Lord Oliver Dankworth relocated to Fort Stockton back in the early aughts. Would never really give any details on the circumstances of his departure from Britain, but led many of us to believe it may have had something to do with tax issues, or an incident involving a minor. “I should have known she was a minor,” he reportedly told Chad over at the Piggly Wiggly, “by that flashlight that was mounted to her hardhat.”
Anyway, he said he chose Fort Stockton because the rolling green grass scapes and bucolic setting reminded him of home. That only suggested he hadn’t seen an optometrist since long before he left merry old England. Bottom line, you can take the Lord out of London, but you can’t take the London out of the Lord. He still shows up for a toddy at the Lucky Lady dressed in plaid wool tweed, Wellington boots, and a Deerstalker hat even when you could fry an egg on the sidewalk out front. And he drives a 2001 Bentley Arnage Red Label, and it doesn’t get any more British than that.
In a town where the King Ranch package on an F-150 is considered ‘over-the-top’, the Red Label Arnage sticks out like a boy scout at a cat house. Draws a crowd wherever the thing goes. Nobody over at the Rusty Hammer Hardware Store had ever even heard of a computer-controlled adaptive electro-hydronic dampening system, but they all speculated that parts probably weren’t going to be available over at Cactus Chev-Olds.
Sister Thelma and Rex Hall from the Fort Stockton pharmacy, Rex Hall Drug, were having a beer and a bump the other night when Lord Dankworth joined them at the bar, ordering his usual gin and tonic. They shared a basket of calf fries, a treat apparently not common across the pond. “I’m tired of all the jokes I get about British food being awful,” Dankworth loudly proclaimed. “British food is the third best food in the entire world!”
“What is number one and two?” Sister Thelma asked him.
“Number one is French. Number two is all the other countries,” Dankworth chuckled. Thelma and Rex weren’t sure if that was just an example of British humor or not.
“What would you say is really the essence of being British?” Sister Thelma asked him.
Lord Dankworth leaned back on his bar stool, pulled the Churchwarden pipe out of the breast pocket of his Macintosh coat. From his other pocket he pulled out a pouch of Peterson Mixture 965 Pipe Tobacco and filled the bowl of the pipe with the aromatic brown leaves, tamping them down while he pondered his reply.
“Being British,” he explained, “is getting in your German made luxury automobile and motoring over to your favorite Irish pub for a Belgian beer with your mates. Then, stopping for an Indian curry or a Turkish kebab on your way back to the cottage, putting your feet up on your Swedish furniture so you can watch your favorite American shows on your Japanese TV. It means having a holiday home in Spain for summer and skiing in France in the winter, with a Romanian au-pair to tend to the progeny.”
Sister Thelma and Rex looked at each other and nodded. The Bentley Red Label Arnage suddenly made much more sense.
“But the most British thing of all,” Lord Dankworth continued as he lit his pipe, “is being suspicious of anything foreign.”
Rex bent down, whispering in Sister Thelma’s ear, “Kind of puts a King Ranch F-150 in its place, huh?”
“God bless America,” she replied. “And the king,”
9 responses to “GOOD LORD OLIVER DANKWORTH”
Unclear about what Rex and our fair Sister Thelma were eating at the Lucky Lady, (i.e. calf fries), I asked Goggle. I then asked, “What is “a bump?” Google had many but the two responses most fitting within existing context dealt with, ‘a feminine flirtatious overture toward someone else using her hips’ and even more disturbing in street slang, “a term for cocaine”. Does Sister Thelma have a darker habit than the one she is wearing?
Then I looked up “Dank” from Lord Oliver’s name. “Dank” means musty or slightly wet. It’s changed over time to mean “something that’s great, as good quality weed is dank.” Are we being introduced to a seamy side of Fort Stockton and/or its beloved characters where Mayor Goodman completes a strong-arm takeover of life as we didn’t know it?
Can’t wait for the next installment.
Might be overthinking this one. A “beer and a bump” is a cold Lone Star Longneck followed by a shot of whiskey.
But don’t rule anything out as regards Mayor Goodman.
BTW, my Arnage is a bit more German than Ollie’s, having the BMW 4.4. It still spends most of its time in the shop.
Re: “Being foreign.” Some years ago I was attending a professional program at Oxford (Lincoln College). We had a group venture to London to attend the Globe, and went down in a tour bus. The driver pulled into McDonald’s for a short break and commented, “thank goodness they have these in France as well so I don’t have to eat foreign food when I take groups over there.”
I was a member of a school group which went to France for two weeks. The second day of class, he excitedly reported that he had found a Pizza Hut. Jeez, guy, who goes to France to eat Pizza Hut food?
Someone who doesn’t like McDonalds?
McDonalds is the international language of food. Unfortunately.
Must confess that when my wife and I extensively toured France in the early 80’s we were more than once too tired to deal with a restaurant and patronized the Golden Arches. Indeed, it might be said that Mickey D’s is the restaurant at which we have we have cumulatively eaten more than any other! Fortunately, the others have ranged from true three stars to fantastic bistros and small inns.
Perchance is a miner in merry ol England the same as a golddigger in the US?