Red Dog's Battle

As an infant I am told I was cradled by entertainer Kris Kristofferson at a club whose location near the Vanderbilt University campus my father owned with a partner and leased to a music impresario called Red Dog. As a toddler I recall that either Red Dog or one of his employees was battling cancer of the face which rendered a rather unforgettable and somewhat disturbing appearance. To a child of perhaps three, this physiognomy reflected a hard-lived existence if not a horror. Today, I might wonder if the poor fellow had been a tobacco user. Put a pinch between your cheek and gum long enough and you might have a little oral cancer to show for it. But I digress. Here I was, a little tyke at one of my father's businesses one day when the health inspector showed up. I can vividly recall that a just vacated table at this lunch hour was about to be bussed, when the dutiful bureaucrat opened the door at this December time of year and entered with a gust of wind that caused one of the used and soon to be discarded paper napkins to blow to the floor. Keep in mind that Red Dog or his manager was already fighting against a severe and life-threatening affliction. The health department man immediately began to jot down a deficiency about the garbage napkin that had drifted to the ground on his clipboard and Red or his man exploded. I can still see the other workers and my Dad trying to calm him. My Dad saying he would call Dr. Joseph Bistowish (forgive any spelling error) and try to get things straightened out. Fortunately, the health department representative was a fast runner or the cancer patient might have put him in a hospital. The problem with some government people is not that they don't work, but as this case from the late 1960s demonstrates, that they work all too well. They dot every "i", cross every "t", and are so darn diligent that they make it next to impossible to operate a private business. And Obama will hire thousands of them.