My Favorite Dentist

When I was a kid, I had to go to the dentist in Marysville. He was an old man, Dr. Kline, and he used the equipment available at the time, a treadle operated drill. He hurt me when injecting me with Novocain and I could smell the smoke from my teeth burning with the slow drilling speed of the drill.

I didn’t go back to a dentist until I was 17 years old. Dr. Herrick was much more up on the latest techniques. He gave me a bulb to hold in my hand to squeeze when it started to hurt. It was nitrous oxide or “laughing gas”. When it started hurting, one squeeze...then more squeezes .....and near the end, I had the ball between both hands squeezing and giggling.

My next dentist was Jim Martindale who was a friend from Yuba College and he was a very good dentist who, unfortunately, committed suicide. His business was bought by Dr. Terry Prechter who is my favorite dentist. He kept the same room Dr. Martindale had until he moved to his current office on Plumas Street in Yuba City. He keeps up with all the latest techniques and is a personal friend. I like his Yuba City office as he usually has a funny poster over the dentist chair to look at when he is working on my teeth. Also, on the window toward the street, a poster of the ocean at Ft. Bragg where we both like to go. I went there camping once and found that he was at a nearby camp site.

In late 1996, I was having some work done on my teeth. I was to have an early 1997 appointment to complete the work, but had to evacuate my Marysville home because of possible flooding. I went to Nevada City and was placed in the gym of the Nevada Union High School. I called him at his home and told him of my problem. My temporary teeth would fall out when I ate. He told me to come to his brother’s office and he would work on me there. His brother is also a dentist and he called him to find out where the dental tools were. The dentist’s nurse was drafted to help out.

He had the TV on the game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Green Bay Packers to decide who would go to the Super Bowl. It was snowing there and Steve Young wasn’t able to connect with Jerry Rice and others.

Dr. Prechter had placed the rubber protective thing over my mouth and when I wanted to yell “Watch out, Steve!” it came out all garbled. It wasn’t until then that I found out that Dr. Prechter was a huge Packer fan!!