Oral Engineering

Half a lifetime ago, a very good dentist in Chicago decided to make my dental disasters a project. As a result, I have dental repairs that are much more enduring than the teeth they rest on.

One of his magic repairs was a bridge over the River Kwai. He melted down a ring from a disaster of another sort, and tied two teeth together, at the same time hanging a phony denture over the intervening gorge. Twice in the intervening years, a piece of taffy or caramel has suctioned his handiwork up from its foundations, and that bridge has meandered through my digestive tract. Today it came off, again--more under control--and I am glad to see it go. It will be replaced, with two extra lanes and a cantilevered arch, at an indecent price.

The gold will be sold, probably to cement another marriage together, permanently, until a dentist do them part.

Meanwhile, I am wearing temporary caps, which my numb mouth suggests are somewhat like mile markers along the highway. I can chew hubcaps, or bacon-like strips of tire treads.

The dental engineers have scheduled two more visits. The first will be to see "how well the metal framework fits". I do not know what that means, but it sounds like scaffolding and reinforcing rods. The last visit will be to insure that the weight of my billfold does not throw the whole project out of balance.

I have my own agenda: I would like a leash for the new bridge. Chasing it through the entire alimentary tract and trapping it on exit, is too low-tech. I want a way to bring it back the way it ran off, before it gets too far. Maybe something nylon.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy. Those were skills to be learned and practiced. I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop. He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes. He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade. Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore. The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up. I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth. I knew how to do that. Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down. On the second try, aimi

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back: two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed! Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore. The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil. We farmed, too, of course. All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor. Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them. Even when all they wanted to do w

SmokeSound

Search This Blog