Coonskin Caps and Childhood Memories of Davy Crockett

 
Davy Crockett is dead.  Fess Parker, the actor who portrayed the famous frontierman, died Thursday at his home in Santa Ynez Valley.  He was 85.

My husband had a coonskin cap.  My brother had one as well.  Most boys I knew growing up ran around with little fake frontier rifles and caps and played at cowboys and Indians.  All of us eagerly watched his show on the Sunday night "Disneyland" as it was then called..  According to this sentimental op-ed in the NY Times,  Fess Parker suffered a great deal playing the iconic Crockett. 

He retired to the northern part of Santa Barbara County in the beautiful little town of Los Olivos.  He opened a winery.  My husband, friends and I visited the winery back in the '90s and tasted some of the best wine we'd ever had.  His label fetches good prices.  Try it and raise a glass to the man who made the coonskin cap a Boomer legacy forever.

Theme Thursday Bottle

Some time last year, my husband and I rented "Bottle Shock", a movie we'd never heard of. It has some very fine actors, Alan Rickman, Bill Pullman, Dennis Farina. It's about a subject I love: wine...and not just any wine, California wine. It's the true story of how California wine was introduced as a serious contender to French wine in a 1976 blind taste test held in Paris. The results of this event were, heretofore unthinkable and forever changed the fortunes of California vintners. Worth the watch. Here's the trailer.

Valentine's Day Aftermath

Valentine's Day was supposed to be filled with small, special surprises for my husband.

And it was. I purchased a bottle of wine with a custom label, a box of chocolate covered strawberries and a cute card. I made a tasty dinner of Steak Diane with roasted potatoes and salad. My husband was happy as a clam at high tide; that is, until, he uncorked the wine, sipped a glass, gazed at the wine label and said "That's my photograph on the wine bottle!"

Now, I had purchased this bottle of Valpocella from a client who owns a franchised custom wine shoppe called Vintner's Cellar Winery. She purchases her wine from a winery in Canada and creates some of her wine labels as custom labels. This particular label was called "1st Iron Bridge Red Wine" and had a wonderful graphic depiction of an iron trestle bridge. As unlikely as it seems. it was my husband's photo. A photo he had taken and posted on Flickr. We both examined it and there was no doubt in our minds it was his photo.

He was incensed. He is not opposed to anyone using his work, but it is copyrighted and he wants permission. He would give it for the referral on the label or, in this case, a nice case of the wine.

So here I am, wondering what happened to my Valentine gifts: a delicious bottle of wine with a label that reminds me of one of his photos (who knew?), a gift of chocolate covered strawberries and a steak dinner. I felt like an idiot. This was Valentine's Day gone askew.

He has composed an email to her, asking where she obtained the label art. She is my client so I will be dealing with this on that level. As much as I don't want to deal with it at all, he is right to pursue this. Ahhhh, so much for that good deed going unpunished...