Reflecting on taking Scotch whisky to my father-in-law

The peninsula looked wintry when I drove across to Chestertown a few weeks ago. Just the barest hints of spring in the buds opening on the swamp maples.

In the back seat, a bottle of Glenlivet. Single-malt Scotch for my father-in-law Dorsey Owings. He has plenty of Welsh blood running through his veins, but he dearly loves the whisky from the highlands. Single-malt has three ingredients: barley, water and yeast. Simplicity.

Whisky means ‘breath of life.’ Dorsey has plenty of that in him, and has had for a long time. He turned 98 on March 10. He’s worked hard, he’s played hard and he’s still getting after it.

Just after Thanksgiving, Dorsey hitched his 30-foot fifth-wheel travel trailer to the back of his Dodge 3500 pickup. There’s a trailer hitch on the back of the fifth wheel. To that, Dorsey hitched another trailer with a golf cart on board. You didn’t expect him to walk all over the Everglades campground when he got there, did you?

He climbed into the driver’s seat with his bulldog, Macksie, beside him and headed south.

Dorsey owned and operated a trucking company for many years. Mack trucks were his favorite. Diesel Macks. Early on, he developed an affection for diesel engines. Liked their simplicity, their reliability, their efficiency and their longevity. He’s kind of like a diesel himself. Just keep the oil changed.

“Bought my first Mercedes diesel in 1962 and I’ve been driving them ever since.” He doesn’t usually get a new one until the old one passes 400,000 on the odometer. “Don’t throw away dirty water until you have clean.”

For Dorsey, new often meant working some kind of a deal that somehow involved part of his farming operation. A sharp businessman. Good with numbers.

On a family farm in Maryland’s Howard County, Dorsey evolved from a farm family to a trucking family and then, eventually, back to farming again, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. He loved doing business with Jewish dealers in Baltimore. “They were always sharp, negotiated hard, and weren’t happy unless both sides came out as winners. And once they struck a deal, you knew you could depend on it.”

Searching for farms

Dorsey loved driving the big trucks - had 20 tractors and 28 trailers at one point - but was happy to sell them all and get back to farming. The farm he had inherited from his father after the Depression - “Worth $25,000 and mortgaged for $18,000” - caught James Rouse’s eye when the Maryland developer started looking around Baltimore for a place to build a new city. Dorsey eventually sold to him, the first farm acquired by Rouse for Columbia.

He looked as far west as southern Illinois for farms he could buy. “Topsoil out there seven feet deep,” he said.

(The story reminds me of an interpretive sign we read a few years ago while bicycling across Missouri. It said that old-time marketers told prospective buyers back east that Missouri soil was so fertile you could throw a handful of 10-penny nails in the dirt at night and come back the next morning and harvest crowbars.)

Dorsey thought on it all for a while. Took his time. Bought a sailboat and took a year off with his family. Headed south for racing on the Southern Ocean Racing Circuit. When they came back, he decided he didn’t want to leave sailing and the Chesapeake behind.

He thinks about all that when he drives around the Eastern Shore farms he cultivated for so many years. He’s tried lots of different crops and livestock, and did well with most of them. But not all. “Nothing beats a try but a failure.” That’s how you learn. He’s always invested in his own instincts and wits. “Never put any money in the stock market you can’t afford to lose.” Probably a lesson from the Depression days.

He had plenty to recollect when he made his annual trips south. But this year, things changed. He made it to Florida OK, but the handling of his rig - getting it all set up and arranged, dealing with the golf cart, backing things here and there - tired him out and made him feel his limits. Always a practical man, a week later he hooked everything up again and drove back north.

He misses the sun and warmth, but I think he didn’t want to take a chance on not being able to get it all back again in the spring. He’s never wanted to be a burden on anyone.

Dorsey sold the fifth wheel and the pickup a few weeks back, and I’m guessing the trailer and the golf cart too. “Now it’s just me and Macksie and my Mercedes.”

I’m hoping that liquid sunshine from Glenlivet will keep the chill off Dorsey until summer gets here.