Image by Mohamed Hassan from Pixabay
“So, the thing is, during the pandemic, you need to do more for exposure for your company, Capt. Ludlow.”
“I do?”
The Ludlow Bubbly had passed a threshold – promoters were calling the business line to sell their services.
Capt. R.E. Ludlow and Sgt. Vincent Trent generally split these calls, but Sgt. Trent was talking with business partner Sgt. Tito Gonzalez, so Capt. Ludlow fielded this eager young person … who had not done his homework, apparently, and did not know of the company's quiet but deep success.
The eager young person sailed right past the captain's ironical “I do?” and kept on promoting his company with a combination of youthful exuberance and naivete and perhaps a touch of desperation … the pandemic was hard on everyone.
Capt. Ludlow made notes … the young person had a lot of good ideas that there was now no reason for the Ludlow Bubbly to employ any company to work on … but because the young man's voice reminded him of that of his own son Robert Jr. and the eagerness of his grandson Robert III (five-year-old Lil' Robert), Capt. Ludlow also felt compassion … this young man was doing his best to do his job.
“OK,” Capt. Ludlow said. “I've heard everything you've said, and you probably don't realize it, but you've told me so much I don't need to hire you.”
“What?”
“Let me help you, young man, as a 33-year military veteran who also made extra money in sales in New York as a cadet in the summer – always leave 'em wanting more, young man.”
This began a wonderful hour's conversation between the company owner and the young salesman – 19 years old, working for himself with his sister, just starting out, boldly cold calling small businesses, all full of the latest online influencer techniques but light on real training in business because he and his sister's family did not have a lot of business people to mentor them. Capt. Ludlow helped the young man to trim down and tighten up his pitch, and also to do research on companies to find the best niche for the promotions his new company offered.
“I will be out of the office for eight weeks from Monday, but if I don't call you on Tuesday, October 1, you call me, young man, after you have followed up with the mentors and techniques I've taught you, and we will do some more.”
“Thank you so much, Capt. Ludlow – it really was you God meant for me to call!”
“Apparently so, young Mr. Wainwright.”
Frank Wainwright got off the phone and looked at his twin Francesca.
“Wow – did you hear all that?”
“I did and also made notes,” she said. “Wow – that would be like having our own dad talk with us about business if Dad were in business!”
But Joe Wainwright was his children's adoptive father. He had found the twins abandoned on the Blue Ridge Parkway at a rest stop almost 20 years earlier, while he was at work as part of Virginia's Park Service.
The children's mother had been Mrs. Alexandra Anne Ludlow, who had left those twins there to spite their father – their father who had divorced her for her infidelities although as it had fallen out, she had gotten pregnant by him the month before he had discovered all she had been doing while he had been away serving his country. He had completed divorcing her before she was even showing, and she hadn't told him.
As it happened, the biological father of Frank and Francesca was their new business mentor, Capt. R.E. Ludlow Sr. – Frank Wainwright had cold-called his own biological father!
Late that afternoon, Capt. Ludlow took a brief nap with youngest three grandchildren Lil' Robert (5), Grayson (6), and Amanda (7) snuggling up with him as the last of the day's deadly heat passed over, and in his dream, his great-grandfather Horatio Lee, founding patriarch of the Lees-of-the-mountain, walked up onto his porch.
“How many children do you have now, my son Robert?”
“I have seven now, and four are lost, sir.”
“No, Captain. Two are lost, and you have taken theirs as your own, but you still have nine. Two have been on the mountain with me, safe all the time with the great-grandchild of a close friend. Have no fear, Captain – you still have nine children, two left of your body begotten, and seven grandchildren. Your love has now reached out to embrace them all.”
When Capt. Ludlow opened his eyes in the evening breeze, he knew. The knowledge did not stay at the front of his mind long because – .
“So, Papa,” nine-year-old George said, “I've got an idea for some evening entertainment – first I need you to back out the car and really inflate the tires, and then –.”
George's sales pitches were just as hapless as those of his elder brother and biological uncle Frank … but someday, they would both get it together, together...
A new twist, it really was you God meant for me to call!” Frank has no clue how true that statement is.
!ALIVE
!LOL
@deeanndmathews! You Are Alive so I just staked 0.1 $ALIVE to your account on behalf of @myjob. (2/10)
The tip has been paid for by the We Are Alive Tribe through the earnings on @alive.chat, feel free to swing by our daily chat any time you want.
Nope ... he has no idea ... but Capt. Ludlow heard both his son's voice and Lil' Robert's voice and attitude ... that deep basso profundo timbre that comes from him in progressively younger males, combined with his first wife's physical exuberance as an athlete ... he had a way to know ... and really, twins Frank and Francesca recognized "Dad" too, but they just don't have a reference point!
I can't wait to read more.
Today, more family members have called -- it appears that before Capt. Ludlow goes for his therapy, everybody who needs to make an appearance is doing so, so we know the players before they start to interact with Col. Harry and Maggie Lee for a few weeks for the summer...