Previously: 40 Years in Beer (Book III), Part 86: Beer, writing, and my life in and out of F.O.S.S.I.L.S., 1990 – 2026
Amid the previous 86 chapters of an autobiographical narrative devoted overwhelmingly to public beeriness, I’ve taken only occasional sideways glances at my “private life,” as defined by the Cambridge Dictionary: “The activities and relationships that are not related to your work, especially of a person who is famous.”
Of course, I’m not famous; infamous, perhaps, which is entirely preferable.
This story is supposed to be about my beer life, and in this vein I’ve meandered satisfactorily, with painstaking slowness, to the present juncture.
And yet…
It isn’t exactly a spoiler or plot twist to be reminded that for ten years (1993 – 2003) I undertook legal partnerships applicable both to work and home, simultaneously. I married my business partner and became part of her family’s operation (with my wife’s sister), later reincorporating it into an entity still functioning today, albeit without me.
As this partnership pertained to my beer-related contributions, undoubtedly it was a success. Little by little we rounded into something unique, noteworthy and even profitable on scattered occasions. Everyone contributed according to their skills, and our collective progress was a genuine testament to teamwork.
However, while the business was great, the personal relationship drifted into irrelevance. I understand that it takes two to tango, as well as to uncouple (consciously or otherwise, Gwyneth), and I accept my share of the blame, guilt, opprobrium and responsibility. Still, Amy and I continued to work together for 15 years after the marriage was dissolved, all the way until the final business divorce in 2018.
As Steely Dan once observed of the semi-mythical Kid Charlemagne, “This life can be very strange.”
And never, ever was this life any stranger than during the period 2000 – 2003, as all the conundrums and contradictions came due, playing out in real time and plaguing me with a central question: Could NABC make it if the marriage didn’t?
Today we know it could, and did. This wasn’t clear at the point of impact. I mention all this for the simple reason that it’s inescapably part of the narrative. One era ended, and another began. Like Vonnegut said: so it goes.
Roller coasters are among my least favorite of human conveyances. And, the craziest roller coaster ride of my life commenced during the year 2000, when I became committed, albeit unconsciously at first, to the escapism of sheer exhaustion.
I’d devote the time necessary to run my better beer business, slip away for a lengthy bicycle ride, go spend an hour at the gym, freshen up, walk five minutes back to work, enthusiastically stretch the concept of happy “hour” to happy “evening” from two or three p.m. until the point when I couldn’t stay awake any longer, then stagger home, collapse into a heap, sleep a bit, and do it all again the following day.
It was a grueling, mind-numbing and ultimately counter-productive schedule. As an obsessive student of history, I’m all too familiar with Abraham Lincoln’s timeless wisdom: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” There can be no denying that the house in question was me, and when you’re perpetually fatigued, there is precious little time for mirror gazing.
Looking back, I can only marvel at the reserves of adrenalin available on demand to help me get by. If only I could summon them again today.
2001 was the most challenging year in my life. It was long and arduous, filled to the brim (and spilling over) with life, death, failure, renewal, tumescence, deflation, success and erosion.
2001 didn’t rain cats and dogs; it poured pivots and juxtapositions.
Because beer travel was my primary coping mechanism, trips kept right on coming during the tumult. In 2001, the plan called for three escapes to Europe for the first time since 1995: one in March with Amy, another in summer with the beercyclists, and a third in autumn (a group bus trip). In 2002, there’d be another motorcoach excursion.
The 9-11 terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington DC necessitated a reworking of the travel calendar, but the four trips were completed. Beer remained their central theme, but upon reflection, each was dominated by a central figure whose presence (in one instance, absence), has retrospectively come to symbolize the experience for me.
- John Richomme: self-exiled Brit living in Louisville, and co-host for Euro #18 (March, 2001) in Derbyshire, Yorkshire, Manchester and London.
- Roger G. Baylor: my father, who died on July 18, 2001 while I was abroad for Euro #19 (July/August 2001), the beercycling expedition.
- Jenő Áts: tour leader for Euro #20 (May 2002), a minibus tour of Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Czech Republic and Austria. Jenő was a multi-faceted Hungarian ex-Olympic swimming star and an epic raconteur.
- “Didier” (invented alias): superannuated, skills-challenged Belgian bus driver who came very close to inciting mutiny during Euro #21 (September 2002) in Belgium and Germany.
Euro #18 (2001): Cask ale immersion in Derbyshire, Manchester, Yorkshire and London
I first met John Richomme during the mid-1990s, and our acquaintance was cemented from the vantage point of an adjoining bar stool at Bluegrass Brewing Company.
Award-winning brewmaster David Pierce, no slouch as a matchmaker, introduced us. Previously David had regaled me with stories about the angular, talkative, fiftyish “English John,” who smoked like a chimney and drank like a fish.
As a European sympathizer in the broadest sense, and more narrowly an inveterate Anglophile, I took to John immediately. He was smart and analytical, with a gift for gab and a hazy past. I’d ask him about cask ale, cricket, Harold Macmillan, stargazy pie or The Kinks, and savor an oversized Worthog Club mug of Dark Star Porter as he expounded.
However ― and you knew there’d be a “however” ― John’s temporary residency in Louisville never made sense. Someone paid him to do something, and somehow it all worked out for a good long while in spite of his inability (or unwillingness) to satisfy certain niggling legal requirements for a foreigner to live and work in the United States.
Every six months or so, John left the country for a few days. Upon returning, his perpetually ticking residency clock presumably was reset. Maybe he was getting by on a tourist visa; I never asked. Why spoil the mood?
As mystifying as John’s job status tended to be, it was even more amazing that he accomplished much of anything work-related amid a herculean daily onslaught of cigarettes and alcohol.
A friend of mine briefly housed John prior to his return to the United Kingdom. One morning my friend rose before sunup after hearing unidentifiable noises emanating from the kitchen.
Groggy, he quietly descended the carpeted stairs to investigate. The only light to be seen in the otherwise pitch-black room came from the tip of John’s glowing cigarette, accompanied by erratic clinks of a beer glass filled with Bell’s Two Hearted Ale, brushing against the heaping ash tray.
I had the strong impression that John genuinely liked America and harbored no great desire to leave, but to this day I haven’t the slightest idea why he didn’t seek to make it official. I prefer to think there was a 007 tale of intrigue, as yet untold, and likely to remain classified forever.
In 1999 my Danish friend Big Kim, who has resided at various times in America, Asia and Africa, came to visit. Kim met John during an extended afternoon session at BBC, and I’ll never forget the drive home, as Kim explained the phenomenon of expatriate Englishmen like John found to be roaming the planet’s obscure reaches.
In Kim’s observation, it usually began with situations or relationships needing to be escaped, abetted by escalating dissipation. Expats like John found their homeland employment prospects diminishing amid burgeoning alcoholic intake and younger competition. But it remained possible for them to parlay the sought-after-worldwide novelty of innate, stereotypical “Englishness” into varying forms of sustenance abroad.
It made sense to me. Wouldn’t any self-respecting American tavern want an entertaining, globally-oriented Brit as a regular?
Kim cautioned that there were stumbling blocks for such expatriates; preserving their marketability as Englishmen abroad often were compelled to range ever more widely into the hinterlands to remain a step ahead of worsening reputations and escalating health issues.
All in all Kim’s assessment tracked, albeit with a melancholy edge, but for the period John resided in Louisville, it was a certifiable blast knowing him.
We became closer during the summer of 2000, when I undertook to upgrade and refurbish the Public House’s interior. I’d come in each morning before opening to paint; when John had time, he helped in exchange for beers and meals.
The stories never ended, and it was inevitable that a travel plot would be hatched.
John was due for an English reset sojourn in March of 2001. Amy and I resolved to join him near the city of Derby, where his sister (J.) and brother-in-law (A.) lived. Meanwhile my Danish journalist buddy “Little” Kim was living and working in London with his then-partner Bibi, and we could drop in on them, too.
John’s case for Derby as a base was rock solid from a beer lover’s standpoint. We’d have a car, and numerous breweries were situated within easy driving distance. Our hosts were professional people with a comfortable home who enjoyed entertaining. John would fetch us at Gatwick, and then after a week’s stay ferry us to London to stay a bit longer with “Little Kim.”
We checked in at Standiford Field (now Muhammad Ali International) for a quick connection in Boston.
It was not to be.
—
From start to finish, Euro #18 was surreal.
Some aspects were evident at the time, while others grew weirder in retrospect. None of them were bad, because our hosts in England were unfailingly gracious. My gratitude to them is eternal, and John truly outdid himself as tour guide.
I concede that my own noggin was off-kilter. When the chosen balm for a fraying relationship is excessive alcohol consumption, problems tend to ensue. “Surreal” means out-of-the-ordinary, unusual and dreamlike, and that’s exactly how it felt, from the very start, with a lengthy flight delay out of Louisville.
Clearly we’d miss our intended connection to London. I didn’t own a mobile phone, and when informed that we’d be placed aboard a flight bound for Heathrow, not Gatwick (please go to the gate NOW), I had only a few minutes to find a payphone and ring John. He didn’t pick up, so I left a fingers-crossed message: Hey, here’s the new flight number ― and can you meet us at Heathrow instead?
(Then I became bellicose with airline staffers, regretted it immediately and remain embarrassed a quarter-century later. Sorry, everyone.)
Thankfully John got the message, and we connected at Heathrow. The welcoming committee in Derby had hors d’oeuvres and bottled ales at the ready. A. was an amateur chef of considerable local renown, with John serving as his sou and wing man. Evening meals were excellent, with liberal libations. There was a memorable excursion to the local Balti takeaway; for the uninitiated, it’s a spicy form of Pakistani curry that originated in Birmingham, England.
John’s and his sister’s mother Hilda was lodging with us. She was 90 years old, charming and quintessentially English, unfortunately confined mostly to her bedroom, where it was became quickly obvious she intended to die ― and did so, barely a month after we departed. At night, her voice could be heard down the hall, spectral and plaintive but firm as she beseeched the Lord to take her, please; she was ready to go.
It was a privilege to meet her.
—
Never had my copy of the Campaign for Real Ale’s (CAMRA) Good Beer Guide been thumbed as frantically. It paid off, and following are highlights.
Brunswick Inn: Derby “railwaymen’s pub with an on-site brewery and 17 hand pumps,” my choice being the stellar Railway Porter.
Dead Poet’s Inn: Quintessential countryside ale house in the village of Holbrook north of Derby. Flagstone flooring, wooden beams, and an open log fire; brewery memorabilia and bric-a-brac honoring (duh) deceased versifiers.
Samuel Smith Old Brewery: One of the great British brewery highlights, in Tadcaster. These ales have been coming to the United States since 1978, the year I graduated high school, courtesy of Merchant du Vin importers.
Samuel Smith ferments in Yorkshire Squares, open vessels made of Welsh slate. The historical yeast strain (used since the 1800s) is circulated constantly, making for a rich and flavorful ale.
All the mineral-rich water used to brew Samuel Smith’s ales comes from a well sunk in 1758, and only whole leaf hops (like Fuggles and Goldings) are used. There’s also an in-house cooperage for crafting and repairing oak casks, one of the last in the country.
After the tour we were ushered into the brewery’s onsite pub for samples, stumbling on a sizeable group of retired brewery workers enjoying their weekly pensioner’s bonus of lunchtime card games, cigarettes and free pints.
Why didn’t I remember this session when negotiating my NABC buyout compensation?
J.W. Lees: The brewery tour was booked by B. United International, then and now among the rock stars of importers. Our route to Greater Manchester passed through the beautiful Peak District National Park, but all I could think about was music, bearing in mind that Manchester (The Smiths, Oasis), Liverpool (The Beatles; Echo & the Bunnymen), Sheffield (Def Leppard; Arctic Monkeys) and Leeds (Scritti Politti; Soft Cell) all are situated in a triangle measuring just 80 by 80 by 40 miles ― like Louisville, Indianapolis and Cincinnati.
Founded in 1828, the original J.W. Lees brewing plant is called Greengate Brewery, located in Middleton Junction near railroads and a canal redolent of the industrial revolution. The tour at Lees included delectable sips of J.W. Lees Vintage Harvest Ale, then we proceeded to one of the brewery’s tied houses nearby for hand-pulled Bitter and Manchester Star. Sublime.
Bass Museum Brewery: Bass Pale Ale was one of England’s earliest and best-known export ales, and a liquid symbol of Pax Britannica, founded in 1777 in Burton-on-Trent, immortalized in Édouard Manet’s 1882 painting “A Bar at the Folies-Bergère,” and served aboard the Titanic.
For many of us, Bass was the first English-style ale we ever tasted, and I was an unapologetic consumer during the 1980s, when alternatives were scant. But in 2000, Bass as a corporate entity elected to torch its own brewing heritage by abandoning ale for pubs and hotels. The brewery was peddled to dastardly Interbrew (now an arm of AB InBev), and the gutting commenced. CAMRA declared Bass to have become a dreaded “national brewery,” by definition a “gravedigger of real ale.”
(Ironically, Bass Pale Ale ― contract-brewed by a Carlsberg subsidiary ― is by most accounts making a cask-conditioned comeback in 2026.)
The Museum Brewery, dating to 1994, was located inside the Bass Museum of Brewing on the old brewery grounds. Later the Museum of Brewing was renamed the National Brewing Centre, still later to be dubbed the Coors Visitor Center, a humiliating name reflecting Bass’s travails.
Fortunately the Museum Brewery was still autonomous in 2001, charged with brewing 60-barrel batches of cask ale, using historic formulas and a classic brewing system. Trust me, because these ales were top shelf. Then Coors did to Bass what American megabrewers always do: destroy the essence to enrich the bean counters.
The brewing center closed for good in 2022. You’ll pardon my obscenity: “Fuck the megabrewers and everything they stand for.”
Black Sheep: Founded in Masham in 1992 by Paul Theakston, who refused to surrender when his family sold its historic brewery to Scottish & Newcastle in 1987. The brewing process here is similar to Samuel Smith, and the cask ales were spot on.
After Black Sheep, John drove us to a rural pub called The Malt Shovel, which poured cask Black Sheep Riggwelter. Having phoned ahead, he knew it was haggis, neeps, and tatties day: “A rich, peppery haggis (savory pudding made of offal, oats, and spices) served alongside mashed neeps (turnip/rutabaga) and mashed tatties (potatoes).”
I swear there was a fourth mashed-up green substance was on that plate (very mushy peas?) No matter; I shoveled it in.
In route to London, John asked if we’d be interested in celebrating our last night together with a meal of Cantonese in Soho at the Michelin-recommended Fung Shing restaurant. He was friends with the owner.
I chose from the “real” Chinese menu, promptly learning that one mustn’t be squeamish with squab, which I failed to grasp as crispy pigeon. The surprise came when the pigeon’s intact head was found buried beneath stir-fried vegetables.
Shrugging, I sopped up the gravy. After all, parts is parts.
Once connected with the Danes abroad in Hampstead Heath, things went swimmingly, with ample supplies of port wine (Kim is a longstanding aficionado), daytime walks, nighttime epicurean exploits, and an excursion to Porterhouse, the Guinness “micro” restaurant project. Alas, the photos from London were lost or misplaced.
While in London, I hopped a train to Cambridge for an afternoon visit with the late Mark Stewart, who was employed by a military contractor nearby. We met at the St. Radegund pub, previously considered here:
40 Years in Beer (Book II), Part 78: We just had to get to Merry Old England (1998)
I kept a Euro #18 beer list, which lists 75 unique full pints in less than two weeks, not counting multiple quaffs and other alcoholic beverages.
How did I do that? Consumption like this is now officially unimaginable.
—
It may be true that everything is somewhere on the internet, although it depends on when (or if) you look. Not until 2021 did I verify that John Maurice Richomme died in 2011 in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire at 63 years of age.
The ancestral homeland of the Richommes is Jersey Island, and a genealogy site there listed his passing, which I confirmed via an inquiry to the General Register Office of England and Wales. Coincidentally, Fung Shing restaurant also closed in 2011 when John’s friend retired.
We continued to see a lot of John in the Louisville metro area until his final, permanent return to England in 2003 or 2004. I heard from him two or three times immediately thereafter, then the trail went cold. Evidently he served as landlord at a pub (!) for a time, and was involved with two or three short-lived energy business incorporations. Meanwhile I had a new private life, and was busy professionally.
Time passed.
I suppose it was comforting to tell myself that John was out on the road again, somewhere, maybe Kazakhstan, Sri Lanka or Paraguay. Someday we’d reconnect over beers at a chaotic bia hơi in Haiphong, reliving old times over youthful lager.
Or, John actually had been a secret agent all along, with everything experienced in 2001 actually a Potemkin film set designed by the MI5’s witness protection program, connected to a money laundering scheme on Jersey, with our hosts portrayed by actors previously employed by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Although in truth, through it all, I understood that John’s lifestyle and habits weren’t likely to encourage longevity. Being proven correct only made me despondent.
But cheers, old boy! They were grand times while they lasted.
Euro #19 (2001): Beercycling in Belgium and Germany
I’ll always remember meeting Kevin Lowber in Brugge on July 7, discovering the Cactusfestival in progress at Minnewaterpark, and ambling through as Americana roots musician Jim White performed. He’s recently played in Louisville at a show Kevin attended. Post-concert, White was delighted to learn of this.
I merely pretended to be familiar with his catalog (admittedly I wasn’t). However, it was an entertaining set.
Our 2001 Belgian beercycling objectives promoted voyeurism via the Tour de France. Around this time I’d mounted a poster at the Public House, an enlargement of a 1920s-era black and white photo showing Tour de France riders sagging, bicycling nomenclature for a brief rest break.
They’re seated on café steps, with admiring children clustered nearby, watching intently as the riders hoist huge mugs of beer. The kids might be envying the cyclists, their bikes ― or their beers.
When people asked me about the poster, I said: “It’s called ‘The Birth of Beercycling.’”
Our opportunity to cross paths with Le Tour inspired a reversal of the photo. This tour’s cyclists whizzed past us as we sagged, seated near café steps, emulating the star-struck children but with beers of our own.
The tour passed in a flash, then we rode our bikes back to Poperinge for steak and ale.
It all took place in the medieval town of Lo, a few clicks up the road from Pops, which comprised the first “stage” of our beercycling journey in 2001. Next, after a rail transfer, we emerged in Bamberg to explore the Franconian countryside. That’s when things got really crazy.
I’ll get to that shortly. Our very presence in Poperinge in 2001 was sufficiently noteworthy to garner an article in the regional newspaper, perhaps inspired by my friend Luc or the well-connected hotelier Guy. Here is Luc’s translation.
—
***4 Americans visit the Tour – Beer and Cycling***
Four Americans stayed this week at the Palace Hotel in Poperinge – Bob Reed and Kevin Lowber from Kentucky, Tim Eads and Roger Baylor from Indiana. Mainly here to sample local brews, they did not want to miss the Tour de France; they watched it from the terrace of a local pub in Lo, a more than unique experience for the four Americans.
Kentucky is mainly known for breeding horses, so horse racing is extremely popular. Indiana is more industrialized with steel industry around Lake Michigan. Needless to say that they were charmed by the peace and quiet of the Poperinge area, a cyclist’s paradise. Their home states are more car orientated.
On Monday they cycled to Lo; they had never seen the Tour or any other main cycling event. American TV pays more attention to extreme sports, cycling is not one of them despite the presence of Lance Armstrong. They were impressed by the publicity caravan, carnival as they called it; a Michelin flag or Champion cap made a nice souvenir. They watched out for the American cyclists; they recognized the US Postal shirts but not who rode with a blue shirt. They strongly believe in another victory of Lance Armstrong but did not hear yet about the cooperation with the controversial Italian doctor Ferrari.
They do not speak in public about drugs. “Armstrong seems to be an honest guy.” They would be very disappointed when it would appear that their hero in the Tour takes illegal products.
They do not know many names of Belgian cyclists, exception made for Tom Steels and Eddy Merckx, of course. After the Tour passed through Lo, Westvleteren was the next stop for a delicious Trappist.
Roger, Tim, Kevin and Bob already visited Poperinge in 1999 during the hop fest. Bob remembers the refreshing taste of Hommelbier and still speaks highly about the Hop Queen.
Again local real ales are the reason for staying at the Palace. Landlord Guy serves them another brew each evening in a matching glass; no less than 130 different beers are available at the Palace.
Before leaving Poperinge, they cycled up the Cassel-mountain and visited a local inn, Het Kasteelhof, where another local ale was tasted.
As a salesman, Kevin introduced the Hommelbier in quite a number of American pubs and also Roger serves it in his Rich O’s Public House. He will soon serve his own homebrew.
—
Boy, did we have it completely wrong about Lance Armstrong. Then again, we certainly weren’t the only ones.
Lo was an easy ride, and we arrived sufficiently early to grab a table curbside and watch as the festivities unfolded. People of all ages gathered to witness the most fleeting of sporting seconds, at least when the ground is pancake flat.
Huckstering comes first. A “publicity caravan” of sponsors was a mechanized entourage preceding the cyclists’ arrival. Support vans for the various teams rolled through at intervals, and it was clear which corporations were paying the freight.
Dozens of vehicles in all shapes and sizes belonging to various secondary sponsors darted past, leaving mounds of advertising paraphernalia strewn in their wake. When this colorful parade was over, there was a brief pause before sirens blasted, bells tolled, policemen noisily cleared the street, and the actual cyclists finally made their appearance.
The peloton can go past so incredibly quickly that those yawning might miss it. Once the riders were gone, certain enterprising spectators rushed to their cars (or bikes) to take pursuit, and perhaps find another handy vantage point further down the road.
I was struck by the way townspeople in Lo made a short holiday of it, introducing their children and grandchildren to the event’s pageantry and history, then watching the pedal-through before returning home for cocktail hour and the evening news. Coming from afar, Le Tour was a must-see bucket list item, accompanied by an excuse for exercise and camaraderie in the countryside.
Had we possessed the ability to cycle past a Belgian frituur (fried food specialist) without stopping, we’d have been better (or thinner) men. We couldn’t, and so after making the usual rounds in Poperinge and environs, it was off to Bavaria for smoked beer, pork knuckles and a beercycling encore.
I’d become familiar with Bamberg’s beer shrines: Spezial and Schlenkerla, Mahrs and Keesman, et al. However, the brewery-rich hinterlands beckoned, and in 2001 we began to explore little bits of it with the help of rental bikes.
- South to Buttenheim for Kellerbiers at St-Georgen-Bräu and Löwenbräu Buttenheim (one of them was open, not both).
- North to Zapfendorf, then to Schesslitz, where there were three breweries at the time: Drei Kronen, Senger and Schmitt.
- West along the Main River to Eltmann, then over wooded ridges to Unterschleichach and the Löwenbräu Neeb brewery.
The daytrips were enriching, informative — and tiring; it’s very hilly around Bamberg. The day Bob and I rode north, we stopped in Memmelsdorf on the way back and had a sag at the town’s smallest of three breweries, Georg Leicht (which doubled as a butcher, hence the excellent Brotzeit). It closed soon after.
Here’s the western route; it took more than three hours.
A WWI Kriegerdenkmal (monument) lies atop a hill overlooking Unterschleichach. Descending the hill, we stopped to take it in, and a deep, sad impression lingers in my memory.
I had a German-language brewery guidebook, Die Neue Frankische Brauereikarte (1996), and using it we found Löwenbräu Neeb in Unterschleichach. No food, just beer; that was just fine with us. The brewery also died a few years later.
The identity of this sag is lost, but the older gentleman graciously served us beers during his afternoon down time, and later the brewer came out to chat. You’ll see my book lying on the table.
Back in Bamberg, evenings revolved around timeless beer and food pairings, by this point effortless. However, there was a major difference in 2001.
Usually I refrained from calling home, but now, in Bamberg, I rolled up the phone bills ― to my mother.
In mid-May, she’d invited me to the homestead in Georgetown for breakfast, a quick drive from our mucky New Albanian flood plain to the leafy “Knobs” (local dialect for hills). There was no indication a serious conversation was in the offing.
After all, I saw my parents fairly often, at least once or twice a month. They’d drive down to eat lunch at the pub, usually on Saturday when I customarily opened and bartended day shift, or I’d go out to visit them on Sunday, our off day. In 2001, Sue Baylor was 69, and Roger G. Baylor 76.
My mother’s career teaching home economics in high school displayed a level of personal organization and precision that would embarrass the vast majority of old-school Prussian militarists. She was the sort of person who used a Sharpie to write the purchase date on a can of kidney beans.
My father, a Marine Corps veteran, was just as exact. His tools had their place, and woe to those (read: me) who failed to return them. Nails and screws were divided according to rusty coffee cans and pipe tobacco containers. You could eat off his workbench. He changed his own damn oil.
In essence, I’ve spent my entire adult life engaged in a desperate existential struggle not to be bound by these unattainable parental extremes of perfection. Even today this battle rages inside me. I’m certainly capable of principled organization when truly necessary, subject to frequent interruptions for slovenliness as a corrective course.
Significantly, what I did inherit from my father is a heart-on-one’s-sleeve, passionate commitment to crusading almost endlessly on behalf of something, although never in the service of religion; he was a pantheist who didn’t know it, an enemy of the rich and powerful, and a champion of the underdogs in life.
That’s largely me, too, and I have to be raising hell about something, even when it isn’t clear exactly what.
I also picked up my mother’s constitutional inability to have fun for the simple sake of it. Like for her, “fun” without some overarching purpose strikes me as meaningless. Simple glee is a challenge. The closest I’ve ever come to letting go as an adult was Euro-beercycling.
In 2001 I stepped into the house of my unpbringing and immediately smelled Maxwell House, which I dutifully choked down alongside my mother’s favored commercial-grade Wal-Mart cinnamon rolls. She’d seen to it that her husband was elsewhere with his buddies, and like always, the succinctly enumerated bullet points were at the ready.
Each of them was a gut punch.
First, my mother needed a heart valve replacement of the swinish variety; it had become routine surgery, and wouldn’t keep her in the hospital for very long.
However, this wasn’t her chief concern. She’d need to be away for a couple of days, and upon returning home, there’d be a period of recuperation. During this time, she’d be unable to care for my father.
Say what?
Care?
Thing is, I was entirely unaware that my father needed care. He seemed fine whenever I saw him. Emotionless, my mother dropped her biggest bombshell.
In fact, he’d been displaying worsening signs of forgetfulness and disorientation ― not for a few months; rather, for several years. She reminded me of the times when she’d call the pub to cancel a Saturday lunch date, explaining that these were the “bad” days when he wasn’t coherent. As recently, when he went to mow the grass with the push mower, but without socks or shoes.
Holy shit.
My mother’s heart valve surgery was best facilitated immediately, before my father got any worse. Naturally, she already had a plan in place to address my father’s dementia symptoms, but it would have to wait until she was recovered.
I immediately proposed to take off work and move into the house to help. Yes, the beercycling expedition was coming in early July, but the calendar math matched up; she’d be back, I’d make the trip, and then when I returned, we’d plot the next steps together.
Ruefully, my mother smiled. I didn’t understand how quickly things were turning bad for my father, and how could I? She hadn’t told me because she didn’t want to worry me, Now she regretted it, but she could handle things ― after her surgery.
In the interim, Veterans Administration benefits included spousal respite care. He’d be admitted to the hospital for a complete physical workup, aiming at a formal dementia diagnosis, then they’d keep him safely under wraps until she was ready.
That was that. It was my mother’s way to script everything, and she was unlikely to be swayed. It isn’t necessary to recap the daily routine during the weeks to follow, but here’s an overview.
I took my father to the VA in Louisville. He was making very little sense, apart from repeating an admonition to “help your mother.” I shuttled between their respective hospitals. My mother’s operation was splendid. She did wonderfully, and would live another 16 years.
However, almost immediately my father began falling apart. Placing him unaccompanied into a strange environment stood to be dicey, but that wasn’t all.
It is highly probable that he quickly acquired an HAI (hospital-acquired infection), and that this infection fatally weakened him. The respite care deadline passed, and he was kept in hospital to “stabilize” the illness he’d contracted there. The doctors sent him to a Clarksville nursing home for what was described as a temporary stay.
It was at this juncture that things got tight. My trip was coming. My mother was about to return to active duty. Should I stay, or should I go?
My mother didn’t hesitate: “go.”
My prim and proper Aunt V., generally acknowledged as the family’s matriarch, visited the nursing home and said it’s under control: “go.”
My father’s other sister, J., who once allowed me to use her and her hubby Bill’s empty returnable beer bottles as toy soldiers, stridently disagreed.
So, I went.
In Bamberg, as the gang peeled away, I elected to venture back into the hills for a few days off the grid prior to taking a train to Vienna to conclude my trip with cousin Don. There had been no bad news, and I elected to go incommunicado for a few days, rationalizing it as a restorative based on the overall stressfulness of everything.
Then I phoned home and learned my father was dead. My mother was prosaic like always; he’d been cremated, and once I returned, a wake would be held at the Georgetown Optimist Club with a keg of Pilsner Urquell and Glenn Miller tunes ― at his request; my father raised me on Glenn Miller, and I riased him to drink the original Pilsner beer.
I moved on to Vienna as originally planned, rebooked the return flight, and sought solace with cousin Don. Life went on, as it does, at least until we locate the concourse taking us to our own departure gates. Had I suspected such an outcome, obviously I’d have stayed home; sometimes you catch the breaks, and other times they catch you (more about my father is here).
As it stood, 2001’s third Euro excursion already was in the offing, barely three months after the wake’s conclusion. But Sept. 11 happened first, and Euro #20 was delayed until 2002.
Next: The two motorcoach journeys of 2022.
