For some reason, Episode #1, 1942-45, produces more memories than Episode #2, 1967-70. In 1942, I was leaving country grade school to become a high school student. In 1967, I was leaving Woonsocket High School to become a principal in the same high school.
Beyond that, my teenage years seemed to collect stuff, which struck memory wise. Freshmen initiation in early fall was one of them. The sophomores and juniors, collectively about 15 or 16 strong, seemed to be in charge. I say ‘seemed’ because I don’t remember any of the three faculty members having anything to do with the planned high jinks of the middle high school fellows and girls. Bill Dent, Bob Lefler, Margie Hinde and others appeared to have free reign in making life miserable for us lowly freshmen. Our girls, my sister, Ramona, Eleanor Luthi and Bonnie Neilson, were required to wear men’s bib overalls with a red bandana decorating a hip pocket, and high top men’s work shoes. Their counterparts, Vic Hinker, Robert Ellingson, Jesse Bonney, Ralph Rhoads, Wally Burrill and I looked somewhat like the fairer sex with dresses, headscarves, lipstick and four-buckle overshoes. Such was our garb for the week, on the school bus, in class and home again on the bus.
This 13-year-old “Greenie” was quite wary of the 15 and 16-year-old tormenters. So when sophomore Bill Dent (deceased a week ago as of this October 2015 writing) sidled up to a couple of us boys with some private inside information, we were quite appreciative. We had not expected that an initiation insider would give us a heads up on what would happen Friday night during the wind up of the initiation week activities. Dummies! What Bill whispered to us was that some other torturers would tell us that we were to be fed cold, cooked spaghetti but they would announce earthworms to the crowd. No fear, he said, the kids will really think you’re fed earthworms while you’ll know ahead of time the real scoop.
This worm demonstration would follow the only other shenanigan I recall from that evening. A couple of girls, garbed in overalls, work shoes and other foolish apparel, were chosen to kneel on the gym floor and compete in pushing cockleburs across the floor with their noses toward a distant finish line. Then, from the group of nine freshmen, the older classmen picked Wally Burrill and the writer to come front and center to sit blindfolded in front of the raucous students. One of the boys announced that the object of the next act was to see which guy could swallow a spoon-fed earthworm first. I don’t recall about Wally, but I was secure in the private information about the contents in the spoon and did not hesitate when a male voice commanded, “Open up!” Remembering Bill’s secret revelation, I opened my mouth to receive the expected cold, cooked spaghetti. It certainly was cold, it might have seemed cooked but one or two chomps instantly revealed the deceitfulness of the private informer. No spaghetti with which I had been acquainted had the bitter sliminess that I was experiencing at that moment of truth!
Spitting vigorously from beneath my blindfold, I spewed the mangled remains of the real worm all over the gym floor in front of me and jerked off my eye covering. But there was Wally beside me, quite oblivious to my situation. In blind faith in his tormenters, he not only finished chewing his “spaghetti”, but he swallowed it as well!
Actually, Wally should have been more worldly-wise than I. There I was, only a 13-year-old country lad just out of bib overalls, but my classmate was a town boy where all the action was and where teenagers already knew the ways of the world. Not to be concerned, however, Wally told us on Monday morning that his mother that night, just to be safe, gave him traditional tapeworm medicine to insure her son’s continued health and well-being! Might we suppose that Anna Burrill mixed up the adjectives “earth” and “tape?!

People like to joke about colonoscopies. One guy asked me after his test if I could see his head through the scope, since his wife was always telling him it must be up there.
But it’s no laughing matter that 90 percent of colon cancer deaths could be prevented, and still 70 percent of people who should have a colonoscopy are not having it done.
So why would that be? I hear all sorts of excuses: “It’s an invasion of my privacy,” “I don’t want to think about it,” “I had a bad experience 10 years ago,” “It’s humiliating,” and worst of all, “I’m afraid you may find something.” Unfortunately, these excuses have been way too effective.
Let me tell you a true story: One day, years ago, my dad called and said that there had been blood in the commode for a while, and asked what to do. My worst fears became a reality as first the colonoscopy discovered cancer, and then the surgery found that it had spread to the lymph nodes.
What followed was chemotherapy and medicine, which, I’m sure, gave him at least an extra year until the malignancy reared its ugly head again.
In the end he developed pneumonia, appropriately called “the old man’s friend,” his pain went away, and he slipped from us gently, and with dignity. What’s done is done, but I wish his cancer had been caught earlier.
So what about the plusses and minuses of the colonoscopy?
First the disadvantages: it’s expensive; the cleaning out before the test is not fun; and there is a small risk that you may go on to need surgery. But there are advantages: using new sedative analgesics, the patient experiences, with rare exception, merely a pleasant nap. The expense is generally and appropriately covered by insurance and is nothing compared to what it would cost if cancer were not discovered early. And the biggest advantage of all: the whole thing just may save your life.
Remember, 90 percent of colon cancer deaths can be prevented. Please, if you see blood in your stool, notice a change in your bowel habits, or even if it is just time for that every 10-year screening colonoscopy, don’t stick your head in the sand, or for that matter, your bottom either.
To hear more from Dr. Holm, watch his TV show, On Call with the Prairie Doc, every Thursday at 7 p.m. CT on South Dakota Public Broadcasting and his Web site, www.PrairieDoc.org. On Call with the Prairie Doc is produced by the Healing Words Foundation in association with the South Dakota State University journalism department and airs Thursdays on South Dakota Public Broadcasting Television at 7 p.m. Central, 6 p.m. Mountain, and streams live at www.PrairieDoc.org.

Dee Baby! I love the way you write in the wee hours of the morning! GREAT column last week.  I wish more of us had that kind of passion and fire in our bellies.  I know in the past you’ve thought of yourself as a democrat. This is not unlike many of your generation with generally conservative views who were raised in hard-working, “JFK was the man”, salt-of-the-earth, left wing voting families.  Unfortunately, that is not the democratic party of today.  You sound more Anti-establishment than anything else and that’s AWESOME!
Waiting for the Revolution,
Ryan Swenson