Crashing

   Welcome to Friday with Chairman Joe.

    The opening scene of the movie Lawrence of Arabia (1962) shows the hero on the day of his death. As the credits roll and we fall under the spell of Maurice Jarre’s score, we watch from above as Lawrence fuels his motorcycle and readies it for the road. Now we’re behind the handlebars with him as he zips along the English countryside. Then it happens. Two kids on bikes. Lawrence swerves to avoid them and crashes headfirst into the brush.
   In the next scene we hear to two black-suited gentlemen outside the church where the funeral has been held. They talk about Lawrence, but they don’t understand him the way we are about to as the film reels back to Lawrence in Egypt in 1916 where he's been working as an archaeologist. He's going to be sent gather information from the Arabs who are revolting against Germany's ally, the Ottoman Empire (the Turks).
   At 3 hours and 36 minutes, it's a long film. The joke at the time was that you needed a camel to get through it and that there was always a line at the water fountain. Long as the film is, it doesn't deal with Lawrence's youth. He was born on this day in 1888. His parents lived together but never married, a big no-no in Victorian England. The family moved around, finally settling in Oxford where Lawrence attended high school and college. He and a friend spent their spare time biking around the countryside measuring churches and hanging around building sites watching for any antiquities that might turn up during the excavation.
   These interest led him to join archaeological digs throughout the Middle East. He was a whiz at languages and had an outsider personality which made him a perfect choice to embed with the Bedouin warriors. He became close friends with the military leader of the Arabs and helped develop a guerilla strategy for harassing the Turks. By war's end he was with the forces that took Damascus in Syria.
   After the war Lawrence worked in the British Foreign office in London, but hated being confined in an office. He had become famous thanks to the travelling lectures of the American newsman Lowell Thomas. Wanting to avoid publicity, Lawrence tried to join the Royal Air Force as an enlisted man under an assumed name. The recruiting officer refused to enlist him, suspecting he was not using his real name. Lawrence left the office and returned with orders from above telling the recruiting officer to enlist him. He had made powerful friends in government during the war.
   Lawrence had an unusual life as an enlisted man. He lived in his own cottage, corresponded with famous people, wrote books about his adventures, and buzzed about the countryside on his motorcycle. For his employer, the Royal Air Force, he worked on fast rescue boats for downed airplanes. He had watched an air crew drown because the boat sent to rescue them was so slow. It was just two months after his enlistment expired in 1935 that he crashed his motorcycle. He was 46 years old.

Lawrence's Brough Superior SS100