THE NEIGHBORS (PART XVIII – “The Doctors” – Part 1)

APRIL 24, 2024 – Dr. and Mary Spurzem lived in the elegant authentic appearing Tudor house—with a slate roof, brick-and-timber facing and lots of dormers—next to Gladys and Charlie. Spurzems were quite a lot older than my parents. From the days of my earliest memories, I’d wanted to see the inside of the house, but for that chance I’d have to wait until the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, when Dr. Borud, his wife Shirley, and their three daughters moved in.

“Doc” (as many people outside our family called him) Spurzem practiced his medical arts and sciences—and intuition—in old, worn quarters above Peterson’s Shoe Store halfway down the first block of downtown Anoka after you crossed the Rum River Bridge. The medical office looked ancient even in the old days of my early youth. If the Spurzems lived in a nice house on a prime river lot, the good doctor wasn’t about to spend extra money sprucing up his workplace.

He didn’t have to. Business in the dusty, dimly lit quarters was always brisk. Dr. Spurzem was universally recognized as a master diagnostician, and as every mother knew (I can’t remember ever seeing a dad in the mix), usually an accurate diagnosis is 90% of the battle when it comes to restoring a sick child to health. Not that grown-ups didn’t avail themselves of Dr. Spurzem’s medical expertise, but it seemed that most of his patients were kids—with their mothers right there on the front line with them. Or not. When I was old enough to walk downtown by myself and was ambulatory despite the malady that required a visit to the doctor, I would be sent to Dr. Spurzem on my own—as were other kids. Whenever he passed between his exam room/office and his dispensary on the other side of the waiting room, the brusque doctor would call out with feigned disapproval, “Kids, kids, kids.” It made me smile, no matter how ill I was feeling.

He was the “go to” doc for physical exams. If you had trouble reading off the letters on the third line down on the eye chart, he’d improve your vision instantly by telling you to try again after stepping closer to the chart. For aspiring athletes, he’d ask, “Did you walk up the stairs to my office without stopping?” If the answer was “yes,” the kid got an immediate pass.

I don’t remember Dr. Spurzem’s billing system, mainly, it turns out, because he didn’t have one. People today recalling their experiences with Doc Spurzem say that he always charged a dollar—two if your parents were employed by Federal Cartridge, the biggest employer in Anoka—and slipped the bill under his desk pad.

For some reason I suffered a lot of painful earaches as a young kid. Inevitably they accompanied a cold and sore throat. After a day of loud, tearful complaining, I’d wind up at Dr. Spurzem’s office, where his gruff manner was reassuring. With an enormous scowl he’d look down my throat and give my ears a rough tug as he peered into the canals. By these quick diagnostic measures he signaled that he was not about to go soft on me—or what ailed me. And sure enough, before I knew it, out of a large glass jar came the foot-long (or so it seemed) needle, accompanied by the brash command, “Down with the trousers, sonny.” The penicillin shot hurt like hell, but I knew it would cure my earache and sore throat in no time flat. I can’t remember if a culture was involved, but perhaps Dr. Spurzem had seen enough in his day to distinguish at a glance, a virus from a bacterium.

What I didn’t know at the time was that Dr. Spurzem owned the vacant lot next to our house on the corner of Rice and Green. In the dinosaur age a builder had excavated the lot, but either minds changed or the money ran out. Spurzem bought it—on the cheap, I suspect—to hold for future appreciation. That day arrived when my parents decided to build their dream house. In the meantime, however, a thick crop of flox, weeds, boxelders—weeds in the form of trees—and a jungle of vines had taken over the lot. My older sisters turned the place into a fairyland filled with their active imaginations. I often trailed along, enchanted as much by my sisters’ creativity as by the magic of the place itself.

I don’t remember Dr. Spurzem or Mary ever walking on Rice Street. I wonder if he ever set foot on his vacant lot, which was three doors down and across the street from his Tudor dwelling. I did see him out mowing his lawn, however, a homeowner’s job that in his case was no mean task, given the size of his yard, front and back, and the number of sturdy oaks in front that he had to navigate around. He used an old push mower—powered by an antique combustion engine but requiring that the external pull cord be manually wound before each pull. On one very hot and humid summer day, I watched him furtively from our yard. He wore a big, broad-brimmed straw hat and sleeveless T-shirt, sweating it out as he stooped over the mower and pulled and rewound the cord at least a dozen times before the machine came back to life.

I was surprised to learn recently that Spurzems had three kids—two twin boys and a daughter—who were of my parents’ generation and long gone from Rice Street by the time our family moved to Rice Street. One of the sons became an investment banker and top executive at the old Piper Jaffrey & Hopwood based in Minneapolis; the other son became a physician. (I could find no information about the daughter.)

During the summer after my first year of law school, I worked for a time conducting surveys for a market research firm. By pure coincidence my survey led to a family on the other side of Anoka. After making arrangements to make a home visit, I appeared at the front door and was ushered in through the living room to an enclosed porch in back. There I found a very old man sitting in a recliner, staring into the past, it seemed. I was introduced to the geezer, who turned out to be none other than Dr. Spurzem, a relative of the people I’d come to survey. He was a shadow of his former loud gruff self, but he remembered me. I certainly remembered him. He asked about my parents and sisters, and we reminisced about Rice Street but he was mostly withdrawn and laconic. I wish now that I’d asked him questions about his background—his education, training, and experiences serving the citizens of Anoka back in the day—but then again, he seemed as distant as the memories he might have recalled. (Cont.)    

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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson