Trego's Mountain Ear

As I wake and head for the antihistamines, I remember Wylie Osler’s story about Dr. Schroeder writing a prescription for him to go to Spokane and spend the weekend in an airconditioned motel. I was never sure whether the prescription was for health insurance, or just to qualify the trip as a medical expense – but Wylie’s asthma was a lot worse than mine. I’m not sure the smoke was any worse than I saw in Kalispell yesterday, when I went in to visit my surgeon. I couldn’t see the mountains from the hospital complex. The problem with smoke from forest fires is that you can’t hope for winds that will blow the smoke away – we can only wait for rain. The 10 day forecast doesn’t look great. At least I had an airconditioned car for the trip – back in the sixties, when Forrest Schroeder ordered Wylie to leave the valley for a couple of smoke-free days we joked about 4-60 air conditioning – four windows down, sixty miles an hour.

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