“Shaping Smiles and Society one Patient at a Time” read the gleaming new sign above the door. Below it, the name Dr. Daniel Maynard DDS was inscribed.
Dr. Maynard had been a part of this community for as long as most people who lived here could remember. His dental practice was housed in the building adjacent to the post office and across the street from what was once Woolworth’s five and dime. His father, Daniel Sr. started the practice and it has been a well respected part of the community ever since.
Dr. Maynard was born in this town and grew up here. He watched it turn from a small community with one stop light at the center of town, to a bustling small city with a double lane boulevard leading to the Air Force base that was built in 1942.
He was raised in a strict household by adults who expected rules to be followed. His parents were loving but tough. Disrespect and insubordination was not tolerated and both his mother and father felt that children were to be seen and not heard.
As the years passed by and the town’s population grew larger, Daniel joined his father’s practice and the two men worked side by side. He could remember as if it were yesterday, standing by his father, mixing the amalgam powder with the drops of mercury to create the material used for fillings. He also remembered when his father purchased the office’s first Borden Airotor drill, it was 1957 and he was 27 years old. Thinking back on that day neither of the men knew the power that drill actually held, but they soon found out.
The men began noticing something about the patients the drill had been used on. They were somehow different afterward, better, not just the tooth that was worked on but something inside. Hard to deal with Mr. Argersinger became pleasant and calm. Crotchety old Mrs. Langstein had a softness about her and Jenny Osplemeyer, who was known for her trips behind her father’s barn with any willing boy, suddenly stopped her “services” and started attending church.
Daniel Sr. began to realize what was happening, he couldn’t explain it, but he somehow knew. The drill changed people; it changed them for the better, or so it seemed. Being the God fearing man that he was, the drill was packed back in the box it came in and placed upon the highest shelf in the office. “Man had no business dealing in such matters” the old man thought. “God makes people as he sees fit, and the drill; well that was the devil’s drill.”
After his father passed away Daniel Jr. took over the practice. The town was as busy as it had ever been. Sometimes the wait at the post office was more than he could take, and the traffic, well that was something that could make the expletives fly out of the mouth of even the most righteous man. It wasn’t all bad though, with more people came more patients, and that was a good thing.
As the years went on Dr. Maynard noticed the differences in people of the present compared to folks from his day. The women were loose, the men had no work ethic and the kids were spoiled brats with no morals or manners. The town, his town, was now filled with crime, unwed mothers and pregnant teenagers. “What has happened to this place?” he thought. As his 2:00 appointment walked through the door talking loudly on his cell phone, his pants slung down to purposely expose his briefs, Dr. Maynard’s gaze shifted to the highest shelf and the Borden Airotor still perched upon it, and he knew what he needed to do.
That drill not only had the power to eliminate decay from enamel, but the power to eliminate decay from mankind and society. Kevin Andrews sat down that day for a filling and left a different kid. As he was making the appointment for his next cleaning Dr. Maynard called out, “Hey Kevin, tell your father he’s overdue for a visit, I believe he could use some work done”.
The following month after seeing scores of patients, Dr. Maynard was sitting quietly between appointments listening to his receptionist hum a tune as she filed some papers. “She’s a perfect employee” he thought as a smile crept across his face. Come to think of it, everyone in his life seemed perfect these days, his wife and kids, the grandkids, even the boy who comes to mow the lawn. He wasn’t surprised, just pleased with himself. After all, he knew exactly why they were perfect. He was their dentist…and he had been using the Borden Airotor drill.