by Sally Wright
Spencer walked away from that meeting muttering one of Booker’s favorite sayings, “Nobody gets it when there ain’t any.” As they’re about to find out.
Richard had a very difficult time making the decisions that had to be made by a company president, and spent more and more time out of the office involving himself in his model train and historic train clubs.
But when a trailer design or production decision of Spencer’s was involved, Richard, and Martha too, if she was there, began to question and pressure him to reverse whatever he’d chosen to do.
He generally kept his temper, and tried to explain what he was doing and why, but the second-guessing began to really get to him. He talked to the outside board members, and they talked to Richard and Martha, who claimed they understood the boundaries of responsibility and would abide by them and not interfere with Spencer’s areas of expertise.
On October 11th, however, Spencer inspected the interior customizing job on a very expensive custom van, and discovered that the padding that the customer had ordered hadn’t been put on the ceiling. It was intended to keep a horse from injuring itself if it reared, or threw its head up, or got loose loading or unloading. The heavy imitation leather was in place on the metal ceiling, but the three inches of extra padding hadn’t been put in under it.
An experienced finisher had been doing the work, and when Spencer found him and asked why the padding wasn’t in place, he looked embarrassed and said that the other Mr. Franklin had told him not to do it. That “it’d cut costs and increase profits if it wasn’t put in.”
Spencer found Richard in his office reading a train magazine, and asked if what he’d been told was an accurate representation of what he’d done. Richard looked cornered and fidgety, and admitted that, yes, he’d been going over the cost sheets for some of their production items, and that that particular padding material was more expensive than he’d realized, and should be eliminated whenever it could be.
Spencer didn’t say anything for a minute. His heart was thundering in his ears and the same surge of adrenaline that got him across France and Germany was rushing through his veins, beating hard against his brain.
He waited, his face flaming and his fists clenched, the shrapnel scars on both his arms standing out white against his skin, as he made himself count to twenty, before he could trust himself to keep from reaching down and snapping Richard’s neck. “Richard … what you did is unethical. It’s a form of fraud. It’s absolutely antithetical to everything Dad and Mom stood for! The customer ordered that padding for the safety of his horses, and yet you were perfectly willing to charge him the same amount for nothing but the eighth-inch backing attached to the plastic upholstery! Weren’t you? Tell me that’s not true!”
“Well—”
“He’s a very successful trainer, and he would’ve seen he was being cheated immediately. So not only was it wrong, but just on a purely pragmatic level, our reputation would’ve been ruined with him and his friends forever. Not to mention the fact that that was not your decision! If you ever stick your nose in the plant again and try to rescind a directive I’ve given, you’ll regret it. Do you understand me, Richard?” Spencer was towering over him, strong and fit and furious.
“I was just trying to be fiscally responsible when—”
“Gimme a break, Richard! Don’t say another word!” Spencer stood there vibrating, his fists set on his hips. “No! I can’t do it. I resign. You’ll have my official resignation in the morning.”
“Wait! You can’t leave! Who else would run production?”
“Maybe you should’ve thought of that before you interfered with me time after time after time!”
Spencer walked into the plant, told the finisher to put the padding in, and walked out the plant door without stopping in his office.
Richard found Spencer’s letter on his desk the following morning:
Richard,
I have been dedicated to Blue Grass Horse Vans for many of the same reasons Mom and Dad were. I took great pleasure in making something that served a practical purpose: high quality vans and trailers that provided safe, comfortable transport for horses of all types and sizes. I was proud of the fact that Blue Grass maintained a strong commitment to producing excellent products at a fair price, while providing a pleasant, safe, environment for those who work here. I was dedicated to maintaining it as a company that: treated people fairly, customers and employees; expected honesty, competence, commitment and excellence, and attracted and rewarded people who valued that too, treating them with respect, and rewarding them well, in many more ways than only monetary.
In order for those principles and attributes to flourish, Mom and Dad clearly understood that they had to be embodied at the highest level by the family members who work at Blue Grass. This is no longer the case.
All that I have respected and admired about the design, production, business practices, and ethics promulgated in the company are now being undermined and I can no longer work at Blue Grass Horse Vans. I am, therefore, tendering my resignation.
Spencer Franklin
Vice President of Production
The day after Spencer quit, he arranged for a friend to move into his house and take care of his mare and his parents’ horses, while he trailered Tracker, his big dark bay Thoroughbred gelding, down to Tryon, North Carolina, just south of Asheville in the foothills of the Smokies, where he camped and rode for two weeks.
When he came back, he heard that the production foreman and the head welder had quit. And that Peggy James, Alice Franklin’s secretary, who’d taken up the slack after Alice died, would be leaving the next week.
They all phoned and told him what had been driving them crazy and why they’d had to leave, and he tried to be neutral when he talked about Richard and Martha regardless of what the others said. It was right and professional, but it wasn’t easy, and every time someone told him what was going on at Blue Grass, it made him more angry and outraged, and there were days he didn’t even answer the phone. He had trouble sleeping, which hadn’t happened since the war. He’d find himself staring into space too, during the day, not even knowing where he was.
He built a shed for his tractor. He worked at Jo and Alan’s for ten days so her Uncle Toss could take a vacation. He rode Sam for Jo, who was too pregnant to ride.
But when he wasn’t riding Sam or Tracker, or working hard on his farm, Spencer stared at his walls and watched images of disaster roll through his brain, trying to imagine what he could do. He had to start bringing in a salary, he knew that. And he had to find something to do that he loved. Though he couldn’t imagine that actually happening anytime soon.
Then he heard that a friend of his from college had broken his hip in a car accident, and he went to see him in the hospital.
November 1963
On November 4th, Spencer started teaching a course on the American Revolution at Centre College, in Danville, Kentucky, for the friend who’d been hurt. They’d both been history majors (though Spencer’d minored in engineering too) who’d concentrated on Revolutionary America and the writing of the Constitution. Spencer hadn’t taught in years, but he had his friend’s course notes, and he drove himself relentlessly to teach the course as well as he would’ve wanted to be taught. He’d teach through January, which came to him as a godsend—something that would give him an income and keep his mind moving away from the breakdown at Blue Grass Horse Vans.
Carl Seeger wasn’t coping with unemployment nearly that well. He’d taken to driving by Equine Pharmaceuticals two or three times a day, and he was seen several times parked across the street, giving rise to the rumor that he was hoping someone from the firm would walk across and talk. Then the week before Thanksgiving, which fell on the twenty-eighth, he visited two lab people at their homes without warning or explanation.
They were social calls, ostensibly. Though he gave them the impression he was fishing for information about how his leaving had been viewed at Equine, while he offere
d a sanitized version that blamed everyone but himself for his hasty departure.
He made both lab people uncomfortable. They thought he seemed unfair and unstable, and they hadn’t known how to react. They told Alan together, since he was directing the lab (while doing everything else he’d been doing before Carl left), and he thanked them, and asked them to tell him if Carl showed up again. Then Alan talked to Jo, and pondered what to do.
The day after Thanksgiving, Alan was doing an errand two blocks from Carl’s house, and he decided on the spur of the moment to drive over and talk to Carl. He sat in the driveway for a couple of minutes, but decided not to go in. Seeing him might set Carl off, and lead to something they’d both regret.
He’d wait and see what happened. If Carl pestered the lab folks again, he’d tell Bob and work out a plan. Bob did not need to be bothered before that. He was having fermentation troubles with his new Equine Viral Arteritis vaccine, while interviewing lab and plant people to replace Carl and Butch, and doing everything else too that presidents have to do. He was looking distracted and mildly on edge, and Carl’s weirdness could wait.
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CHAPTER FIVE
Excerpt From Jo Grant Munro’s Journal
Sunday, March 1st, 1964
…I haven’t done much with the journal since Ross was born in December. He’s sleeping better at night than he was, but I still haven’t caught up. Alan goes to work at four so he can come home by six and help with Ross through dinner, but I have had moments of abject panic when Ross is screaming and I don’t know why.
There was a baby in the nursery when he was born who had all his internal organs on the outside of his body. Watching his mom and dad staring at him through the nursery window made me feel terrible, and see even more clearly what a gift it is that Ross is whole and healthy. Sometimes we just stand by his crib and watch him breathe in wonder and amazement, and I suspect we aren’t the only parents who’ve done exactly that.
We’ve been blinded, though, I think, in a way, in our quiet cocoon here. Because forces have been at work in the outside world that are far less than benign. One being Carl Seeger who actually went so far as to get an IRS auditor to investigate Bob Harrison. This guy spent all of January and February at Equine Pharmaceuticals, and even took over Bob’s office for a week so he could go through his personal files, and all he found, after all of that, is $2000.00 that Equine may be should’ve paid, depending on how you allocate some part of their inventory. Investigators get to keep a percentage of what they find, and Carl’s friend Terry was pretty put out that he couldn’t find more. Bob was beside himself watching this guy poke and prod, when he’d always been as honest as he knew how to be. Especially when he’s so pushed at work he can hardly see straight.
Spencer’s being tormented too by the ongoing muddle at Blue Grass. Folks who work there keep calling him asking him to do something to make it better, and all he can do is tell them there’s no way he can help, and to do what’s best for them.
During their January board meeting, the outside directors asked him to come back and take over, with Richard and Martha actually agreeing to let him be president, since the company’s losing customers, and lots of folks have quit. Spencer said he can’t come back if R. and M. can still outvote him, and that they’d have to agree to the rest of the stipulations in his dad’s will. Richard and Martha refused, of course. And how they’ll pay their inheritance taxes, nobody seems to know. I think part of Richard’s animosity comes from the fact that his social climbing wife left him two years ago because he wasn’t being promoted as fast as she thought he should be, and they both blamed Spencer for standing in his way.
One good thing was that Spencer was approached by a group of venture capital people, not too long after the teaching job ended, who asked him to evaluate a pre-cut custom pole barn manufacturer that’s just east of Lexington. The owner’s ill and has to sell, and they wanted Spencer’s opinion as to whether the quality of design and production is enough above the industry norm to make it a business worth buying.
He dodged around it for a while, because he wasn’t sure he’d know enough about that business to help, but he ended up doing it, and he’s found it interesting. It looks like they’re going to buy it and ask him to run it for them.
Maybe even more importantly, Spencer met a woman there, a widow who’s the office manager, who’s intelligent and educated and a long-time horse lover, languishing without a horse, who seems like a very reasonable person, and they’ve started going out. After what he went through two years ago, he deserves to be with someone who’s actually worth his time.
We haven’t heard anything from Carl for quite a while. He’s stopped showing up at people’s houses, but I know he had lunch at least once with Jean Nagy (the lab tech I secretly think of as Eeyore), since I ran into them at the Wagon Wheel. Carl being quiet makes me vaguely nervous.
Butch, on the other hand, calls Alan at two in the morning every two or three weeks in a drunken stupor, to pour vitriol in his ear. Sad. But hard on Alan.
I’m designing the renovation of an old farmhouse toward Harrodsburg that’s in bad shape, but has great bones, and I not only think about it when I’m doing the dishes, I dream about it at night. I love doing what I do, and I’m grateful I get to.
Riding Sam again too is making me feel like myself. Being a mother changes things. You stop just being who you’ve always been—much less what it is you do. You’re responsible for a helpless child twenty-four hours a day, and you will be till he leaves home. I also suspect you never stop worrying even when they’re grown. Ross can tear my heart out in ways no one but a child ever will.
Which means cantering through the fields on Sam makes me forget about being a mother and blows cobwebs out of my brain.
Emmy comes with us, of course, with her ears flopping around her. I looked at her today and thought about the night she showed up two years ago just as a thunderstorm blew toward us—a tiny tan puppy shivering in the wind—and I can’t believe what a great dog she’s been.
Monday, March 2nd, 1963
It was late afternoon, and Toss had put grain in all the feed tubs and was throwing flakes of hay in the stalls while Emmy sat and watched him as though she were grading his performance.
Jo had left Ross with a babysitter at the house, and she had Sam in the crossties at the back end of the aisleway, and had just unsaddled him, after having taken him cross country. It’d been so warm, after the cold of February, and Sam’s winter coat was so thick and long that steam was rising off his back, and his coppery chestnut hair was wet and curling and dark with sweat.
Jo was pulling a shedding blade through his coat, scraping out handfuls of hair and shaking it out in clumps on the floor. He was itchy everywhere, and he liked the scratching and the scraping, and he threw his big head straight up in the air and curled his upper lip above his teeth, then shook himself all over.
“Feels good, doesn’t it? I’m going to give you a bath too, and use Alan’s new shampoo. Look at the piles of hair on the floor! It looks like you oughtta be bald.”
Toss came out of the last stall and pushed the wheelbarrow into the tack room, then told Jo he’d pulled up the handle on the pump in there so the hose was ready to go.
He walked past Jo and Sam to the back door, and gazed across the small paddock at a dark bay mare and her new foal nuzzling at her side. Toss squinted as he took off his battered straw cowboy hat and wiped his forehead with his sleeve. “You looked at the new foal? The colt by Tap Dancer out of Virginia Dare?”
“First thing this morning. Why?”
“Virgee had kinda a hard time. I don’t reckon he lacked for oxygen. We got him breathin’ right quick, but he seems kinda weak.”
“I didn’t notice anything, but then—”
“I called Mr. Breckenridge, and he’ll be along first thing tomorrow. He’s real partial to old Virgee, and he’s done real well with her foals.”
“He has.”
“I’m gonna go ahead and call Doc Dutton. The little guy might need a supplement or somethin’. He don’t seem to be nursin’ real good.”
“Has her milk come in the way it should?”
“Seems okay, but I’d like to get ’em both checked to make sure we ain’t missin’ nothin’.”
Jo kissed the side of Sam’s snoot, and patted him on the shoulder as she walked past him to stand by Toss, who was scraping mud off a flat-heeled boot on the edge of the concrete floor.
Jo watched the tiny bay colt walking behind his mother, a collection of bones in a tight skin bag, as Virgee led him away. “He is wobblier than some, but there’s a whole lotta variation when they’re this young.”
“I know. I know. And his confirmation looks real fine, but … You hear somebody walkin’ on the drive?”
Emmy was flying toward the front of the barn, and they both turned to look after her, and saw a short plump man with tiny hands and feet silhouetted against the sun at the other end of the aisleway. He was wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, holding a briefcase in his other hand, while Emmy sniffed both his shoes and he looked uneasy. “A woman at the house said I should try here. I’m looking for Jo Grant Munro.”
“I’m Jo. Emmy, come.”
She came, and sat next to Jo, close to Sam’s head.
“I’m from the Internal Revenue Service. I’ll be auditing your farm business, your LLC architectural firm, and yours and your husband’s personal tax returns.”
“Why? We’ve never—”
“I’d like to establish an office here today so I can get straight to work first thing tomorrow.”
