Grandfather B suffered from a bad back.

Years of lifting six foot long two hundred pound wool bags had left its mark. He wore a back brace corset to ease the pain.

In the days before Valium and Advil the only possible help was surgery. Even more "iffy" in the early 1940's than now.

Our local doctor recomended a young professor of neurosurgery at Oregon University Medical school.

Grandfather decided that for a delicate operation such as this he wanted the "best" so he wrote to family members in Philadelphia asking them to make inquiries.

The answer came back. Don't come here. You have the "best" in your own back yard at the University of Oregon Medical School.

Incidently, this physician operated successfully on Aunt Dorothy about 1960 and with a protege on my late wife in 1974. He had been consulted and was on standby when JFK was shot in Dallas.

In the attack on the Health Bill the question of the status of aliens really seems to be bugging a lot of people.

Our foreman at B.B & S. was Mr. Henderson who passed away in 1959. Mr. H. had worked for my grandfather in Walla Walla. Grandfather retired in 1939. He went on to work for grandfather's successors.

I know from conversations with him that he had worked for others in the area prior to working for my grandfather so he was living in the area for forty to fifty years

He owned a home. His two sons worked their way through a private college. He paid all taxes required.

He was a Canadian citizen.

I found this to be true when he complained about having to register as a resident alien at the post office every January.

He said he was born a Canadian and felt that that was where his citizenship should be.

Is this the type of person the naysayers are afraid of.

Also a concern, I remember reading Edgar Allen Poe's Mask of the Red Death. In this story all of the Elite of the country gathered in the palace to be safe from a plague.

The unworthy were left outside to suffer and die.

To celebrate this brilliant plan a masked ball was held. At midnite when they unmasked the contageous had joined the party and all were exposed.