After putting down the phone with Ms. Jeanine Thibodeaux, niece of the man for whose memorial he would soon sing bass in an improvised outdoor choir, Capt. R.E. Ludlow took a moment to consider what she had said to him about her late uncle's ferocious opposition to the alcohol industry in light of the fact that had nearly disqualified him from her family's service: the Ludlow Winery.
The Ludlow Winery had lasted 107 years, and had been founded by Capt. Ludlow's grandfather. Capt. Ludlow's cousins, likewise grandchildren with him, had just sold it off weeks before that.
Divine timing … two ways, because Major Thibodeaux had left his testimony in a song, and had left strict instructions that no man involved in the sale of alcohol might touch anything that concerned him … but he loved a bass voice, and so Jeanine Thibodeaux had reached out to Capt. Ludlow, basso profundo.
While waiting on Ms. Thibodeaux's email, Capt. Ludlow searched the number of death of veterans to alcohol related incidents. Maj. Thibodeaux himself had perished in a similar way, but Colonel Falstaff had not been drunk with alcohol but oxygen loss – suffocating behind the wheel, in essence. But, that was one of the things alcohol use actually did to the body – disrupted oxygen absorption, and killed red blood cells outright over time – alcohol ranked with cyanide in that it made the cells unable to absorb available oxygen.
Although Maj. Thibodeaux's case remained unique, and not among the statistics he mourned, Capt. Ludlow was staggered to see the pattern of servicemen returning home and dying in a variety of alcohol related incidents. Put that together with the number of civilians, including his own children, for whom alcoholism was a contributing factor to their deaths – a staggering number, but obviously, made possible because of the wide availability of alcohol.
Capt. Ludlow had a sudden, cold feeling … further back in history, his family had grown tobacco. Selling mass death for profit was more American than apple pie – and it was made of mass death because slavery and genocide had taken place to have land to grow tobacco, sugar crops, and grapes.
Ludlow Tobacconists had gone out of business in 1865, no longer profitable after the end of slavery.
The Ludlow Winery had just gone out of the family in 2020.
Only Ludlow Bubbly, Inc. still stood … the family's first business that did not sell poison to others for profit … not even excessive sugar, because Capt. Ludlow had the palette of his grandfather, and knew how to get tastes out of fruit and spices such that the fruit carried the sweetness with very little if any help.
Capt. Ludlow considered this, and called Sgt. Trent, the company vice president, with this staggering realization.
“Well, sir, I'm from a long line of Tennessee moonshiners, myself,” Sgt. Trent said. “My father was the first man to say no to that trade in our family – and my father's mother's family made good moonshine in that nobody ever got sick or went blind from it. The argument on that side of the family always was that people had to make use of the skills they had to get enough money to live.
“But Dad always said, 'There ain't no good moonshine – alcohol be a killer. Speed don't matter – give it time, and it always kills. 50 years ago, I would have heard y'all's excuses, but even with dat dere, God don't need us to help men dull men's minds and hearts and slow-kill bodies to keep us fed.' There came a point when he no longer would even permit the moonshiners around our home – he did not want them flashing their money at his children and confusing us.”
“Dad said that all drug dealers were alike when crack cocaine became a big deal: 'I don't care whether it be powder or a rock or a drink: you take it, you sell yourself into slavery to them what sell it and produce it. That's what the old slavery be about, anyway: white men getiin' rich selling poison to other white men and needin' slaves to grow enough of it for cheap. There ain't no good thing that will take you back to slavery, and I don't care what nobody says.”
“Sergeant,” Capt. Ludlow said, “you have but deepened my thought: it is not just that God saves our souls from sin, death, and hell. It is that He is saving us every day from cooperating with sin, death, and hell right here, right now. Sir, we sell high-quality, no added sugar soda! We sell fruit juice and herbs and spices with bubbles, and we neither buy slaves to work nor sell people into slavery to our product! Who but God could make it so!”
“And in Virginia, the beginning of buying slaves to grow poison to sell to others – who but God, indeed, Captain!”
“I just got off the phone 20 minutes ago with a cousin of mine that had me shouting from the goodness of God – and I've got to go back up to that high praise!”
“Well, go on up and I'm going with you!”
“You know,” eight-year-old Gracie Trent said to her eldest brother, 21-year-old Melvin, “Capt. Ludlow is keeping right up with Dad, and I didn't know white men could get happy like that.”
“Capt. Ludlow is what we call passionate in temperament,” Melvin said. “He lives right there at the edge of breaking out all the time. You know how Goody's former owners came through here running their mouths and got caught up, just that quick?”
“Ain't it the truth,” Gracie said, sounding just like her grandmother.
“It is better for everyone that Capt. Ludlow use that energy he has in praise to God than for him to be looking for the next person to get caught up, because unfortunately, the world is full of people that will have you wanting to catch them up and shake them up and knock some sense into their heads.”
Gracie thought about this.
“I think God knows that those type of people don't need to come around here too often, because I think Capt. Ludlow isn't tired enough yet and will find some energy to give them what they need.”
“Ain't it the truth, Gracie!”
She was right. The phone call was coming, but while Sgt. Trent was still on the phone with Capt. Ludlow, all was rejoicing.