Ardent Spirits

On the afternoon of September 30, 1955 an elegantly trim and all-but-new ocean liner slid from its berth on the Hudson River in New York City and headed for England. With its other passengers in tourist class, I was among a group of some thirty American men bound northeast for Oxford University. Our ship was the S.S. United States which, on its maiden voyage three years earlier, had shaved ten hours off the prior record for transatlantic voyages. We'd be five days on the early-autumn sea and, with any luck, could dodge the great storms that had roiled the Atlantic in recent years.

Only a few months earlier, I'd met the distinguished historian Bernard De Voto when he came to lecture at Duke, my undergraduate alma mater. I'd heard that De Voto was famous for his strong pro-American tilt; so a chill lifted the roots of my black hair when the young woman who was backstage beside me suddenly told De Voto that I was now a Rhodes Scholar. He looked up into my sudden pallor, chuckled a little sardonically, and said "Mr. Price, I'm glad to have met you while you're still a be ... read full excerpt from: Ardent Spirits: Leaving Home, Coming Back ebook