A Journeyman's Journey - The Story of Jim McEwan. Udo Sonntag
of an attempted explanation. “Show me how you light the fire,” he insisted. “I wanted to save time so I could build more barrels, so I came with a shovel full of coal,” I said, trying to soften him with a little lie. “I’m insanely sorry if I did any damage,” I stammered almost inaudibly. “You’re sorry? You don’t realise the damage you’ve done. The carpet has been in this office for 200 years. It would probably have been here for another 200 years. I will withhold your wages. You’ll have to pay for it. There’s nothing else for it!” He was really angry, but again he kept his composure and didn’t swear. “We’ll buy a new carpet and it will come out of your wages, I can tell you that!” That hit home! All I’d been asked to do was to light the fires and now I had created this irreparable damage. And then came the inevitable speech. “Why didn’t you just admit that you had done this? Why didn’t you just say that you had a mishap, that you tripped and it just happened? No, you chickened out and lied to me! I showed you how to light the fire properly. As you can see, with good reason, because if you had followed my instructions, we wouldn’t have this drama.” I felt sick as a dog at that moment because he was right. I felt even more miserable because he didn’t shout, making his words all the harder to bear. Why hadn’t I mustered the courage to stand by my recklessness and stupidity? The announced pay cut only hurt half as much as the certainty of having caused this man so much disappointment. “Jim, this is a golden opportunity now. Learn from it and behave yourself in future or you’ll get into trouble, real trouble, I can tell you!” So there I sat, 15-and-a-half years old, with Christmas just around the corner. I was pretty desperate and that must have been how I looked to him. But what followed showed how generous this man was. A new carpet was indeed bought and laid. I’d already calculated the likely cost and I almost felt sick. It would take years to repay the damage, years! But I had to go through with it; there was nothing else for it. But I was glad I didn’t have to pack my bags immediately, otherwise it would have been one of the shortest careers at Bowmore to date. I had almost burnt down the distillery out of recklessness, but I had been allowed to keep my job. That was Mr McColl, a really fine man. Because if one thing was clear to him at that moment, it was that I had really learned my lesson. To this day, I still light a fireplace exactly as James McColl once showed me. Never again in my life have I used glowing coals for this purpose. When the new carpet was finally in the office, I hardly dared to walk on it, content to look at it from a distance. I wanted to take care of it, because I would be paying for it for years. But Mr McColl made sure that not a single penny, not a single one, was deducted from my wages. For that I am still infinitely grateful to him today. Can you imagine such a great character? Anyone else would have fired me immediately and rightly so, but he saw the big picture and knew why he hadn’t fired me. A truly great man who holds a special place in my life to this day.
The central heating in the management offices in those days.
Across Loch Indaal: Bowmore and its distillery.
But just between you and me, everyone agreed that it was long past time to throw out the old carpet, because the new one looked much better. And I only found out afterwards that the carpet didn’t originate from 1779 after all, even if everyone claimed that it did. No, this carpet had already been replaced during the Second World War and was only 20 years old.
Many years later I returned to Bowmore from Glasgow in the position of manager, while James McColl was still working at the distillery. The ironic thing about this situation was that now roles were reversed. Suddenly I was his boss. Can you imagine that? I had become the superior of a man whose footsteps had always seemed too big. With his kindness and integrity, he not only knew how to educate me, but he could handle and lead any situation, no matter how tough. But even he was getting on in years, and it had become time for a generational change in the distillery office. I never saw myself as his boss, never! He was a shining icon for me throughout my life, from whom I was able to learn so many things. Even though I was officially in charge, I did not feel at all comfortable in this role, totally out of place as his boss. How could I tell him what to do, when he had originally hired me and been so protective towards me? That was an impossibility. Whatever happened, as long as James McColl worked at Bowmore, he was my boss, my advisor, colleague, confidant and my friend. No, I stand corrected, he was that to me for as long as he lived. Ultimately he took a well-deserved retirement, after about nine months of happy collaboration. I was aware that I could never become the gentleman he was, plainly without his stature. I am a completely different person. In Glasgow I learned to lead a team, but my methods were quite different. Would I have continued to employ young Jim after the firelighting situation? I don’t know, but he did. I still speak of James McColl today with profound respect, for I have not met such a character even in the years since his death. He left a huge gap in the island community, which anyone who knew him will emphatically tell you.
5 Davy Bell – Always a Penny in Your Pocket
Davy Bell (left) and Donald McArthur – two coopers and the product of their labour.
When I look back on my life, there are a number of wonderful people who have befriended and, above all, shaped me. One of those very important people is undoubtedly Davy Bell. I would certainly not have become who I am today if he had not existed. Davy Bell was simply the person who inspired me the most. That is why I would like to give a lot of space here to remember him and to thank him from the bottom of my heart. Davy was not only my teacher in the art of barrel making. He was much more than that, and I learned so much about life from him.
When I was a young apprentice just beginning to find my way in this world in 1963, the first days in the distillery were very exciting for me. I wanted to be good at what I did, with Mr McColl’s announcement that I would have a sort of probationary period first, during which I could do no wrong, always at the back of my mind. I had no concerns that I would deliberately cause trouble; rather, I was worried that I would make a mistake because I didn’t know any better. That’s why I needed someone to take me by the hand, Davy being exactly the teacher I needed, and believe me, there couldn’t have been a better one. He’d known me as a child and took me under his wing. He knew how to ease my fears with few words and gave me a great sense of security. My place was definitely by his side, and for whatever reason, he adopted me. I was so proud to be able to learn with him, to learn from the number-one barrel maker. Every barrel maker is given a number when they join the union and every time one of them retires, you move up one. When I started, I was number 782 – but Davy was and still is number one for me! He was number one not only in Scotland, but across the world.
Jim’s teacher Davy Bell (right).
Davy had always been a well-known and respected man on Islay. You could count on him attending church every Sunday to reinforce his beliefs. Although he certainly did not have an easy life and had seen a lot of death and suffering in the First World War, this hadn’t thrown him off the straight and narrow. Perhaps that is why Davy was a great man throughout his life, not only for me, with very firmly held and reliable values. I remember very well his first words as my teacher at Bowmore, “Stay away from drinking whisky, work hard, and don’t steal whisky!”
He had experienced all too often what happened when these rules were not followed. Too many didn’t follow them, and had to bear the consequences. If you were dishonourably fired from a distillery back then, it was hard to gain a foothold on the island again. Davy was familiar with such personal situations and knew that it was usually the families, the wives and the children who suffered. This was not unique to Islay, but was a phenomenon that occurred everywhere whisky was made, exactly what Davy wanted to protect me from. I, his apprentice, was not to meet this fate. For him, his craft