Winston Churchill's Bed

So many things to comment on but a bout with the Flu left me with an old tale to tell.

Some time in the early seventies while at the Ford Foundation the issue of youth Employment was always high on the agenda. Short time after the end of WW2 Ditchley Park in Oxfordshire England was made into a British American Conference Center to promote close collaboration understanding between the English speaking countries. For 300 years Ditchley was home to a very wealthy “Gentry” family.

So, one lovely spring day we turned into a driveway that I was sure was a mistake that I had been taken to one of the many castles owned by the Monarchy. The driver assured me otherwise. (My Socialist father described the landed gentry as the “bloodsuckers, profiteers who first exploited the English Peasantry and then went around the world doing the same thing in the Colonies.”)

I questioned the driver on the need for the two story high front doors? He said they could accommodate a mounted Knight in full regalia spear in hand. In the corner was a smaller door and a man in a sort of tuxedo outfit---the Butler--- took my suitcase. I gazed about this huge room in absolute amazement at its size with a fireplace large enough for me to stand in. In a booming voice the Butler announced to whom I know not. “Robert Schrank from the United States.” Not wanting to show my ignorance of the ways of royalty I decided I would just go along with whatever was going to happen. Keep in mind I grew up during the Great Depression when my family’s primary concern was food shelter and clothing. You can see why this Butler experience was pretty bizarre stuff.

When my boss Mike arrived also experiencing the same reaction to the Butler’s
welcome.Says, "So Schrank you thought you had to wait for the Revolution to be welcomed to the home of British Royalty. What would your old Bronx radicals say about this?” Like me Mike had grown up in with working class parents and we both spent much of our youth in the Labor Movement. Hearing the Butler declaiming each arrival gave us both the giggle fever that was tough to control.

I was assigned the very same bedroom that Winston Churchill used during the war on, “full moon weekend nights.” (On those nights the Germans did not bomb as they would be to easily spotted.) Churchill came to Ditchley with his whole Cabinet for a little R&R. Churchill’s bedroom was about 25 by 30. But what was almost as large was the bathroom. I was sure that the ceramic tub had been excavated from an Egyptian burial ground as a Royal Sarcophagus.

We were called to dinner in an elegant 18th Century dinning hall festooned with battle flags and clan identities. By each of the 25 settings was a long lineup of silverware. Fortunately I had been to a formal dinner. The young women sitting next to me noticing my uncertainties, whispered, “just start with the closest utensil on the left and with each course go to the next.” After desert the Director gave us the schedule of the meetings for the next several days.

I returned to Churchill's Bedroom. Upon sitting on the bed I found a huge sink hole smack in the middle. The mattress was sitting on one of those old springs that went from head to foot. I thought, hell if Churchill could sleep in it so could I. Well I couldn’t. Woke a couple of hours later with a screaming back ache. I now did what I had done many times in flea-bag Motels. As a doctor friend advised, “just pull the mattress down on the floor. You’ll do your back a big favor.”

Somewhere in a deep many zone sleep I thought I heard two knocks on the door and voice declaiming, tea knockup sir.” The door swings open and there in full Butler regalia, his right arm holding a tray was this bewildered fellow. He looks at the beds exposed spring and then glance down on the floor, where I’m peeking out from under the covers. The poor fellow almost drops his tray. I try to reassure him, “Oh its nothing I always sleep on the floor.” He blurts out in most agitated alarm. “My God the Yank has pulled Mr. Churchill’s mattress on the floor.” With that he abruptly leaves. Lost my first experience with “Tea Knockup.’

In the following days I was never again offered “Tea Knockup. I was told that everyone especially the kitchen help wanted to get a look at the Yank who sleeps on the floor. Oh the conference went fine. We reviewed all the reasons that youth are having difficulty finding jobs, “Unprepared, lack of jobs, in the wrong place shifting needs for high tech work. We also knew all the things that needed to be done to fix it. Heah, just like now.

PS> I was invited back to Ditchley several times never assigned to Churchill’s room.



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