by Ed Nelson
Back at my garage hideaway or as I thought of it, my Hernando’s Hideaway I also read the official textbook and worked calculus problems. This was probably the hardest course I had ever taken. There would be an exam available at the end of the term to see if I had mastered the subject.
This way of learning aligned well with my study methods of the last several years. Accidently going to that student orientation at Berkley two summers ago had been a godsend.
As I sat in my warm garage listening to the rain which has started again I realized that half of the reason I was here was to be with people my own age. Where were they? Sitting in this garage even though it was advancing my education wasn’t helping my socialization.
I only knew Bill Benton here at school. He was probably at work so I walked over to Blackwells. He was in and glad to see me. Though the bookstore had a lot of browsers they weren’t buying, most probably just wanted to keep out of the rain.
I asked him what he was doing after dinner tonight. He invited me to join him and some of his fellow workers at the Dog and Crown pub to have a pint and play darts. I told him I wasn’t much of a drinker but would love to join them.
I attended another lecture where the lecturer was as dreary as the day, then headed home. At dinner in answer to Mum and Grand Mum’s inquiries about my day, I complained about the weather. They told me welcome to England. April showers bring May flowers.
Mum brought me up to date on Mary’s clothing line. It was going very well. This had come out of nowhere in the last month. It started with her being teased at school about having a brown thumb. Mum had started a greenhouse and they had silver bells, cockle shells and pretty maids all in a row. From there somehow puppies got involved. I would love to hear the complete story one day.
The long and short of it I had better watch my back, my mercenary little sister may out-earn me. Good for her if she did.
When I told Mum I was going out for the evening her only comment was that if I had anything to drink spend the night in town and please call her if I did. Now I know why she insisted on a telephone line in the garage.
I met Bill at the Dog and Crown right after dinner. It was an easy two-block walk from the garage so I wasn’t worried about drinking too much, not that I had any intention of doing so.
One thing that can be said about English Pubs is that they take care of their appearance. The façade was black with the name in red letters. There was a gold trim around the façade and windows. Green plants were located on each side of the door. It was posh looking. Inside it was clean and well lit.
There were tables and booths. The booths had tall backs so each was well separated. One thing that I found interesting was that between each booth on the divider was a coat hanger hook. Many were full. It must rain a lot around here.
Like all bars, the smoke was hanging low. I would have to send my clothes to the dry cleaners after tonight.
Bill was already there with two other guys, Tom Weston, and Steve Stewart. They seemed like nice guys. Bill introduced me informally as, Rick Jackson saying nothing about my background. We dressed alike, each in chino pants and a shirt with a sweater over.
We all went to the bar and ordered a pint. I did it to fit in. In American they had waiters in England you had to go to the bar and order. The pub was owned by the Watney Brewery so they served Red Barrel. It was cheap and it was bad!
After a sip that was the end of my beer drinking for the night. The guys all laughed at the face I made. They didn’t give me any grief about not drinking with them so I had an enjoyable evening after I traded that swill for a coke.
The bartender tried to get me to taste a different brew, but once burned twice shy, besides I didn’t want to take up drinking because of our family history.
None of the guys got staggering drunk but you could tell they were drinking. We played darts. I lost every game. It looked like they would have to be falling down drunk for it to be a fair handicap.
They exchanged stories about their hometowns. Tom Weston is from Liverpool and he told us we should visit. There was a new band that had been playing locally and he thought they would do well. They wrote their own songs and had a different sound than American Rock and Roll. We agreed that could be interesting.
Steve Stewart came from Edinburgh which was no surprise with a name like Stewart. He was a member of the Stewart clan but not in the direct descent.
They wanted to know me. When I told them I had just arrived in England from California they were genuinely surprised. My accent was really good tonight, or they had too much to drink.
I switched to Ohioan and Tom said that is, “Bloody marvelous you ought to be an actor.”
This totally cracked Bill up. It got the attention of several other tables.
“Tom you twit, he is an actor. His movie, ‘Bandits of Sherwood’, is playing at the Odeon right now.”
That started the inquisition. It all boiled down to, what famous people did I know, did I make a lot of money, and then the big one about being a star and all those girls.
I admitted to John Wayne, Sharon Bronson, and Anna Romanov as I had been in movies with them, plus Frank Sinatra and the Beach Boys because I had made records with them.
Bill’s laughter which had got the attention of other tables brought questions from them. I answered everything that I could politely. On the issue of beautiful women that flocked to the stars, I commented that one had to be careful about the gold diggers, other than that a gentleman never kisses and tells.
I didn’t want anyone to know what a loser I was in the female department.
Since I kept my answers short and polite the questions soon disappeared and everyone but me went back to the serious business of drinking and tossing darts.
One young lady approached me and asked, “How could one break into the movies.”
I told her about central casting in Hollywood and I imagined there was something like that in the English industry. She thanked me and returned to her group.
Other than that we just talked about the Dons and how difficult some of them were to understand. We also checked out the girls in the bar but all of them were in groups or couples so all we did was speculate on what each of them might do if approached properly.
After listening to their ideas I begin to think I might not be such a disaster with girls after all. Or at least all guys my age were disasters. Somehow that felt right. We broke up before the eleven o’clock closing time. We did have classes and work tomorrow.
They planned to meet back at the Dog and Crown tomorrow night at the same time. I declined. I had no studying in this evening. I couldn’t do two nights in a row like this and maintain my grades. Well, I guess it wasn’t maintaining grades as passing the examinations.
I walked back to the garage and drove home. I don’t think a sip of beer four hours ago would cause any problems. It was a good thing I didn’t drink because I got a speeding ticket on the way home. The Panda car was waiting in a parking lot. I was doing forty-two mph in a thirty mph zone.
The Bobbies were nice. They gave me a warning. What they really wanted was to see the inside of my Aston Martin. Not being a complete fool I invited them to sit inside it while I gave them a tour of the car and its performance statistics.
After establishing that I had a valid driver’s license and insurance they let me proceed. I had used my American accent since I had an American driver’s license. I was reminded to obtain an English one if I was going to be here for a while. When I told them I was enrolled at Oxford one of the policemen joked that had they known that I would have got a ticket. Students were a pain!
I had publicity photos in my satchel. Never leave home without them. I pulled them out and autographed them to each of them specifically. I used Sir Richard and that got their attention. I had saved the Queen. Please keep it under one hundred and be on your way!
I didn’t plan to abuse it but it was nice to know it might get me out of a hole someday.
Mum was st
ill up when I got home. She was waiting for my call. When I walked in she walked right up and smelled my breath. Nothing was shy about Mum.
She wanted to know all about my evening. When I told her it was really nothing it was just a group of guys talking guy talk.
“How about the girls there, any interesting ones?”
“Not really they were in groups and we never talked to them.”
“How did you guys rate them?”
“Mum!”
“All guys rate girls, just like girls rate guys.”
Did she mean I had just sat in a bar and a bunch of women rated me? How demeaning.
“Rick, this was exactly the sort of evening I was hoping you would have, you enjoyed the company of your peers and nothing exceptional happened.”
I decided not to tell her about being stopped for speeding. Knowing Mum MI6 would soon notify her after calling 10 Downing Street.
I went on up to bed. While getting ready for bed I thought about the evening and realized that I looked forward to doing it again, certainly not every night but it was fun and relaxing. No work, no studying. How unusual, people actually lived like this. No wonder many did not get ahead, their lives were in a pleasant rut.
I would have to watch that I didn’t fall into it permanently but it was a nice place to visit.
With that, I turned out my light to go to sleep. There was another change in my life. I seldom read before I went to sleep. When I went to bed I was so tired I didn’t even try anymore. I didn’t consider this to be a good thing. I would have to make time to read when I wasn’t tired.
I had always read fiction. Maybe it was time that I started reading newspapers and magazines on current events. Not the tabloids but serious journals.
Chapter 26
The next several weeks were the same, go to lectures, Thursday nights spend at the pub with the guys. I did get better at darts but I was still about five years of experience behind the group.
One thing really began to stand out. In college, they didn’t really care if you attended a class or if you learned anything or not. They had your money the rest was up to you. I thought of the kids my age in Bellefontaine sitting at their desks in the tenth grade. They would be spoon-fed information at the rate of the slowest learners.
If they were failing extra counseling would be given and their parents brought into the picture. Here it wasn’t even noted, you would just get a letter saying you had been sent down.
I did find out there is an entire support system available if you elected to use it. They had what they called laboratories or workshops. You could attend these for hands-on experience in science or class exercises in any subject. There were tutors available at a price, group or individual. Then there were the students getting together and working as a team to self-teach.
I wondered how the Blackwell gang as I thought of them could have so much time they could do the pub three or four nights a week. When I asked I was surprised. They hadn’t really come to Oxford to learn anything, well how to socialize with their peers and make a double twenty.
They were all taking the minimum number of the easiest courses they could. Even Bill who I thought was trying to learn was coasting, maybe not as much as the others, but to my mind coasting. I found out that he had been desperate for a job because his dad wouldn’t fund a party life.
The more I learned the more I realized how fortunate I was that I had internalized that message at Berkley.
My toughest course was Calculus. I had to hire an individual tutor. I could almost grasp single variable calculus but as soon as the word multivariable is mentioned it was like my mind turned off.
The idea instantaneous change or derivative of various functions being a process called differentiation is like a dim light in the distance. I could almost see it. Of course, every time I felt like I was getting close it receded into the distance.
My Don was enthusiastic about using derivatives to solve various kinds of problems. He seemed to miss the fact that half the people sitting in the room still didn’t understand how to find this apparition called a derivative.
Then after making the assumption that we could find this elusive thing called a derivative that we could go back from the derivative of a function to the function itself. He called it integration. It was nothing like George Wallace trying to stand off the United States Army.
It was like wading in mud but I was getting there. Without the tutor a nice guy named Charles Erich I would have floundered. I mean I can plot x,y coordinates and draw a curved line to join them smoothly. It was calculating a point on that curve without the equation that stumped me, then when I knew the point to be able to describe the equations which gave the coordinates it became black magic.
Chuck was the most patient guy I had ever met. He worked with me trying different methods to get it through my thick head. It finally dawned on me that calculus is seeing the relationship of patterns in equations. If I have an equation for a circle I can see the relation to the volume of a sphere. One thing that will always be true is ‘pie are not square’, no matter the equation. Chuck about lost his cool when I brought that up.
I don’t think I will ever win a prize in Mathematics but I can follow the tune.
One evening when I got home from school there was a message from Dad. I was to call Cessna in London. They had called Jackson House for me to tell me about a model 310 that had become available in England. If I could take delivery there I would end up getting it almost two months early.
It was too late to call the Cessna business office in London so I had to wait until the morning. I actually didn’t call until I got to the garage at school. I had been up since 5:00 wondering if it was too early to call so I thought I did pretty good waiting until 8:02.
I was put through to the sales manager. I had left word with Cessna when I placed the order that if that model became available early anywhere in the world I would consider it. You could tell the sales manager was very happy to hear I was already in England.
As much as I wanted to drop everything and rush to London I arranged a Saturday appointment. That bloody calculus.
On Saturday I pulled into the Cessna office parking lot on the private side of Heathrow in my Aston Martin. I was glad the price was fixed because one look at my car and it would probably double.
When I settled into the sales manager’s office after a round of Sir Richard this, and Sir Richard that. I asked how this aircraft became available. It seemed a company had ordered them with a good down payment and then went out of business overnight. The manager didn’t say it but it sounded like something dodgy had been going on.
Actually, they had ordered three aircraft which were now sitting in the hanger. With half a laugh I was asked if I wanted to buy three airplanes for a good price. Without thinking I asked how much off for the lot. He quoted me a number that would get me three airplanes for the price of two.
I shook my head and asked how can that be?
“Sir Richard, we have a cash flow problem. We are a franchise of Cessna and they want their money. Unless we move these soon we may be out of business ourselves. Remember there was a good down payment so we are giving up our profit and breaking even just to move these off our books.”
Now I needed three aircraft like an extra hole in my head so I promptly told him, “Let’s take a look.”
As we were going to the hanger the Manager diverted us to introduce me to the Owner and told him I had an interest in all three. If I had asked them to carry me they probably would have.
In the hanger were three brand new Cessna 310’s in standard colors. I hummed and hawed around looking at the brand new logbooks with the first maintenance performed outside the factory noted. I tried to look like I knew what I was doing. I even opened the cowling on several engines to see if they were clean.
The truth is the wings might be ready to fall off and if they weren’t in the normal walk around mode I wouldn’t know it. Why I said yes I will buy them I will never
know.
The only extra I asked for was that one of them be repainted in the colors I had ordered. They had no problem with that. The next question was how I would pay for these and when would my parents be there to finalize the deal. That was getting a little old, but I don’t think I would let some kid come off the street and take my aircraft no matter what type of car he was driving. I explained that I was emancipated so could make a purchase like this on my own. I had been through this enough that I brought an extra copy of my emancipation decree with me.
As to how I was paying, would they take a cheque? Again the deer in the headlights look. They gave me the total amount with VAT added in and I wrote the check then called my bank and gave the name, account number, and the current magic word.
The word would have to be changed after this. Every time I made a purchase that required using the safe word to indicate I was not under duress it was changed. While I was on the line I was given the next word on the list. If I forgot it, it would be a nuisance. I would have to go to the bank in person with my ID to start over.
They would have the aircraft ready for delivery by next Saturday. Apparently, it takes time for the paint to dry and all the paperwork to go through. Now I had to get back to Oxford and find hanger space for my little fleet. I also had to figure out what I was going to tell Mum. Unfortunately, she was the one on this side of the pond. Dad would understand boys and their toys at least I thought he would.
I had a moment of genius before I left the Cessna shop. I called Mr. Norman of the Queens Messengers. He had asked me to let him know when my plane was in England as it would be handy to have a messenger with a plane.
It was Saturday but I don’t think the man ever left Buck House. Maybe he had a suite there for all I knew. Anyway thinking that I would be leaving a message I was surprised to catch him at his desk.
I told him I now had a plane in England.
His response was, “Capital. Remind me of its specifications.”
