WHAT’S SO FUNNY: Head man at Sleepy Hollow

If you go back far enough, you will recall the TV Western series “Gunsmoke,” which was a weekly staple in America’s living room for 20 years. One of the reasons for its popularity was the character of Galen “Doc” Adams, Dodge City’s lone doctor.

As played by Milburn Stone, Doc Adams was the ideal medical man. He didn’t just remove bullets from Marshal Dillon’s body several times a season, he treated whoever walked into his office on the spot, made house calls in a buggy and told his patients to pay him when they could.

This character wasn’t entirely fantasy. When I was a boy in Missouri and a tombstone fell on me and broke my leg, I was attended to by just such a doctor, the elderly Dr. Ellery, who could have hung his shingle in Dodge City with no questions asked.

Nowadays, however, the small-town Doc Adamses are rare. Most of us see specialists or a family doctor by appointment, or we go to the emergency room.

I like my regular doctor, but he’s not here in town. I go to him for my physical and we talk about my levels, but I don’t feel I can drop in just to chat about my scratchy throat.

And when my ears are plugged up — well, down at the ER they act like I’m wasting their time.

So I’m one of many Lagunans who are grateful for the Sleepy Hollow Medical Group walk-in clinic on Ocean, which is open seven days a week and provides physical exams, minor surgery, travel medicine, lab testing, X-rays, flu shots and anonymous HIV testing.

Sleepy Hollow has a fine staff and three doctors, but the doctor I speak of today is the one I know, Dr. William Anderson, the tall, lanky guy who’s been fielding problems there for 15 years now.

Like Doc Adams, Dr. Anderson has to face a constant flow of walk-in patients without losing his composure. He has cured or reassured me several times, which isn’t easy. I’ve gone in there thinking I was losing my hearing and my vision, that I was going to get malaria on my next trip and that my daughter’s cough was the voice of doom.

Multiply me by a few thousand, with all the variations that make those medical books so thick, and you’ve got quite an invasion of symptoms walking into Sleepy Hollow over 15 years. Any man who can handle that and retain his equanimity is Doc Adams come again.

Another thing I like about Dr. Anderson is that when we greet each other at the grocery or on the street, he never calls out stuff like, “How’s that fungus coming along?”

We’re lucky to have him, and Drs. Wasbin and Sheidayi, and Maria the office manager, and Paula, Monica, Amy and Julia, the medical assistants. They’re another reason not to get out of Dodge.