A 1950s Gentleman-Type Doctor Exchange

Notebook Recollections

I asked real estate sale guru-friend Steve Sprafka if he had any famous clients or notable sales recently.

“Eric Clapton bought two 1969 Fender twin reverb amps last year. He calls me sometimes.”

… “But probably my best find ever was a couple years ago. Two 1868 Sharpes .50 caliber buffalo rifles from a house on Summit. And the Buffalo.”

“The Buffalo that took the bullets from the Sharpes?”

“Yes. $30,000 for the Buffalo, $20,000 apiece for the rifles.”

“Holy cow!” I said. “Who sold that to you?”

He said he couldn’t reveal that. But his Uncle, Dr. Greg Sprafka, referred him.

“There are a bunch of Dr. Sprafka‘s,” Steve said. “My dad, his dad. Uncle Greg. Uncle Joe was a dentist and Grandpa Joe started it all in Detroit Lakes in the 1900s.”

I knew that Dr. Greg was a long-time West 7th general practitioner for 40+ years. I ran into him one afternoon smoking in the “St. Luke’s“ doctors lounge. 

Smoking! Oh yes, you could smoke at St. Luke’s in the 1970s. And not just in the doctors lounge. And on every patient floor there was a smoking lounge. You could smoke in any hospital in the Twin Cities in the 1970s.

I asked Dr. Greg about the smoking.

“Heck, smoking was nothing,” Dr. Greg said to me. “St. Joes had a doctors smoking lounge with brandy snifters.”

Then he asked me about my clinic, the helping hand health center. Where I had started in 1975.

“What kind of clinic are you running down there on Seventh Street by Mancini‘s?”

“A free clinic,” I said. “A community clinic.”

“You got hippies and social workers and crap like that there?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Are there real doctors there”

“We’ll me,” I said. “And Dr. Ravi.” 

Dr. Ravi was our relatively new Free clinic physician in the fall of 1985. And he rolled up his sleeves and dove right in. Hospital calls and weekend rounds, evening clinic. Some neighborhood politics and gatherings. Even did some St. Luke’s evening shifts in the emergency room. 

“I think I ran into him one late night in the ER,” said Dr. Sprafka. 

There were occasional encounters between Dr. Sprafka and Ravi and I at the hospital.

One day in 1986 he came to the Helping Hand and asked for a tour from our clinic manager.

Occasionally, Dr. Sprafka patients migrated to our clinic over the years. And I suppose a few of ours went to his office.

On rounds one day, I ran into Steve’s customer Eric Clapton at midnight on the St. Luke’s adult men’s floor a couple nights later. He had finished a concert at the St. Paul Civic Center and was hospitalized later that evening for emergency gallbladder surgery. 

He was obviously post/op now.

“Got a light mate?” Eric Clapton asked me.

“Sorry no,” I said, “but there is a patient smoking lounge up here.”

“Where is that place?” he asked. I told him, showed him actually.

I asked if he was gonna pick up any gear from Steve Sprafka while he was in town. 

He snapped his head toward me. “He’s a good guy. I’ve bought quite a few amplifiers from him over the years.”

Ravi and I saw Dr. Greg Sprafka here and there in St. Luke’s over the next eight or nine years. The doctors lounge of course for donut bonanzas, meetings, medical records.

Dr. Greg actually took Ravi and I to dinner at Mancini‘s. Nick Mancini personally blessed our steak dinners.

Our clinic had actually opened up our new office and some space next to the bar area of Mancini‘s. What a Clinic. One evening I saw famous crooner, Tony Bennet, get out of a silver limo and head into Mancini’s for a performance in the bar. It was said he got 10 Gs and a steak dinner for a two hour show and a meet and greet. Doc Sprafka was there and got a personal autograph with Nick Mancini‘s help.

Our practice was growing. Ravi and I noticed a few longtime Dr. Sprafka patients were transferring to our growing clinic in the famous nightclub. I suppose a few of our patients were going his way also.

In the spring of 1992 I arrived at our clinic early, 7 a.m. Two large cardboard boxes were inside our outside patient door. I slid the boxes inside. There were 12 shoeboxes full of large recipe cards, each one appeared to be part of a patient file. I looked at several cards. Handwritten, short sentences. “Sore throat,” “2.4 cc penicillin shot,” “School exam,” “diabetes,” “check,” “anxiety,” “worse.”

This was all Dr. Dr Sprafka‘s world. His patient records.

Dr. Sprafka was “giving us” his practice. A 1950s gentleman-type doctor exchange that extended into the early 70s. 

Not selling his practice. Turning it over to us. Trusting his patients to Ravi and me and our place. We were, after all, real doctors and staff. At a real Clinic.