Pawling, NY

A retired dentist with chronic atrial fibrillation comes to the office every month to have his INR checked. Most of the time he's well and simply gets a blood test. I've known him for years. He's a widower, friendly, compliant and a delightful patient. He recently suffered from a bout of CHF which followed a nasty case of bronchitis, so I've had the chance to see him more than usual. Today was a simple follow up to determine if the dose of coumadin was adequate and to see whether we would continue on a low dose of furosemide. Those decisions took minutes, but we began talking about spring. He recalled a spring in Pawling, NY while he was in the army. He was stationed at what is now Greenhaven Prison, but apparently at the time was being used for the military, but also housed hardened criminals. He was assigned there to practice.



I worked on a dairy farm not far from there when I was in high school twenty years after he was there. We both recalled the big hill, which was a challenge for the freight trains coming out of New York City. He recalled watching the cars go by and remembered they often had to have two engines pulling. I shared that we used to hop the trains, because they were going slow enough, and ride them for many miles, while the local boy, Kenny, would drive the tractor around to the next intersection where we'd hop off. He recalled playing on a fabulous golf course that was "just like a wide, green pasture". I recalled that Pawling had one of the oldest golf courses in the country. As far as I know, its still in operation.



I remembered that there was a man who worked as a prison guard at Greenhaven who rented a room at the dairy farm I worked at. On the weekends he would help out around the farm, out of boredom. He said he was from "upstate", near Syracuse, and that he was working to send money home to his family. He rarely went home. He never got a phone call. He had a tatoo and very black hair, which he kept slicked back. He was a quiet man and had very conservative political views. I always had the feeling that he could explode at the least provocation and imagined that he was capable of killing a man.



The dentist remembered that he lived in very nice army housing with his wife, and this memory made him smile. He admitted that they were being pampered beyond what was necessary. From there he was sent to a post on the Jersey shore. He remembered that a famous radio announcer lived in Pawling, but he couldn't remember his name. I didn't know it, but looked it up when I got home. Edward R. Murrow. His ashes were spread over his farm. I never went into Pawling that much, my farm was up the road in Poughquag, but we did occasionally go to the farm supply store near the train tracks. I think it was an Agway.

Years later, when I was in college we took a field trip to Wingdale, the mental institution there, as part of a class on genetics. It was the most uneasy I've ever felt in my life. We were ushered into a dingy room in an old, industrial style building. Like something I could imagine in communist Russia. The room was filled with abandoned children; all malformed and bizarre. One was just an enormous head, and tiny limbs. One had a face as narrow as a turnip. One appeared to be part boy, part monkey. Most were in stainless steel hospital style cribs. Like little prisons. A few were being held by nurses who, I remember thinking at the time, had significantly more inner strength than I had.

All of these memories of Pawling were far more interesting than CHF and atrial fibrillation, but the dentist and I were much better off for having spent the time recollecting.