KP, Basic Training, Fall 1965, From the Archives

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I was up and through the showers and lacing my boots when the Fire Guard came into the bay to wake up the KP crew. We had to be in the kitchen by 5:00 AM. I was in the kitchen waiting for the cooks and the rest of the KP crew a good 15 minutes early.

Most of the guys hated the shift that ran until 7:00 PM. I had decided that nobody was going to work harder than me while I was in the Army, and this was just another day. And just like a day at work, time passes faster if you are working rather than sitting around watching the clock.

The assistant cook was the first to arrive, and he was surprised to see me already there. We started getting set up to cook breakfast. It was interesting to be mixing pancakes for 200 guys, and the scrambled eggs were also mixed from powder.

By the time the cook came through the door, we had the bacon ready to go into the oven. The oven was hot, and the griddle was fired up. Just about all he had to do was to start cooking.

“Are you the whole crew today?” the Mess Sergeant asked me. His voice was gruff, and his frown wrinkled his entire forehead. He wore a little white sock-like cap to cover his bald head.

“I was up early, Sergeant,” I said. “The others should be along any time now.”

When the others did arrive, the Mess Sergeant barked out instructions with practiced repetition. The milk dispenser needed to be filled, and the juice set out. Coffee needed to be made. He was assigning chores as fast as he could, and the assistant cook was trying to give instructions fast enough to keep up. It was a system that was used to make guys useful, even though many of them had never been in a kitchen.

“Who wants to mix the pancake batter?” the cook asked.

“Larsen had that mixed before you got here,” the assistant said. “And the eggs are mixed, and the bacon is ready for the oven.”

The cook looked at me and scowls. “Have you been a cook?” 

“No, Sergeant, I was just here early and needed to keep busy,” I said.

Breakfast went off with no problems. We were each assigned to serving positions or other chores like keeping the milk dispenser full or moving dishes from the collection area to the dishwasher.

When breakfast was over, we started cleaning up and then getting ready for lunch and making desserts for tomorrow’s dinner. The cook was pretty good at keeping everyone busy and ruled with a loud voice and a frown.

“Larsen, you wash the vegetable steamer,” the cook says as he points the sizable stainless steel steamer that was anchored to the floor. This was a large tank, maybe 100 gallons.

I jumped right to it. Having made cheese in Myrtle Point for 4 summers, if there was something I knew, it was how to scrub stainless steel. I didn’t wait for any instructions.

I dumped a good couple of handfuls of powdered detergent into the steamer and started filling it with water. With a large scrub brush, I mixed the soap with the water and turned on a little steam to warm the water. About that time, I felt the presence of the cook, more than seeing him. He was standing at my left shoulder.

“What the hell have you done?” he boomed into my ear. “Did you put soap into my steamer?” He continued before I could answer. “Nobody puts soap in my steamer.”

I looked at him, and then I looked back at the steamer, everybody in the kitchen was watching now. 

“How long have you used this without washing it?” I asked. I knew I probably had made a grave error by talking back to this guy. Still, I probably had him over the barrel because it was supposed to be washed.

The cook looked at me, red-faced, eyes narrowed, and breathing hard. Then he looked at the steamer.

“If they taste soap in their peas tonight, I will have your ass, Larsen,” he bellowed.

“I have washed more stainless steel than you will ever see in your life,” I said. 

He stood and looked at me for what seemed like minutes. I was expecting to catch his full wrath. Finally, he took a deep breath and relaxed his facial expression. “We will let them decide,” he said, pointing out to the dining hall. Then he turned away and got back to other tasks.

I scrubbed and scrubbed on that steamer. Swirling the brush around, I was hanging half over the rim into the tank. By the time I was done, sweat was dripping off my eyebrows and my nose. I drained the tank and rinsed it several times. During this whole process, I could see both the cook and the assistant cook watching me. Plus, the other guys on KP.

When I was done, the cook came over and looked at the steamer. It glistened compared to its old self. He nodded in approval.

“Now, if you’re so good at scrubbing, you can scrub all the garbage cans,” the cook said.

I am sure he thought this was a punishment. It sort of reminded me of the rabbit story when Brier Rabbit begs not to be thrown into the brier patch. Every fall, I would scrub hundreds of milk cans, cleaning them for winter storage. A few garbage cans were nothing.

I was outside, enjoying working in the sunshine. I had water flying and cans spinning as I washed the cans and set them out to dry in the sun. I noticed the cook watching from time to time. I think he was a little upset that I was enjoying myself.

Then one of the other guys in the platoon, who was cleaning the storeroom, came out with a bunch of empty bags and cardboard. He handed them down to me to put in the dumpster. I took the load and tossed them in the dumpster.

“I have one more load,” he said. “You can take a break for a minute while I grab it.”

I grabbed the bags, and this time they were cumbersome and heavy.

He smiled, “Payback for the ass-chewing,” he said. “Put the heavy one in one of those clean garbage cans, and we will pick it up tonight.”

I looked at the heavy bag. It contained a whole bunch of bananas, stem and all, enough for the entire platoon.

Dinner went without a hitch. Nobody complained about soap in the peas. We cleaned up and were thanked by the cook. 

“You guys have been a good bunch,” the cook said. “I think you will do well in this man’s Army.”

It was nice to get back to the barracks and get through the shower. I was in clean clothes when the guy who had stolen the bananas came by motioned toward the door. 

It was close to dark, and the two of us exited the rear door and ran across the back yard. We grabbed the bag of bananas from the garbage can, turned, and ran back across the yard with the bag carried between us.

We felt like we just put one over on the cook. We had bananas for the whole platoon.  We burst through the back door and almost ran over Sergeant Lopez. 

Sergeant Lopez was the DI for the 4th platoon. He had lost his wife to the meningitis epidemic currently at Fort Ord, and he lived in the company barracks. His room was right by the back door.

Here we are, standing at attention against the wall with a bag of stolen bananas between us. We both think we are dead.

Sergeant Lopez says, “Ah, what have we here?” He peeks into the bag.

We knew we were dead now.

Lopez smiles, looks down the hall, and shakes his head. “I didn’t see a thing,” he says as he turns and heads for his room.

The whole platoon had 2 or 3 bananas each. The trip back to the dumpster with the peelings was just as scary.

Our opinion of Sergeant Lopez changed that night.

One Big Hot Spot

 D. E. Larsen, DVM

The early morning air was warm and unusually humid as I loaded into my truck to head to the clinic. This was going to be a hot day, and I just hoped I wouldn’t have some dog with a heat stroke today.

“The good news is there isn’t much going on this afternoon,” Judy said when I leaned over the front counter to look at the appointment book. “We should be able to leave early before the day warms up.”

When Dixie came through the front door, her immediate concern was the daily schedule.

“I’m hoping we have an easy afternoon,” Dixie said to Judy.

“I am trying to keep things open,” Judy said. “They say it will be a hot day, and you know how hot it gets in this clinic.”

“Yes, I am going to get the backdoor open and start the sprinkler on the roof,” Dixie said. “That will keep things cool until two or three this afternoon.”

Dixie opened the garage door in the back of the clinic. With the front door open, it provided a nice cool breeze through the clinic. The sprinkle on the roof kept the clinic from heating up until later in the afternoon. The water running off the roof was hot already.

“I didn’t schedule any surgeries today,” Judy said. “That way, we won’t be stuck here recovering a patient in this hot weather, and we can fill those hours with any clients that call this morning.”

The morning was busy, and Judy did a good job fitting the entire day into the morning.

“I think we will be out of here at one if we work through the lunch hour,” Dixie said. “That will be great. I have plenty to do this afternoon.”

I was finishing the last appointment at twelve-thirty when Georgia came through the door with her Saint Bernard, Nana.

“I know I don’t have an appointment, but something is terribly wrong with Nana,” Georgia said. “I am hoping you can see her.

“We are just finishing up for the day, but I think the doctor has time to look at her,” Judy said.

Dixie showed Georgia and Nana into an exam room. “Something doesn’t smell good with Nana,” Dixie said. “How long has she had a problem?”

“I noticed her smelling this morning,” Georgia said. “I was so hot yesterday, and she suffers in the heat anyway. I just assumed she was just hot when she was scratching yesterday.”

Nana’s odor had filled the room by the time I stepped into the exam room. I took a deep breath.

“Nana is an interesting name,” I said. “Where did you come up with it?” 

“Nana was the family Saint Bernard in the Peter Pan movies,” Georgia said.

“Let’s see if we can find where this odor is coming from,” I said. “How long has she had a problem?”

“I noticed her scratching a little yesterday,” Georgia said. “I just figured it was the heat, but this morning she really smells.”

I knelt down to look at Nana. She was far too large to lift onto the exam table for just an exam. I ran my hands down her back, and her skin was moist over her shoulder blades. 

“I think I have found the problem,” I said as I parted her hair to look at the skin. A large area of infected skin was on the middle of her back. “I think we need to clip some hair to get a better look at things.”

“I hate to have her hair clipped,” Georgia said. “Are you sure that needs to be done?”

“What is going on with Nana is a moist skin infection,” I said. “The hair mats down a little, and the infection just grows. We need to remove the hair and clean up the area. Then with some antibiotics and other medication, things heal up pretty fast in most cases.”

We started clipping Nana’s hair in the middle of her back. The skin was painful, sore, and covered by a thick layer of yellow pus. We extended the area of the clip, looking for the edge infection. Nana was an excellent patient. She never complained through the whole process.

“Look at the size of this hot spot,” Dixie said as she finally reached the edge of the infection, almost up to Nana’s neck and back to the middle of her back. “I don’t think I have seen anything this large.”

“And it looks like it extends down her sides,” I said. “It looks like someone poured a bucket of pus on the middle of her back.”

When we finally finished clipping hair, the area covered looked like the area that a saddle would cover. Several strips of infection extended Nana’s sides, almost to the bottom of her rib cage and down the sides of her legs.

We scrubbed the area with Betadine Scrub. Then after a rinse, we applied some Furacin Ointment and hydrocortisone cream. 

“We are going to send you home with some antibiotics and prednisone. I expect this to heal rapidly, although there are a few spots where the infection is pretty deep, and they might scab over.”

“What caused all of this, Doctor?” Georgia asked. “Was it something that she ate?”

“I could be a food allergy, but the dermatologists say that food allergies are real rather rare, unlike what the dog food companies try to say,” I said. This often starts from a reaction to something, and maybe just a flea bite. Controlling fleas this time of the year is just about impossible. I hear new medications are on the horizon that will help with flea control.”

“How can a flea bite cause something like this?” Georgia asked.

“It is not just a simple flea bite. It is the allergic reaction to the bite,” I said. “Or the reaction to some other allergen, the dog scratches a bite, the skin oozes some moisture, that mats the hair down. A skin infection quickly follows in this heat, and the lesion just grows. This is by far the largest hot spot I have ever seen.”

“So she is going to be okay,” Georgia asked.

“Yes, I think she will feel much better in the morning,” I said. “We should plan to check Nana on Monday, just to make sure everything is coming along okay. Then it is just growing some hair back.”

Nana’s tail was wagging as she went out the door.

“I was so glad we didn’t have to sedate her,” Dixie said. “I could just see our free afternoon melting away.”

“I turned the phone over to the answering service,” Judy said. “I hope everyone has a good weekend. It is supposed to be cooler by Monday.”

***

Nana was a different dog when she came through on Monday afternoon. Bouncing in the door, tail wagging and nuzzling Dixie, she led her and Georgia back to the exam room.

“I think she knows you guys helped her,” Georgia said. “She feels so much better, and there is only one small scab on her back.”

“Looks like we are home free,” I said as I looked at Nana’s skin. “The inflammation is mostly resolved. There is nothing more to do now except finish the medication, and then Nana can grow some hair.”

Photo by Olga Dudareva on Unsplash. 

Brucellosis Vaccination 

D. E. Larsen, DVM

I was up early and got to the clinic well before eight. I was hoping to get out to Bill’s place and finish his heifers before the day heated up too much.

“We have a call this morning to vaccinate some heifer calves,” I said to Dixie as soon as she came through the door. “It is going to be a hot day. We need to get out there right away, so we can be done before it really heats up.”

“Well, the good news is there isn’t much going on this afternoon,” Judy said. “We should be able to leave early before the day warms up.”

Dixie and I double-checked the truck to make sure we had everything. We will give a brucellosis vaccine to about twenty heifer calves this morning.

Brucellosis is a disease that is contagious to man, a zoonosis. There has been a federal program to eradicate the disease since 1934. The incidence is much reduced from those early years. 

In the 1930s, brucellosis, or undulant fever, was a disease in women and children. The disease has become rare with the widespread use of pasteurization of dairy products and the federal eradication program. Now it is mainly a disease of veterinarians and slaughterhouse workers.

The eradication program uses calfhood vaccination of all breeding heifers before they are a year of age and testing of adults. Infected cattle, and sometimes entire herds, are slaughtered.

Vaccinated heifers are identified with a vaccination tattoo in their right ear and either an official ear tag or, in the case of registered cattle, their registration tattoo is satisfactory. An official record of vaccination is made and submitted to the state veterinarian’s office. The identification process and the paperwork cause the process to be a little time-consuming.

Bill was waiting at the barn when we pulled into the breezeway.

“This is sort early for you, ain’t it, Doc,” Bill said as we stepped out of the truck.

“I was worried about your black cows. You know they suffer more in the heat,” I said with a smile.

“These cows are not bothered by the hot weather,” Bill said.

“Well, we need to get started,” I said. “Dixie wants to be out of here before it gets hot.”

“I’m still not understanding why we have to vaccinate these heifers for a disease that we don’t have in this state anymore,” Bill said. “I mean, Oregon is supposed to be brucellosis-free. I would think that we could stop this expensive vaccination.”

“Cattle move around a lot more these days than they did twenty years ago,” I said. “They did a study some years back, where they took four hundred head of cattle and put them through a sale. Then they followed them for the next week. It was sort of an eye-opener. In the week following the sale, those cattle spread across five states and were exposed to thousands of cattle as they went from one sale barn to another.”

“Well, I don’t go to a sale barn to buy cattle,” Bill said.

“No, but your neighbor probably does,” I said. “Actually, the only real source of brucellosis in this country today is the bison and elk in and around Yellowstone National Park. And, the experts think there is probably no way that we will get control of that situation.”

“So we have to pay extra, just so a bunch of city folk can go get gored by a wild buffalo,” Bill said.

I mixed the vaccine, and Bill ran the first heifer into the chute. I gave the heifer a dose of vaccine under her skin on her right shoulder and then placed an official tattoo in her right ear.

The tattoo had a number for the quarter, followed by an official shield, and then the last digit of the year. I used green ink because it would show up better on the black skin of these ears.

“Why is it that you have to do these vaccines?” Bill asked. “I mean, we can do the other vaccines. Why can’t we do this one?”

“This vaccine is called Strain 19,” I said. “If it is a live strain of the brucellosis bacteria. If it is not handled correctly, it can make a person sick. The book says that usually happens to young veterinarians who don’t have their safe practices established yet.”

“Do you know anyone who has ever had Brucellosis?” Bill asked.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “My grandmother, for one, she probably got it from raw milk. For that reason, my mother quit drinking milk when she was ten or twelve. The first veterinarian who I worked for in Enumclaw had it. His case was pretty severe and eventually resulted in him losing his colon. Then Dr. Haug from Myrtle Point had it. He told me he was sure he had caught it from a cow that he worked on way out in a pasture, and he didn’t have enough water to wash up with until he got back to his truck.”

“Okay, you convinced me. Let’s just get to work and get these heifers vaccinated,” Bill said.

With Dixie keeping track of the paperwork, I was able to get through this bunch of twenty heifers in less than two hours. The temperature inside the barn was already starting to warm up. It was hotter in the breezeway when we washed up and put everything away in the truck.

“I hope Judy has kept the book open,” Dixie said. “That clinic, without air-conditioning, gets hot on these days.”

“Yes, when we were building it, Jim said we would only need air conditioning for a few days out of the year,” I said. “I guess he was right, as far as the numbers go, but on these hot days, we just have to close down.”

When we returned to the clinic, Judy had the appointment book emptied out, and it was hot enough to call it a day.

“Give the answering service the phone and tell them the clinic is too hot for us to work,” I said. “I think I will get Sandy to gather up the kids and head up the river to soak our toes and wait for the evening breeze.”

“Give us a call before you go,” Judy said. “We will join you as soon as Kenny is off work.”

“That will be good. Maybe we can cook some hot dogs for dinner,” I said as I headed out the door.

Photo by Kat Smith from Pexels.