Chateau Red (Boiling Springs)

I was reading a list the other day, 10 Fascinating International Facts That Are Wrong, and discovered something amusing.

The Error: Mouton-Rothschild is a top-grade Chateau claret.

The five growths (classes) of red Bordeaux were determined in 1855. Four were considered First Class Lafite-Rothschild, Latour, Margaux, Haut-Brion. Mouton-Rothschild did not like being place in second class so their motto is “Premier ne puis. Second ne daigne. Mouton suis.” (First I cannot be. Second I do not deign to be. I am Mouton.) All I know is I certainly would not turn down a glass of it.

That Mouton-Rothschild is a second class Bordeaux is of little consequence to me. Given my chosen field, I may never be able to afford a bottle and probably wouldn’t if I could. I’m a craft beer man.

It’s what it reminded me of that matters.

Several years ago, my Great Aunt in rural Tennessee applied for a job as a supervisor at a local clothing manufacturing plant when she was in her eighties. She figured she was a cinch for it owing to the fact that she had about 20 years experience in the field. It had taken her forty years to get that experience, mind you, but that had everything to do with the state of the clothing manufacturing business in northern Tennessee and nothing to do with her.

What was built as an OshKosh plant had been the subject of numerous obituaries only to be resurrected under a different manufacturer’s name as many times.  When various investors were able to win contracts out from under whatever particular country was killing America that year, they’d buy or lease the dormant plant and equipment, reassemble a team that usually included my Great Aunt and several cousins, and get whoever was occupying the county seat reelected. I used to call them itinerant sewers. It wasn’t them who ever traveled, but the work sure got around.

Political stabilization notwithstanding, my Great Aunt did not get the job. Apparently they thought her 20 years of experience was about 10 too many on account of the stretch of life it took to get them. She was disappointed to not be working again.

A couple months later, the phone rang. It was the plant. Production was ramping up and they wanted to know if she’d be willing to do a little sewing on the side as a floater, occasionally filling in for others who took itinerant to mean something other than what I did.

Her answer? “Well, if I can’t be the tablecloth I don’t reckon I want to be the dish rag.”

I didn’t even know she was French.

What I do know now, though, is that documenting those similarities from the hills of France to the hills of Tennessee is going to be central in my work. Showing them as part of a unifying process, a human process by which we identify ourselves, our livelihoods, and our heritage is worth more than a bottle of first class Chateau claret. I just hope I can find another sense of humor worth half as much. I wonder what the politics are like in Bordeaux?

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