CATEGORY: PORTLAND
PHOTO: ME AT 14 WITH BUCK TEETH

All through childhood, all through adolescence, I had buck teeth.  By high school, I had more or less grown into them, but due to teen age vanity, I had also become more aware of them and learned to despise them.  My mother had spent a great deal of hard-earned depression money on having braces put on my teeth with (I thought) little results.

When I left Moro for Portland, one of the first things I did, when I had saved up the money, was have my two front teeth pulled and replaced by a bridge.  Even though the dentist whom I chose was one of those “advertising” dentists (so maybe not the best dentist in the world) he asked me to think it over because mine were “perfect teeth.”  But I had thought it over.  Out they came.  The new look definitely changed my appearance.  Later, I learned that they could have been filed down and capped instead of being pulled.  What is done is done.