The Ash Creek Papers

I still marvel at the mind… the ability to weave ornate dreams… pasting together places that aren’t quite right with folks from different parts of our lives. Sure a pure plot or story line is missing… no clear beginning and certainly no distinctive conclusion… just a picture of something in mid-stream.

And my dream from last night was a pure gem… & I will write of it in just a bit; but first a story that took place a few hours before…

It was 8:30PM and time to call Christian Toft-Nielson. Christian is one of my best customers. I call him about once every 4-5 weeks. Always between 8:30PM and 9:00PM… this has given him a chance to eat dinner & attend to his kids, then he can listen to my wine story.

Typically our conversation will last no more than 10 minutes… in that time I will have introduced him to 2 or 3 different wines, and then I will make a recommendation of what to purchase. His range of purchase is $15 to $20 and he will buy 2 cases of red wine from me every time I call. Christian is European, and purely European in heart… wine for him is a “food” and not merely “alcohol”… he and his wife enjoy wine with every dinner (and with lunch on the weekends if they are home). Wine is not a “big deal”; but simply a part of enjoying life.

Occasionally he will buy some white wine for “self defense”… just to have on hand for the guest who only drinks white… or for the odd time he wants white for seafood. He buys white in what I call “extra dry martini proportions”: 8 cases of red to 1 case of white.

He also enjoys wine from every major wine growing region of the world. He is one of the easiest customers I have to sell… he never shies away from trying something he hasn’t heard of, or from exploring an untried region. He is in fact “tailor made” for my selling approach… I will pick out 2 wines that I find interesting without giving a moment’s thought as to whether it will squeeze into his palate preferences. “I’m not going to poison you Christian… give this wine a try”

I have sold him from the get-go… he has never returned a bottle.

Last night we visited Italy. Castlerapiti… a “Super Tuscan” from the ’95 Vintage. A classic blend of Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon. And with a “95 Vintage the wine has had time to “soften” in the bottle… it’s drinking like a dream… “Christian, this is like getting a pair of pre-washed blue jeans”.

The second wine was Farnetella. This is my personal favorite Chianti. To get better than this I have to double the price and get a Riserva that I adore. But for the money, this is one of the finest red wines out there… definitely not the Chianti from my undergraduate days! This is a slam dunk… Christian bought this wine from me in an earlier vintage 3 years ago… and it would be time for him to get some more.

Simple. This part of the call lasted 5 or 6 minutes. “Christian, what I am going to recommend is a case of each and of course I will give you an added 5% discount”

“OK, Jim… sounds good”.

Now to be honest… that was nothing special. As I say, he buys two cases from me every time I call. So a 2 case sale is not so much a “sale” as taking an “order”. And as my Brother Paul would say… “a rhesus monkey can take an order”.

So sometimes I have to test my mettle. And with Christian it is adding a third case, or perhaps “stretching” him into high end wine. In the past I have pushed him into Bordeaux ’00, Brunello ’97 & Brunello ’99. Tonight I would press him into Burgundy ’02. Wines of extraordinary seductive appeal… wines that cannot be by-passed… hell, everyone knows that the reason Napoleon fled Moscow was because he ran out of Chambertin!

“Christian… one more thing before I let you go. It’s Burgundy ’02. These wines won’t be landing on the shore ’til next Fall and we have just bought them on Futures. Christian, ’02 is a Vintage of Historic quality in Burgundy… much like Bordeaux ’00, this is something that can not be missed… we are talking about a region where vintage quality is a fickle as a 6th grader… and we have at our hand wines that we will probably not be surpassed in our life time. Unfortunately, the excellence of the Vintage was created by a drought… a drought that brought a high level of fruit concentration & wonderful acid levels… but a tiny, tiny harvest. Wines will be impossible to get… which is why we have bought them on Futures… if we didn’t commit to wines now, then we wouldn’t have them to offer to our customers… and it is our position that none, none, of our customers should miss out on these wines. If you love Burgundy then you should be taking a “second” out on the house and buy cases of Burgundy… but as a wine lover, you have to get some. To miss out on Burgundy ’02 would be like closing your eyes during a meteor shower. Christian… you are one of my best customers, and I wouldn’t be doing you service if I didn’t tell you about these wines… and further I am not going to let you say ‘no'”.

We are over our normal 10 minute conversation. I gave him a listing of the Burgundies we had… and he asked me to email him the details and get back to him tonight.

We’ll see…

And this morning I had a pre-dawn visit. I can’t place the location. I think I am sitting on some sort of couch. Maybe “slouching” more than sitting. And I hear my Father’s voice from a different room, or outside?. I move to where I can see him better. He has a smile, big and broad… he has just laughed, or perhaps is ready to laugh again… he is waving good-bye to a customer… an older man (his contemporary) and his wife from Chicago… I recognize him but just can’t place his name… “It’s great to see ya… thanks for coming in… everything will be ready for your next visit… and next time I want you to bring some of the other guys with you!!!”

And then I am distracted… a customer comes into the room where I am sitting (or reclining) with one of our fitters… no it was not Charles, nor Alvin, nor Felice, nor August… someone else… and all I can think about is this fitter doesn’t know what the hell to do… and this customer looks like a real tough pain in the ass… who is it? My gosh… it is a grown up version of this kid Malcom who was a foreign exchange student in my 7th or 8th grade… a snotty little kid from England (I will have to ask Gary Moss) whose shirt cuffs were miles too long, and whose attitude was emblematic of why the British lost the Empire. I endured watching him being fitted… and then woke up to the cool night air on my arm.

So there you have it. “I haven’t completed the deal yet, Dad. I have to finish this note so I can get on to emailing Christian my Burgundy proposal. Email would be foreign to you… much the same way that you rejected zip codes & never got real comfortable with phone numbers that didn’t include names: Murray Hill 7-0850. What can I say? It’s a new world… but somethings are the same. The lessons you taught Paul, Alan & me still ring true. Never close a sale…”

It seems like yesterday. A week short of 21 years ago, I sold John B. Rogers $22,000 worth of clothes on the Eve or your passing. Tonight I will sell Christian some great Burgundy.

Keep smiling.

So I’m behind the times. My kids point this out to me all the time. I don’t watch TV, I don’t know the latest films, don’t know the “stars” or trends… it took me only a month to figure out that the Paris Hilton sex tapes didn’t involve a sex escapade in a suite of a hotel in France.

Oh well…

I had the good luck to finally catch up a bit with the rest of the world and took in Sea Biscuit. Good Film. And to everyone who said it… you were right.

There was a line from the film that struck a deep chord… “You don’t throw a life away just because it’s banged up a little.”

So whose life is not banged up a little? Who do you know who doesn’t suffer from the nicks and bruises of every day life? Or maybe worse? Or in someway feels physically or emotionally less than whole? Maybe you do?

Yes, Sea Biscuit is a good film. It is uplifting to witness the horse’s spirit acting as a source of healing for the lives of the owner, the trainer & the jockey. The horse Sea Biscuit made a difference.

Did you see the movie? Did it make you feel good? Oh, yes you should.

We are all precious. Banged up a little? Yeah, maybe. Hard not to be. So don’t cast too critical an eye across the table at your neighbor… nor think that the knocks that we feel on this side of the table are somehow unique.

I think we’re all banged up just a bit… some more than others. And some can take it better than others. Our lives are just too precious. Let’s not throw them away. Not our friends, not our family… not ourselves. Don’t let it happen.

We can make a difference… we can make a difference.

I can remember thinking that Mr. Spock on the original Star Trek — he half human, half Vulcan, a logically oriented being, whose emotions were buried beneath his Vulcan half — was an entirely lucky sort. Problems came up on the Bridge of the USS Enterprise, Captain Kirk needed a steady hand, someone who he could trust, someone who he could rely on… who did he turn to? Mr. Spock! Logic driven, cool, collected, not clouded by issues of the heart. Great choice! For Captain Kirk, that is… on the Enterprise…

Let’s look a little bit closer at this character… Don’t be fooled by his clear intelligence, or his pointy ears & arched eyebrows… is this suppression of emotion a good thing?

Well… maybe it is on Planet Vulcan. But we live on Earth.

So I suffer with my emotions… daily. And suffer, meaning I live with it. A day doesn’t go by that I am not keenly aware of the beauty that surrounds me… the happiness & joy I feel, or the disappointment and pain I also experience… the failure to connect to someone, the missed opportunity to say the right thing… to fail in some way make a difference for someone, of not doing well enough… oh, it hurts — the same way bringing a smile or laugh to someone’s face, or doing a job well done brings such immeasurable pleasure.

Anyway… for those who know me… I spend a fair amount of time running (or on some “cross trainer” if my “wheels” are hurting)… I actually dislike the activity greatly… but it has been a good vehicle for me… to work thru some anger, burn some calories to boot, and to think. To think about how I feel… to think about how lucky it is to experience life’s full riches… to feel the anguish of hurt and despair, and to feel the joy & excitement of love and the comfort of peace of mind.

So there you have it… the beauty of a summer day, the hum of the cicadas adding to the melody of the mid-day sun, walking along a hedge covered in honeysuckle, bees abuzz, the air thick with humidity, and the sweet perfume of those flowers encasing me… How can you not feel good? And then there is the day you struggle with a hurt, a loss, a bad turn of fortune to you, your kids… whatever.

All part of the same pie if you ask me. And my God, I wouldn’t trade it for all the bounty on Planet Earth or on Planet Vulcan.