How Sweet It Was

A Memory of Pitlochry.

“I’ll have a very large J&B on the rocks,” the distinguished gentleman gave me his order. “And easy on the rocks,” he added.  I hurried off to the bar and returned with the glass of Scotch.  Dana Andrews looked up and smiled.  “You’re new around here, aren’t you?” he said.

“What’s your name?”

“Alastair,” I replied.

“Do I detect a Scottish accent?”

“You do sir,” I replied.   “I’m from Perthshire.”

He sprang to his feet, pulled the tweed jacket from his shoulders and extended the inverted collar across the table toward me.   “Look at this” he said, “I bought it 24 years ago and it’s as good as new.”   In the flickering candlelight of the restaurant, I peered at the label.  It read:  “Fraser’s of Perth” and instantly I felt that glow of patriotic pride, familiar to exiled Scots.  It’s a long road from the purple mountains of Scotland to California, but in 1966, that’s where I found myself — alone and feeling a wee bit lost in the forest that was Los Angeles.

Within days of arriving in the United States, I’d accepted the first job that presented itself; a waiter’s position in a posh Palos Verdes eatery.

Dana Andrews, a popular film actor of the times, lived in the neighborhood and visited the restaurant frequently. Considering his reputation for being less than congenial, I was surprised when a modest interface developed between us.  In January of that year he and his wife had established the Festival of Performing Arts — a community project in the Palos Verdes district of LA. It stirred memories of earlier days when I was present at the birth of a similar undertaking in the Scottish Highlands.

Keenly interested, he listened intently  while I described the stoicism of John Stewart who had conceived of the idea of  building a theater in Pitlochry, but when faced with what appeared to be an insurmountable problem   —  a lack of building materials in post war Scotland — he instead opted to use a tent.   Who could have predicted that this infant tent theatre,  would mature into the world-class Pitlochry Festival Theater?

My interlude in Pitlochry and connection with the Pitlochry Festival Theater, although peripheral, began in 1951 and left me with a plethora of indelible memories.  On graduating from Breadalbane Academy in Aberfeldy, I had eagerly accepted an apprenticeship at the Green Park Hotel in Pitlochry at Loch Faskally.

Away from home for the first time, it was with trepidation that I stepped off the train at Pitlochry station, but my apprehension soon disappeared when Bill Sutherland, the affable assistant manager — a striking man of about twenty-seven with blonde hair and brilliant blue eyes — met me on the platform with outstretched hand.  He had come to deliver me to the hotel where I would reside for the duration of my apprenticeship.  As we left the station in his wood-paneled shooting- brake, I noticed on the platform, a distinctively decorated water fountain with a sculpted stork poised on one leg on top.


For the complete story of my beginnings at the Green Park Hotel in Pitlochry, please check: www.alastairbarnett@shaw.ca

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