False Teeth

by Douglas Fodge



Some things that happened during my childhood were so dumbfounding and unbelievable that no one knew whether or not to believe them, then or even now. By the early ‘50s, Daddy’s teeth had rotted down to nubs, and this forced him to do something about the situation. An obvious remedy was to go to a dentist. In modern times, at least in most of the USA, going to a dentist would be akin to going to a shoe store – something you did a couple of times each year. Not at our household, especially in those days.

The only times we sought the help of a medically trained person of any kind was when something was really bad. In an earlier story, I told about the time Daddy chopped a 2-3” gash in the side of his head with an accidental blow from an ax while attempting to catch a rabbit that had escaped into a hollow tree. That little gash wasn’t serious enough to warrant medical attention, but when you could no longer eat corn-on-the-cob, fried rabbit etc. then matters were getting pretty darn serious. However, getting medical attention of any kind was no simple chore for us. We didn’t have an automobile, and all the medical and dental professionals were in neighboring towns of Clarksville or Paris, Texas, each about 15-20 miles distant.

Going to either of these small cities meant riding a bus or hitching a ride with someone, so Daddy hiked off to Mr. Van’s combination drugstore, bus station, reading room and soda fountain in Detroit (Texas, that is) to purchase a bus ticket to Clarksville, presumably to see Dr. W.M. Mullins, D.D.S. Dr. Mullins would be known today as a frontier dentist, lawyer, preacher, physician, and veterinarian. By the early 1950s, Dr. Mullins was nearing 90, but he still attended patients for whatever ailments they had. Daddy had known Dr. Mullins most of his life since Dr. Mullins had practiced in our community for several decades before moving his office to the larger city, Clarksville. Dr. Mullins was the Sunday School Superintendent at the First Methodist Church in Detroit for about 30 years. As for me, I don’t recall ever meeting Dr. Mullins, although others of my family can spin tales about different procedures he performed on them, including some about dentistry. Even today my brother Robert tells about one predicament Dr. Mullins encountered and how he solved the problem. It seems in his later years Dr. Mullins was about midway through a tooth extraction, and he concluded that he was too weak to finish extracting the patient’s tooth. Not the least bit flustered by this problem, Dr. Mullins went outside and enlisted the aid of a complete stranger in the hallway to help pull the recalcitrant tooth out of the poor fellow's mouth. There’s no doubt that the patient was grateful.

Daddy rode the bus to Clarksville on a Saturday morning and walked from the bus station to Dr. Mullins’ office. He asked to have his teeth extracted and replaced with a set of false teeth that morning without benefit of having made an appointment in advance. I’m certain Dr. Mullins understood the situation so he complied. As far as I know this was the only time in his life that Daddy visited a dentist, but that was fairly common practice among farmers in our area. People never brushed their teeth, and when a tooth “went bad” they pulled it out, often as not, they did it at home. There’s a bit of truth in the cartoon about boys pulling each others teeth by tying a piece of string around the base of a dying tooth and yanking it out.

I never heard that impressions of Daddy’s rotten teeth or mouth were made, and after his teeth were extracted, it was time to be fitted with a set of false teeth. I was told that Dr. Mullins excused himself, went into a back room, and returned with various sets of false teeth that he had in stock. He presented this collection of false teeth with the intent of picking a set that fulfilled Daddy’s requirements. The fitting process took about thirty minutes, and finally Dr. Mullins and Daddy were satisfied with a set of teeth. Daddy asked how much the set cost, and he was told that they would cost more than $100, plus the dental work. Now mind you, Daddy might have paid $200 for a good Coon or Fox Hound without even the slightest blink of an eye, but $100 for a set of false teeth? No way, Jose! According to Daddy he asked Dr. Mullins to bring out some less expensive sets of teeth, but Dr. Mullins informed him that less expensive sets of false teeth weren’t very good quality, and it would be hard to find a fit, especially any that looked somewhat natural in his mouth. "Let’s try some out anyway", was the reply, "I can’t afford all the expensive sets."

After another lengthy round of teeth fitting---can you imagine what this ordeal must have been like?---Daddy and Dr. Mullins were finally satisfied that a set of false teeth that would suffice had been identified, and Daddy asked Dr. Mullins how much they cost? "$10!" "How in God’s name could these false teeth be so much cheaper than all those others?", a jubilant and satisfied patient asked. "Because they’re second-hand teeth!"

So help me, we heard this story so often over the years without ever the slightest change in the way it was presented that Mama and I concluded that it had to be true. Moreover, Daddy was a firm believer that one would go to hell for lying just as fast as for stealing something, so I think it was true to the last detail. Nonetheless, in spite of satisfaction noted at the time of purchase, Daddy complained about how his false teeth fit and looked for the next 30 years, but he never went back to get replacements.