The Dentist

Filling You In . . .

by Eva Pasco

I’ve no idea why I didn’t “excavate” this memory to “fill” my published, nonfiction memoir collection whose stories pertaining to growing up during the Sixties accrued after I submitted my first memoir to the webmaster of ‘The 60s Official Site’ in 2008. His gracious invitation to set up my own web page there was one I eagerly accepted, and from that day forward, my memoirs mushroomed. My sister provided the spore to cultivate “The Dentist” when she informed me that she’d lost one of her mercury fillings acquired during adolescence from Dr. Piccolo.

Not our former dentist’s real name, the moniker belies his imposing, athletic stature—affable and gregarious too. Dr. Piccolo was a prominent, cutting-edge dentist, so charged for services accordingly. His four-dollar fillings were considered pricey at the time.

Whenever my mother and I arrived for one of my appointments on a Monday evening, my father and younger sister would wait for us in the car. The two of us were lucky to find a seat in the crowded waiting room until he summoned us inside his office which consisted of a work station and nondescript desk with a black rotary phone on top. He and his colleagues, from what I recall of the Sixties, didn’t need no stinkin’ receptionist, secretary, or hygienist.

Once you sat on that dental chair, you got the Piccolo treatment:
Proud of his innovative “jet drill, ” a high-speed hand tool capable of a cutting speed over 180,000 rpm, Dr. Piccolo charmed me into foregoing Novocain prior to filling a small cavity. Thereby, I could avoid the painful jab from a needle, and eliminate waiting for the narcotic to take effect. This became his standard procedure for the drill and fill. It struck a nerve! I compare the experience to a scene from the movie ‘Marathon Man’ starring Dustin Hoffman in the role of Thomas “Babe” Levy: Unable to extract information—pun intended, a Nazi war criminal proceeds to torture Babe by drilling into one of his teeth.

It wasn’t until 1969 when Congress passed the Public Health Cigarette Smoking Act (Public Law 91–222), which prohibited cigarette advertising on television and radio and required that each cigarette package contain the label "Warning: The Surgeon General Has Determined That Cigarette Smoking Is Dangerous to Your Health."

Therefore, Dr. Piccolo exercised his right to puff while he worked on your teeth, and you inhaled second-hand smoke. I remember the occasion when he worked up a sweat wielding a pair of dental pliers to pry loose one of two top wisdom teeth. The ash on his cigarette grew precariously long during the process. In the middle of any procedure, Dr. Piccolo would think nothing of answering the phone to converse at length with his bookie, adding to the informal ambiance of his inner sanctum.

Payment for services rendered was simple. My mother handed over the dough and we left without the parting gift of a toothbrush. If Dr. Piccolo had his peccadilloes, I think my parents’ dentist, who’d retired in the early Sixties, gave him a run for his money. Dr. Piccante often invited me into the closeted area behind his work station where he prepped the resin for silver fillings. While he brandished his dental instruments to work on my mom or dad, I visited with his parakeets.