Failure to Proceed
A Rolls Royce Tale
Crew of the USS Tom Clancy,
Please enjoy this article about a journey I took last summer. I hope the springtime is treating you well. Please subscribe and tell your friends.
Best,
Matt
***
A good death, I thought, some poetry in dying in the left hand seat of a Rolls Royce plunging off a switchback.
The best view of the valley, flying from the highway carved into Afton Mountain.
Keep your eyes open, the last thing you see is that beautiful view down into the gently rolling vineyard braids and manicured grazing fields weaving the rolling foothills of the Blue Ridge.
Eyes open!
A view to die for.
It was the eve of the 209th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo.
I was clad in seersucker in the passenger seat of a 1954 Rolls Royce Silver Dawn named Clemmie driven by my friend Peter. Peter was asking me if the way was clear to merge, I was telling him no, and Clemmie, engine temperature redlining, was working overtime and still topping out at about 65 MPH with the steep incline up the side of the mountain. There were only 785 of these cars ever made.
The tractor trailer approaching us in Peter and Clemmie’s blind-spot looked to be doing about 80. The merge lane was fast coming to an end. We were in a bit of a tight spot; Peter couldn’t hear me above the wind, and for a moment I thought of the worst: we’re struck by a semi, lose control and careening off the side of the mountain Thelma and Louise style in a rare luxury automobile. This would be a good death. But not good enough.
We made the merge and continued our trek westward. Our destination was just south of Nashville; the goal today was to make it to what we called in the military a RON—remain over night—sight, at a Holiday Inn express in Abingdon, down in the coal country panhandle of Virginia where the highway begins to snake through Appalachia.
“Lawrence of Arabia had a Silver Ghost,” Peter tells me, “Can you imagine such a thing?” I look it up later; Lawrence didn’t just have one Rolls Royce Silver Ghost, he had nine, customized with Maxim machine guns on back as deep strike desert attack vehicles. Peter’s an Anglophile, through and through, flies a Union Jack at his home. On the front of the Rolls is a Medallion—what Rolls aficionados call a Grille Badge—that he picked up as a young man attending the Queen of England’s Coronation in the 1950’s.
We never got to Nashville.
I haven’t yet talked about the Rolls Royce. It’s a very nice car. In Ancient Egypt Pharaohs would’ve been buried in this car with their favorite concubines and pets mummified and propped up in the seats, their organs embalmed in canopic jars carefully stowed away in the boot.
It’s a nice, nice car.
As it is, other Silver Wraiths serve as the Presidential State Car in Ireland, Brazil and Zimbabwe; they shuttle Dutch and Greek Royalty and served as the transportation for Queen Elizabeth Down Under when she toured Australia in 1959.
Communists liked the car as much as Colonists; Tito used the Silver Wraith as his official State Car in Yugoslavia; there’s a photo of him and Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia riding around in the same Rolls Royce during a 10 day goodwill tour of Yugoslavia
Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin were both photographed in a Rolls Royce Silver Ghost in the 1920’s. Lenin remained a Rolls Royce man until the day he died and went on embalmed display in Red Square.
Stalin wound up using an American built Packard 12—a gift from American President Franklin Roosevelt in 1935—as his state vehicle. Aside from political pageantry, the car is also an actor: a Silver Wraith is onscreen in Batman and Batman Returns, the James bond films From Russia with Love and Spectre, and a smattering of other films; The Love Bug, Arthur, Withnail and I, the third Karate Kid.
We made it into other lane after the Semi passed. The Austrian man who’d worked on the Rolls for Peter after an accident (Peter was not at fault) a couple years earlier sent me a text message the day before:
“I’m the one that glued Peter’s Clemmie back together. Please pay attention to the following: Peter needs to drink water to stay hydrated. So does Clemmie. The cooling system is not pressurized and has an overflow pipe that spits out water drops through the grill on the driver’s side bottom corner. Check the water at EVERY fuel stop just before taking off again, allowing the engine to cool a bit. There should be no steam coming out the big plastic filler on the passenger side of the radiator. Keep an eye on the little temp gauge on the dash.”
I kept my eye on the gauge, which was working overtime; the engine was hot, chugging water up the side of the mountain. We were on our way from Peter’s home—called Finders—in Charlottesville, to a town called Franklin, just south of Nashville, Tennessee, to attend a week-long Rolls Royce rodeo put on by the Rolls-Royce Owners’ Club.
Peter, who’s 1954 Silver Dawn was immaculately restored by the Austrian man in Staunton who’s main job was as a Pipe Organ mechanic. His side hustle was fixing up old Rolls and he’d done a hell of a job with this one. Peter wanted to win best in show and the car seemed like it had a real shot.
Let me tell you a little bit about this car: it’s the most comfortable automobile I’ve ever sat in. The seats are unblemished leather, stuffed with horsehair, and more comfortable than the most comfortable couch or chair you’ve ever sat in. The unblemished leather is an interesting feature, and means that Rolls Royce must source leather from cattlemen who never use barbed wire fences, as barbed wire fences will puncture a cow’s skin as they graze, causing a blemish.
This is, in effect, Biblical Grade leather worthy of one of the Old Testament’s oldest testaments:
Numbers 19:2 This is the ordinance of the Law, which the Lord hath commanded, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel that they bring thee a red cow without blemish, wherein is no spot, upon the which never came yoke.