On April 26, 2009, the Kelley House Museum hosted Dr. Don Hahn and Dr. Jim Swallow to discuss practicing medicine in Mendocino over the years. The following is Dr. Hahn retelling a few stories about house calls he made in the 1960s and 1970s. To watch the full discussion, visit the Kelley House Museum YouTube page.
Dr. Don Hahn in his office. (Photographer: Tobin Hahn)
I can confess that I was particularly fond of making house calls because I got to see and learn more about a person. Two houses that I particularly enjoyed. The first was the farmhouse at the very end of Middle Ridge Road in Albion. It seemed to me at the point of being engulfed by rose vines. There lived Dean and his wife, Jesse, who was born there and lived all her long life in the same house. Dean was from Oakland. He had traveled to Albion as a member of the Oakland baseball team to play against the Albion. There was some socializing after the game, a dance, perhaps, and Dean met Jesse, and so it went. Dean was a collector. He had tons of stuff stored in various outbuildings. Their attic was an adventure. The most poignant item stored there was an old-time large wheel, elegant baby carriage that Jesse’s parents had, who came from Canada, must have used to wheel her along the dirt road and paths of Albion over 100 years ago. Dean was very generous and gave me many little presents, including an old-fashioned pocketknife, a magnifying glass, a boot jack, and a wonderful apothecary balance, complete with apothecary weights I keep to this day in a place of honor in my consultation room. He was a little vague on the origin of the scale.
The second house I enjoyed visiting belonged to Edith, who grew up in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She was a nurse at the old Stanford Hospital in San Francisco, where she met and married a doctor operating a small clinic hospital in Albion. He had returned to Stanford for some refresher courses. She came to Albion for the first time as a bride in 1919. She found the place somewhat austere. She survived that first winter by anticipating the splash of color that would erupt in the spring as the tulips she had planted would bloom. Alas, she waited and waited and waited in vain. That was Edith’s introduction to gophers. Widowed, remarried and widowed again. She had moved to a lovely, eastern style home in Fort Bragg when I first met her. She eventually came to expect a visit from me regularly, as she became increasingly infirm.
Before then, when she was still quite able to come to Mendocino. She was sitting in my consultation room one morning when she spied the apothecary balance. She said it reminded her of one that they used to have at the Albion Hospital. I explained that this one had been a gift from Dean. Turned out she knew Dean well, and she asserted that Dean didn’t always have a clear perception of what was his and what wasn’t. I had the scale given to me a second time, this time by Edith. You might say they’re all balanced out in the air.
To hear more from Dr. Hahn and Dr. Swallow about practicing medicine in Mendocino, visit the Kelley House Museum YouTube channel. A Woman’s Place Was Everywhere: How Working Women Shaped Mendocino is now open to view! The Kelley House is open Thursday-Monday from 11am-3pm. Walking Tours of Mendocino are available throughout the week; visit the Kelley House event calendar for a schedule.