Ben and Sam were gathered in Ben’s library-conference room Friday afternoon to celebrate survival of a brutal week of emergencies, Ben’s legal, Sam’s medical. Law and medicine were the last thing they wanted to talk or hear about; they were weary.
In silence, Ben poured each a dram of The Macallan. Read more
Blog
On Being Old …Still Working
Ben and Sam met every Friday afternoon
In Ben’s library-conference room
To contemplate their week of law and medicine
Enjoy their friendship and a dram or two of The Macallan Read more
A Fortunate Find
Ben Reach and Sam Nixon MD were saddened when they learned on entering Millie’s Diner for breakfast that Frank Phillips had died of a heart attack the previous afternoon while shooting a covey rise on his Red Hills Ridge Plantation. Saddened, but not morosely so, for they had often discussed how sudden death while enjoying one’s favorite sport was not a bad (indeed was an ideal) way to “shuffle off this mortal coil,” to paraphrase the Bard in Hamlet’s “to be or not to be” soliloquy. Read more
When
When the harvest moon’s been full
And the dawn is coming chill
And the woodcock whistle through
My thoughts turn to bird dogs and what they do Read more
Remembering the Quail Championship Invitational (1996 through 2006)
Reading John Russell’s splendid new book, The Invitational Champions, has brought back precious memories of the eleven years it was my privilege to report the trial at Paducah.
My invitation to report came from John after my first report of the Florida Championship in 1995. I had attended the trial at Paducah as a spectator briefly in 1993 when Silver Bullett won his second crown, no Runner-Up. Read more
Sibling Heirs
Ben and Sam never ceased to wonder at the venom sibling heirs often held for one another. Ben often quoted his mother, “About the only place you see brotherly love is in the Bible.” Sam had a theory, “Sibling discord springs most often from spousal discord. If kids witness fights between their parents, they are likely to fight one another. And the worst happens when parents play young children off against one another or use them as pawns in parental disagreements.” Read more
What Is
“What is the noblest thing you ever saw a dog do here?”
The fellow asked his buddy as they watched the embers dim
Sitting before the fireplace at Chinquapin
The others had all gone to bed Read more
The Cadillac Farm
I met Joe Prince November 14, 1973, introduced by his brother David, a life insurance salesman seeking prospect referrals from me, a 35-year-old lawyer doing estate planning in Richmond, Virginia. Joe was a grain farmer in Sussex County, forty miles south of Richmond at the village of Stony Creek. But Joe’s claim to fame was as a quail hunter of a special kind, the kind every city-bound quail hunter longs to have as a friend. Read more
The Runoff (fiction)
No one expected a runoff, but when the Secretary announced it, no one was really surprised. But when it ended, with Butterfly named National Champion, all were surprised except two. Read more
The Curse
Ben and Sam had lived long and seen a lot. Ben practiced law and Sam medicine. But more than that they collaborated on trying to help solve families’ problems.
Not a week passed that one or both of the curmudgeons were not consulted by a desperate parent or grandparent about a child or grandchild on the verge of ruining his or her life. The crises varied from substance addiction to academic failure to depression leading to attempted (or successful ) suicide, often in combination. And the cause was mostly affluenza: a lack of aspiration to make a worthwhile life brought on by lack of need to struggle. Mixed in were crumbling or crumbled parental marriages also linked to affluenza. Read more