Life Moves Suddenly
Oxford and Paris
Life moves suddenly at times, and in unexpected ways.
This I wrote before the fact.
Then, when I had planned otherwise, a series of events conspired to illustrate this concept in detail, but for a day or two, there had been no time to jot down the unlikely series of coincidences as they left me breathless and full of wonderment, when a respite finally allowed some elaboration.
Big Dave Loyal, and that is his name, had until recently served in the musical regiment of the United States Army named the Old Guard. There were the drummers, and brass players, and one or two color sergeants who would lead the red-coated, stately parade clad in powdered wigs and buckle shoes.
I saw and heard them on Pennsylvania Avenue at the Trump Inauguration.
Dave established a contracting business after separation from the military where he had borne a sixty pound bass drum for a dozen years.
I met him when he arrived at the farm with a large slab of oak to be further milled to wooden drumsticks and handles for ceremonial steel pikes that were the totems of status for color sergeants.
Thing was, this was not just any slab of wood, and Dave Loyal, was not just another ex-mil customer.
The oak was taken from a tree at Mt. Vernon planted by George Washington. Dave had the inside track on access to the wood to be crafted and sold back to the U. S. Army Old Guard.
He told me about the physical requirements for the Old Guard in addition to being musically gifted: the regiment was drawn from the army enlistees, but required they stand between six two and six four feet in stature, and be well-formed.
In his Clark Kent framed glasses, Dave looked like Superman.
That was Big Dave: I took an unavoidable liking to him, because in his stature, coloration and Clarke Kent glasses, he was a ringer for my little brother.
***
A year later, I found myself waiting late enough in the day, that it became hard to see the mill yard, an obstacle course of toothed and sharpened tools, wayward poles of rough-cut oak and irregular root bases cut from walnut stumps.
To add to the hazard, the weather had turned icy, enough to freeze the aromatic sawdust under foot.
Dave had after doing business a year earlier, arranged to bring in a massive walnut trunk, big enough for me to fill another customer order for eight foot walnut boards to be used in constructing an aero propeller for an antique German biplane replica under construction.
The deal with Dave was to be barter: I would mill Dave enough walnut for his small projects and keep the major beams for aviation stock.
The felled tree had belonged to one of Dave’s friends in Charlottesville who wanted it cleared from the lawn. With Dave on it, perhaps they would not need a tractor despite the fact he was a musician, not a body builder.
There were three other oak and walnut projects that kept me busy all Wednesday, that had accumulated while my tractor was out for repair.
I had told Dave to just bring it in anytime, and I expected his arrival any time during the day. He had left a message at dinner time that he had gotten as far as West Virginia which puzzled me: West Virginia is not on the route from Charlottesville to Loudoun County.
While setting up strategically located Coleman lanterns in the dark, and positioning three of our cars so headlights would illuminate the unloading zone and tractor, my boot slipped and I came unceremoniuosly crashing down on a rare area uncluttered by tools or sharp stakes, taking a moment before rising.
Later, after Dave had arrived in the dark and we off-loaded, he paid me a hundred dollars: the tree was so good it was to be a cash, not a barter sale.
Limping back to the farmhouse where dinner sat now cold and half-eaten from the interruption, I could feel some discomfort and my wife, a physician, was alarmed at the swellling, enough to suggest an immediate emergency room visit for an X-ray.
***
I took a medicinal glass of wine and settled in early to recover for the next day’s bottling expedition which, I had been informed, would begin by meeting a winery colleague in the parking lot of a Leesburg grocery to carpool to Madison County, about thirty miles short of Charlottesville and a hour and a half ride.
While this was taking place, there was another conversation developing about a new vineyard management job in Arizona and I had passed the preliminary interview and been invited to talk further.
It was suggested by the vineyard owner prior to getting too serious and wasting time traveling to Arizona, that I might meet with his brother, who had opened a distillery in Charlottesville, for a second round of job discussions. In fact, I was happy to consider this: his brother had done a microbiology doctorate at Berkeley and had been a fellow at the Pasteur Institute, Paris, before leaving his professorship at UVA to established a distillery.
Ian would be the first winemaker and distiller to whom I could speak of the academic life.
Sleep was fitful and the last I had heard, I was to be at Safeway grocery ay eight o’clock. My first sensation that morning was seeing the clock that read seven-thirty.
I had overslept from the swelling in my lower back, the pain killers and the wine.
There was no time to shower, and immediately before leaving the house, I had a barrage of emails at the ringtone of my phone.
First, the commute would be delayed until eight forty-five. Second, I had a job interview with Ian that same afternoon, not in February when I would be back at the Omni for the annual winery vineyards convention hosted by the VATech viticulture faculty.
I had not had time to get to the bank, assemble a lunch, or look at email, or shower and I was limping from my injury and would have to struggle to arrive on time.
But the suddenness of life, about which I had pondered earlier before any of this happened, was taking place before my eyes: the change in time meant I could shower. Dave’s unexpected cash from the previous night meant I could manage, and the fact that the winemaking was not expected to absorb the entire day meant I could go the extra distance to the interview.
Click, click, click: sometimes the cogs of life just align with no effort and it is possible to go with the flow. I had seen this before and it brought the happy thought that all these coincidences were not actually random.
What is meant to be, is meant to be. A man just has to be prepared and vigilant, I told myself lathering my wild hair in the shower and composing what I would say in the interview which was a matter of happy anticipation.
The day went like that: bottling finished early and I was able to make a smooth exit for the interview.
I had not had time to research where the interview would take place online, nor did I have a map in the rush to leave that morning. In this era of GPS, it is not possible even among the hundreds of strip malls just north of Charlottesville, to buy a paper map of the city.
My expectation of finding a Starbucks in Charlottesville to find the location in absence of a paper map, was only diminished when I learned that neither laptop nor smart phone could access the Starbucks Wi-fi.
That too, it turned out, was not a problem with my infallible sense of direction, and I arrived at the interview flush with the notion of inevitability, and the talks went well.
Later on the drive home, I thought of our discussing The Pasteur Institute where Ian had done his postdoc fellowship, and of French biologists and biophysicists we knew there.
***
And there was a flashback of Oxford and Paris...
There was quite a lot to recall: I had been at Queen’s College, Oxford, for a research conference on molecular cytogenetics years back, never mind when. A colleague at Pasteur had invited me to give a talk in Paris after the UK meeting was over.
During an earlier meeting break, I had explored Magdalen College (pronounced “maudlin”) where my father-in-law had done his Rhodes Scholarship, and Christ Church College, where a large contingent of American Signal Corps trainees had been sent in 1917 to attend pilot ground school, before advanced training near the golf course in Turnberry, Scotland, and subsequent posting to combat squadrons in Flanders where many were killed in action.
My head was full of science, chromosomes and military aviation memoirs when I walked down The High (as High Street is called in Oxford and New Haven), when I passed a news kiosk.
On the front page was a full spread image of the Concorde jet, rising off the runway in flames, an event of the previous day during the Oxford meetins. Later, I could not place the date of the conference, but the shock of the Concorde disaster was burned into memory as I had headed for Paddington Station for the bullet train that would carry me beneath the English Channel to Paris.
My late father-in-law had been adamant that the Red Baron, Manfred Freiherr von Richtofen, had been a student at Oxford prior to World War One, another aviation rumor that I had gone to Oxford to investigate in spare time from the scientific proceedings.
And, I had known the story of Baron von Richtofen’s niece Frieda von Richtofen, who had married Oxford don and dictionary writer Ernest Weekley, only to leave him for an affair with writer D. H. Lawrence.
Whew.
The two leaving Oxford for Taos, New Mexico, where Lawrence and Frieda had settled into a writer colony that included their close friend Aldous (Brave New World) Huxley in the 1920s. Huxley had always been a favorite.
O’Keefe arrived in Taos shortly before the death there of D. H. Lawrence in 1930.
All these things came to mind discussing the Pasteur Institute and grapes to be tended, or not, in Arizona...