bath County since I left. False facades of humanity covering up an empty, soulless existence.
Healthcare in Bath County has always been about the people, Jason. It’s not been about corporate structures, bottom-lines, flowcharts and other efforts at bringing the boardroom into rural America. It’s been about the people.
Drs. Myers, Hornbarger, Harnesberger, Jarman, Redington and others have practiced the ancient, time-honored role of healer in the mountains. They may not have known the best economic growth methods and models, but they knew about people, sickness and disease. They knew about caring for the patient. The doctors -- and nurses -- in Bath County understood “holistic medicine” before it became a catch-phrase uttered by Madison Avenue types trying to look cool and “with it.”
These are things that you don’t understand Jason. Until you get to be a tired, old man, you never will be able to comprehend what the people of Bath County could teach you today.
That’s about all for today, Jason. Do the right thing and I‘ll be glad to buy you lunch when I’m back in town. If you have a few minutes, I’ll even show you some of the nooks and crannies in Bath County that you'll never find on your own.
Do the wrong thing and I won’t have a problem showing you what Mr. Pauley did to me, Burger and a couple other boys when he caught us peeking into the girl’s restroom at Ashwood Elementary.
Jerry Nelson
Buenos Aires, Argentina
JourneyAmerica.org
By the way, please be sure to tell DURRETTE & CRUMP, your attorneys, to kiss my ass. Anyone that knows me, knows that the two groups of people I have no use for are bankers and lawyers. The only thing I want from a banker is the free Christmas calendar each year and the only thing I want from lawyers is for them to be back in their coffin before the sun goes down. Both groups are one tiny step above the stuff I scrape off my shoe.
