Service and company better than a hotel.
Woodard Herring Hospital, Wilson, N.C.
“Let’s open a window and get rid of some of this cigar smoke. I bet they can smell it all the way to the Courthouse.” The nurse opened a window and the thick smoke drifted toward the outside. The men laughed and offered her a cigar to take home to her husband. They were using an ashtray about the size of a dinner plate but still dropped ashes on the table and floor.
No X-Rays, MRIs or, blood drawn. He just went by his doctor’s office and said he wanted to check into the hospital for a few days. It was 1954. Doctors didn’t need much of a reason to admit a patient if they were willing to pay the few dollars per night for a private room. I believe for this hospital stay the reason Tom Wiggins gave was that he was constipated.
My great grandfather Tom Wiggins was living alone since his wife, my great grandmother, Nannie Forbes Wiggins, passed away in July of 1951. He could have gone to Wilson and checked into a motel or downtown at the Cherry Hotel or the Briggs Hotel but he would not have the kind of service he was getting at the Woodard Herring Hospital on Green Street in Wilson, N.C. He enjoyed interaction with the nurses and they catered to him. He was a social person and enjoyed the attention and he and his older friends who visited him were probably big ol’ harmless flirts.
My father told me that Pa was in the hospital and I should go by and see him. I went by the hospital and asked which room Tom Wiggins was in. I was directed to a corner room at the end of a hall. I knocked gently on the door and heard my grandfather say, “Come in.”
It was just after 5:00 pm when I entered that room filled with cigar smoke. A bedside table/tray was pushed between chairs and lowered to the height of a barroom table. There was a bucket of ice, a bottle (partially hidden under the table), drinks poured and already being consumed by my great grandfather, Mr. Leslie Matthews, Dr. Pittman and Mr. George Tyson. They were laughing and talking and telling stories on each other. I wish I had stayed longer and listened more closely. They were chiding my grandfather about being on the short end of a purchase of some mules and it was a colorful story that I came in too late to hear all of it. Pa then asked Dr. Pittman about an elephant. I cannot swear that the drinks were alcoholic but that is where the evidence pointed.
There were two young guys in a room down the hall. They had been in an automobile accident. It seems they ran into a tree on Goldsboro Street not far from the railroad track. One of them had a cast on his leg and I am not sure how serious their injuries were but Pa had made contact with them. They were from Greenville and were waiting for their families to come pick them up. Pa said the boys had no money or cigarettes so he gave me some money and asked me to go out and get them some cigarettes. I got their cigarettes around the corner at the Bus Station Café.
At that time Pa had a blue Cadillac that he had parked on the street near the hospital. I mentioned that I better go because I was walking home. At that time I was living with my Uncle Pete Greene and his wife my Aunt Bill on Woodard Avenue near Atlantic Christian College. It was about 15 blocks. I didn’t mind the walk, and as I told my co-workers “I walked farther than that to get to a cornfield to chop corn all day.” I just wasn’t wearing high heels to chop corn, but I was carrying a weeding hoe and a Mason jar of water.
Pa gave me the keys to his baby blue Cadillac and told me to drive it and he would call me when he was ready to go home. I took the keys and the Cadillac. It was a fun week. Of course, I had to drive it to the Creamery every afternoon and do a few laps and profile Nash Street. My friends, Joyce Fields and Inez Jenkins Anderson and I rode and profiled every afternoon that week. We rode by the Creamery, Theater Soda Shop and waved at the guys hanging out on the sidewalk in front of Wimpy’s Pool Hall on Nash Street.
One day when I stopped by the hospital a few of Pa’s fox hunting friends were there talking about hound dogs. Mr. Tyson didn’t hear well so he would cup his ear in his hand, lean toward the speaker and say, “Aye, Come Again.” They would repeat even louder about fox hunting, hound dogs and about all the details of how some hound performed better than another. When they started imitating the sounds of their fox horns, I left to pick up my friends and do a few laps through the Creamery parking lot. I can still remember that corner room at the Woodard Herring Hospital and how the nurse opened a window to let out a little of the cigar smoke. I don’t believe hospitals today have a corner room like that. Maybe they should have “just one.”
Montress Greene
Email: Montressg@gmail.com
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