What Have You Been Doing All day?

During the strep throat epidemic several years ago, I was among those who came down with the infection. I was hospitalized several days. I was treated there by my good friend, Dr. J.E. Hagan. I'd ask him each day when he intended to turn me loose. He'd never give me a definite answer. One morning he came into my room carrying a fishing rod and a box of tackle. He looked at me in the eye and said, "Roscoe, I am going to let you go home if you will promise me one thing," "Okay," I said. (I would have promised anything). "What is it?" I asked. "I want you to go to Florida and get some sunshine and fish," Dr. Hagan said. "I have some new tackle here that I want you to try out." I asked him why he didn't try it out himself. He said he was too busy. I took his advice and enjoyed a speedy recovery. Dr. Hagan was a dear friend from that day on. I thought perhaps after his many years of service to humanity in relieving the suffering of others, he might be able to take the advice he gave me that bleak day in the hospital - That he might take a similar trip to Florida. But he never did.

Not too many years ago, he went to Myrtle Beach, South Carolina to try his luck at fishing and just to rest. He asked me many times to go there with him. He became interested in skin-diving, fishing with arrows and so forth. That was in vogue on the coast at that time.

I remember Dr. Hagan as he would be waiting for me to open the store when he needed something to work in his flower garden or lawn. I can hear him say, "What have you been doing all day?" He was up in the morning when many folks were still in bed. 1955