My current dentist has a cute little bulldog that he keeps in the office. It seems a bit unprofessional but he pulls it off. His office is out in Webster where I used to be a patient of his father. I went out with that guy’s receptionist. The elder recommended I see Dr. Cupolo for a bridge and I liked Rocco so much I switched to him. Dr Cupolo had an interest in a bagel store in Culver Ridge for while and his son ran the Victor Grilling Company. Today his son owns Rocco, a great downtown Italian eatery. The place is named for his father.
My mom used to take the six of us (my youngest sister had not yet arrived) up to Dr. Cleary’s office in the Medical Arts Building on Alexander Street. His office was on the sixth floor with a great view of the Emergency Department of the old Genesee Hospital. They had an elevator operator back then. We’d wait our turn while we read Highlights (Find Ten Things Wrong With This Picture), and ran up and down the stairway of the place. There was a soda fountain downstairs in the pharmacy but we never had any money for that.
Dr. Cleary was old school. No novocaine. “Hang on,” he would tell us as he swung that old, slow-speed drill with a 1/4 inch bit around. He was a Red Wings fan so we talked baseball and between patients he would smoke cigarettes in the office.
I just rode my bike over to the hospital where my mom spent last night. She has a few blood clots that they are attending to but she slept well. When I walked in she had just finished a breakfast of pancakes and bacon.
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