Doc Richard Dix preferred any woman to every man. He dismissed all other males as malformed jokes, failed attempts at becoming him. And a good number of ladies agreed. Falls celebrated its hundredth anniversary and most local fellows grew beards. Patriotic women sewed long dresses and there was a huge parade. Doc Dix turned up downtown to mock our earnest spectacle. All year, he’d remained clean-shaven and in slick modern dress. Others jokingly resented it. Doc Dix and his enormous brood were seated all along his white car’s hood and roof.

Fourteen fluffy-faced men, pulled behind a tractor, formed a tableau depicting the solemn signing of Falls’s Charter. “Hey, Doc?,” one whiskered fellow hollered from the float. “Where’s your beard?”

Dix’s answer is still quoted: “Bitch, I’m sittin on it.”

No sane fellow would allow his unchaperoned wife to take the family pet to Doc Dick Dix’s office alone. There were many postcard-funny stories of how Blondie, the female cocker spaniel, lay anesthetized on Doc’s brushed-steel chrome operating table. Mid-spaying, she was all pink, split end to end, while Dix chased her upset lady owner round and round his table, baying, “You know you want it. I see you’re wet and open as Blondie. Admit you’re in heat and need it right this second. Say the word, gal. Doc’ll slip you nature’s most calming of all shots.”

Then it was not called “sexual harassment.” It was just “being fresh.” Like the motor-court lobby postcards, people mostly joked about such open-season sex. Doc’s chasing worked often enough to make the aerobic outlay worthwhile. His procedures kept certain agreeable wives quiet. Kept their animals often seeming sick.

Dix’s own long-suffering wife spent most of her time having babies and the rest turning a blind eye. Her legs were wrapped like Maypoles in flesh-colored swaddling to help ease her terrible varicose veins. She’d come from a family of doctors (people doctors). Her dowry helped pay for Dix’s vet school and the semi-mansion where they lived. It had separate dormitories for the five girls, four boys. They all looked towheaded as their big blond randy dad. Sundays, though we owned no pets—thanks to my headachy mother’s allergies—Doc Dick Dix apparently made house calls. By then though, Clyde and little Meadows Delman, spreaders of God’s Word, were miles, motels, and hobbies away.

Still, en route to righteousness, I pictured our small home. I imagined Doc Dick Dix’s showy Pontiac pulled up, hogging the whole drive, where one elegant black Packard belonged. At school, a few kids had made recent scary comments. The Dix clan was blessed with finespun white-gold hair, cheeks that burned pink all winter, and eyes of the deepest purple-blue. So, coincidentally, was I.