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I borrowed this title from a series by June Thomas in the Slate Magazine of Sept. 28, 2009. She was writing about a coming crisis in American dentistry. My blog post was written the following month. This is not that post.

In 2009 I read a story that explained why so many British actors in the Post War era had such bad teeth. The answer was probably that Britain had more pressing things to worry about after five desperate years of war.

I got good dental care as a baby boomer.  My uncle came home from Korea to become a dentist and one of my Father’s best friends was a dentist in good standing. I’ll call him “Winston.” He served on the Kansas State Board of Dentistry. 

Winston was a little spacey but he was a wonderful dentist. While I once threw a titanic fit at having to get a vaccination, Winston calmly got me to open my mouth, numbed me with a shot of Novocain and patched up 13 cavities. He was a magician. Did I mention he was a little spacey? 

Winston had a reputation as a rake in college. When he began dating one of my mother’s innocent friends there were many collegians alarmed for her reputation. They needn’t have worried. Winston and “Betty” got married and raised three whip-smart girls and a boy who would become his senior class president.

Now this is not to say Winston wasn’t red blooded. He and my dad had some prurient interests in the age of Playboy magazine. I discovered this about my dad on a family vacation. 

I always knew dad liked pretty girls. He enjoyed watching girls dance on American Bandstand. He tried to interest Parker Brothers in a game he and my mother invented called Date Rate. My mother drew pretty sorority girls and my dad gave them personality traits that helped whoever got the hottest date win the game. Parkers Brothers turned it down but I used to play it, although I much preferred the game he invented called “Wanted.” It was about bounty hunting horse thieves, train robbers, claim jumpers and murderers.

As I said, Dad liked pretty girls. One summer in Oregon while buying groceries for our camp site I saw a girly magazine riding the conveyer belt with the carrots and canned goods. I picked it out of the groceries only to have my dad grab it from me and put it back. I said nothing and we never spoke of it.

I never looked for nor found any such material in our home but years later I heard a funny story about Winston. His wife Betty discovered a large stash of pornography at their home, which was filled with patriotic Civil War and Abraham Lincoln-themed décor. 

Betty asked Winston what it was doing in the house. He smiled and explained that it belonged to Dan, my father. He told Betty that he was keeping it for my dad so that my mother didn’t discover it. Betty apparently accepted that as a reasonable explanation. Betty was a little spacey too.

Our family got together a couple times a year. We traveled to Kansas every summer and Winston’s family once visited us in Minnesota for Christmas. On that occasion we read Dicken’s A Christmas Carol out loud on Christmas Eve. We were wholesome folks.

My Dad and I heard a rather different story one summer as Winston was fixing juicy burgers on the grill. Winston told us he was still pondering a complaint that had been brought to the Kansas Board of Dentistry.

A dental hygienist in a small one-dentist town had discovered disturbing photographs that her boss had hidden in his office. 

This dentist regularly knocked his patients out to spare them unnecessary pain. The stash of photographs the hygienist reported to the Kansas Board of Dentistry suggested a rather different motivation for knocking patients out. They were all of the dentist’s unconscious female patients. The photos showed the dentist’s unorthodox procedure of inserting a metacarpal-free part of his anatomy where one might normally expect to see a dental pic or mirror.

Winston was reflective as he related this story to my dad and me. What, he asked himself and us, should the Dental Board have done? 

On the one hand, it was true that the dentist had taken advantage of his patients. But then again, he was his town’s only dentist. Who would take care of the community’s dental needs if it lost its only dentist? 
The board decided to err on the side of professional necessity. They did nothing.

I originally told this story in regards to the infamous Red Plan, which I worked my butt off to put on the ballot. It was allowed to proceed despite contractors not using licensed experts in the design work. 
No doubt like Winston’s Kansas Dentists the Board of Contractors decided Duluth needed new schools. 
Necessity is a justification in wide use today, especially by the new President. As Trump said, “He who saves his Country does not violate any Law.”

As for Dentistry in Minnesota today I wouldn’t worry too much for anyone with good dental insurance. As I explained in 2009 about 40% of all new dentists are women.

Welty grinds his teeth at lincolndemocrat.com.