The Man Who Wore Mismatched Socks

Purebread

An excerpt from the 1951 Chapter in The Man Who Wore Mismatched Socks.

Background: John Buxomley is a recovering alcoholic; he has just recently hit “rock bottom” and is working hard at conquering his addiction. Gladiola Wallingford is a woman who he had feelings for back during the war, and he has just found her again. Against great odds, they succeed in going on a picnic together. 

In this passage I wanted to explore:

-The idea of how an independent woman could build a business in an environment (back in 1951) when the business world was dominated by males.

-The idea of how small businesses should consider talking to one person at a time rather than mass marketing as their principal growth strategy. My growth philosophy has evolved to this: mass marketing is for big companies and for commodities. If you’re big, and/or if you deal in commodities, mass (talking to “everyone”) is a logical way to proceed. If, however, you own or work in a small business, it makes absolutely no sense at all. Talking to one person at a time and being patient is far more effective in the long term. (Hint: that’s the hard part. It takes time and persistence.)

-How this “talking to one” could be done in pre-Internet days.

-The notion of substantive, meaningful conversation between men and women who are romantically interested in each other. Flirtation is all well and good, but if taken too far can lead to objectification and treatment of the other as interchangeable, temporary and disposable. “What is truly important to you?” is a fair, even vital, question in the realm of romance, and yet most fiction and film attempts to make us believe otherwise.

 

Here, then, is my excerpt:

They talked about a thousand things, and the time ran away like water over a falls. She was clearly fascinated with everything that he said, and Buxomley was happy to be able to talk freely about his newly repaired car, his new job at Red & Black Ltd, his amateur astronomy, his interest in math…

For his part, he wanted to know everything about what she had been doing. It turned out she had established a bakery, Purebread, right there in Twickenham, shortly after the war. (It had been so bloody close to him!  How had he missed it all this time?) In spite of the tremendous odds stacked against it, her little concern had prospered beautifully. When he asked how she had done it, she spoke of using only the finest ingredients, and the remarkable qualities which all her breads, cakes, muffins and scones possessed. She also made every effort to know her customers.  And then there were the letters…

He asked, and she explained. Gladiola took down as many customers’ names and addresses and phone numbers as they would allow; most didn’t object. Each working day, she phoned one customer and asked how they had liked what they had bought from Purebread. She also sent one letter to a customer chosen at random each and every day. She chose them randomly, and thus many people got more than one letter from her, over time. Her letters were simple missives. They thanked her patron for purchasing from her. She praised the simple pleasures of the English table and expressed her hope that her creations had added to the enjoyment of the family meal. She encouraged her customers, without pressure, to write back to her.

At first, she only heard from one out of dozens of recipients. After a time though, as people received more than one letter from her, and especially as they started to have conversations amongst each other about their letter-writing baker of Twickenham, it became fashionable to write back. Pretty soon, Gladiola had gathered quite a tight little tribe about her, people who eagerly anticipated her breads and cakes and muffins, but who also relished the entire experience of her creations. A Purebread at the table meant so many things! Good taste, absolutely- they were always so delicious! Delightful packaging- breads always came in that charming yellow cardboard box, tied with a bit of burgundy red string, and her desserts were in that same yellow box but with a light green lid, also tied with that red string. Very distinctive, nothing else came wrapped like this! And then of course there was the chance of being belled by Miss Wallingford herself, or, best of all, finding one of her letters in the post.

By 1951, most of her patrons were writing back.

Buxomley was astonished. “Gladiola, I’ve never heard of such spectacular success coming from such simple acts. Well, except for the Gacks, but, you know, as much as I love them, they’re all a bit barmy. What you’ve done though- totally hatstand! What made you think of it?”

She smiled lightly. “Well, it was something Victoria and her parents said, once when I was visiting at their home. Just after the war, you know. She was planning to start up her education again. She’s studied economics, and her particular interest is Bertrand competition. It’s a bit more racy to call it ‘a race to the bottom’, so we always call it that. ‘Bottom-racing’, what a funny little term!”

This wasn’t exactly romantic conversation, but it was certainly interesting conversation. And anyway people all made so damn much out of silly superficial things when it came to romance. But wasn’t it better to be talking to a beautiful woman about her accomplishments than about how her hair reflected the sunlight, or how rapidly her eyelids fluttered? Interactions between hair and sunlight were largely beyond her control; nature bestowed what nature bestowed. Her accomplishments, though- those were hers, and hers alone.

“What does that mean, then, Gladiola?”

She burst out with her answer, all flushed with the excitement of sharing her success with someone she cared about. “Bertrand’s 'race to the bottom' goes rather like this: if a company, like my own bakery, or your accounting firm, any company- starts lowering its price to gain market share, their competitors tend to start doing the same thing. Each tries to undercut all the others until the price of the product or service in question is just above the cost of production. They've all raced to the bottom.”

“I see. That would attract the buyers looking for something at the lowest price, which we all do from time to time. Don’t we?”

“Yes, we do, and there’s really nothing wrong with that. But as owner, I had a decision to make. If you're trying to sell to everybody, you've got to become more average to do so. You become a commodity. Further, John, it's a matter of vulnerability. Commodities are vulnerable to bottom-racing. If you're indispensible to your customers, if you are constantly delighting them or solving problems for them, you are invincible. You are racing to the top. Your competitors cannot force you down.”

“That’s amazing, Gladiola!”

“I suppose I don’t really solve any critical problems for my customers…”

Excited for this wonderful woman who had unexpectedly come tumbling back into his life, he grinned. “Of course you do! Everyone has got to eat! And you make their meals better when they buy such excellent food…”

“Still, John, I focus on the other thing. Delighting them. And it’s worked for me. I have a thriving business going.”

“You certainly do! I can’t wait to come down to Twickenham and buy one of everything!”

She laughed and smiled and her cheeks flushed all red. And looking back on it later, John Buxomley realized that at the moment he had said those words, “I can’t wait to come down to Twickenham and buy one of everything,” that this was the first moment in his life in a very long time when he had forgotten completely about alcohol.

 

 

Why, then, does anyone buy their beer at all?

When I discovered Everett Rogers' Diffusion of Innovations I read it twice through, and I still refer back to it often. Always will.

The second time through I made note (via Kindle, so 'twas easy) of all his generalizations. They go like this:

Generalization 5-13: Mass media channels are relatively more important at the knowledge stage, and interpersonal channels are relatively more important at the persuasion stage in the innovation-decision process.

Generalization 5-14: Cosmopolite channels are relatively more important at the knowledge stage, and localite channels are relatively more important at the persuasion stage in the innovation-decision process.

Generalization 6-1: The relative advantage of an innovation, as perceived by members of a social system, is positively related to its rate of adoption.

Generalization 6-2: The compatibility of an innovation, as perceived by members of a social system, is positively related to its rate of adoption.

Generalization 6-3: The complexity of an innovation, as perceived by members of a social system, is negatively related to its rate of adoption.

Generalization 6-4: The trialability of an innovation, as perceived by the members of a social system, is positively related to its rate of adoption.

Generalization 6-5: The observability of an innovation, as perceived by members of a social system, is positively related to its rate of adoption.

There are many more.

Well, I have a hypothesis to test:

"People who balance creating and consuming content pay less attention to mass media channels than people who primarily consume content."

I wrote about this concept in TMWWMMS before I realized it consciously. Has that ever happened to anyone? I wanted to explore the question, "Why, then, does anyone buy Slore's beer at all?" With Slore's standing in for any commodity, any mass-produced product or service.

Here is an excerpt.

Victoria decided to help her husband figure out his next steps in a most intriguing manner. Tours of Slore’s (It’s Beer) were available, and although they were very carefully orchestrated to only put the company in the best possible light, she still counted on being able to find out something useful by taking one herself. Aloysius would be instantly recognized, but she doubted that anyone in such a large corporation would know who she was; her appearance was still unknown to any employees there.

Now, after their little spying episode, the conversation comes around to trying to draw a conclusion:

Archibald said, "For now, I have to ask, my little spies: what was the physical plant like?"

Turning his attention back to his daughter-in-law and her athletic friend.

“There was an awfully big rat!” Rivka chimed in rather gleefully.

“A rat? Oh dear, it doesn’t sound like old Slore is ‘creating, developing, and supporting standards of excellence within our brewing industry’, now does it, what?” Archibald had a look of impish delight on his face as he said it.

“And piles of rubbish, with old shipping crates and pallets strewn about all over the brewery floor, the areas out of sight of the tour’s walkway, anyway,” Added Vicky.

“And dust all over everything! They must clean the brightwork in the few areas where the public sees their equipment, but otherwise it’s all a terrible mess.”

Rivka seemed downright angered by the incongruities.

Vicky wanted to describe what she could infer about the brewing process. “Slore’s seems to be very careless about their brewing; they're doing rapid sparging, and cheaply too, without any apparatus for recirculating the initial runnings back through the grain bed, and I saw a worker spraying water into the top of a mash tun with a hose, no sparge arm, drilling into the grain bed and channeling... And it looks as if they're making their second draw of weak, low alcohol beer very great in quantity and then adding it back into the first draw. No wonder their beer was often not only weak, but cloudy too!”

Aloysius gave his wife a big grin and reached across to her chair and squeezed her hand, so proud of her knowledge of his craft.

Archibald summarized. “So we have dreadfully unhappy employees, poor, cheap techniques, and serious issues with the cleanliness of their facilities. Why, then, does anyone buy their beer at all?”

No one said anything for a moment. Then Rivka quietly asked, “Because their ads are great?”

“That must be it,” Aloysius said. “They’ve used the mass media to the point where people are aware of them, and then, well… I can’t say, exactly. Why would that make any difference to what they buy when they want a beer?”

The Power of Flawless Composure

When Aloysius is forced to take his first "brolly ride" he finds incredible comfort in the sense of normalcy provided by a butler who refuses to let the battle destroy his composure. Perhaps we all should give more consideration to even keels...

*****

Swooping in from the left beam on one of the pencil-thin bombers, Gack hammered away with his eight Brownings and smoked the port engine. Fixating just a little too long on the strangely beautiful sight of bright orange flame licking around its cowling and dense black smoke pouring back into the slipstream, he was shocked to hear that dreadful sound again: WHAMWHAMWHAMWHAMWHAM! Suddenly his world was falling apart right in front of his eyes. Glass shattered from his instrument panel, air roared in through holes in his fuselage, and intense pain came from somewhere on his body, he couldn’t even tell where yet.

WHAMWHAMWHAM and damn, that liquid making his left rudder pedal slippery was red, not oil-black or glycol-green. And then his engine burst into flames. This was it, then. He had to bale out. Spitfires and especially Hurricanes had turned out to be surprisingly robust compared to their wood-and-fabric Great War predecessors. Usually when hit, if your wings were still on your best bet was to ride her down and pancake in a field somewhere. But not when you caught fire. Oh no. Then you had to jump. Gack thought to himself, “My God, I’m going to end up like one of Mannock’s ‘flamerinoes’! Or like poor O’Brien. A fireball. I’ve got to walk out!”

He reached for the catch on his canopy and, of course, it was stuck. Terrified of losing his eyes, he pulled his goggles down and then banged away with his fist against the release; it finally let go. He rammed the Malcolm Hood back, all the while trying to keep his wounded Spitfire upright, and wondering with a part of his mind why the Snappers weren’t finishing him off.

The flames licked high off his crate’s long, once-beautiful cowling. It was only a matter of time until they reached back to the main petrol tank, situated right between his cockpit and the burning engine.

His next step was to release his harness. As he fumbled with it, he was suddenly splashed by hot glycol. He thought, “What vile, sticky stuff this is!” Next you were supposed to flick your machine on its back and drop free, but as soon as he stood up the force of the slipstream ripped him out of his cockpit and he was free but afflicted with even more pain as his feet smacked against the tailplane.

Now he was falling through the sky and feeling oddly warm and comfortable, as if he wanted to go off to sleep. After all, they had all been fighting quite hard for a long time and he certainly deserved a rest. His mind drifted back to Mick Mannock and his fear of burning, and the incongruous way that old Mick had delighted in sending the enemy down to earth in flames. Of the story of how that Great War pilot had strode into the mess hall after getting four victories on one mission and shouting out, "Flamerinoes - four! Sizzle sizzle wonk!" How odd! And then of course that’s how he had died- shot down in flames. Then Gack felt bad for his beloved Spitfire and wished there were some way he could rescue the old girl; now where had she got to?

Suddenly a thought that was rather crystalline in its clarity broke through his listless reverie: “Pull the ripcord, you bloody fool!” He did so; his body was jerked up with a stunning blow and then there he was, on his brolly. Drifting down towards the cloying English fields of high summer, their greens and browns so inviting that it wasn’t until he was at less than a thousand feet that it occurred to him to wonder what his flaming Spitfire was going to do to one of them when it hit. Good God, he hoped it didn’t kill any Englishmen…

He hit the ground near what he later discovered was Rook Wood, lucky to land in the adjacent fields rather than getting all hung up in a tree. Still feeling unfocused and groggy but seeing that his leg wound wasn’t anything too terrible, and finding that his ankles still worked serviceably well in spite of getting pranged against the tail of his kite, he limped to a fine looking mansion on the appropriately named Cold Harbour Road. He walked up to the door and, steadying himself as well as he could, knocked firmly. Or so it felt; but his rapping on the solid English Oak didn’t sound very loud.

It was loud enough. A uniformed man who was surely the most unflappable of all English butlers opened the door, took a long look at Gack from head to toe, his uniform ruined by blood and glycol stains, even his socks oddly not matching, and motioned him to follow as he turned into the magnificent entry hall. The man suddenly paused and, with unassuming grace, offered his arm to this bedraggled RAF officer who had appeared on his doorstep with such jarring abruptness and helped him the short distance to a nearby room. He seated Gack gently and, seemingly not minding the blood that was dripping on the highly polished wooden floor, went to fetch him some tea and a biscuit.

As Gack warmed himself with his mug of delicious, hot honest English tea, he dimly heard this very butler’s butler saying with flawless composure, “An officer of His Majesty’s Royal Air Force is waiting to see you in the drawing room, my lord.”

At that moment, tired and wracked by pain as he was, Aloysius St. James Spottisworth-Gack was delighted that there were people like this. So dedicated they were to maintaining a sense of normalcy in the midst of all this chaos!

Freed From Competing With Average

One signature thing about Seth Godin's entire philosophy gives me trouble. Although I am experiencing remarkable success through following his ideas, there are still Hits out there that disrespect peoples' Attention and treat them as interchangeable, temporary and disposable. I define many Hits as I imagine Seth would- an average product or service for average people, to be sold in the greatest quantity possible. It is only rarely that a Hit is something truly remarkable and interesting.

How can this be?

More to the point, if we own a business, how do we deal with the fact that we are creating something respectful and sustainable, based on Permission, and yet we see a competitor doing well who bases their business on treating people as interchangeable? How can that competitor remain bigger than us? How can they gain success in this manner?

Well, I wish to suggest that we are not competing with such a one at all.

The following is an excerpt from my work-in-progress. There are  links here to more details, but all you need to know for now is that Aloysius and his father Archibald are brewers in England at the height of the mass-marketing era. Their brewery, Gack&Bacon Ltd, is fighting to maintain its autonomy and creativity in the face of the conglomerate Slore's, which has bought up as many independent breweries as it can and which uses strong-arm tactics to influence pubs to buy exclusively from them. At this point in the story, Gack&Bacon Ltd has just suffered rather a severe setback.

Here, then, are my thoughts, in fictional form, on how to deal with this terrible conundrum:

*****
*****

Later on, Archibald joined them for tea, having worked all day with Greinhalm to concoct a special brew to celebrate an old friend’s wedding anniversary. “Altered Altar Ale”, they were considering calling it. Upon being filled in on his son’s traumatic episode, he, naturally, had something of profound simplicity and directness to say.

“Oh, rubbish, Aloysius. There will always be Hits. There will always be a Slore’s for every endeavour, a pabulum for the masses. But those are average products for average people. Just because we brew beer and they brew beer, one comes to believe that we compete with them. But we do not, my boy.

“We make something so entirely different than Slore’s and that mass-produced brackish moor-water they call beer, that we’re not even talking about the same thing. We compete with ourselves. We delight our fans, and as such we also compete for their Attention with those few businesses that are brave enough to do the same.

“And there are so few of that lot, Aloysius, that when you look at it clearly, our customers have plenty of Attention to go round. In fact I rather fancy that when we respect people’s Attention, the whole pie grows bigger. There’s more for all of us who treat people with respect.”

“I see. Fascinating, Father. It rather frees one‘s mind to see things that way, doesn’t it?”

“It does. There’s no sense the thoroughbred concerning itself with being outpaced by the ox, what? Now let’s go out to the back garden and have some tea.”

*****

Yes... There's something about re-thinking who we really compete with that is very liberating. And it goes even further than that. How, or even if, we choose to fight is an important decision indeed.

Watch as Gack realizes this after his first recon mission in a de Havilland Mosquito. This plane was made mainly of wood, had a crew of only two and no defensive armament. As a result it was fast. So fast that, rather than fight back at its attackers, it could simply outrun them. Come see what he makes of the lesson:

The danger on any wartime mission wasn’t truly over until you were on the ground and your batman had brought you a mug of hot tea. It often took hours of tea swilling and lying under many blankets to work off the penetrating cold of high altitude flight! Still, as Gack crossed over the coast of Holland and flew over the North Sea on the way back to Horsham St. Faith, he found that, as often happened after a mission, a small part of his mind was insistent on coming up with insights. Profound ones. On this trip he thought of all the bombers that had been designed big and bulky, crewed with five or even ten men and laden with all the equipment it took to support them. Bristling with machine guns in heavy, drag-inducing turrets. British Lancasters, Halifaxes and Stirlings; American Flying Fortresses (appropriate name, that!) and Liberators; the German machines that he had fought against in the Battle of Britain. And here he was, just he and Gateacre, in a quirky wooden machine that threw off all the means of fighting back and, defenseless in every way except for height and speed, was apparently almost immune from the threat of destruction by the enemy. Oh, nothing was sure in war, and many Mosquitos would be lost on ops, that was certain, but he’d rather take his chances in his Wooden Wonder than in any heavily armed aluminum Castle of the Sky.

For it seemed that, while standing one’s ground and fighting an enemy strength for strength was often noble and seemed the proper thing to do, sometimes fighting smarter, choosing your own fight instead of your enemy’s, was the best path towards true victory. After all, why ever let anyone who was in opposition to you dictate the nature of the contest?

This was a lesson that Aloysius was going to apply to the family business after the war. If there was to be an “after” for him…

 

Bill Archibald Rocks The Pig & Trebuchet

I wanted to honour my old friend and also explore what the edges of a musical performance might be. As well as its center, actually...

Osprey Hulgenkoffler and his Big Band Unplanned came to the Pig & Trebuchet in June of 1953. Every other Big Band that you saw had a bandleader that spent much of his time up front, swinging a baton rather then a trombone or ten sax, and who engaged the audience only enough to encourage them to buy into his personal mystique, as if he was the most talented musician up there.

Not so Osprey Hulgenkoffler. A drummer with mad chops and madcap abilities to enthrall his audiences in a brief fourth-wall-breaking conversation just before his boys started to play, he would retreat to his drum set and lead from there- solely with his beat. That’s how he did it- with sticks and bass drum pedal, no baton, no words, no gestures. Any musician who couldn’t hack that vibe didn’t make it into his band. It was as simple as that.

Gack was wearing his right sock Tangerine Yellow, the left, Phthalo Bue, mostly because he enjoyed the difficult pronunciation when asked about it. Victoria was radiant in a Moonstone Blue dress with matching shoes from Roundelphi’s; rather understated, with simple lines, and all the more fetching because of it. Archibald had a knowing smirk on his face for some inscrutable reason, and Glennis looked magnificent in an absolutely up-to-date gown that effortlessly belied her age.

The band was all set up. Hulgenkoffler’s musicians sat perfectly still, absolutely silent. There happened to be both white and black band members, which was a surprising and welcome mark of progress from the still very segregationist United States. Osprey took center stage and eyed his audience with a steady gaze until, one by one, they all fell silent. Waiting. He engaged in some lighthearted banter, praised the Gacks for running such an… interesting establishment, and then said this:

“Ladies and gents, some things are abundant. Air. Newspapers. The hot air from the mouths of politicians and the vapid pabulum from Slore’s taps.”

Gales of laughter from that one; everyone in the P&T was in the very midst of appreciating the more Visceral brews of Gack&Bacon Ltd.

“Some things, then, some things are scarce. Diamonds. Hundredth birthdays. Aston-Martins. Teenage children who listen to their parents.”

More laughter.

“Well, chaps and lassies,” (this was Osprey’s signature manner of addressing his audiences), “I believe that memorable experiences are the ultimate scarcity. And tonight, from Bill Archibald, my new tenor sax man, a memorable experience you shall have. Yes, you shall have it indeed.”

And with that he practically leaped back to his drum set, settled himself onto his stool, and kicked off “Begin the Beguine”, and a bit up tempo too.

This number had a subtle, steady, yet relentless drum beat that made the listener feel a sense of urgency throughout.  There was a bittersweet vibe as well; an essential sadness, like love won and then lost. Saxes started steadily but quietly, then the trombones joined in with their luscious power; finally the trumpet section wailed in a bombastic yet controlled stratospheric flourish that sent chills up everyone’s spine. The break was mostly trumpets but the saxes had their foundational role. Then it was the ‘bones turn on the next verse, just a beautiful combination of melody and harmony from their slides and bells.

And then Bill Archibald took the solo mike.

The audience knew before he even placed lip to reed that they could expect something new and exciting. First of all, though Archibald was dressed in the requisite black tux, he wasn’t wearing dress shoes- his feet were shod in clogs.  Those funny Dutch wooden things with the bowsprits up front and the clickety-clack noise as you walked. Further, his whole posture, indeed his whole being was made as if focused on lips for embouchure and eyes for expressions that matched the soul of the score. And then he had a wild enthusiasm for the music that had already spread throughout the room. On his way in, carrying his tenor sax in its case in his right hand the entire time and not even noticing the weight, he had regaled the patrons two and three at a time with exuberant turns of phrase, working them up into a high state of anticipation for what was to come from the Great Unplanned Band. “We’re jus’ comin’ off some bad gigs in The Apple; man, we’re in the pocket.” “Any band run by a jake hide hitter like Osprey is gonna chill ya; wait till ya see him shed!” “These cats are out-rageous!  Love ‘em all, they’re all down by law.”

His solo started reasonably enough. Some long tones, some arpeggios; a bit of skating around the high register of his tenor sax and then a startling quick dive down to a low D or even C, just for the sheer joy of the sudden bounce through two octaves. But then… then, Archibald started to take off into directions that no one in the room had ever heard before. The remarkable thing was, from time to time he splashed hints of “Begin the Beguine” into his solo like big warm raindrops hitting hot pavement. The audience never got lost. But he led them, bravely and unflinchingly, into a place of warm familiar undercurrents overlaid with spectral, mysterious, almost alarming flights of crystalline notes that he would build into magnificent towering structures and then, right when they reached a size and scale that seemed unbearable in their delicate beauty, he’d shatter them to pieces, then mercifully send just enough familiar grounding phrases to his audience to anchor them a bit, and then he’d start the whole process all over again. And it was wildly different each and every time.

No one (but Osprey, who always kept time) knew how long Archibald’s solo lasted. It felt timeless. When it was over, though, and he retired in temporary exhaustion to his seat, lots of things happened all at once in the Pig & Trebuchet.  Several men spilt their beers. One dropped his glass entirely, shattering it on the edge of the hearth. There was a muted “mazeltov” from a few Jewish patrons at that. A woman near the band was openly weeping, trying to find the words to express “May we hear some more?” but only rasping out fragments of speech that made no sense at all. Her husband came by her side to steady her.

Osprey could have called his axe man back with a mere signal from his hides and cymbals. He wouldn’t, though. If, as he said, memorable experiences were one of life’s finest scarcities, and if, as Gack himself had taught him, Scarcity Equals Value, then it was best to leave things as they were and let everyone’s emotions rest for awhile before taking them to anything like that level again.

The band was fun and thought-provoking and ever so memorable. Patrons listened and danced and sang along as they saw fit; any shopworn notions of British reserve were left at the door of the P&T, or perhaps, so it seemed, all the way back at the border of the town of Parsons Green. Osprey even had the grace to bring Canfield up on stage so that his banjo could add some aural kindling to “Sweet Georgia Brown” and the less familiar 1901 Porter Steele tune “High Society”.

After the show, Bill Archibald showed his essential kindness (along with his endless enthusiasm) and spoke to that woman and her husband about music and The Apple (a place they’d never been) and life on the road and even the merits of trains over buses. The man was a driver for the LNER, so he was pleased as pie to hear the belching rubber-wheeled beasts denigrated as a means from getting from gig to gig.

Even more remarkable, the otherwise fairly conservative couple went on the Tuesday afternoon next down to Roundelphis and bought matching clogs for each other.

They felt quite hep about it.  “Or was that ‘hap’, dear?  Or did he say ‘hip’?  He most certainly didn’t say ‘hup’, so it must have been…”

Persistence. And How it Relates to Fun.

Fun.

Is it going to a beach and drinking oneself into a stupor?

I have heard students speak this way a lot in recent years. Sometimes dental and other students, whose parents I know are cutting checks for tens of thousands of dollars every semester, talk about their three vacations a year to the Caribbean, the goal being to drink and eat and overall to be a hedonist, presumably to escape from the process of learning a scarce set of skills and making a difference for people.

What??

My older daughter wanted to go away on her Spring Break last year. She went to Israel and helped build a community center, as well as performing some other service projects. The raw contrast of her actions to "Wasting away in Margaritaville", if I may quote a song, made me so proud of her. A particularly fine nuance is that she often had a glass of wine at dinner, but the focus of her trip was making a difference, not the wine. The wine was incidental, a normal part of a meal in Israel.

Our modern American society has trained (read brainwashed) us to believe that having fun is being mindless, turning off everything and "zoning out" as an escape from the battles that we fight every day. Pop culture celebrates the outrageous Spring Break, the celebrity cribs and Jersey Shore hedonists and Kardashians (I don't even know how many sisters there are and don't tell me!) who do absolutely nothing for a living and yet get paid more in a year for it than I will probably make in my lifetime.

But is oblivion the best form of fun? Not to me it ain't.

Many forms of fun make a difference for others. My daughter's help with the community center for instance. Coaching a fledgling business owner in Permission Marketing and seeing their company grow because of it. Getting a few interesting folks together and solving an interesting problem.

Other forms of fun are just for ourselves and our friends. A game of basketball, a group bike ride, taking an easel out on the Drive and painting Boathouse Row and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Writing in public.

I see evidence that corporations and the marketers out there despise when we do this sort of thing. They want us to consume their content, not create our own. They want us watching the game, the reality TV show, buying their music. Seeing their film in the theater at an outrageous price, to push the box office total to record levels.

Well, we have near-infinite choice now. The world is all cluttered and messy, and we can cut through the clutter with Google on a computer and even on our cell phone and find whatever we want, whenever we want, wherever we want. This newfound power leads us to ignore the mass market more than ever before, which leads the mass market to yell at us louder than ever before so that we pay attention to them, which leads us to ignore them even more, etc. in a vicious cycle in which the consumer is bound to win in the long term.

Because we can.

The key, though, the absolute, vitally important key to all this, is that we create, not just consume. Oh, sure, we can consume content often. Sometimes movies, books and sport are great fun. They may even educate or edify us. More and more, though, we wish to create things on our own, and the power to do that is increasingly in our hands, not in the hands of some omnipotent Gatekeepers of power and knowledge.

Join me then as one of the characters in my novel, Dr. Peter Saunterton, demonstrates this restless creativity by his words and actions. Aloysius and Victoria are about to be married in 1944. Aloysius and his father, Archibald, own the Gack&Bacon Ltd brewery. Peter and Nancy Saunterton are the parents of the bride.

Dr. Peter Saunterton goes a long way to have fun, that is for sure. Many of us might prefer something a little simpler and immediate. But he is creating and contributing. He and Aloysius share an odd but intense interest in wainscoting and Boiserie.  (For the explanation behind that, I'm afraid you will have to wait on the novel's release.) I will say that I like presenting odd niches rather than always dealing with highly popular things; this is one of my themes. Anyway let's listen in as Dr. Peter hammers the people who live in, well, Margaritaville...

*****

1944

And so it came to pass that  Victoria and Aloysius were to be married by Vicar Grahame Henley in his Benevolentia Ilustre church. This was also the preferred choice of Nancy and Peter Saunterton, even over their own parish. They were familiar with Reverend Henley’s virtuosity on the harpsichord and both quite taken with the vitality, intelligence and noble spirit of his sermons. Also Peter was bewitched by the splendid wainscoting in Henley’s vicarage. He was “on one of his rampages”, as Nancy termed his more obsessive academic pursuits, in an attempt to identify the artisan who had created it. When she had teased him about it as they were planning their children’s wedding, he had sent Archibald into gales of laughter with his defence, spoken excitedly with wide-eyed innocence: “But Nancy, my dear, ferreting out this artisan and elucidating the connections between him and the others that we know of in his period could totally redefine our understanding of English wainscoting and interior wall treatments!”

It was, indeed, 11:59 for more than just Archibald and his brewery, and the elder Gack was more than a little pleased to find a kindred spirit among his future relations.

1957

Dr. Peter Saunterton banged open the front door to the Gack&Bacon brewery complex and strode onto the main floor. Normally the very politest of creatures, most especially so to his dear wife Nancy, on this occasion he left her to her own devices, which involved re-opening the heavy oaken door which her husband had just let close in her face.

“His name was Blaise Bonenffant!” he exclaimed, hair disheveled, wild look in his eyes. “I found him!!”

Archibald, Greinhalm and Canfield looked up from their fermenting tanks in complete puzzlement. The elder Gack spoke: “Found who, Peter?”

“Blaise Bonenffant, the artisan, nay, artist, we must call him that now, who created that magnificent wainscoting in the vicarage at Benevolentia Ilustre. I found him!”

Nancy Saunterton sauntered up, looking a mixture of cross and amused.

Archibald straightened up to his full height, jutted out his bearded chin and quietly intoned, “Bloody well took you long enough, Peter. Now have a go at the woodwork in Admiral Heaneage’s house. He rubbed away half the detail with his white glove inspections, so you’ll have your work cut out for you!”

Dr. Peter laughed; he always enjoyed the way Archibald managed to come up with wainscoting jokes, no small feat considering that most folk, for some inscrutable reason, didn’t find this, the most elegant of uses of wood, to be very exciting.

Drawn by the commotion, Aloysius came up, Lauren in tow. It being the Saturday, they had been down by the Thames again, exploring nature as she enjoyed so much. “What’s up, Fathers?” he asked.

Archibald: “Your father-in-law has discovered something that will surely rock the world of architectural history to its core.” An impish grin sprang to life under his white beard.

Not even noticing the hyperbole, Peter went on, “I’ve found the creator of that magnificent wainscoting in the vicarage at Benevolentia Ilustre. His name is Blaise Bonenffant. Two ‘f’s, like many a good Norman name.”

Aloysius’ eyes widened considerably. “That is splendid news. Absolutely topping! Do you know much about him?”

Archibald groaned. Now they were going to prattle on all afternoon about it.

“Well, his life spanned from 1700 even to 1771. So, to put it in perspective, he was twenty and greatly affected financially by the South Sea Bubble, was rather lucky to have missed the Boston Tea Party and all that controversy, and he saw five monarchs: William III, Anne, George I, II and III. Not a bad show, what?”

“Certainly not!” beamed his son-in-law. “We have records that show that our brewery was most active during the reign of that rather difficult man, George II. People must have preferred to face his shenanigans in a mildly inebriated state. Though he was the last English king to lead an army in battle, at Dettingen…”

“Quite so, quite so, Aloysius. A complex monarch, to be sure! Anyway as to Bonenffant’s style, I can trace certain elements to Jethro Nagle, yet there is also a strong influence from Beerepoot Grodefoote, that brilliant Dutch fellow who I’ve studied so intently for years!”

The ever-pragmatic Greinhalm intoned, “May I ask- is this research for a textbook, or part of a course that you teach?”

Brows furrowed in thought. “Well, not precisely. I mean to say, certainly all my findings shall work their way into my course on the history of interior design. And I shall certainly write a paper on Bonenffant. But, no, at the moment, this has all simply been for fun.”

“You’re insane!” sang Canfield. “This has taken you over a decade!”

“Well… If something is important to us, and better yet, brings us joy, we have to show up. Again and again and again. People commonly think that fun is the easy stuff. Sitting back and getting drunk, or watching someone else play a sport, or whiling away the time with idle gossip. The truth is quite different.” Here Peter took on a very professorial air, waving his hands about as if he were speaking to his students about the Belgian Golden Age of Dutch Elm Boiserie. “The truth is, it is far more fun to brew a beer, to play a sport, and to give a meaningful talk on a subject than all that other foolishness. Fun is hard!” And here he laughed lightly at his own paradox, showing that he wasn’t taking himself quite as seriously as it appeared.

Nancy chimed in: “As many years as I’ve been suffering with his going on these intellectual rampages, I must admit that my dear husband is right. I once spent six months trying to master one of the voices in Josquin’s Missa Malheur me bat. Once I’d got it, it was so satisfying that Peter threw me a party, just as if it was my birthday. And I can tell you, that party meant more than some silly reminder of how old I am.”

Peter positively beamed at his wife. She understood him. What a magnificent thing that was.

Count Basie Swings The Pig & Trebuchet

In March of 1947 Count Basie and his Orchestra came to The Pig & Trebuchet for the first time. Like everything the Gacks tried to do there, this event was different from the average. Most concerts or dance sessions at any venue with any of the famous Big Bands followed a pattern of people paying, people filing in, then everyone listening or dancing or perhaps drinking to the music, and then everyone filing out.

 No matter how much fun the actual music and dancing might be, the stultifying routine of the rest of it was simply not the sort of thing that would do at The Pig & Trebuchet.

And so this gig was different. There were twice the number of sets, each half as long as usual. Between sets, patrons could freely mingle with the band, asking questions, talking shop if they were musicians themselves, and just generally connecting. With a room that held a maximum of 150 patrons, plus staff, this was actually feasible. Some of the Big Bands and other performers who had achieved great fame wanted none of this; they wanted the Fourth Wall to remain solidly intact, and strenuously avoided close contact with their fans whenever they could.

Count Basie loved it, though.

That was partly because of the sort of person he was, Aloysius could tell by the talk they had that afternoon, before the show. Yet The Count understood something vitally important too, something that Aloysius had learned from his father early on. It was one thing to sell some vast number of records, measured in the hundreds of thousands, and to pack concert halls and smaller venues with apparent ease. But Count Basie knew that his real audience wasn’t ten thousand. It wasn’t a hundred thousand either.

It was one.

By influencing (and perhaps delighting) one person at a time, Basie recognized that he would influence many more, and in a tighter, more powerful way than the mass marketing of his label could ever manage. A fan who had had a chance to really talk to him, or to guitarist Freddy Green, or to drummer Jo Jones- such a fan would tell twenty, fifty, perhaps even a hundred people about the experience over the course of many weeks. The ripple effects would be huge. Fans, old and new, would think about and talk about the relatively strong tie that was formed by face to face interaction for quite some time. Advertising, no matter how clever, was far too weak an influence to form attitudes this strongly held.

Aloysius was working behind the bar on this night. He did that fairly often. It was an extraordinary exercise in quirkiness- the owner of a substantial brewing concern working the taps for his customers. Yet it was the same concept- talking personally to The One, not yelling at The Many. He did relish seeing their enjoyment at his products and services, and there was no better place to do it from. He also particularly wanted to serve the band members, as they were all such friendly and interesting chaps. Victoria joined him. She was a huge fan of The Count and his music. The man had incredible "chops"- the basic set of musical skills a musician possesses, particularly in jazz. He could shed arpeggios with blinding speed. And yet he often started a piece or took a solo with just a few spare notes. Why did he forego musical density for minimalism so often?  Victoria wasn’t sure what was in his mind, but she had her theory. He may have only played a few notes, but they were excellent notes. They mattered. Basie also understood that the spaces between the notes were just as important, if not more so, than the notes themselves. Such a lesson in human communication! He always left his audience wanting more.

The event was a huge success. The frequent breaks and the favourable ratio between the musicians in a Big Band to the fans in a small “joint” such as The P&T allowed all kinds of fascinating conversations to spring up all throughout the evening. What pleased Aloysius the most however was Count Basie himself.

It was obvious that he was the one who had the very best time of all.

 
(Count Basie signed this picture to me when I was 13 years old. He wrote: "To Rick, Basie '74." This magnificent musician- and magnificent human being- also talked to me and my Dad during an entire one of his breaks. I chatted with his second alto sax man Curt Pegler during another. I am so happy to honor them and all his band members with this passage in my story.)

The Cards We're Dealt

How often are we called upon to do the best with the cards we're dealt, lousy as they might be at times?

Have a peek at a passage towards the end of the novel that asks this question, as Gack is given his photo recon target for his ultra-low-flying night reconnaisance plane, the magnificent Hapax One.

*****

“Yes. Well. In any event, your photo recon target is at the Ctpyktypa Hotel, a 19-story building on Kurortnii Prospect, right on the Black Sea Coast, with 330 rooms, its own private beach, fitness center, congress hall, 6 luxurious villas, tennis courts, and an extraordinarily large dance floor surrounded by tables and multiple bars.”

“The Russians do like their vodka, Major.”

“Indeed they do. Oh, and Gack, it will be a little light. August 18th, the Saturday night in question, is only four days away from the full moon.”

“I’d never have figured that out in my head, Major. I’m very calendar challenged. In any event. Considering your bloody mountains, that will make me quite happy.”

“Yes, but you’re going to have a lot more moonlight than we consider ideal. You’ll be able to see the mountains well enough to avoid them, which is good. But any MiGs will be able to see you a lot better than on your previous missions.”

“Which is bad.”

“Yes. Sorry about that, Gack. But we can’t miss this party.”

It Matters How a Company Views its Products and Services

I recently toured the Yards Brewery in Philadelphia:

http://www.yardsbrewing.com/

I highly recommend it. Yards is a visceral company, one that concerns itself with making its customers happy. With, in Seth Godin's terminology, delighting us. 

Their beers are remarkable. You can tell that a great deal of attention goes into creating them. 

When it comes to that, allow me to quote from an Anthony Trollope novel, the improbably titled Rachel Ray, written in 1863.

Yep. That's an '8', there.

Luke Rowan is a brash yet charing young lad who inherits half interest in a brewery in the mythical town of Baselhurst. Mr. Tappit, the mature owner of the other half, is more resistant to change than an oil company CEO. Let's hear Luke's passion:

"Ah! But I've made up my mind to be a brewer. I like it. There's opportunity for chemical experiments, and room for philosophical inquiry, which gives the trade a charm in my eyes. I dare say it seems odd to you, but I like being a brewer."

One hundred forty-nine years later, Luke Rowan's words still rock.

So anyway, after our tour, I wondered what I was going to write. Please understand that I know in my head that I'm making up this remarkable story that pits the visceral against the corporate, the anonymous, and the interchangeable. However, in my heart, it always feels like my characters are real and the things they've done actually happened. I feel more like I'm documenting their lives, not inventing them.

Here I will share what I wrote after my tour. Come along as I explore Gack's mind- and heart- as he engages in that 'philosophical inquiry' which is brewing a beer that will delight his customers. And then follow me into the corporate boardroom at Slore's as they hassle out some similar decisions, but in a very different way. Note- I am basing this passage on what happened to Schlitz. (Cutting costs cheapened their product and killed their brand in the late 1970's and early 1980's. A significant part of that was cheap cardboard which flaked all over the bottles and made them look dirty.)

*****

From my novel:

Gack was puttering about in the brewery on a Monday morning in April, perfecting his Parsons Green Parsnip Pilsner. This was, like more than half of Gack&Bacon’s products, a filtered beer. The filtering process removed the yeast and all cloudiness, but also reduced carbonation. Filtered beers were thus stored for a time in bright tanks where they underwent forced carbonation. Gack filtered just a few quarts and then stopped the process so as to be able to check on its effectiveness. He drew off some beer and went to examine the results of the filtration with their nephelometric turbidimeter. This remarkable device measured the reflection of light off suspended particulates and gave a precise numerical result in a measurement called a Formazin Nephelometric Unit. They also owned a standard turbidimeter which measured the attenuation, or reduction, of light through a liquid. Gack&Bacon Ltd thus had two different means at their disposal to determine the same thing: how effective their filtration process was.

He wrote down the results from both devices and considered them for a moment. Not satisfied, he closed the shutters to the windows in the lab to the point where the room was quite dark, even though the sun was climbing higher by the minute as morning in southern England got underway. Striking a match and lighting a candle, he held up a pint glass of his pilsner and examined the light from the candle flame flickering through the beer. It was a beautiful sight, warm mellow background hues constantly lanced by the bright flashes of the fire he held behind the glass. Musing on how Visceral was the contrast between fire and liquid, hot and cold, ephemeral and tangible, Gack let himself fall into a deep reverie that was finally interrupted by a drop of hot wax on his index finger. He was astonished at how relaxed he had felt. Every stray thought of business and personal challenges and even his memories of the war had receded into a far corner of his mind. He made a conscious decision to capture this feeling, so that he could return to it when he needed to calm himself in times of stress.

And then, dismissing the highly sensitive and costly instruments that had told him his filtration efforts were sufficient, and rather taking his cues from the ancient brewer’s technique that used a simple candle and had given the bright tank its name, Gack added a finer mesh to his filter stack and tried again.

This time he was happy with his result.

Later that week there was a special meeting of the principals at Slore’s, which, now that the war was over, meant Boswell, his elder son Alabaster, and Chief Financial and Legal Officer Halden Hudeler. The younger son, Adolphus, didn’t make too many meetings, being more generally inclined to sleep through half the day and carouse all night.

As usual, Hudeler was on a mission to cut costs. This time, he was pushing to shorten the brewing cycle.

“We have to be careful,” observed Alabaster. He relaxed his expression with a hint of a smile and his eyes were wide open and welcoming. His strategy was always to start with charm and only go to war if necessary. Regrettably, war was all too often necessary when contending with Halden Hudeler. “If we shorten the process too much, we’ll have cloudy beer. Our entire standardization process is designed to accustom the English public to a clear, reliable, predictable product that never varies. They most certainly will not want to see cloudy beer once we’ve spent all this time and effort on teaching them to want clear.” 

“Yes, yes, young man, I quite understand the ins and outs of the brewing process and the capricious demands of customers. I’ve been at this game for quite some time now.” Again, with that “young man” nonsense, even though Hudeler had less than ten years on him. “What I wish you to do is to tell your boffins to reduce the brewing cycle precisely to the point where the beer becomes cloudy, and then back off an hour or two. That is where the greatest efficiency lies.”

Boswell assented. “Yes, Alabaster, order Albertson in production to make it so.” He glanced at his watch and didn’t seem to care that he was being obvious about it. Alabaster suspected that he had some rendevous with a woman in a nearby hotel. It was often, but not always, his father’s executive secretary who was the object of his carnal desires. Alabaster idly wondered if his own marital fidelity was at least partly derived from the disgust he felt at the hurt his father caused his mother on a constant basis with his affairs.

Actually, they weren’t so much affairs as simple acts of satisfying base physical urges. There was no romance as far as Alabaster could tell. The women surely received money and gifts as part of the deal, carrying on with a wealthy and powerful man. Those favours were given in the spirit of quid pro quo, however, not as gracious gifts, lovingly tendered.There was more to accomplish at this brief meeting. But Alabaster took advantage of a moment when Hudeler and his father were talking about ways to cut insurance costs to reflect on his own marriage. He concluded with all the logic he could muster that he really did love his wife, and that the other reason for his fidelity, his reaction against his father’s faithlessness, was a fairly minor one in the grand scheme of things.

Now Hudeler was going on about cardboard. “When it comes to packaging our bottles, the new automated machines have allowed for tremendous gains in efficiency, not to mention the fact that they have replaced thirty-seven full-time workers.”

“Yes, and about that, were any of them re-purposed? I’ve meaning to follow up on that since we spoke about it at the general meeting last week.”

“Only three. And they all took a reduction in compensation, averaging eighteen percent, for the privilege of holding onto their jobs,” Hudeler explained in a low growl.

“Only three? That seems rather a low number,” Alabaster replied.

His father would have none of it. “All the more money you can put in your own pocket, my boy. Let’s not go all bleeding-heart on me, shall we?”

“As you say, father.” Alabaster cast his eyes down at the table, wishing fervently that he could apply his legendary negotiation skills with ease to the two men in this room! It was much more difficult with these two than with any client he had yet come across.

Hudeler went on. “And yet I see the opportunity here to reduce costs even further. I’ve been poring over the cardboard invoices…”

You would, thought Alabaster.

“…and really now, Prist & Proctor is charging us an outrageous fee for what amounts to a pile of reprocessed tree limbs. I’ve had Baxter take a look through their catalogue and he’s discovered that we can use a much cheaper stock and still maintain the strength of our cartons, not expecting to have any bottles fall out in transit.”

Alabaster straightened up a bit, at last seeing where to place the point of his lance. “Well, yes, but, although I was rather busy at sea during much of the war years,” here taking a subtle stab at Hudeler’s continued service within the confines of these brewery walls, “I do recall that when we used similarly cheap cardboard due to wartime shortages, it flaked all over the bottles, especially during humid conditions.”

“So?”

Boswell’s eyes darted between his son and his most valuable employee, eagerly lapping up the lines of tension between them as they engaged in yet another boardroom battle. He almost forgot his watch for the moment. Almost.

“So, as you say, the bottles came to look all dirty. They were most assuredly not, but they appeared that way. And perception is reality, from the standpoint of keeping our customers happy.

”Hudeler glowered and snapped, “Happy? Happy? We need have nothing to do with keeping our customers happy, Slore. I’ll remind you of the commonly acknowledged fact that happiness is not the most prevalent state of humankind, and it’s hardly within the purview of a brewing company to concern itself with such weighty philosophical matters. We need only concern ourselves with whether or not some change in our product or our operations affects sales in a positive or a negative manner. I shall reluctantly concede that if there were enough cardboard flakes on our bottles our customers might reasonably be expected to buy less of our products. Yet I am equally determined to save money on cardboard, as it quite rankles me every time I have a look at our balance sheets. Therefore, let us select the lowest grade of cardboard possible that shall not flake excessively. Baxter can run the tests, he enjoys that sort of thing, though I cannot for the life of me imagine why. And then I’ll go down to Prist & Proctor personally and batter old Frederick into submission on his outrageous prices. After all, we’re their largest customer. He can ill afford my ill will.” And with that Hudeler leaned back with an excessively smug look on his face. Alabaster fancied that that last line was as close as their humourless CFO ever came to making a joke.

Boswell, satisfied that his two officers would maintain the profitability he required from his company, adjourned the meeting and went off to satisfy the itch in his groin that seemed ever so much more important than employees, brewing times and bloody ridiculous decisions about grades of cardboard.

Intolerance- and Solving Interesting Problems

Intolerance is surely one of the most disturbing and incomprehensible things about human beings that there is.

Our responses to intolerance are many. We can fight it directly, arguing with those insular ones who would prefer everyone to be just like them. We can become insular ourselves, walling off into closed communities where our kind can live without constraint. We can set such a fine example that others cannot help but tear down at least a few bricks in the walls they've constructed around them. I'm thinking here of figures like Count Basie, Jackie Robinson, Sidney Poitier and so many others.

The very best, and most effective, response to intolerance is the hardest one to start, and the easiest one to carry through to completion. The finest response to intolerance is to reach across whatever aisle it is that separates one from another and solve interesting problems together. The more challenging the problems, the better.

I'm not going to tackle this specifically until the sequel to Socks, which will be entitled The Sorrow of the Last Lemon. But it's something that's been on my mind since grade school, when I faced my own burden of intolerance. There is much to do...