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Park the car, zip up the jacket against the chill and the damp, hit the “outside walk” counter on my watch, and proceed along the usual path. I am listening to an account of Hannibal traversing the Alps. It may be cool here but it is nothing like the Alps in the late autumn and my path is level. So there’s that. In to the office, up the elevator, get out the wallet
The wallet
The wallet is not in my pocket.
At least I have my phone. But. This isn’t good. I have left my wallet at home. Lucky for me, there’s a co-worker outside the elevator banks, and she beeps me up; after that, I’m on my own. I stand in the airlock for a minute or so until I get the attention of someone passing by, and then I’m in.
Well, let’s get a cup of coffee -
Oh. Right. The main staircase up to the 13th floor is blocked, and we must take the stairwell. Which requires beeping a card. I wheedle one off a co-worker and head up. I think of all the to-ing and/or fro-ing I usually do in a day, in and out, up and down, and I decide that this just won’t do. I finish my coffee, post the Substack, and go back to the car, back to home, get the card, back downtown, park the car, et cetera. Takes all of 35 minutes. But now I am free to roam as I please.
Never once struck me that this was a foretaste of losing access to the upper world, the place with the grand views, the inside of the towers I take for granted but know deep down give me a sense of identity. There will be a day when I don’t have the card to forget, unless of course I just work there until I drop. It would be a bother for everyone if that happened at the office, but if I feel it coming on, I could always stagger to the office of the person I suspect was responsible for my diminution and, painting and wincing, say “FROM HELL’S HEART I STAB AT THEE,” or something Ahabesque. Or maybe the person responsible is myself, in which case I’d have to go to the men’s room to launch the accusation. There’s a full-length mirror.
Made some phone calls to interview someone who said she wanted to be interviewed, but it’s clear she’s ghosting me. Have to come up with another piece extra plus-vite pronto-like, so started paging through websites and old papers to get an idea. And I got one! It has to do with this.
Tell me: which product do you think they were announcing? It’s 1903.
Okay, one more.
If I gave you one more, you’d get it.
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So! What's the journey that takes us from this image . . . |
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. . . to this one? |
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It starts with this story.
That’s a lot of hay.
Text of the story:
Twelve million dollars and work.
That's the combination Mr. and Mrs. Crawford F. Failey,
Palazzo Apartments, 2400 Telegraph avenue, Berkeley, have
agreed to today following the inheritance by Failey of $12,000.000 from the estate of his grandfather, Crawford Fairbanks of Terre Haute, Indiana.
Both the young people are instructors at the University of California.
Mrs. Failey was Gertrude Van Wagenen, daughter of a prominent Sioux City, Iowa,
attorney whose family moved to Berkeley last year.
In May of this year she married Failey across the bay, where both had met while taking post graduate courses at the University of California. They shortly after their European honeymoon learned of the inheritance.
"We are going to continue our work. The money won't make
any difference to us that way,'" said Mrs. Failey today "We have chosen this line of life work and we are going to continue until we either succeed or fail."
Failey still is in Indiana helping to settle the estate while Mrs. Failey has continued with her work in Berkeley. Neither of them, she said, are a bit dazzled by their good fortune.
The money's meaning to them, she continued, is that it will allow them to continue their research and educational work without having to think so much of the mere earning of a living.
Yet they would divorce, because he remarried in 1937, and went back to the Midwest. He was a professor of Chemistry at the University of Chicago. He died in 1981, and his grave says “Buried at sea.”
The source of the fortune: Crawford Fairbanks, of Terre Haute. Civil War vet, newspaper owner, hotel owner, all-around rich guy who got most of his gelt from whiskey distilling.
In addition, he had investments in and served as an officer and director of Diamond Paper Co., of Anderson, Ind.; Haverhill Paper Co. of Massachusetts.; Chicago Paper Co. of Illinois; Piedmont Paper Co. of New York; and Southern Indiana Gas Co., of Greenfield and Shelbyville. He also owned Terre Haute’s principal newspaper, The Tribune.
But what became of the $12 million fortune? I assume a chunk went to the ex in the divorce. They had no kids.
Here’s her bio:
She was a biologist and Yale research scientist through her marvelous collection of illustrated anatomical works as well as goiter dolls and ivory anatomical manikins.
Okay, hold on. GOITER DOLLS. It’s probably exactly what you think.
She obtained her Ph.D. at the University of Iowa in 1919. Beginning in 1931, commuting from her home in New York City, she established a research laboratory and colony of macaque monkeys, at Yale, and carried out pioneering research on the reproductive biology of primates. Her modest official title Research Associate in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology and Lecturer in Anatomy, belied her many scientific achievements.
She and gynecologist John McLean Morris are considered the "discoverers" of morning-after contraception, working first with diethylstilbestrol (DES) to prevent pregnancy. Van Wagenen and Morris reported their successes with monkeys and with women, respectively, at the 1966 annual meeting of the American Fertility Society.
Interesting.
They divorced, and Failey remarried in 1937. He had a sister, who no doubt got some dough in the old distiller’s will, and she had one child . . . whose wife’s obit says:
She is survived by her children, Mary Motley Kalergis and her husband, David, of Charlottesville; Hugh Camp Motley and his wife, Winkie, of Keswick
I am now very interested in how someone came to be called Winkie Motley. As for Hugh Motley:
Hugh Motley died of pneumonia in 2016, and he was “a highly-regarded horseman from Keswick, Va., who started his own bloodstock agency and sold Thoroughbreds at many of America's top sale.”
So the money hadn’t dissipated, had it.
Oh: the obit has this line.
"He was a great rider with a natural seat," said friend Tommy Lee Jones. "He did a great job as Master at Keswick. People just enjoyed riding with him. He knew how to have a good time, and he was always harder on himself than he was with anybody else.”
Tommy . . . Lee Jones? From the actor’s bio:
He owned an equestrian estate in Wellington, Florida, until he sold it in 2019. Jones is a polo player, and he has a house in a polo country club in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
And that’s how we got from one thing to the other. |
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Olean, part two! So much more. 
