“Hey, man, did you ever think you’d be 70 years old?”
The question from my friend, Jerry Manley, the pride of
Petersburg, Tennessee, basically was an echo as I said the same thing to him.
We’ve grown old, more or less together, at least in spirit, ever
since we combined forces as friends without a care … or was that without a
clue? … sometime in the 1970s. We were young newspapermen when we met.
All I ever wanted to be was a newspaperman. Always was until
Korporate Amerikan politics took that from me. At least they gave me a sendoff
(I could not be celebratory or accept in good faith the “Go forth and prosper” of
the company Magoos.) Jerry hung on a few years, finally being “bought out”
while he was on vacation. It was not a
“don’t look back” message: Just “don’t come back” to a fellow who had given
more than 30 years to the morning newspaper in Nashville.
Anyway, that’s sort of the end of the tale. Jerry and I have
been friends for nearly a half century, him entering my life a few months after
I began work as a sportswriter at The Leaf-Chronicle in Clarksville, Tennessee.
(Hindsight has me still there now, after the heartbreak at 1100 Broadway, where
there use to be newspapers…. Although, the Clarksville paper has turned soft
and flimsy. Like newspapers in general.)
Nashville still is fortunate to have a newspaper, even one
of diminishing circulation. I have friends there and hope they don’t get the
kind of call Jerry got.
Hell, a woman I love as a friend got a call like that at her
grandmother’s funeral. I won’t use her name here, but I’d offer hugs to her and
her family if I bumped into her.
Jerry, at the time we met a half-century ago, was an editor
of the paper over in Gallatin, Tennessee, and he and a guy we knew as “The
Rhinestone Fat Man” – David Rush encouraged it by wearing rhinestones and being
fat – came over to the newspaper building that really was the heart of
Clarksville, Tennessee. The Rhinestone Fat Man would also join us, at least
back in those days, in our after-hours (they had to be after-after-hours, as I
worked until 1 a.m. many days) gatherings and would sing “Mysterious Rhinestone
Cowboy” and nasty racist and misogynist David Allan Coe’s “You Never Even Call
Me By My Name,” as his gut pushed at the snaps on his cowboy shirt. Written by Steve Goodman, it is the perfect
country song, even if Coe is despicable. I miss Steve Goodman, though. And John Prine.
They were friends.
Coe’s song and much of his catalog, for that matter, was a
part of the Rhinestone Fat Man’s party schtick when he’d plop his monstrous
frame into a chair. I don’t know whatever happened to him, though I saw “The
Rhinestone Fat Man” probably 25 years ago and he was thin and happy and living
in Florida. Flipflops instead of cheap Acme Boots. Floral shirt instead of
rhinestones.
But this isn’t about Rush or Coe. It’s really about me. And
my friend, Jerry, who I love like a brother, and damn I do love my brother, although
Eric (my real brother) never wears rhinestones or stayed out all night washing
away the arenaline of a newsy night – like the one where Chico the Monkey escaped
and Montgomery County deputies mobilized in St. Bethlehem.
“Tim and his friends are crazy,” Eric told our mom after he
failed to make it through one of our all-night news meetings and flapjacks
festivals.
The way we – The real News Brothers and others who we loved
-- lived was better than any other kind of life, even the lives where people
were making several hundred bucks a week to our one or two. For $3 you could
get a short stack and all the coffee you could drink at G’s Pancake House on
Riverside Drive. Open all night long. Constant water refills (necessary for us)
.Now it’s closed and gone. Clarksville, like everywhere else, has
gentrified. No room for grease and caffeine overlooking the river at 3 a.m. any
more.
I’d been working at The Leaf-Chronicle for awhile –
truly loved it so much, I stayed for 14 or more years – and Jerry came over
from Gallatin to paste up the News-Examiner, helping Glover Williams’ composing
room crew trim the copy with that nasty razor machine (I always fretted when I
was around it, as I’m clumsy and bleed very easily. Oh, what pleasant company. We
all need someone we can bleed on.)
Jerry, or “Jer,” as I cleverly called him, would need to get his
weekly newspaper’s stories waxed and his pages to Ronnie Kendrick, who remains
a dear friend, in the camera room and onto the presses before those of us from
the daily Clarksville paper – founded 1808, oldest newspaper in Tennessee,
phone number 552-1808 back then --could begin our composing room work. Fire up
the cigarettes, folks, smoke ‘em and toss them on the cement floor. Hey,
Glover, show me the way to the next whiskey bottle to flavor my coffee.
Hell, I’m talking too much about Jerry here. But he has stood by my side for almost a
half-century. Often he stood by my side because it was the only way either of
us could stand up. There are photos of me sitting on the pavement outside a
place we called “Camelot” that might fool you, thinking I was posing. I was
simply holding onto the earth.
One time we stood side-by-side on an interstate overpass and tried
to rain our used beer down on a friend of ours, Max Moss, who died last year,
who was commuting from Clarksville to Nashville, where he was wire editor at
the Nashville Banner after being shat upon by the corporate types in
Clarksville.
I knew Max drove that lonely stretch of highway at about 3 each
morning, heading to the Banner, which was an hour away. Jerry and I liked being out at 3 a.m.,
whether above a long and lonesome highway or down in my basement, absorbing concoctions,
aswirl in smoke and listening to music until dawn. We
gave up our rainstorm plans because we figured we’d fall onto the highway and
die.
Anyway, most of the above won’t make sense to you, and that’s
OK. I’m writing about me today. And as of 7:30 this morning I have 70 years to
reflect upon. If you were part of my
life but don’t make it into this tall tale of truth and fabrication, you are
better off, because most of the folks whose names will be in here – other than
me, at least of this writing, and Jerry – are dead. The rest of you out there,
whether here or not, who love me, well, shit, I love you, too.
Anyway, to answer Jerry’s question that started this tale: It
really does feel out-of-place to be 70.
I began my day, as I usually do my birthday, by saluting my Mom when I
looked at the clock that said 7:28. I expected the phone to ring in two
minutes.. Up until 22 years ago, she
would call me at 7:30 to remind me that “30 years ago today .. or 40 … (or
whatever number I was settling in on that birthday) …it was a snowy day when we
walked to the hospital ….”
It was the whole story of my birth, minus the contractions and
gory details. It was almost biblical,
though there were no angels nor shepherds present and my older brother, Eric,
was staying with my Grandma and Grandpa Champ in the middle-class home in urban
Detroit, right across the street from the Vernor’s Ginger Ale plant. They used
to use an elf as the advertising trademark of that ginger ale, and as a young
boy when I was old enough to visit that house and sit on the porch, I decided
that God looks like that elf that was painted, huge, on the side of that
building. Funny thing is, in my mind,
when I depict God, he really does look like that Vernor’s elf. I kinda hope I find out I’m right. Although
that discovery can wait.
Actually, once my family moved into Central Time – away from
Michigan and to Chicago and then Nashville – I think my mother was an hour off.
The 7:30 she told me about when I lived in Michigan is 6:30 Central time. I
never corrected her, though, as she had a nice rhythm to her tale. She was a brilliant woman and kind, except
for the time Rusty Perry and I tested our tricycle knowledge by rolling down
the hill to the deep canal on the other side of the cornfiled near our house in
Sylvan Lake. Chased us both back with
switches. I think I was 3 when I climbed on that tricycle and went looking for
adventure in whatever came my way. A true nature’s child, I would get the front
wheel of that ride as close to the deep water as possible. And laugh. Man, did I
laugh.
So far, most of the people in this post are gone. Oh, Jerry’s around. So’s my brother. And
Rhinestone Thin Man likely still is singing country songs at an alligator farm
or somesuch.
Yeah, back to the basic premise here. I didn’t want to die
young, though I probably deserved to, at least made all the right moves for way
too many years. Sometime around the time Suzanne and I adopted our kids in
Romania, I was already an “old” dad, and I decided I needed to behave myself so
I could see them grow up. Emily fooled
me, though, as she moved to California, where she is raising my grandson, Roman,
as damn fine a toddler as you’ve ever seen on a telephone screen. Joe still lives with us, though. I enjoy having
him here while he commutes to grad school.
Took him (Joe, not Roman) with me to see The Rolling Stones a
few weeks ago. Since that time, he keeps playing me Stones songs and
performance videos. Of course, to me,
that is sort of a mission accomplished. When Travis Scott and Drake presided
over the stampede that left many young people dead and injured the other day,
Joe said he liked that music fine. “But this is real music,” he chirped, displaying
footage of The Stones during their Nashville show. His favorite song is “Paint
it Black.” You devil.
“I’ve seen The Rolling Stones and I’ve seen The Who,” he’ll tell
me, and then add that his favorite band remains Eric Brace, Peter Cooper and
Thomm Jutz, three friends of mine who make brilliantly enjoyable
singer-songwriter-style music. Peter qualifies to be up there with Jerry atop
my friends list. When I hired him to
work with me at The Tennessean in the entertainment department he wore a purple
tie and worshiped Jason & The Scorchers.
I don’t know if he’s still got that tie.
I’ve taken Joe with me to see Eric, Peter and Thomm about five
times, and they are his favorites. Maybe he and I can go see The Rolling Stones
four more times.
And I’d really like him to see my honky-tonk-singing pal, Jon
Byrd, a refugee from academia who tossed out all of his books and moved, with a
guitar, to Nashville many years ago. Contrary to his hip image, he lives in
Bellevue.
I’ve been going to concerts since a mid-teen, when I’d go catch Ike
and Tina or Vanilla Fudge at Ravinia, outside Chicago or later MC5, P-Funk and
The Byrds at Soldier field. I think James Taylor was at that latter concert as
well. He was just breaking in. I think he’s done OK with that Fire & Rain.
Mud-Slide Slim.
I once tried to book The Rolling Stones (along with a friend
named Jack Meyers, who I’m sure is wealthy and retired now) for a concert at
the arena in Ames, Iowa, where I never missed a class nor a beer. We had a
formula figured out where they’d make a million, the university would make
money and Jack and I would be able to pay back our school loans. The guy in
charge of the arena nixed our entrepreneurial adventure on our second meeting. He blew his nose and then he blew my mind. Or
my vision.
Still, Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson laughed either with or at
me on another night outside that arena, when I was leaving with ample
assistance. I think the rest of the
original Beach Boys were there, beneath a sweet cloud as I passed.
There have been many adventures along the way, mostly legal and
always ethical by my standards.
I made a movie with Jerry, Rob Dollar (a self-retired friend in
Hopkinsville, Kentucky), Jim Lindgren and a few others. Someday I’ll share it
with you guys. Or maybe not. It was in Super 8mm, with a synched soundtrack, as
our production took place in the dawn of the 1980s and long before people had
home video cameras and machines. Crude, but it does have Jimmy Stewart and John
Glenn in it, among others.d
I married happily one time, and Suzanne and I adopted both our
children in Romania. I mention that above as a stabilizing influence on
me. True enough. I love my family.
I’ve lived a life with dogs and cats as my best friends and
lament long after their passing. I have been unable to shake the death of Roxy,
and her raging cancer led to her a humane death a year ago, the day after
Thanksgiving I held her and stroked her head, staring into her eyes, as the lights
extinguished.
I’d do anything to have her back. I’d do anything to have any of
my pets back. But damn it, Roxy was my best pal.
And that’s not mentioning all the friends I’ve lost, like Scott "Badger" Shelton, radio newsman and pal.
Tony Durr had earned his spot as my closest friend when he died,
reaching for a phone, an empty pill bottle by his side, in an Alaska Coast
Guard barracks. That’s more than 30
years ago and I still miss him.
Others: Harold “The Stranger” Lynch, Richard Worden, Max Moss
(and his wife Merrily), Glover Williams, C.B. Fletcher, John Seigenthaler,
Jimmy Carnahan are just a few of my friends from my newspaper career. Among
their things in common: They are dead.
And I really miss Okey “Skipper” Stepp. I just enjoyed my 40 cups of coffee a day with
him at the Royal York Hotel Café. He lived in the hotel, then a flophouse for
lovable losers, no-account boozers and even the occasional honky-tonk hero or the
arthritic, crippled carny and merchant seaman who once served spaghetti to Al
Capone.
My mom and dad are gone, or I’d be having birthday cake with
them today. Chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream. My brother, Eric, was the
vanilla guy.
In addition to Peter and Jerry, I have many friends. Some newer,
like Peter Rodman. Others I’ve known longer, like Thomm Jutz and Eric Brace.
Bill Lloyd comes to mind. Billy Fields. Larry Schmidt, whose parents I adored. Elise
Shelton (widow of one of my most-trusted friends, Scott “Badger” Shelton, who
wanted to kill all Republicans.
Tom Carpenter remains with me from my college years. He’s
retired from success as a veterinarian and plays golf almost every day near his
Vegas home. The fact we still are friends brings me great joy. John “Titzy”
Nitz is also out there, a wealthy agribusiness sort of guy who long ago took me
and Jocko and Narholm back to his home farm in Cherokee, Iowa, for the
hog-cutting. Makes me wince when I think
of what I witnessed. Jocko and I did the cooking, by the way, as we never
wanted to cut off anyone’s privates.
I’ve reignited a friendship with high school friend Josh Hecht,
a music man, and also with a woman I once dated named (then) Dee Gerson, who is
a helluva artist. They both are out near San Francisco, among my favorite
cities. I’ll probably go out there with
Suzanne again next summer.
Other college pals, Uncle
Moose and Nard Sandholm (aka “Nardholm” above) being the best of them, died
from cancer, kind of like what took Max and my cousin Marc Champ, who was
partly raised by my folks and was like a brother to me. The last time I talked
with Moose – long, long ago – he was holding kittens and sitting in the yard
outside the farmhouse in Red Oak. He told me he was dying and we laughed about
our evenings with Allen Ginsberg and Groucho Marx.
Some friends don’t respond anymore. Which is fine. Jocko I miss
the most. But he says he doesn’t feel like reconnecting now. And, of course,
now is critical, increasingly so for me. Later likely won’t work.
We lose friends along the way.
Like a doctor who lives in Carolina and a judge in Florida. Like Captain
Kirk, who turned into a Trump-loving, Jesus-thumping asshole, who told me I was
wrong about both. Jesus is my friend, but Captain Kirk used him as a weapon, at
least until I told him to go to hell. Or actually a much harsher farewell ended
our final conversation a year or so ago. A friend since college no more.
If I was to tell a 20-year-old Tim that one of his best friends
by the time he turned 70 would be original country outlaw Bobby Bare, he
probably wouldn’t be surprised. That
20-year-old loved music by Bare, Kristofferson (also a dear friend), Willie
(who I know) and Johnny Cash, who liked me before he died.
I’m not going to go on and list all the musicians I have known
and loved. For that, well, you’ll have to stay tuned for further stories.
Though I sure love Chet Atkins, Eddy Arnold, Mac Wiseman and Funky Donnie
Fritts.
Duane Eddy is another friend.
I do feel lonely often as I work alone in my basement office. I
have a great family and a fine cat, Champ, who helps me. But Roxy’s gone.
And I need to get down to see Jim Myers at Elliston Place Soda
Shop, where he works his bearded ass off. Oh, I guess bearded ass probably
isn’t a great description.
Freddy Wyatt is playing golf with his preacher son in
Clarksville. And my good friend Pastor Kip is not to me a holy man, but a source
of encouragement and love.
Keith Cartwright has a new book out that I need to read. And I
miss Charlie Appleton, who wrote of bizarre murderous twists. He’s fine now.
Just kind of old and enjoying his family.
There are other friends I should mention. Hell, I almost forgot
Phil Lee, former Burrito Brother turned troubadour. And the late George
Hamilton IV. George Jones.
I can’t get to all of them or you, so don’t feel badly if you
aren’t in this treatise. I love a lot of people until they stab me in the back
or, worse still, stab one of my friends in the back. Do the latter, and you are
dead to me.
But I know I’m surrounded by love and I know I’ve lived life
both fully, until my system couldn’t stand it, and lovingly and with few
regrets, but a few costly miscues.
I cherish those who cross my path probably more than I should,
as I can’t understand why they drop their friendships after they’ve gotten what
they could out of me.
My best friends, though, are really John, Paul, George and
Ringo. They’ve been with me through it all, occupying a large slice of my
brain. I listen to them today as much as
ever in my life and I did interview Ringo a couple of times. I’ll be cranking
up the “Get Back” remasters while I ride my 10-12 miles on my exercise bike in
a few minutes.
Mick and Keith and Charlie and Bill and Brian and Mick T. and
Ron also spend their time in my head, but only to punctuate my soul. We all
need someone we can lean on, as I noted earlier.
I could go on, but I’m tired and need to get to work or at least
save energy for my daily bike ride.
Yes, I am surprised I am 70 years old. Only old people live that
long.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.
