It was two weeks before Christmas. Ben and Sam had mixed emotions, glad to be seeing old friends back in Albany to visit family over the Holidays, sad to realize the ranks of friends were shrinking.
A few of their many acquaintances knew the sure way to find them together this time of year was to drop by Ben’s office at 4:30 or so. With days short they met early for their libation for neither liked to drive after dark. This week they would greet there together four visitors, and those visits would bring serendipity in a way that offset the sadness that so often accompanied Holidays for folks their age.
The first to stop by was Amy Culp, wife of a bird dog field trial handler named Fred. Amy was a nurse at the Albany Memorial Hospital, and a favorite of Sam. Fred was sixty-two, old for a for-the-public trainer-handler plying the all-age circuit.
Amy came to tell the curmudgeons she was concerned about Fred being on the road alone, because of fatigue and dimming eyesight and a tendency to doze off occasionally. She did not have to go into detail. The curmudgeons were painfully aware of Fred’s problem from personal experience, though they did not admit it to Amy.
In the old days Fred would have been traveling with a black scout who could help with the driving. But those days were long gone, thanks to the squeeze in the economics of the field trial game. Handlers could not afford an employee-scout these days. Instead, they used universally a buddy system, scouting for one another. As a result black scouts had disappeared from the game, David Johnson being the last of that noble tribe. A great loss to the game, Ben and Sam often agreed as they sipped drams of The Macallan at the end of a work day.
Their second unexpected visitor was William Alley, a young black man just out of the Marine Corps who had served three combat tours, one in Iraq, two in Afghanistan. William was looking for civilian employment, and apparently having no luck. Sam detected signs of PTSD in William’s gestures and speech. They had known him from early childhood. The son of an employee on a quail plantation who had been a field trial scout as a young man, William had picked up doves and rowed a fly fishing pond boat for the curmudgeons in his teen years. They were both very fond of him.
The third visitor of the week was a titan of business recently returned to the area after retirement as CEO of a private equity fund manager on Wall Street, John Clifford. He was looking to buy a quail plantation. Before going to Wall Street thirty years ago, he had managed an Atlanta-based consulting business and dabbled in field trials. His one good dog, Ben remembered, was a pointer named Ambitious that Fred Culp had handled to a Championship for him. Ben mentioned Ambitious, and John asked about Fred Culp.
At the same moment Ben and Sam had the same idea. Without a moment of rehearsal they spun it out to hook John Clifford. Sam came up with the opening line of their pitch, worthy of P T Barnum.
“If you want to find a quail plantation before it gets listed for sale at an inflated price, the best way is to engage an under- cover agent in the ranks of the dog men in that culture. Your old handler Fred Culp has more contacts in that world than all the real estate men in Georgia and Florida.”
Ben chimed in, and before the three had finished their third drams of The Macallan at Ben’s conference table, he and Sam had John Clifford hiring William Alley as scout and driver for Fred Culp and those two engaged to find John a quail plantation for sale before it could be listed with a broker who would make it at least 10% more expensive (John Clifford prided himself at buying things low—companies and art works lately).
The curmudgeons managed this in a way that made Clifford think it was all his own idea. And before the week ended Fred Culp had at that table sold John Clifford a derby he would handle for John in the Continental Derby Championship with William scouting in a month’s time.
John Clifford signed a contract to buy a quail plantation a week after hunting season ended. Fred Culp and William Alley would be his first plantation employees. The derby Fred had sold John and run for him in the Continental Derby Championship did not place, but would lead his wagon dog string.
For more stories of curmudgeons: https://tomwordbooks.com/book/the-curmudgeons/
Photo: The legendary scout David Johnson at the 2013 Florida Open All-Age Championship, Chinquapin Farms, Branford, Florida.
great story