PHILIP – Sat. – Nov 15, 2014

I have been there four times — twice by bus when I sang at the Mosque Theater with the Maury High Glee Club (I returned to Norfolk the same day.) And twice as an adult of twenty and twenty-two when I wanted to see the Confederate Capitol building.

Begrudgingly, my host will bring it out, and you would be duly disappointed. It is just a bucket, about the three gallon standard size, but unable to hold water or any liquid because the slats are not sealed or bonded together. The bucket would leak all over the place!

You notice it contains just one thing: about four pounds of teeth — human teeth — molars, 2nd molars, 3rd molars, incisors, central incisors, cuspids, canines, lateral incisors, eye-teeth — you name it; they were all there: 4 lbs. of them, a bucket full.

“Do you want to see the instruments that pulled them out?” she asked.

“No.”

“We have complete display of 1870 dental instruments,” she told me. “Wanna see ‘em?”

“No. . . But tell me — how did you acquire them, the ‘bucket’, I mean?”

“Clarence Beebe, provided it,” she said. “Come with me.”

She 1ed me into a small anti-room and closed the door. She sat down at the tiny desk and indicated I should take the chair opposite her. I felt I had seen this room before, in a detective movie, or someplace, and I wouldn’t have been surprised if she had said, “You killed Mary Smith, admit it — you hardly knew her, right? — then tell me why you did it? — and tell me why you used an axe!”

Instead, she asked, “Clarence Beebe — you ever hear of him? He was an advertising genius! He told P.T. Barnum he was the ‘greatest showman in the world,’ and he believed him! — and better than that, he convinced the old bird to promote his circus as ‘The Greatest Show on Earth!’ And he would live to see his one-ring midway attraction become the three-ring extravaganza that it is today! . . So, Beebe then got ahold of Dr. Philip Parker and said he should go on the midway and pull teeth.”

“And you’re saying I should bill myself as the ‘greatest dentist on earth’?”

“No, silly. What’s the biggest fear people have about going to the dentist?”

“I don’t know — the pain, I guess.”

“Pain. You’re right — pain is the No.1 excuse Americans have for not seeing a dentist when they should. And you are you a dentist, are you not?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“Then you should know! Ever hear of Dr. Philip Parker, DDS?”

“No.”

“Well, he was the dentist who pulled all those teeth in that bucket over there — painlessly, in a sideshow, a setting on the midway before P.T’s main show. When the A.D.A. got wind of it, they threw a fit. They told Parker to cease and desist — or forfeit his license.’’

“What’d he do?”

“What do you think he did? . . . How ‘bout you? Wanna give it a shot? Wanna see if you can fill the bucket to the brim?”

And thus it began. I started by picking out ‘victims’ I thought were already ‘four sheets to the wind’, and nothing could hurt them, anyway, or their teeth were so rotten I was doing them a favor by pulling them out — the others I plied with whisky, chloroform, and morphine. There wasn’t a peep out of any of them, but the A.D.A. made up for it. They sent me a letter saying I’d better not ‘give any indication you offer, or ever have offered, anything resembling “painless” dentistry’. I wrote back, telling them to ‘be careful, or I would drop my name entirely, and have it changed legally to PAINLESS PARKER (D.D.S.) — which the ‘unknown dentist’ should have done in the first place. Then I could advertise ’painless dentistry’ all I wanted — after all, I’d become Dr, Painless Parker, D.D.S.!

To a make long story short, that’s exactly what I did. Once the bucket was filled to overflowing with teeth of all descriptions, washed and gleaming like a toddler’s, I gave my notice, changed my name back to the original, and walked away from the throngs gathered nightly on the midway.

Shortly after this adventure that year, the A.D.A. sanctioned and approved Novocain. (Dr .Phillip *******, D.D.S. never had it so good.)


Copyright© 2014 by Robert A. Mills, all rights reserved; may not be published, nor re-written nor broadcast without the author’s permission