Around 1927, Bob Drinkwater and his 10-year-old son, Billy, drove from their ranch in Burns to John Day to see Doc Hay, the Chinese doctor famous for healing a wide variety of ailments.

Billy, who now lives in Prairie City and is in his 90s, still recalls what took place that day so many years ago.

His dad had blood poisoning but the doctors in their hometown of Burns couldn’t cure him. When he wasn’t getting any better, he decided to turn to Hay for help. He took his young son along for company.

The first thing Billy remembers about stepping into the old Kam Wah Chung building was the different smell about it.

“Just being a boy, I was looking all around,” Billy said. “There was a counter and little boxes behind (the Chinese doctor).”

The boxes, which sat stacked on several shelves, held the hundreds of Chinese herbal medicines the doctor used to cure his patients.

Doc Hay had the boy’s father place his right hand on the counter and proceeded to do what he is perhaps best known for, reading his patients’ internal ailments by feeling their pulse.

He placed two fingers on the elder Drinkwater’s wrist and after a long pause said, “That’s fine.”

Hay then pulled out three to five boxes and put a little pinch of each in a small empty box.

“He said ‘take this home and have your wife put this in a pot of water,'” Billy recalled. “‘Bring it to a boil and let it boil a few minutes, then after it cools, take a small glass a day.'”

“It was less than a week that there was improvement,” Billy said. “It cured my dad.”

With those memories still strong, he says he hopes to attend the grand re-opening events this Saturday at the Kam Wah Chung & Co. Museum.