SORTA BACK ON TRACK

Yesterday, my Doctor drove me out to Nutre Hohar so I could deliver three months royalties from book sales as promised. It wasn’t a big deal, financially, but every dime counts toward the care of those tykes. It was my pleasure and I hope to contribute more next time.

WHY I CANCELLED MY AIP MEMBERSHIP.

WHY I CANCELLED MY AIP (Americans in panama) MEMBERSHIP. I’m usually too busy to read -- let alone engage in all the chat groups that feature Panama. Since my doctor relegated me to a post- vegetative state while I recover, I spend more time on the computer. So I started reading the chat sites and the blogs. Reading AIP gave me gas. There’s a tourist named LLOYD posting long discourses about his freshman tour and sophomoric impressions of Panama. It’s posted in volumes and it’s TOTAL POLYANNA! I interjected that his long missives are better suited to a blog or a long letter home. Well, that scrambled the egg. Members jumped all over me. Not just one or two but a horde. Well, LLOYD, retrace your steps. We’ll take a different tour; one which is real and not misleading to the folks back home or the recent arrivals. First, when you get off the plane, don’t rent a car. Take a taxi or bus. That’s how 85% of the people in Panama travel. Have the taxi take you from the TOCUMEN airport, to the village of Tocumen. Then tell him to skip the corridor and the coastal strip and take you through the city to the Albrook bus terminal. Make a side trip to La Boca and see how the fishermen live. Once at the bus terminal, take the Panama – David bus. It’s pretty nice, unless it breaks down. When you reach the terminal in David, transfer to the Boquete bus…a school bus of unknown vintage with no air conditioning, hard seats, and stuffed with folks going to work. A lot of them getting on along the way and having to stand the entire trip. ARE YOU GETTINGTHE PICTURE, LLOYD? Okay, let’s skip the part where you enjoy the quaint B&B, the fine cuisine, beer and wine, the coffee tour, looking at gated communities and the like. I’ll pick you folk up in my car and we’ll spend some time exploring Chiriqui. Not far out of Boquete, situated near all those nice gated communities is a small complex called Casa Hogar, Trixer. On any given day there could be fifty to eighty orphan kids living in near poverty. Wanna stop in for a visit? Further down the hill, past Dolega is los Algorrobos. Here’s my old house, where I was robbed twice in one year. Let’s go across the hiway to the house when another gringo was murdered. We could spend several days viewing these crime scenes, but let’s move on… Here we are in David. First let me show you Nutre Hogar, a special home for malnourished children – under the age of five. Oh, look, there’s over forty of them. Shall we take the tour? Next stop the Regional hospital. Looks pretty good from the outside, right? What are all those people doing standing in line? Oh, gee, they’re trying to get in…let’s take the tour. Walk single file, the halls are crowded with sick and injured folks. Once in a while you’ll see a gurney parked with a dead person in a body bag. Oh look, there are sixty people in this ward and only two attendants. “I’m sure conditions will improve once the new subway is completed in Panama City” “LLOYD, you look pale. Maybe we should leave here and go have a drink at TGIF.” As we drive down the Inter-American I point to the taxi stand where I was almost stabbed and mugged in broad daylight. I show them the turn off to Villa Mercedes, an upscale community where another gringo was murdered. We get to the restaurant and we review the tour. “What? You didn’t like it?” This is just a small sampling. (The other side if the tourist brochure.) The entire population of Panama is 1/3 that of Chicago, USA. The difference is there is no safety net; no one to step in and keep you from starving to death. There’s no food stamps here. No welfare checks and an extremely low consideration for the working people. I doubt our waitress makes $300 a month. It’s been that way since I first arrived in 1951. “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” A lot of us old time gringos try to help…and we do in a small way. The applause you’re getting on AIP is from naive people looking for Shangri-la or local folks that have something to sell you…bank on it! “Okay, here’s what we can do… there’s two more orphanages we can visit, a large special needs school, a few more crime scenes and we can check in at the local prison and say howdy to Wild Bill. OR, I can drive you to the airport and you can GET THE HELL OUTTA HERE! Robert Hatting

A TRIBUTE TO DOBE HARDING

This is a good summary of a good man; my friend and hero. Gerald (Dobe) HardingApril 16, 1941 – April 1, 2011 Dobe Harding of Bend passed away on Friday, April 1 in Crane while hunting with friends. He was 69 years old. He was born in Aberdeen, WA on April 16, 1941. His parents were Milford (Mel) Harding and Kittie Barbara (Wendorf) Harding. As a child, Dobe attended school in Arlington, OR, then attended high school in Stayton, OR, and graduated in 1959. After moving to Central Oregon from Stayton in the 1970’s, Dobe had a plumbing and heating business in Sisters. Over the years, he lived in many places, including Maui, San Jose, CA, Redding, CA and Lapine. Dobe enjoyed fishing, hunting and was talented in fabricating metal and welding. He was witty, and had the ability to make people laugh, and was a great conversationalist. He also loved music. He is survived by his wife and partner of 32 years, Toni; daughter Lisa Davis of Bend; son Brad Harding of Bend; stepson Dude Aylor of Sisters; and 11 grandchildren. He was preceded in death by his son Rick in 1995. Dobe will be missed so much by everyone who knew him, loved him and enjoyed his company, family and friends alike. He was a very special person.

A TRIBUTE TO DOBE HARDING by Bob Hatting.

Dobe and I went to high school together. We played sports, fished, hunted, and later we were in business together. One time we even swapped houses; his in Stayton for mine in Sisters. Over the years we developed that special bond of trust. My book “Partners” is dedicated to him. His character, wit or stature is featured in almost all of my stories. Dobe’s stature was “Chief” in THE LAST FRUIT STAND ON GUAM. His character is Sheriff Boomer in my novel BOOMER, and I used not only his stature but his fine unwavering character as Sergeant Bell in ALASKA BE DAMNED . In 1973, Dobe and I entered the “Wild Cow Milking” event at the Sister’s Rodeo. My job was to rope the cow. Dobe was supposed to “Mug” the old girl, remove the loop and hold her while I dismounted and milked her to obtain enough liquid into a stubby beer bottle to run to the judge…at least a drop or two was required. This was a three day event. The first go…I roped a fence post. (Obviously I was a lousy roper). The second go, I roped the hind legs of my horse and was bucked off. The third go, I got lucky and roped a cow right off. Dobe rushed from the bucking chutes, grabbed that cow and pitched her to the ground. He was so Bull strong, he removed the lariat held her 900 pounds of kicking and thrashing while I rushed to her udder – being cow kicked several times, to milk perhaps two ounces of moo juice. We won the event. Mert Hunking, the producer of the rodeo presented us a trophy buckle and fifty bucks. Neither of us wanted the money, we wanted the buckle. We flipped and Dobe won. It was the only rodeo award he’d ever won. A couple of weeks later, Mert had another buckle made for me. It was the ONLY roping event I ever won. I have the buckle to this day and I’m sure Dobe kept his. I have a hundred stories like the above. Why choose that one? Because every time we reunited after a long absence, that was the story that was rehashed. All who knew him at least liked him. Most loved him. I’m one of the latter…gotta stop now, I’m getting’ tears on my keyboard. SO LONG, DOBE – SEE YA SOON!

Back on Topic- Crystal Cowboy

For some unknown reason --

The novel CRYSTAL COWBOY has been outselling ALASKA BE DAMNED! To date, my best selling novel. I thought it may have been the lowering the price to .99, but that was done a month ago. One never know in this writing world.

OFF TOPIC – AGAIN

As one would expect, health becomes the number one priority for most folks when they’ve had a scare like I recently experienced. So, I’m going to write about it -- again. As an author, I have an eye for detail. Observing people, mannerisms, inanimate objects and the like is just habit for use in future stories. I’d like to share those observations with you, now. CLEAN – There’s household clean and clinical clean. Hospital clean should be of the highest order. Hospital Chiriqui smells clean, the floors appear to have been mopped with a disinfectant but the exam rooms look shoddy and grimy. The girl in the lab who took my blood the second time, had dirt under her fingernails and I assume hadn’t bathed that morning. The Regional Hospital was extremely filthy. In the ward I was housed, there was blood on the floor, insects running willy-nilly across the ceiling and of course the gurney where I was bunked hadn’t seen soap and water since its manufacture – sometime during WWII. When you think you’re dying, none of this makes a whit of difference. However, in retrospect, it gives me the shudders. EQUIPMENT AND PROCEDURES: How can any reasonably intelligent doctor make a decision based on erratic procedures and outdated equipment. Every instrument needs to be calibrated on a regular basis. I’m just guessing here, but if those three EKG machines used on me were set side by side and hooked to the same patient, all three would give different results; same with the BP apparatuses and the lab equipment. Where am I going with this litany of complaints? I’m not sure other than to expose what I witnessed and experienced and hope you are forewarned to this backward health system for the average and less privileged. Bob

WAY OFF TOPIC

I suffered what I suspected was a heart attack (severe chest pains) the other day and had a friend take me to Hospital Chiriqui. I filled out the forms, a nurse took my blood pressure 160/80, and then doctor on staff at the emergency room looked at the chart and ordered me to have a chest X-ray. Thirty minutes later I’m ushered into his office and informed I still have residual phlegm in my lungs from when I smoked 3 years ago. He wrote a couple of prescriptions, one for anti-inflammatory and another for cough syrup. This dipstick hadn’t even placed a stethoscope on my chest) DOCTOR #1. A day later at 5AM, I drove myself to the same hospital. Again I had severe chest pains. A young Panamanian woman doctor was on call. (DOCTOR # 2) After using the stethoscope and reviewing my blood pressure (160/100) she promptly gave me an EKG. Then she sent me to the lab for some blood tests. (the one person on staff was very professional) I returned to the doctor an hour later and she reviewed the results. They were normal. I hadn’t had an INFARTO (heart attack). However she was worried about what she saw on the EKG print-out and asked me to come back at 1pm to review the results with the Cardiologist. At 1:00 PM. I arrived at the hospital with my friend, Sue. She is a retired nurse from BC. She knew what questions to ask. The Cardiologist’s office was just down the hall from the emergency room. He wasn’t there and we were told by the rudest receptionist to come back at 3:30pm. By 4:00 we were in front of the Doctor. (DOCTOR# 3) He looked at the file; cardiogram and laboratory results. He pulled out a worksheet and checked off every lab test known to man. Then he wrote a couple of prescriptions; one for Plavix and the other for Exforge. He added one for a sleeping pill. He wanted to run another EKG and a stress test the next morning at 10. My friend Smoot agreed to drive me to the hospital in the AM for the Lab work. There were three young women in the lab. I watched them carefully. None were focused on their jobs…I have a no confidence in the results of their test results because they were playing grab ass, texting, and really being unprofessional. One hundred fifty bucks later, I get my results…4 pages of hieroglyphics. I might add…not once during these tests did they check my blood pressure. Now, I’m in the cardiologist’s waiting room. His nasty receptionist hollers out. “How are you going to pay $290 for the tests?” I argued that I’d never agreed to those prices. Finally Smoot and I were ushered into the inner sanctum. My BP was really high 180/110. I asked the doctor “Explain to me why at the other end of this hall an EKG is $23. And in here it’s $145?” (wrong thing to do…like cursing at a cook before he prepares your food) Well, he gave me the EKG for the price of an office call ($40) than wrote a set of instructions on a prescription pad and told me to go to the regional hospital. I didn’t realize how bad I’d pissed him off until I was admitted to the welfare hospital. The hallways were filled with patients on gurneys, all lab work is done in the hallway. A scrap of paper is taped on the wall above your head and the occasional nurse make notes on it from time to time. I was in the hallway for seven hours waiting for a bed. During that time my BP was checked once and they stabbed some kind of needle with a cap into my hand. (A dead person in a body bag on a gurney was sitting in the hall in front of me during this procedure). I was finally ushered through a ward with at least sixty sick or injured people on gurneys, to a cell like room with four others…it said observation above the door. I spent six hours on a hard cot with no pillow, nothing to drink and I saw my assigned doctor once…when they told me I could leave. (Doctor # 4) Yesterday, I met with a doctor of my choice. (Doctor# 5) I showed her my test results including my EKG’s. I asked her what she would do…she indicated the Plavix and the Exforge was a good call. The half a sleeping pill was good, too. She took my BP, it was 130/90. The best since this whole thing started. She gave me her private cell number and told me to call her anytime and she would make a house call, too. I’m confident I’m in good hands and now I can mend. Bob

Book Covers – 1st impression?

A few years back, when my novel, PARTNERS, was being published, I was fortunate to have Bill Moomey in my corner. He allowed me to use several photos of his Western Art Paintings. These were beautiful pieces, the full size canvases were the size of plywood. They were used as the cover of PARTNERS as well as several interior illustrations. The details, captured on a large format camera, were even evident when the photos were rendered down to book cover size and later to the small digital images you see on the Kindle and Pubit sites. I’m proud to have him in my corner. Without his assistance, half of my books would be naked.

BOB HATTING
MY BOOKS
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=Robert+Hatting&x=14&y=22
MY BUSINESS
http://isthmustrader.wordpress.com.
MY BLOG
http://blair-pacificpublishing.blogspot.com.
MY CHARITY
http://www.nutrehogar.org/en/index.html.