Alaska toughness: the late Dick Cook

[turkeykirk]

John McPhee, in his book Coming into the Country(1976) tells the story about Dick Cook (1931-2001). McPhee tells of “ a day arrived in which a tooth began to give him great pain. He laid down in his cabin and waited for the nuisance to pass. But the pain increased and was apparently not going to go away. It became so intense he could barely stand it. He was a couple hundred miles from the most accessible dentist. So he took a pair of channel-lock pliers and wrapped them with tape, put the pliers into his mouth, clamped them over the hostile tooth. He levered it, worked it awhile, and passed out. When he came to, he picked up the pliers and went back to work on the tooth. It wouldn’t give. He passed out again. Each time he attacked the tooth with the pliers, he passed out. Finally, his hand would not move. He could not make his arm lift the pliers toward his mouth. So he set them down, left the cabin, and —by dogsled and mail plane— headed for the dentist, in Fairbanks.
Mr. Cook drowned in the Yukon River in 2001. He was 70 years old.

 

[Buck70]

Tough as gravel.

 

[Nicodemus]

You do what you have to do when the situation calls for it.

 

[Silver Britches]

Dang! I passed out reading that! Tough joker!

 

[Redbow]

No doubt Mr. Cook was a tough man but some things are quite a bit tougher than we are. A bad tooth is just one of them. Thanks for the story.

 

[The Original Rooster]

You do what you have to do when the situation calls for it.

Didn't one of them old cut in/cut out linemen pull out one of his teeth with a pair of pliers? Seems I remember a story about it.

 

[Nicodemus]

Didn't one of them old cut in/cut out linemen pull out one of his teeth with a pair of pliers? Seems I remember a story about it.

Yea, it was old Jamo. I pulled two of mine about a year apart, out on the right of way, with my slip joint pliers. I don`t plan to do that again if I can help it.

 

[Jeff C.]

Tooth pain is rough.

 

[The Original Rooster]

Yea, it was old Jamo. I pulled two of mine about a year apart, out on the right of way, with my slip joint pliers. I don`t plan to do that again if I can help it.

I'm lucky in that sense. I've got good teeth but I've always gone to the dentist and took care of them. There's a lesson in there that I should have learned about my back and neck but didn't.