When I moved to Lotus City to practice Orthopedics in 1965 there were two men still in practice in their 90's. The place was a sociable environment and the most sociable place of all was the surgeon's lounge at the St. Joseph's Hospital. Dr. JM and Dr TWAG, known colloquially as Twag, occupied the area most mornings. We all smoked and drank coffee in those days so there was a convivial if somewhat dense air. Twag always occupied a corner chair, a large red leather old bishop's chair with a worn round bottom he seemed to fit exactly like an egg in a egg cup and JM eschewed seeking anything resembling that rite. They probably saw their one or two patients in hospital in the morning and then enjoyed the action in the lounge till the afternoon office. Twag liked to recount the adventures of his family when his father served in the British Army with Gordon of Khartoum in the Sudan and he was a boy after Gordon lost his head to the Muslim horde. JM liked to recall he was the first physician hired to do pathology at the Vancouver General Hospital in 1904. They served up stories ad infinitum and if Twag took too long JM would say , "Gray, you live in the past." Even if we were busy we stayed a while to listen. Something to do with respecting your elders. JM was also an astronomer, graduating to a telescope from a microscope in 1904. When smoking was forbidden and coffee waived in latter years, no one bothered to sit in the surgical lounge and connect with the less relevant conversations that meant so much.
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