THEY CALL ME "FLAPJACKS"

One less finger to count on: The death of a News Brother

2012-01-24T12:16:00.000-08:00

Scott “Badger” Shelton is dead.
Anyway, it seems like only the other day that he and I – remember I am “Flapjacks” -- were, with my big brother, Eric, and my pal Rob “Death” Dollar hanging out with the Lone Ranger. And it was Scott who was egging me on to head for the Kentucky-Tennessee border when Trooper Rudy tried his best to shut down the fun. I got a ticket, but I think even Trooper Rudy liked the damn nice guys who were riding in

the old Plymouth Duster.
After all, we were not only friends of the Lone Ranger, we were The News Brothers..
That was 30 years before Jan. 23, 2012, when Badger died.
Damn cancer. I’d like to use the ”F” word instead of “damn,” but it might offend. I mean I only use that in anger and in private, like when someone cuts me off in traffic and I figure I’m going to die. Or, I’d guess, when Trooper Rudy’s lights flashed as I pulled over on U.S. 41A, just south of Hopkinsville, Ky., where we’d been befriended by Mr. Lone Ranger.
Hold it, I know Mr. Lone Ranger is dead. But not Scott… He couldn’t be… . I mean how long ago was it that he joined Rob and me to ride the notorious newsroom shark back at The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper, where I spent my early years and flavored my soul? The shark ride was a News Brothers’ protest of everything and nothing. Mostly we were laughing and being friends who shared a peculiar trade, gathering news, him for the local radio station, WJZM, me and Rob for a newspaper for which we bled in effort to serve “our city” … the beautiful still in my heart Clarksville, Tenn.
Screw cancer. Yeah. Still wanted to let the “F-bomb” fly.
But he’s still here, isn’t he? Wasn’t it just the other day, give or take 30 years, that he stood there, with his lab coat covered with Beatles badges – that’s how he became Badger -- and applauded as I almost fell off the roof of The Leaf-Chronicle?
We were filming a second movie to the first one Rob and I did with a few other friends. The original -- “Flapjacks: The Motion Picture” – had been in our minds a huge success, as we raised money for charity and enjoyed our relatively minor celebrity. We did a little Christmas short subject, but never finished near-legendary “Flapjacks II: Revenge of The Big Guy” feature film because life – personal and professional lives – got in the way.
Another close friend of mine once said “Life’s what happens when you’re busy making plans” … or something similar. Course that guy’s dead now too. And all he had wanted to do was give peace a chance. Course that’s not a part of this story, really.
Our nearly fatal News Brothers roof scene – which almost had me going head first onto Commerce Street -- was going to be kind of like The Beatles on the roof of Apple Records. Flapjacks (me) was – by temperament and philosophy – the Lennon figure of the group. Death was the kinda-McCartney. Badger was Ringo – he has the drum kit in his basement as evidence. Jerry “Chuckles” Manley was a sort of George, although much thicker and with an accent that’s much more heavily Petersburg, Tenn., country boy than Liverpudlian Scouse.
Anyway, I didn’t fall off the roof and laugh my way to my death that day. It would have made good film footage. But Badger was glad I regained my balance. Death and Chuckles and a fellow I’ll just call “Tennessee” and a little bald-headed guy named “Danny” joined in the wondrous wall of applause. Then we shot another scene before climbing down through the roof and into the newspaper composing room, getting ready for another day at work.
Still got that Super 8mm film and at times have thought about having it developed to see what’s there. Then maybe film a grand finale with some much older guys. Heck, even my old pal, film editing wiz Robert Smith, could have taken it and spliced it together like he did with our first feature 30 or so years ago.
Course the rooftop scene film’s probably no good. Wouldn’t matter now, anyway, because Badger died Monday, so who would repeat that feverishly bored applause?
To hell with cancer.
Almost all of the true News Brothers made our annual reunion trek to Clarksville a couple months ago. We stopped for our customary plates of flapjacks, of course, at G’s on Riverside Drive. Even Badger made it out of his home off Memorial Drive, thanks to his beloved wife, Elise, also a former colleague, and his own determination.
We went by the Badger residence afterward. He was tired and weak. But he laughed. When I hugged him goodbye, I knew it could be the last time. But I didn’t want to believe it. I mean after the “goodbyes” “I’ll pray for yous” shared by all of The real News Brothers, we laughed.
Maybe, we figured, Badger was going to bounce back from his cancer. He’d tricked it before. Maybe this wasn’t goodbye, but instead “see ya later,” and we’d reunite again, with Scott getting the last laugh. That full-bellied laugh that he tried to punctuate the air with as we shared that lovely November night in Badger’s basement. The laughter wore on him, though.
Vile cancer.
My life now is into its fourth score or something like that. I’m 60, so I’ve completed three score and two months. There’s a lot of stuff muddled and muddied in my mind, but then there are the big Kodachrome images from back when we all thought the world was a sunny day, Oh yeah…
So many of the snapshots are from Clarksville, where I spent 14 years of my newspaper career. I believe that’s 42 in human years, as the lifestyle takes its toll. Everything looks worse in black and white, and the cost on a newsman’s soul has been demonstrated by many other friends as being potentially mortal.
But I’m still alive. Scott’s not. He died Monday.
Damn cancer.
Still as I searched out the details of my friend’s death, as I talked with my pal, Rob, and with the wonderful widow, Elise, I kept lighting on crystal clear and Kodachrome images.
There I was, scrambling up the stairs of the old WJZM radio station in downtown Clarksville – very near the church where Badger now will be memorialized.
I’d become his friend because journalists in a small city have to lean on each other sometimes. Besides that, we liked to laugh. I’d go up to the WJZM newsroom and talk about what’s going on. Maybe I’d get a guest spot on Jimmy in the Morning’s program – complete with the news breaks by the fine Scott Shelton reporting. He was no Les Nesman, that’s for damn sure.
Maybe I’d even get a chance to spin some discs, some stacks of wax. I remember both Scott and Jimmy looking in wonderment when I played “Helter Skelter” on the 23 watt AM station … not your common 6 a.m. wakeup fare on pop radio. When I get to the bottom I go back to the top of the slide….
There are other times, like when Scott would drop in at the newspaper to stir up trouble or just visit with kindred souls. Almost everyone I knew in Clarksville knew Scott, so he was almost everywhere I went.
I moved from Clarksville 23 years ago or so. Over the years we’ve gotten together occasionally. But even when we were apart, Scott, well all the fellows in the News Brothers, owned a piece of my heart. If I really needed help or prayers – some think I need them – I knew I could always reach out to one of them. When so many of my so-called friends seemingly were frightened to be associated with me, Scott would shoot me an e-mail. Just encouragement. A very spiritual man, he offered up prayers that I’d have “a long and lucrative freelance career.” Getting there Scott. Thanks for the faith in me.
Damn cancer.
I’m not going to say Badger couldn’t get ornery. But that’s OK. Friends know friends have faults. Hell, look at me…. And some people still love me.
One less now, unfortunately.
There really is no need to go into a long and melancholy tribute or to replay my friend’s battle. All I can say is he had guts. His wife, Elise, had and has guts. So do their boys. It was a family affair, good and bad. Hell, just last Christmas Badger’s wife got him a nice HD TV, so he could watch the bowl games.
As the cancer seemed to slow, I’ll bet he was already waiting for the Vols next football season…. But he’ll get better reception where he is now. Course I heard God’s an Alabama fan – just look at the record for proof – and doesn’t let folks watch UT games. That’s not to say an angel can’t slip away to Neyland Stadium, though.
Another great friend, Tony Durr, who died many years ago in some lonesome and desolate Alaskan outpost once told me that “you’re lucky if by the time you get to the other end of life you’ll be able to count your true friends on the fingers of one hand.”
And then before I knew it I had “his” finger suddenly and mortally available.
I’m not sure if the “one hand” philosophy is correct. Seems I still have (yessir, yessir) two hands full.
Most of them are News Brothers, a strange and endearing fraternity of guys who came of age telling tales of bloodshed and of county fair chicken pot pie winners.
In recent years, I’ve even added fingers, because I’ve been in need of help or encouragement and there are those who have stepped forward, as I would for them.
But there is something so special about the News Brothers.
And now there is one less of us. Rest in Peace, Badger. I love you.
Fucking cancer....

My pal Vince Gill talks about how much fun it is to make sweet music with lovely Amy Grant

2011-12-20T14:09:00.000-08:00

OK, so it's Christmastime. I guess it was three years ago I wrote this piece for the Nashville Symphony. They didn't use this version because I mention that Vince Gill enjoys sleeping with Amy Grant and other light-hearted things. I was proud of the version that was used, but figured you might like to read this one. By the way, I'll be back in full bloom soon.

“Earthy elegance” is how Amy Grant describes her husband’s cross-genre appeal.
Country icon George Jones says the man he nicknamed “Sweet Pea” has “the kind of voice for just any type of music,” whether sung in a high lonesome saloon or the grandest of symphony halls.
The guy in question, Vince Gill, says he’s just a “hillbilly” who respects his surroundings and audiences.
“I always try to play what’s appropriate,” he says. During his three nights at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, “I’m not going to do the crying-in-your-beer, cheating songs. I want to do what’s beautiful for the room, honor the room for its integrity and honesty.”
Some argue country music is best when played in a barroom. If so, for three nights, Turner Hall in the Schermerhorn Symphony Center will become the most acoustically pure honky-tonk in the business.
Grant points out her beloved is at home in the most-reckless joints as well as in the elegance of the Schermerhorn. “I’ll say this about Vince Gill: The one thing I’ve always loved about him is he’s such a combination of elegance and rough around the edges.
“His voice, the way he carries himself can be absolutely down-home. He could get along comfortably in the roughest barroom – that’s his roots – and he can put on a tux jacket and walk out with the symphony.”
She notes, though, that playing with a world-class symphony offers challenges not found in the smoke-filled roadhouses where Gill honed his pure-tenor voice and guitar-playing skills. For example, the music must be orchestrated and the singer must resist any whim to call out set list shifts. Plus there’s a certain pomp, or at least propriety, when playing to the tie, gown and Chardonnay crowd.
Gill admits the challenge, but mostly he simply relishes playing the venue he says will become “Nashville’s Carnegie Hall.”
While he is a heralded artist – 19 Grammys, 18 Country Music Association Awards and six Academy of Country Music Awards are just some of his hardware – he also is the music world’s “class clown.” As showcased during his dozen years as CMA Awards host, Gill’s self-effacing, roll-your-eyes charm allows him to tip-toe the line that defines good behavior.
Again, he tries to fit his tongue to the circumstances. Perhaps he tuned up – or toned down -- for his symphony stand during a three-week Christmas tour with his wife.
“It’s always a lot of pressure performing with Amy,” he says. “I mean, I’ll say just about anything between songs. But I’ve always got to be on my best behavior with Amy.”
Regardless, this funny man -- who jabs at himself for being “calorically challenged” -- says the “awesome” thing about touring with his wife is not just that he’s traveling with his best friend: “I get to sleep with the other act,” he deadpans.
That “other act” isn’t on the Schermerhorn bill (“But I’m in town and I’m available,” she teases), but her remarkable passion for the Nashville Symphony might apply a dose of musical performance anxiety to Gill.
Beginning in 1993, when the symphony was in dire fiscal straits and perhaps facing extinction, Grant began performing with them in a series of fund-raising concerts that helped retire the debt. Beginning in 1996, she and the symphony barnstormed the land with Christmas concerts, raising the orchestra’s profile.
The Nashville Symphony arose with flourish to become a world-class, Grammy-winning, Carnegie Hall-playing outfit beneath the baton of late Maestro Kenneth Schermerhorn.
Instead of fading to black, the orchestra now performs at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center, a monument which meshes the best of the world’s great halls with modern technology.
Gill hardly takes performing in the Schermerhorn’s Laura Turner Hall for granted.
“I want to honor the room in its most glorious state,” he says.
Gill remains mindful of his surroundings and audiences wherever he plays.
This modern-day soul of the Grand Ole Opry inserts vitality into that institution by performing regularly there and by challenging younger country artists to take that venerable stage. He stays true to principles nurtured by Roy Acuff and Bill Monroe. “I never play the electric guitar out there. I like the way acoustic music plays there. I play bluegrass. I try to honor the tradition of the place where I’m doing the music.”
One might argue the Schermerhorn is too young for traditions, but Gill uses his career’s fail-safe tool to scour the songbook for tunes suitable for the hear-a-pin-drop confines.
“I follow my ears,” he says. “My ears are my greatest asset. It’s not my hands. It’s not my voice. It’s my ability to hear.
“And if I can hear what’s appropriate to sing or play, that’s what I point toward.
“My ears haven’t let me down in a long time. I just trust them and try to do what they tell me is the right thing for me. And I still hear pretty good.”
His symphony choices are songs that “orchestrate well.”
“I hope I can keep it fairly organic and try to honor the symphony and honor the room.”
Don’t expect the electric guitar wizardry that long-ago earned him an invitation to join Mark Knopfler’s Dire Straits (“Money for Nothing”).
He’ll keep it acoustic. “I’ll be trying to do the things that are beautiful, do ballads. There’s no
point in trying to rock the crowd.
“It’ll be more in the jazz or subtle blues world. I don’t see a lot of flash and dash.”
Expect the “Go Rest High On That Mountain” vocal purity that earned him legions of admirers, among them country icon Jones, whose own voice turned many a barroom ballad into a thing of beauty.
It is said that Jones, in his prime, possessed the best voice in the history of country music.
Jones, the man they call “Possum,” disagrees: “I think Vince has the most beautiful voice I’ve ever heard. He’s the man and the singer that everyone would like to be like. He just overwhelms me.”
Jones, who worked package tours with Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn and Gill, adds “I don’t think there’s a nicer person in country music or any music.”
Jones says “He Stopped Lovin’ Her Today” and the like never belonged in a symphony hall. “I don’t have the type of voice that fits in, but Vince does.”
Gill has played the Schermerhorn before. And while he takes his job seriously, he is, after all the impish Vince Gill…. So to the genteel souls in the audience: Be forewarned ….
One night, while dazzling a Turner Hall crowd, he got it in his head that he really, really wanted
to sing a tongue-in-cheeker he’d recorded with The Notorious Cherry Bombs, a country super group that included, among others, pals Rodney Crowell and Tony Brown.
That song: “It’s Hard to Kiss the Lips at Night That Chew Your Ass Out All Day Long.”
“I looked at Amy and I told her: ‘I’m sorry, dear, but I’m going to have to do this.’ ”
Christian-pop star Grant, who’d signed on for the better and the worse, didn’t stop him.
While he doesn’t rule out a repeat performance this month, he says it would have to occur during his solo segments. “I would have the good taste, at least, not to ask the symphony to play along on that one.”
Once again, his mind turns to the special environment. “I’ve been to Carnegie Hall. And I heard the symphony at the Schermerhorn the first night. I have not heard rooms that respond to the music the way the Schermerhorn did.
“The sound of the instruments, when played lightly, it was beautiful. When they bear down on the violins, you could hear the actual wood of the instrument.
“That’s a testament to how great the room sounds. It’s magical.”

A reflection of Christmas lights and birthdays with Little Jimmy Dickens, a giant of a human being

2011-12-19T08:03:00.000-08:00

Little Jimmy Dickens is one of my favorite people, deservingly loved for his charm and personality. People sometimes forget he's one hell of an artist. But that's an aside. Saw him Saturday night at the Preds game and we all sang Happy Birthday to Little Jim. Anyway, in appreciation of a great man's 91 years -- his birthday is today -- I thought I'd resurrect a story I wrote for my friend, Susan Leathers, and her Brentwoood Home Page last Christmas. Remember,this story is a year old, so it doesn't reflect anything happening today. I haven't been out to see if Jimmy has his lights back. In any case, the story you are about to read is true.

Little Jimmy Dickens sits in his house on West Concord Road in Brentwood and chirps, softly, about the activity on his one-acre lot.
“I’m just kicking back and watching the birds,” says the Grand Ole Opry legend, adding quickly that something is missing from his yard this year.
For the first time in more than two decades, the homestead in Brentwood Hills is absent the elaborate light display that has raised children’s smiles and bedazzled holiday sightseers.
Closing in on his 90th birthday, he simply decided not to partake in the elaborate decorating this year. You see, he’s not one to hire yard decorators. This salt-of-the-earth soul always has done it himself.
“It’s such a struggle to put them up by myself. I just let it go this year,” says Dickens on a blustery Williamson County afternoon.
Then he pauses. “I miss it. A lot. I been doing it for so long.”
He explains that this year he and his wife, Mona, and their two daughters and their families – “I’ve got two granddaughters and a great-grandbaby, a girl. I’m surrounded by pretty girls” – are going to spend Christmas away from Brentwood.
“We have a chalet up on the mountain in Gatlinburg that we’re being given to use,” he says. “I’m looking forward to it.”
While up there, they’ll celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Christmas Eve marriage to Mona. “We’ll just be with everybody,” he says, of that celebration.
Because of the plans to Christmas in the mountains rather than home in Brentwood, the genial heart of the Opry figured he’d limit the decorating to a lonely wreath or two.
He doesn’t blame age, although he could, of course. He was a mere youth, perhaps not even 70, when he began turning his home place into a holiday showplace.
It sounds like even he has a hard time believing it when he says: “I’ll be 90 Dec. 19.”
That birthday, by the way, will be celebrated at home. But Dickens doesn’t know yet what’s in store for him.
“My wife is full of secrets. She don’t tell me much, but I’ll be in the middle of it,” he says, breaking into the laughter that has delighted Opry fans since he joined that historic broadcast family in 1948.
“Tater” – as his pal Hank Williams dubbed Dickens after the 4-foot-11 performer’s song “Take an Old Cold ’Tater (And Wait)” --reckons that since his birthday is on a Sunday, at least it will be one of his days off. He still works the Opry regularly, performing Tuesday, Friday and Saturday nights as well as being available whenever the show needs him.
“They keep me busy,” he says. “But I don’t do any recording or any touring much anymore. Oh, I’ll do a few things with Bill Anderson and the casinos here and there.”
Other than that, he’s content with his work for the Opry. He also admits delight at the newest generation of fans hatched after he began appearing in videos and televised appearances with reigning CMA entertainer of the year Brad Paisley, who as a teenager opened for Dickens and who still regards the older, smaller man as a mentor.
“Brad’s been so very kind to me to use me in his videos and stuff. He’s just a prince,” says Dickens, who began his show biz career in 1938 on the radio in West Virginia.
For the next decade, he plied his musical trade for radio stations throughout the Midwest, where in addition to singing and picking “I was selling anything from baby chicks to trees.”
He found his permanent home in 1948, when “Mr. (Roy) Acuff brought me to the Opry.”
That King of Country Music died in 1992, but this firecracker of an entertainer continues to thrive.
When Dickens isn’t at the Opry, there’s a good chance he’s talking about it. “I do a lot of interviews and things like that. I enjoy talking to people. I appreciate their interest. I worry when they don’t call me.”
When he’s not engaged in Opry pursuits, he keeps busy taking care of the house and his acre yard in Brentwood Hills.
“There’s always something to do around here daily,” he says, of the chores he’s tended to in the four decades or so spent in “the third house built on this hill.”
As noted earlier, the wildlife rank pretty highly on his list of passions. “We feed a lot of birds,” he says, pointing out “at least a dozen” feeders within eyeshot.
“We have those little bitty wrens and whatever you call them. They’re beautiful. Got a lot of redbirds, too.”
He also tends to the pond filled with “big Japanese coy. They go to the bottom, though, this time of year.”
But on this cold and gray December day, he admits regrets about not putting the lights up this year.
“Oh it’s a lot of work. It takes me about a week to put them up,” says this lively nonagenarian.
He’s unlike many holiday decorating enthusiasts, in that he can’t quantify his work by rattling off the number of lights he has put up in years past.
“Golly, I have no idea. I just kept putting them up until I ran out.”
And there are some special reasons he laments not taking the effort to get his yard decorated and lighted up by the day after Thanksgiving, as has been his tradition.
“I like it when the kids in the neighborhood come by and look at them. And down at the Orphans Home, well, they bring the children by and see them lights. That was worth it.
“They would just bring them buses by. That’s the part I miss more than anything. The people in the neighborhood thanking me for putting them up and the kids enjoying them.
“That meant a lot to me.”
There is a long pause and a twinkle. “I think I’ll probably do them again next year.”

It's a damn wonderful life ... aka 'The Big Guy got run over by a reindeer and some wise guys from not afar '

2011-12-10T11:13:00.000-08:00

As you know, old Flapjacks is working on a longer project that is sure to delight. But can't let this holiday season pass without revisiting one of my favorite damn Christmases ever.

“Have a Damn Nice Christmas.”

Makes you feel like breaking out the hot chocolate and singing about that Wenceslaus fellow feasting on Stephen or whatever.
That Damn Nice holiday sentiment nearly cost me my job back in the winter of 1982. Fortunately, I was able to make The Big Guy, our publisher blink. Perhaps the dollar signs I’d help him earn blinded him temporarily, long enough for me to back out his door, put on my yellow fedora and fire up a smoke.
Hell, for all I remember, and sometimes that isn’t much, The Big Guy maybe even smiled. At the very least he jangled the change in his pockets and nodded, blankly, thinking “How in the world can I get back to Carolina and out of this institution....” He was from that state populated by basketball and Biltmore and his prize, upon retirement, was to get back to the mountains and drool.
Call me naive or innocent (few do, you know), but I was surprised by the fuming anger of The Big Guy, as I didn’t understand what was so wrong with this sentimental greeting. I even sent one of the cards to my mom, and she didn’t object. She was willing always to have a Damn Nice Christmas right up til she died. I think she hung the card on the Christmas Tree. Still she had been a journalist, so I suppose she got it.
That greeting that was broadcast around Clarksville came during the heady early days of the fraternity of nicotine-stained journalists who came together with purpose and pride and along the way became known as the News Brothers. Blue-collar journalists, telling blue-collar stories to a blue-collar (and Army-drab-collar) town.
Most people liked it when we wished them a “Damn Nice Christmas” 28 years ago.
After all, wasn’t that the last line from It’s A Wonderful Life? Jimmy Stewart looks into the camera, eyes twinkle as the bell tinkles and says: “Attaboy, Clarence: Have a Damn Nice Christmas!” Listen closer next time, as that part of the line gets drowned out by all the joyous singing.
In the weeks and months leading up to delivering the holiday greeting to The Big Guy, our publisher, I’d been helping to guide what came to be prize-winning coverage involving the deaths of two beautiful and innocent young people. Of course, we weren’t looking for recognition. We just were looking for the truth. And justice. And, when the adrenaline and nicotine wore off, perhaps some sleep.
Kathy Jane Nishiyama and Rodney Wayne Long still stir nightmares in sections of my soul scarred and raw by their monstrous murders almost three decades ago. There still are the sweats on cold nights.
Children, really. Promise extinguished. Forever frozen as “mug shots” that ran daily on the front page with eerily parallel dispatches about the mysteries, searches, chases, savagery and mourning.
The newspaper wasn’t large in staff, but the staff was large in heart. We were pretty young ourselves, though our own innocence had been washed away by years of covering trailer-trash murders and gunfights involving prostitutes, transvestites, serial killers and soldiers. Our photographer would show us some of the not-ready for prime-time shots he got of bodies and bullet holes. Even I was shocked by one of a fatal wound right below a guy’s testicles. He not only bled out, but his once-proud – to him I’m sure -- private parts were making the photographic rounds of police departments and newsrooms.
Sure there was gallows humor. When you are making $150 a week and aswirl in bodies, sometimes you just had to laugh when you saw the photograph. Sorry. But it’s true.
The Kathy Jane and Rodney stories touched us and I’ll tell you much more about them some other time.
Suffice it to say that for the most part, we worked around the clock to tell those stories, to cover the deaths and the get to know the families of the teen-age victims and the killers. Some of the finest police coverage ever by my dear friend, Rob “Death” Dollar, with the occasional assist by me and by our vigilant Baptist wordsmith, the near-legendary Frank “Wuhm” White, a successful businessman and downtown roof owner. Another story. Another night. For this is Christmas.
Long-time copy desk pal Jerry “Chuckles” Manley, a semi-portly boy with a reddish beard, edited the copy with expertise and with at least one keen eye while Virginia Slims smoke made the other eye run. His sidekick, “Flash” – a fresh-from-school news virgin – aged every time he helped copy-edit those stories and write a headline about a body found or a gleeful, boasting killer.
My boss Tony Durr – whom I still love and miss a couple of decades after he died, alone and perhaps in mortal remorse, in a lonely Alaska Coast Guard barracks after washing out of journalism and a half-dozen marriages -- pranced around the newsroom, excited by the grisly coverage and his occasional assist and /or attempt at deflecting the slings and arrows of upper management .
Sure, great coverage of two murders that occurred at about the same time in the same Southern town. “Things like that aren’t supposed to happen here in Clarksville,” barked one police officer who enjoyed back-shooting dope-smugglers, pimps, throat-slicers, chicken thieves, father rapers and other everyday perpetrators and predators.
Sixteen-hour work days could be punctuated by cigarettes exploding in the newsroom. Yep, we booby-trapped the open packs on our desks with “loaded” cigarettes. There were those who never wanted to admit they smoked by buying their own. Wives would object if they openly indulged. So they bummed and as a result I loved watching them jerk around in their chairs, gasping when the smoke cleared, the frayed cigarette pursed between Lee Oswald lips.
Seems pretty juvenile, but then again, so does rubber vomit.
But this is a story about Christmas 1982 and the card. You remember the Christmas card, don’t you?
It actually seemed like a great idea, guaranteed to raise a smile, in the wake of all that had gone on in the news. And besides that, Rob and I were coming off the success of the movie we’d produced and directed, written, whatever the word might be, and even starred in ... along with “Flash” and “Chuckles” as co-stars and others who occasionally dropped in to take part. Half the town’s police force and firefighters and charitable organizations were involved to some extent. Even the mayor and the first American to circle the globe participated.
“Flapjacks: The Motion Picture” -- with its intricate plot revolving around news events, along with its slapstick and satire poking fun at journalism (we didn’t realize we were the last generation of practitioners of that profession at the time), law enforcement, pop culture and current events -- holds up to this day.
With all the pie-throwing, gun-slappping, confetti-flying, car-chasing and finger-flipping scenes, it also really is a portrait of my life at the time. I could have called it “Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine,” after the Doors album, because it came out of my head – and out of Rob’s – as we went along, coping with the disaster and death we’d been covering.
We’d meet for coffee at 7 a.m. on Saturdays with a “script” for the day’s shoot, film for a few hours, then wash the shaving cream from the pies or the sideshow elephants turds off our sneakers, go to the newsroom with a couple fresh packs of smokes and put out prize-winning newspapers well into the night and next morning.
OK, you may be wondering what this all has to do with a Christmas.
You see, the movie played until dawn in an abandoned theater in the city and raised a few hundred bucks that went to a homeless agency, the fire department’s Christmas toy drive and the Police Department’s children and widows’ fund.
Even the newspaper hierarchy was pleased by the movie that came a month before Christmas ... some young staffers, after all, had done this on their own time, made headlines in Clarksville and in the corporation for raising money for charity ... and at the same time won journalism awards.
Of course, with all this holiday cheer floating around, Rob and I decided the best thing a group of guys can do is put together a Christmas card to thank our friends and to express our belief in peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind .
It in turn would reappear the following December on our planned News Brothers calendar, again a fund-raising proposition. More on that too another day, as I’m sure you are anxious to get out and shop for some children who really don’t care what you give them, as long as they get something. See the loaded cigarettes or rubber vomit section above for last-minute ideas.
When we weren’t immersed in the most heinous of murders, driven to drink (and sometimes getting a ride home) by the human carnage we’d witnessed, we got further involved in charity.
We wore our shades to give blood and to visit dying children. . There even were plans under way for a News Brother Basketball Tournament, that we were going to host at one of the local high schools, again to raise money for charity.
There was nothing complex about the Christmas Card. We’d wear our News Brothers’ best – bits and pieces of the tuxedoes we’d worn in the days of the “Flapjacks” premiere.
Rob, Chuckles, Flash and I showed up in our finery. Our clerk, a pretty woman named Neesa, was good enough sport to show up to don the top half of a Santa costume and expose what were and likely still are damn nice legs.
Fresh from the photo shoot, Rob and I dashed to our favorite printer and ordered a few dozen postcard-sized copies of that picture, with the phrase “Have a Damn Nice Christmas” printed below the picture.
Delighted by the result, Rob, in his white top-hat and I in my yellow fedora immediately distributed these cards around town.
We started out in the old Royal York Hotel, a high-rise former swank joint that had degenerated into a flop for widows, widowers, lovable losers, liars and murderous drifters. Many of them were our closest friends. “I was so tough my spit would bounce,” one of my friends told me when I wished him a happy 83rd birthday. Again, another story.
We went up the elevator – it was one of those you drove yourself – and stopped at each floor, sliding a card beneath each door. “Gunsmoke” reruns blared from the TV sets in 90 percent of those rooms.
We then left a stack at the desk to be distributed in the lobby.
In the next hours, we wandered the streets of the city, handing them out, sliding them into the mail slots for county and city officials. It was sort of a Charlie Dickens scene we were creating in the cold, snowy Clarksville night.
We even saved one in case Chico the Monkey ever came back from the dead. I still have that one. Just in case. That too is another story and it actually took place later. I have told you about that tragedy before and likely will again, as Chico’s death haunts and delights me to this day.
Then, spreading Christmas cheer, we went to the newspaper complex, going from the press room to the advertising offices, to the camera room, to the job shop, sliding cards beneath doors and leaving them on desks.
The last one, and we didn’t hesitate, went beneath the office door of The Big Guy, our publisher.
“He’ll like this,” said Rob.
“Yeah,” I said. We didn’t really think he’d mind one way or another, as long as he could jangle the change in his pockets as loudly as possible.
Perhaps he was angry by the Chico coverage. Maybe it was my long interview with a drifter named W. Robert Cameron. I’d caught him while he was resting along a railroad siding, taking a breather from his mission of hitchhiking to Austria.
Maybe it was Rob’s steady stream of stories about death and destruction –”No more wreck stories” we were commanded after about the 24th traffic fatality involving a drunken soldier in six months. Not good for the Chamber image, I suppose, in hindsight. Especially at Christmastime.
“Tim, uhh, this is The Big Guy, uhhhh,” was the voice the next morning when I picked up the Flap phone, one of those blue plastic contraptions that I kept next to the Mr. Potato Head collection on my desk. “Could you come down here and see me.”
I still didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t sound angry. Just self-important.
“Uhh, Tim, uhh, could you close the door and, uhh, sit down.” I noticed he was jangling his change harder and faster. I wondered if I should offer him a loaded cigarette.
He held up the card. “This is wrong,” he said, sounding like a sinister Bobby Knight. “You do not put ‘Damn’ and ‘Christmas’ in the same sentence. You guys have gone too far. Do not give any more of these out.”
Once I explained that half the town had them, he stood up and walked across the room. He was jangling wildly. The rosewater scent of his hair spritz filled the tiny confines.
“Tim, uhh, you are a great newspaperman, uhh, but this is too much. Do you have any of them left?”
I nodded. “Sure. How many more do you want? And I can order more”
He stood there, in silence, nodded to the door and then said “don’t do this again.”
I looked at him and smiled.
“What?” he said, in a benign bark.
“Big Guy, Have a Damn Nice Christmas.”
He shook his head. “You too,” he muttered. “You too.”
I ambled back upstairs to the newsroom, where Rob greeted me. He put on his top-hat, fired up a Kool and we went for coffee.
A dozen hours later, about five blocks from the newspaper, a house caught fire. A guy dressed like Santa Claus, apparently en route to a party, stopped.
By the time Rob and the Fire Department got there, a soot-covered Santa Claus, with a handicapped woman slung over his shoulders, walked from the fiery house.
He handed her over to the rescuers and anonymously disappeared into the night.
I can’t remember if we ever identified the Good Samaritan with the jiggling belly and the soot-covered white beard. I’d like to say there were flying reindeer involved, but if so, they all vanished without a trace.
All I know is it was a great lead story on a holiday that should revolve around generosity, love and peace. As papers rolled off the press early the next morning, I carried one outside, onto Third Street, where a little snow was falling. Rob was standing out there, with our old friend, Skipper, the old carny and merchant marine who once served spaghetti to Al Capone. Rob had rousted him from his room at the old hotel. It was cold. Boy was it cold.
We shared nips of cheap brandy and wished each other a great holiday: “Have a Damn Nice Christmas.”
Skipper looked up as Tony, Jerry and Jim arrived. He handed them the bottle of cheap brandy.
Skipper, who wasn’t wearing his teeth, looked up to the sky and began singing “Silent Night” in his amazing Irish tenor.
With that beautiful voice echoing off the old buildings around us, I looked to Rob and the others and smiled. “God Bless us every one.”

Life beneath the scoreboard: 'I don't have time to be sad'

2011-12-03T08:24:00.000-08:00

All the talk about the "new" Sounds stadium at different locations sent me mentally trekking back to a day spent in the old neighborhood beneath the Greer Stadium scoreboard. It is a neighborhood that should be revitalized, but Metro powers-that-be look instead always at downtown and the riverfront for their showpieces. Anyway, here's the chronicle of an afternoon spent with one of the now-vacant neighborhood residents when I was writing for the Tennessean, Nashville's morning daily.

Monica Bender's dad was only 32 when he collapsed and died while jogging. His daughter, on this day shooting hoops on a South Nashville hard court, is that exact age.
Her mom also died way too young. Breast cancer claimed her four years ago, at age 57.
The young woman's 85-year-old grandmother has diabetes and needs considerable attention. Grandma also worries that heavy winds will blow Greer Stadium's guitar-shaped scoreboard onto the family home, almost directly below it on Chestnut Street.
"She also is afraid the fireworks noise will hurt the house," says Monica, who lives with grandma Ellen Taylor and tends to her medications.
Heavy load? Perhaps. But Monica is happy.
"I don't have time to be sad." She stops dribbling her well-worn basketball.
"You can hardly read what it says." Monica rolls the ball forward in her hands to expose the almost invisible Rawlings logo. "It's so smooth now, sometimes it's hard to control."
I had been driving through the Greer Stadium neighborhood when I spotted her. It was midday, and here was a grown woman attempting a jump shot from the top of what would approximate the key, if there was such a marking on the asphalt parking lot. As the shot echoed off the rim, she snagged the rebound and delivered a tidy layup. It was time to park my car.
"Basketball's my hobby," Monica explains after I interrupt her solitary game outside the old SNAP Neighborhood Center at Martin and Humphreys.
"I like to come out here for an hour or so when I'm not working." Seldom are games - or even other people - involved.
"I just like to shoot," she says. "Do my own strategy."
This is Monica's serene oasis. Warehouses, office buildings, the Sounds ballpark and her grandmother's home pretty much fill her horizons.
"I like the scenery," she says, running her right hand over the almost cue-ball-smooth basketball's skin.
Monica grew up in Mt. Juliet, but her heart forever has been tied to the house behind the scoreboard.
"My mother was raised right down there," she says, looking toward the white house beneath the giant guitar. "It always was home. We came here every weekend when I was growing up. Never missed a weekend."
Monica physically moved here just three years ago. Her mother had died, and her grandmother's health woes became a concern for the whole family.
"Somebody needed to take care of her, make sure she got her shots," Monica says.
She has two brothers and three sisters, but she volunteered for this role.
"I've never been married. Got no children, not that there's anything wrong with being married and having children. I just never thought about it. I just have been busy being my own self."
Monica never thought twice about moving here to help her grandmother.
"It was home anyway. It's been rough sometimes, but, hey, Jesus is going to help me out. That's my source. I do what he says to do."
Besides that, she enjoys living with her grandmother. She can't say the same for Blackie, the poodle.
"Old, black poodle. Little dog. Little ornery, too," she says, the sunshine catching her bright smile. "Blackie's my grandmother's dog. If it was up to me, I'd do fine without him. But it's her entertainment."
Tending to medical needs of her dying mother, and now her feisty grandmother has sparked her to change her career focus.
A Donelson Kroger cashier by day, she's taking night classes to become a medical assistant. "I want to help people," she says.
Regardless of her career path, her nights will be spent on Chestnut Street.
"I'm staying here with my grandmother until God calls her home. That's the plan.
"Taking care of your family is just what you do."
The 5-foot-5 woman fingers the basketball logo again. "I made the high school team, but since I just had one parent, I couldn't get to practice.
"I love all sports, except golf. I don't understand it. And car racing. Who wants to watch cars go around and around all day? But I like the rest of them. Hockey's pretty good, got those fights."
And baseball? After all, her life's home is beneath the Greer Stadium outfield wall.
"I like it. I like the lights and the fireworks. I guess I've only been to two games in my life. We just sit on the porch and look at the people going in, and we listen."
Her preference is obvious as she dribbles the ball twice, stops and sends it toward the hoop.
"God's given me life," she says. "You should be sad when you don't have it."

Jesse McReynolds talks about how his mandolin-playing and Jerry Garcia led to his long, strange, musical trip

2011-11-20T12:30:00.000-08:00

Those of you who care know that I'm working on a book or two containing my own back pages while trying to carve out an income. Just so you don't think I've forgotten about you, here's a story that appeared a bit over a year ago in The Westview, the paper that became the Nashville Ledger. If you want to read this, I'd also suggest you sample some of the music.

The 81-year-old mandolin-playing, iconic country traditionalist doesn’t feel at all out of place playing songs embedded in fans’ hearts by Jerry Garcia and The Grateful Dead.
Doesn’t sound out of place either, reckons Jesse McReynolds, noting that he and his late brother, Jim, and their Virginia Boys were a source of inspiration for Garcia and his band mates.
“I think the whole thing is that Jerry would have liked to have been a bluegrass picker,” says Grand Ole Opry star and bluegrass legend McReynolds, relaxing at his home in Gallatin.
“He liked doing the old songs like the ones I grew up listening to,” says the mandolin player who has carved out a unique niche in American music by implementing his adventurous spirit.
That spirit is on full display in his newest album Songs of the Grateful Dead: A Tribute to Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter.
Hunter, who put the words to Garcia’s melodies for decades, even contributed an original to this collection, in large part because he was taken with the tribute project, credited to “Jesse McReynolds & Friends with David Nelson and Stu Allen.”
The latter two have deep ties within the Grateful Dead universe. Nelson is a member of the New Riders of the Purple Sage, a band he founded with Garcia and John “Marmaduke” Dawson. Allen is a former member of Dark Star Orchestra – a Dead tribute outfit -- and is a member of JGB (formerly the Jerry Garcia Band, the late Dead leader’s primary outside outlet.)
“I got to know Robert (Hunter) some through Sandy,” says McReynolds. Sandy Rothman and Garcia took a pilgrimage to the South back in 1964, the idea being to capture on tape traditional country and bluegrass acts. A particular favorite of Garcia’s was Jim & Jesse’s band.
McReynolds and Rothman became friends when the bluegrass star began pondering a Dead tribute record. “Sandy told me the story about how he and Jerry used to travel in the 1960s, before the Grateful Dead.
“They followed us around. But he was too shy to talk to us. Jerry was a bluegrass fan and he was interested in our music. The only thing I regret is that I didn’t get the chance to meet him. But I do listen to their music. My wife is a big Deadhead.’’
Actually, it was due to that “Deadhead” – “Joy ‘n me are 15 years married. She’s 50-something” – that McReynolds seriously began to select the Dead songs he’d like to replicate in his own special fashion.
“She knows every song that the Dead ever done,” says McReynolds. “She was such a big help on me playing this project. She’d tell me how it goes.”
McReynolds met his current wife in the mid-1990s, when he was touring as one half of Jim & Jesse.
And what started as a business meeting – she was interviewing the McReynolds brothers for a New Jersey country publication – developed into something much more for Jesse, whose first wife, Darlene, died in 1993.
“We didn’t see each other for a long time, but….” laughs McReynolds, adding that his wife brought her Grateful Dead albums with her to Gallatin.
Listening to that music, much of which is built on traditional American music’s shoulders, convinced him that he could do a tribute record and stay true to the sound of that iconic rock band.
After all, it’s not that Jesse McReynolds and his late brother (Jim died of throat cancer in 2002) had ever been afraid of taking risks.
“I’ve recorded for a lot of different groups,” says the mandolin star. Of course, many were just studio tracks he was laying down in Nashville and neither knew nor particularly cared on whose album they would end up.
But he was hand-picked by Jim Morrison, the erratic genius behind The Doors, to play mandolin on The Soft Parade album. While “Touch Me” was the big hit from that 1969 album, “Runnin’ Blue,” with its lonely intro “Poor Otis dead and gone, left me here to sing his song,” is a Doors fan favorite. And Jesse McReynolds’ mandolin provides just the effect Morrison was seeking.
It also should be noted that Berry Pickin’ in the Country -- a 1965 tribute to rock ‘n’ roll workingman’s poet Chuck Berry – remains atop the stack of McReynolds fan favorites.
“That was one of the highlights of my recording career,” says McReynolds. “No bluegrass group had ever tried anything like that before.”
Bluegrass pickers always have shared some of the free spirit of rockers, but the musical forms seldom intersected, a notable exception being Elvis’ reworking of Bill Monroe’s “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”
“I just was one who would never turn my back on any type of music,” says McReynolds. “I am surprised when people say ‘Wow, I’m surprised you listen to that kind of music.’
“But the Chuck Berry record is one of the most requested albums Jim and I ever done.”
Berry didn’t play on the album. But he did appreciate it. ”Chuck wrote the liner notes. I wish we could have got him to play on the project.”
Of course Garcia, who died in August 1995 after years of struggles with health and substance problems, does not appear on this album either.
But his spirit is here, according to McReynolds.
And so is his lyricist.
Hunter, a country music enthusiast, has been known to visit the Grand Ole Opry. He also paid a couple of visits to Nashville while McReynolds was recording the Grateful Dead album.
“I told him I was so impressed with all the words he wrote on those songs,” recalls McReynolds.
“So he said to me: ‘I’ll send you some words if you want to put some music to them.” That was the genesis of “Day by Day,” the album-closing track in which McReynolds channels Garcia.
Filling in for Garcia in interpreting Hunter’s lyrics wasn’t easy.
“It’s just a little hard for me to put music to words that somebody already wrote. But Robert was pretty happy with it. I’m just glad I got my name on a song with Robert Hunter.”
The only other song on the album that was not a Grateful Dead original is “Deep Elem Blues,” a traditional song that captivated Garcia when he first explored American roots music.
The song that details the perils and pleasures of the African-American red-light district in Dallas is of unknown origin, but it dates at least back to the 1920s. It was a Garcia staple in his coffee-house, pre-Grateful Dead days. And it was a regular part of Dead sets beginning at least by 1966, having both traditional acoustic and electric incarnations.
“Jerry liked things like ‘Deep Elem Blues.’ He liked some of the Carter Family recordings. There is a big connection on him and bluegrass music,” says McReynolds.
“I did ‘Deep Elem Blues’ because Jerry liked to do that one,” he adds.
While exploring Garcia and Hunter’s massive songbook, “I picked the songs that I figured I could do in my own way pretty much, ones that fit my voice.
“But it’s Grateful Dead music and I wanted to do it in a way that Jerry Garcia fans and Grateful Dead fans would accept it,” he continues.
“I didn’t want to copy the Grateful Dead, but I wanted to get the same arrangements, the same timing. I tried to get as close to the way it was originally done and then do it my way too,” he says.
Of course he knows the image of an 81-year-old mandolin master, a veteran bluegrass star, doing Grateful Dead tunes catches some people off-guard.
“When I tell people I’ve got a tribute to the Grateful Dead out, they look at each other and start laughing,” he says. What they don’t realize is that while they have been sitting in their seats at the Grand Ole Opry listening to the traditional-sounding “Black Muddy River” or “Ripple,” they’ve been listening to pure Dead.
And, of course, the jam band circuit, sprung from the Dead’s performance style and fan base, also has discovered this cutting-edge album by an 81-year-old bluegrass picker.
“It’s already accomplished more than I ever figured it would,” McReynolds says. “I’m thankful I’ve found an audience I didn’t know existed, as far as accepting me doing music like this.
“Nobody can come close to capturing the original version of the way they done them, but to know that the Grateful Dead fans accept me, well….”
Dennis McNally, publicist and official Grateful Dead historian, says the way the music comes from the picker’s soul is reminiscent of the work of his old friend.
“If Jerry Garcia had been born in the South and if he’d been permitted to live to be 80 he’d sound like Jesse McReynolds,” says McNally, whose A Long Strange Trip is considered the definitive history of the band.
Yes, his brother has been gone for eight years. Garcia’s been gone 15. But at 81 years of age, Jesse McReynolds, well, to borrow a phrase, plans to just keep on truckin’.
“I usually play 40 or 50 dates a year, but with this record I might be working a lot more in the next year. I’ll do as many as I can.”
He’s clearly enamored with the man and the band that first brought this batch of intricate music to the people.
“Back then, when this was going on, with the Grateful Dead and Woodstock and rock ‘n’ roll, we was so busy then doing our own roadwork, we was pretty busy doing our own thing.”
He laughs at the lifestyle differences, while celebrating the musical kinship.
“I’ve never smoked or drunk very little. And I know very little about smoking marijuana, although I smelt marijuana a few times,” he says.
“But the way they lived their lives has no bearing on me as far as doing their material. That was their way of doing things. They done things their way; we done things our way.”

Baseball season's over, but it's never too late to read about guitars that tune good and firm-feeliin' women

2011-11-01T19:27:00.000-07:00

With baseball season over and -- who knows what will happen in the future with the Nashville Outlaws? -- I thought I'd share this piece I wrote for their inaugural season, 2010, in which I was asked by then-club honcho Jason Bennett to talk about the Outlaws who inspired the name, men I knew and loved or still know and love. This was in the ballclub's old program, but I thought it was pretty darned good. Maybe you'd enjoy reading it. Thanks. By the way, I love baseball. But I love Midnight, Tompall, Bare, Willie, Billy Joe and Waylon, "my" Outlaws and friends a helluva lot more.

The guy who started Nashville’s Outlaws movement with a tear-jerking duet with his son laughs when asked what the connection might be between those musicians of the 1970s and the new Prospect League baseball club which is borrowing that name.
”I guess the way the music business correlates with baseball is, well: Do what you do and do it as good as you can,” says Bobby Bare. “Let the scoreboard tell you how well you did. Our scoreboard is always the charts and how many you sell.”
The Nashville Outlaws ballclub will be keeping track of how well they do this summer by watching the scoreboard at Vanderbilt University’s Hawkins Field.
Outlaws co-founders Brandon Vonderharr (general manager), Jason Bennett (vice president) and Chris Snyder (also vice president) – whose friendship was formed during a decade spent in Nashville’s professional baseball world -- deliberately chose the club’s name out of reverence for that most irreverent and loosely allied group of music-makers and windmill tilters.
“We wanted to select a name that was reflective of Nashville’s music background and the guys that had a vision that made them find their own path, their own voice and along the way found a place with the public,” says Bennett, referring to the folks often referred to in shorthand as “Waylon and Willie and the Boys,” after a line in the movement’s most-iconic song.
It is a fitting symbolic affiliation for the ballclub comprised of college players who hope to follow Bare’s advice and hit, pitch, catch and run “as good as you can” to get noticed.
Perhaps they’ve got Big Apple pinstripe dreams. The most important way for a guy to get noticed in this league is with the crack of wooden bats on rawhide. This will be a new sensation for these young men, most of whom have spent their careers creating that heretical “ping” when contacting the ball with aluminum bats.
Like Bare and his cohorts, the team also will be swinging for mainstream acceptance.
One plus toward developing fan loyalty is the team makeup of scholarship players from Vanderbilt, Austin Peay, Belmont, Western Kentucky and hometown players attending college elsewhere.
“When you come to Hawkins Field to cheer for the Outlaws, you really will be cheering for the home team, for Nashville,” says Bennett, saying that is a difference this club has with the Class AAA Sounds, playing just blocks away. The Sounds are tied to a Major League club and their professional dreams are to at least get their cups of coffee in the Bigs. Perhaps they’ve already had that sip and are on their way back down. They don’t consider Nashville home. Former Sounds star Prince Fielder will forever be labeled a Milwaukee Brewer. Don Mattingly is remembered as a New York Yankee … Nashville was a rung on the ladder to the top, albeit one where people sure liked guitars.
And then there are the entertainment value and values.
The Outlaws’ premise is to offer low-cost -- $8 a ticket plus free parking – entertainment in a setting where families, Little Leaguers and church groups can get up close and personal to the action.
The hope is to change the way the game is perceived and appreciated in Nashville. “We are excited that we can provide a great alcohol-free environment that would be safe to bring your family to. It’s more of a wholesome environment where you don’t have to worry about who’s sitting behind your kids,” says Bennett.
The musical Outlaws founded their own loosely linked team in Bare’s Music Row office, a gathering place for dreamers, schemers, guitar-pickers, pinball players and knife throwers: Waylon Jennings, Tompall Glaser, Captain Midnight, Billy Ray Reynolds and the lot.
Nashville treasure Hazel Smith -- writer, TV host, publicity producer and all-around sweetheart – actually gave the movement its name.
“I was doing mostly PR at Glaser Sound Studio, 916 19th Avenue South,” she says. “It was Waylon’s and Tompall’s office. It was like Bare’s in that inside those walls they could say what they wanted to do and do what they wanted to do.”
She was pressed to come up with a way to describe the music, so she reached for her blue Collegiate Edition of Webster’s Dictionary and began scouting out words.
“I looked up a lot of different names like Mustangs, and you know different things but nothing really fit the music they were doing. Then I came on ‘outlaws’ and it said ‘living on the outside of the written law.’
“I thought for a minute. They certainly are not doing music the way that Music Row is doing right now, so maybe that might fit,” she recalls, going through her thought process of settling on the musical moniker.
Romanticized history has it that the Outlaws movement was all about Nashville reclaiming its rootsy, “Your Cheatin’ Heart” heritage from the Countrypolitan strings, crooning and wall-of-sound style that reigned over the charts. Bare laughs at that notion.
“It didn’t have a helluva lot to do with anything except it was a bunch of free-spirited guys who didn’t care what anybody said. They just didn’t want to do the same thing over and over again.”
In Bare’s case, established record company wisdom would have him reprising his classic sounds, i.e. “Detroit City” or “500 Miles Away from Home.” He understood why the companies wanted more of the same: Who wouldn’t? How many “Detroit City”-quality songs are on the charts nowadays?
Bare possessed neither temperament nor need to repeat himself. “I just was having some fun with new stuff.”
That new stuff that launched the Outlaws movement was Bare’s recording of a collection of songs penned by the late Shel Silverstein. Lullabys, Legends and Lies was filled with wit, heartache and story songs.
“Gather round fellows I'll tell you some tales about murder and blueberry pies
And heroes and hells and bottomless wells and lullabys, legends and lies
And gather round ladies come sit at my feet I'll sing about warm sunny skies
There's mermaids and beans and lovin' machines in my lullabys legends and lies….” goes the track introducing this double-vinyl-disc song cycle. (It is available on remastered CD and is an essential element of any music collection.)
“I produced it and nobody knew what I was doing,” Bare recalls. The record company was expecting something like Ride Me Down Easy – his previous effort.
“When I got that project finished, everybody was happy knowing I wasn’t going to go nuts,” he says, with a laugh. So he got the go-ahead to proceed and “I immediately went nuts and worked with Shel” on Lullabys, Legends and Lies.
Bare says the record company was skeptical about releasing this aberration. But after a smuggled acetate of “Daddy, What If?” -- featuring Bare singing with his son, Bobby Jr. -- hit Atlanta’s air waves, RCA simply ignore what it had.
“Here was this cute little boy singing with his daddy. It heated up the radio big time.”
While the album is a monumental work, its true importance is that it opened the door for artist-produced albums out of Nashville. The first one to follow Bare’s efforts showed with a flourish that the floodgates were open.
“Waylon and I have always been really close,” reflects Bare. “He went to Chet (RCA honcho, guitar wizard and my late friend Chet Atkins) and said ‘Bare’s doing that. Let me do it, too.’
“Of course, they were really worried about what Waylon would do. But they let him, and he went ahead and produced Honky Tonk Heroes,” a collection written for the most part by fellow Texas renegade Billy Joe Shaver.
Suddenly, this “different’’ musical vision was corporate-approved, executives let their hair and beards grow, swapped polyester for denim and began counting money while cashing in on the Outlaws.
Ironically, the movement proved so successful that it helped pay for the glass corporate towers, banks and foreclosed office suites that have supplanted the rowdy rooming houses, honky-tonks and semi-derelict offices of the 1970s.
“It pretty much was a promotional gimmick,” says Bare, reflecting on the next big step. Wanted: The Outlaws was really just a sampler of music from Jennings, Willie Nelson (a former Bare roommate), Jessi Colter (Waylon’s wife and a pop success for her “I’m not Lisa”) and Glaser. (When approached for this story, Glaser, though kind, politely said “I’m retired,” and set the phone down.)
The big-name Outlaws --Waylon and Willie – became country music’s Glimmer Twins, and they stormed the country, drawing rock fans into the world of steel and heartache. Their shows were loosely constructed and could include walk-ons by Cash, Charlie Daniels, Kris Kristofferson and country traditionalists like Jack Greene and Jeannie Seely.
Regardless of the stamp of corporate approval that “legalized” the Outlaws, they gained notoriety by dreaming their dreams and acting on them, creating a new, artist-centric version and vision.
The young men who comprise baseball’s Outlaws and the businessmen who are footing the per diem and expenses are similarly dreaming of gaining wider recognition. It’s not that they hope to topple the Sounds and Ozzie as that team builds toward a more big-time future. But they do hope to offer a fun alternative.
It should be emphasized again that the musical Outlaws’ game of choice wasn’t baseball, but pinball. And it wasn’t that flippers and flashers and sirens game played by The Who’s famous ”deaf, dumb and blind kid.”
This was serious, quarter-a-play stuff, in which you beat the sides of the machine to get the ball-bearings to line up, bingo style, with payoffs based on how many were lined up. Five in a row brought $100, if memory serves.
Bare says “Waylon, Tompall, Midnight, we all were addicted to them.” (Midnight was Roger Schutt, a wannabe songwriter, knife-tosser and oft-fired disc jockey who was a friend to everyone from Bare to Jennings to Roger Miller to Kinky Friedman to this writer … but that’s a story for another time.)
Of all the parallels between the base-running and bass-playing Outlaws, probably the most basic is that they share the philosophy of going against the grain to get back to the thing that’s most important: whether it’s a guitar line or a line drive.
Instead of going in a direction that takes them away from their roots, they are steering dead on toward that destination.
As Waylon sings in Luckenbach, Texas, the biggest-selling record of the Outlaws movement:
“There's only two things in life that make it worth livin'
That's guitars that tune good and firm feelin' women
I don't need my name in the marquee lights
I got my song and I got you with me tonight
Maybe it's time we got back to the basics of love….”
In this case, it’s time we got back to the basics of baseball.
“It’s a grassroots movement,” says Outlaws VP Bennett. “There’s something to be said for being able to play and watch baseball in its purest form.”

The man who loved motorcycles died, and 5 more lives claimed, but Booger makes sure a dream roars on

2011-09-21T16:03:00.000-07:00

When Booger answered the phone tears coated his voice.
And it reminded me of the day I rode on the back of the Harley, my then brown and curly hair being slashed by the wind. At the front of the herd of bikes, Booger Watson rode on the old motorcycle in memory of his Pop.
The bikers and I (as a participant observer… I suppose nowadays you’d say I was “embedded with the bikers … ) were celebrating the life of Leslie W. “Big Lester” Watson … as were the five people who died Sunday, their RV filling with carbon monoxide during the campout following the toy run in Big Lester’s memory. Thirty years after that first ride.
I’d been working all day for my various employers while most people were celebrating or worshiping or both – some pray while roasting brats and other wieners before Rob Bironas tees it up for the Titans. I took a break and turned on the TV news.
“Five motorcyclists dead after charity event in Clarksville,” says one of the weekend news guys, Skip or Lefty or Butch or Buzz, I can’t remember. The blond guy with blue eyes. Like that narrows it down in TV land.
Anyway, I sat down and waited, right through the commercial for frozen Friday’s dinners and the lead story about the Titans “kickin’ the ever-lovin’ crap” – as the sports guy said -- out of the Baltimore Ravens. Maybe he didn’t put it that way. Can’t remember. It was a good game, though.
Then came the story that both seared and sored my heart, suddenly thrusting me into decades past, into the times I rode in the convoy of the bearded and leather clad boys who loved Big Lester.
Five people died Sunday. Camping at the after-party hosted by Bikers Who Care, an organization born and dedicated to fulfill the kid-loving legacy of Leslie W. Watson.
In recent days, after last weekend's tragedy, no one has called him “Big Lester,” for that was a nickname born in grease and toil, when he was teaching the rugged young men of Clarksville that they could be saved, they could find direction, by putting the gears and nuts and bolts together, by fixing up Harleys. And riding them. With due caution (but not necessarily helmets).
Actually, there was one writer who invoked the old nickname. In the story I wrote for Reuters News Service, who do try to keep me busy and help me feed my kids and 500 head of cattle out on the back 40, I referred to him as “Big Lester.” Kidding about the cattle by the way. All I’ve got is a possum and a lot of goldfinches. And moles. Hate the damn moles.
I don’t know what he thought about moles, but I know that Leslie W. Watson didn’t like his first name. Leslie was hardly, back then at least, the kind of name you’d associate with a guy – even a very old man – who rode and relished 61-cubic inch knucklehead painted chrome silver. “Big Lester.” More like it.
Course he’s been dead now and political correctness I suppose has made the name “Leslie” more macho, worthy of the spit and leathers and grease beneath nails and on thinning hair. Course Booger’s real name is Leslie, too. And he still goes by “Booger” even at 60 years old.
Then again, some people call me “Flapjacks.”
Anyway, back to the motorcycle run. Now it’s called The Leslie W. Watson Memorial Toy Run, an annual effort to collect toys for the Clarksville Fire Department’s Christmas toy drive for underprivileged children.
On that first time out, when maybe 250 or 300 bikes roaring from the Fairgrounds down Riverside Drive to the firehouse on Franklin, it was called the “Ride for Big Lester.” The admission was a new toy – and most brought several – to donate to the run.
That group of bikers expanded their goals, working with many charities, aiding kids, in sickness and in health. Now about 1,500 bikers ride in annual the Leslie W. Watson Memorial. Many are soldiers or veterans. Back then, it was mostly scruffy kids and me (not that I didn’t blend in).
Someone, it may have been Dickens, said of that portion of my life it was “the best of times, it was the worst of times.” There was some personal tumult, for sure. And I had nasty habits, took tea at 3 in the afternoon and sometimes was asleep by 3 in the morning.
I was first and foremost a newsman, the associate editor of an excellent daily newspaper, The Leaf-Chronicle. I worked probably 70-80 hours a week, helping my staff in recounting the adventures of Court Agate, counselor at law, and all kinds of stories about giant catfish, train wrecks, helicopter crashes, murderous punks and drunken soldier wrecks and shootings. And, with a long drag at a cigarette, I’d grab the first paper off the press and check the headlines.
Hard-smoking and drinking, a nationally honored columnist who wore his feelings on his sleeve, I was warned.
That’s why I fell in love with Booger and the boys, or really with their memory of Big Lester. It’s why I was rolling along, helmet-less, the wind whipping my Levis denim jacket and mustard News Brothers T-shirt, a pair of shades protecting my eyes from bugs, glass, dog turds and other flying objects.
Not sure where this “get your motor running, head out on the highway” adventure started. I think on the obituary page. I read that a fellow named Leslie W. “Big Lester” Watson had died and that his remains would be at some mortuary, whatever the name of that island of deceased souls, pickled bodies and broken toys in downtown Clarksville.
It was my town. I loved almost everybody there, other than a phony bald guy I sarcastically called “newspaperman” and other assorted authoritarian geeks or creeps who mostly were his friends or government officials.
So I walked to the funeral home. Only to be struck by the sight of the silver Harley outside, surrounded by about 30 or 40 other motorcycles.
Inside there were nice words for Big Lester. Outside were the two-wheeled machines to which he had devoted his life.
When the funeral was done, the boys rolled out to Greenwood Cemetery with the body.
The next day’s editions of the newspaper had the front-page centerpiece with the headline:
“The man who loved motorcycles died.”
It was the Feb. 17, 1982, version of my old Clarksville Calling Card column that ran for more than a decade three days a week. The Nashville Banner had me do a similar slice-of-life, human-dignity-focused effort called “Real Life” for almost 10 years.
Then at the morning newspaper in Nashville – after the Banner was done in when greed got in bed with Korporate Amerika – I was allowed to write the same basic column, as long as I did it “on my time” for a couple of years…. Until they required me to run photos with the columns and suddenly realized most of my columns were about black people or perhaps motorcycle riders. Not the Green Hills shopaholics and 20-30ish white tamponeers and their trophy husbands that were the chosen demographics.
“Write about white businessmen in the suburbs or don’t write a column at all,” said the then-boss, or words to that effect.
I smiled and pulled down my pants, shot him what was then a finely toned moon. Maybe I just flipped him off. Or hit him with a giant hocker on the schnozz. Nah, I gotta admit I was sad. But proud. I refused and began a long and steady stroll toward what ended up with me sitting on the night cops beat.
Regardless, that fellow is now some sort of white big shot in Brentwood while I wear worn out shorts and Chicago Cubs T-shirts, down to the seeds and stems of clothing, while toiling away in my basement. Yet, I am convinced I won.
Oh well, personal tails and tales aside, the story about Big Lester’s funeral painted a pretty good picture of these young bikers. And then a few months later they decided to start the annual Leslie W. “Big Lester” Watson Memorial Toy Run.
I rode in thatl. I didn’t have a motorcycle. Always been a knucklehead but too poor to own one, so I rode on the tail-gunner’s seat, bugs in my teeth and good vibrations all around.
That was 1982. The 30th edition of the run, now called “Leslie W. Watson…” etc., with no “Big Lester” in its moniker -is the one that ran last Saturday, with the bikers filling up four truckloads of toys before going to their after-party – a fund-raiser for a camp for seriously ill children.
Two-hundred bikers and their families camped out at the Clarksville Speedway.
Five people did not wake up, victims of carbon monoxide poisoning.
That’s the news the Aryan news guy offered up and it was why I called Leslie Jr., well, Booger, to ask what happened.
He cried when he told me. But he said the ones who died loved kids, too. That the work would continue. That Bikers Who Care are on a mission from God. Or something similar.
And I thought that, in a real way, I helped get this run started by my loving depiction of the man who loved motorcycles and also various columns about kids in need or dying….. I identified with them all and they with me.
So when Booger and Bill Langford and the others began to dream about the memorial run three decades ago, I participated in their dream and in publicity for it. I rode in it and covered it more than one year.
When five people die at an event you kinda helped start, well a guy can’t help but feel the pain. Then again, look at all the kids these bikers have helped. And will help in the future.
Big Lester would be proud.
It also had me digging through my files. Most of my writing, from all the newspapers at which I served with dignity if not decorum, was lost in the Nashville Flood of 2010.
But there were a few old columns I was able to rescue.
One of them is the following, from Feb. 17, 1982. My writing perhaps has matured over the years. I know I have matured to the point of being over-ripe. But here is the column:

The man who loved motorcycles died

The gloomy, drizzly day was suited more to a funeral than a motorcycle ride.
Leather-jacketed young men joined conservatively dressed old men at Tarpley’s Funeral Directors.
They all admired the low-slung, silver Harley-Davidson by the curb in front of the funeral home.
The bike belonged to Leslie W. “Big Lester” Watson, who died Saturday at Vanderbilt Hospital in Nashville.
Big Lester’s youngest son, Booger, 30, was standing in front of the funeral home, talking about Big Lester and the beautiful old Harley.
To many, this bearded young man in black leather jacket, jeans and boots may have seemed out of place at a funeral, especially since he was to lead the procession … vrooming the silver machine through the streets of Clarksville to Greenwood Cemetery.
And what a procession! Many of the other young men in black leather and jeans, strutting proudly outside the funeral parlor were there to join Booger… to vroom their Harleys behind Big Lester’s and escort the hearse in revving final tribute to the cemetery.
Many of the older fellows in their suits and ties probably envied the collection of proud young, probably remembered back to the days they straddled Harleys and headed down the long, lonesome highway abreast Big Lester.
“Dad opened the first Harley dealership in this town,” said Booger.
That was in 1946. When Big Lester moved Watson’s Motorcycle Shop from 741 Greenwood to 1661 Hopkinsville Highway in 1952, he rode his bike to the new location.
That was the last time anyone rode the beautiful machine.
He put that 61-cubic-inch Harley away, covered it, lovingly storing his lifelong dream away.
“From the early 1920s, his life had been Harley-Davidson motorcycles,” said Booger. “The first one he had was a 1915 model. He said that when he got that old 1915 model, one day he’d own a new one.”
That day was in 1940, when Big Lester traveled to the Harley-Davidson factory in Milwaukee, Wis.
He rode home on his dream machine.
Big Lester hadn’t ridden motorcycles much in the last of his 73 years of life.
“The last time I remember him riding a bike was when I was 11 years old and he built me a little hummer and showed me how to ride it.” Booger laughed, then his voice thickened and he rubbed his eyes.
Big Lester transferred his love of Harleys to his sons. Hadley owns Watson’s Motorcycle Repair in New Providence and Booger worked with his dad at the old shop on Hopkinsville Highway.
Booger pretty well ignored the business he shared with his dad for the past month. “I spent all of my time at the hospital,” he said.
And then, the man who loved motorcycles died. In his mourning, Booger had a thought: he was going to take his dad’s beloved bike out of mothballs, repair it, clean it and ride it in the funeral procession.
“It was a passing thought to begin with .. then, I thought ‘Well, I’ll go to the shop and see what happens…’”
The work began Sunday night. “I’d say definitely it was running in an hour’s period of time.”
Booger spent two hours Sunday and six hours Monday preparing his tribute. “Most of that time was spent cleaning it up and checking it out. Some of my friends came by last night to help … It as a party … kind of like it would have been if Pop had been there.”
Of course, “Pop” was there in spirit, which was represented by that motorcycle.
“Other than a human object, that motorcycle was the nearest thing to Daddy,” said Booger. “He just loved it.”
The funeral hour was drawing near. Booger and 30-to-40 bike-riding friends prepared their honor guard….
Big Lester’s Harley Deluxe was going to be at the point, leading the way to the cemetery.
“Daddy always liked his motorcycle in front,” said Booger.

Rest in Peace to the folks who died in Clarksville.
But their dream, Big Lester's spirit, lives on whenever Booger and his friends go back on the highway to help kids.

We don't need no education: The Americanization of Emily & one cool-rockin' daddy who laments that college has begun

2011-08-26T18:09:00.000-07:00

He knows when to hold ‘em and he knows when to fold ‘em, but there’s no way he could help me cope with the violent and vicious melancholy tearing at my heart and soul.
Don Schlitz has a daughter, too. And he knows what it’s like to pack up a couple of cars and haul your baby girl off to university, away from my protection but not my love, of course.
Damn. It hurts.
As Kenny Rogers sang in perhaps Don’s most-famous song, this is one songwriter who knows when to walk away and knows when to run. But there’s no way to get away from that ache of the empty bedroom with the lonely teddy bears on the shelf.
That last sentence is mine, not his. Maybe he’ll borrow it for a song. Judging by what the government says, I could use the income. Especially now that my beautiful Emily Mariana has started college.
Don, a genial and gentle soul who makes his living by making words rhyme and lifting people’s hearts with songs -- from The Gambler to Forever and Ever, Amen -- is without words, hell downright speechless when we talk about how I dreaded moving Emily from my house.
“Man, I know what you’re going through,” he says, his easy drawl offering a bit of brotherly reassurance.
“I feel for you, but nothing I can say will make it better,” he offered. “I’m not going to tell you any different.”
Don and I were having a conversation for business – my business and his – when our conversation strayed into the personal.
An editor – who was among my closest friends and personal advisers – once told me my greatest talent and attraction as a journalist was that “you wear your heart on your sleeve. It’s gonna kill you one day.”
The fact he was found on the floor of a Coast Guard barracks with an empty prescription bottle nearby may prove he held his heart on his sleeve as well. But that’s another story. One of many dead friends.
He was right, though. I don’t hide behind a just-the-facts demeanor, unless I’m dealing with a serial killer or a father-raper or a litterer caught because of 8-by-10 color glossies of his act.
So if I like someone I’m interviewing, which is generally the case, I don’t hide behind my notebook. The fun is in being human.
Getting a little ahead here, but who’s counting words?
Don was wondering if I could come out to his house this week to hang out. I like hanging out with good guys. Hell, he may even have wanted me to offer up a hint or two toward his quandary. “I’m staring at all these words that rhyme but I can’t figure out how to put them together in a song,” he says.
Songwriters are among my favorite people and saying I couldn’t go out there hurt. But it was saying the reason that made the hurt worse.
“I’m getting my daughter ready to go off to college. I’m taking her this week,” I said.
My stomach, usually a swollen and constipated knot of tension, twisted and turned, rumbling. Don heard the slight sob coloring my words.
“I feel for you man. Been there. It sucks. It hurts.
“Just be happy she’s going to be near you,” said this nice fellow, a year my junior – “you’re one of them 1951ers,” he joked, pointing genial fun at those of us from the heart of the Baby Boom.
Yes, I did help stop a war. Don may have too, although he’s a spry, young man, a whippersnapper, one of the 1952ers.
And yes, I pictured myself on a boat on a river, with tangerine trees and marmalade skies. Ah, those old first-night of college memories…. Or are they real? Just ask the Axis... Oops, I stray again. Scuse me.
I have lived the tough and cynical life of the hard-driving hippie disappearing into the moonlight over Route 66 in my 1965 Falcon. Thirty-cents a gallon and shut off the engine when going down the slopes of the Rockies or Sierras. Rolled 400 miles one day without burning a bit of fuel, from Flagstaff to Barstow and down into Burbank. Stopped along the way for 10-cent coffee and chatter at a truck stop in a ghost town.
I have splashed in the hot sulfur baths in the middle of the desert and talked of revolution and politics and peace.
When I did “settle down,” so to speak, I became a harder-edged-still newsman, nicotine-stained fingers, beery breath, threatening to send pica poles where they shouldn’t wander on their own while dealing with all kinds and flavors of celebrity, ballgames, death and destruction.
I’ve buried many of my contemporaries, some who lost the fight against the demons we all confronted. Others who just decided to pack it in on their own.
I’ve suffered immense personal and professional loss, but countered with gain and growth.
I have learned not to count on "friends" for help in most cases, that a true friend indeed is rare and that most good-time "friends" turn their backs on you when you are in need of a good word or a leg up. You may know what it's like.
A simple, most-perfect expletive can be aimed at those who disappoint or betray.
I have stared down the most vile Korporate Amerika had to offer, people who were more interested in dispiriting me than in letting me do my job with dignity.
I’ve learned lessons on twisting-turning nights and almost-bouncing checks.
And I don’t want to think of my daughter having to eventually encounter a world that’s not fit for her. This was the first big step toward her entrance into that mean world.
In other words, while I wrestled off some thugs after a pickled-egg and beer dinner in Winslow, Ariz. (It was such a sad sight to see), I don’t know how to handle this latest catastrophe other than to wish I’d held Emily back a school year so I could have her in my house one more year. Shoulda flunked kindergarten, kid.
Truth is, the chubby baby I plucked from the cobbled ground of the orphanage courtyard in Arad, Romania, 16 years ago, is in college. Dropped her off Thursday.
I’ve known this day was coming for awhile, ever since I decided to let her into my life, so to speak, to go ahead and put the time and effort and personal resources into the adoption of the kid with one name, Mariana, scribbled on the back of the 3-by-5 snapshot sent us from Romania in the summer of 1995. That was before Al Gore discovered the internet. All we knew is the baby had curly hair like me – that’s why our adoption lawyer chose her – and she was beautiful and mostly healthy.
Of course, I wasn’t alone in the adoption decision. Suzanne also wanted to go get this little girl, to bring her to America, to give her a home. Relish and savor love grown not in the belly but in the heart. (Hey, Don, there’s another line).
Enough so that we gladly (??) spent too many thousands dealing with the creepy pocket-protector personnel of the State Department and answering perhaps the most intrusive questions ever directed at me.
And that particular adventure led us to a second adoption, three years later, of our son, Joe, formerly Lazar, a 3-year-old playground reprobate who enjoyed watching oxen drop their loads on the dirt road outside his orphanage in Giurgiu, Romania.
All the boys got charges out of that. Heck, it was kinda different to me, as well. Despite my many nasty habits – I take tea at 3, etc. – one thing I can never get enough of is the sight of an animal crapping while pulling a load of Gypsies down rutted roads.
But that is another story for another day.
This one is about Emily.
I am happy she is going to be successful. “This is what we train them for, to be out on their own,” said one friend, trying to salve the rawness that is in my head, gut and soul as we took the many steps to get her ready for college.
During this week, while I helped her get ready, while I spent money on everything from gasoline to eyeglasses to GooGoo Clusters (a kid’s gotta eat), I kept on thinking I was looking at the little girl.
Oh she is small now, only 5-foot or so. And very pretty. But I kept seeing her as the little girl I picked up at the day-care back in 1995 and 1996. I was working at the Nashville Banner then – a far superior newspaper to the one you folks are “offered” each day now – and I tried to get off work by 2, so I could pick her up at the day-care.
Since I went to work at 4 a.m. or so, that still was a reasonably long day. Anyway, I’d drive up to the day-care and usually see her sitting by herself in the playground. She didn’t look sad. Just remote. Like a baby who had spent most of the first two years of her life isolated in a crib in a massive dorm of similarly isolated children.
She didn’t know much English. But “Tata” quickly turned to “Daddy” and soon we were driving around the Music City, singing songs about Rocky Raccoon, Bungalow Bill, the holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall and the like. Of course there were those other songs about Silver-Tongued devils, cool rockin’ daddies and my famous renditions of “Happy,” “Dead Flowers” and “Shotgun Willie.”
And those drives almost always led to a house out in Forest Hills, where my mother, then in her final couple of years, would react with delight when I’d carry the little girl into her house. Mom died 12 years ago now.
She always loved “Little Emily.” In fact one of the last times she was able to get out of the house was to go to the airport when we brought Emily home.
Our almost daily visits with my mom usually meant that on the way back to my house, there’d be a spin through the drive-thru at McDonald’s for some fries. They were among the first “American” treats Emily ever sampled. In order to keep her quiet in our room in Zurich during a daylong layover on our way home, I found a McDonald’s in the old city, bought quarter-pounders with cheese and fries and milkshakes. A fella in full Arab-prince regalia led me to the McDonald’s. I called him Ahab.
Emily spent that evening in Switzerland running from me to Suzanne for a fry.
Finally she ran into a table and collapsed in tears. Briefly, before she was chasing fries again.
Oh, I could go on with 16 years of memories – not all of them great, because she is far from perfect. I’m happy she’s closer, at least in my regard, to that than is her old man.
But the stories I’d tell all carry the same basic theme. I love my daughter. I’d do anything for her. I want her to be happy. (Yes, I need love to keep me happy….)
Yes, I’m proud Emily is in college and I hope she makes it. School’s not always been easy for her. But she's smart. She can accomplish this task, I'm sure. But more than smart, she's good. A good person. For that I'm most proud.
But it hurt like hell to unload her in a dormitory, even a nice brick one.
Don Schlitz – remember Don Schlitz, this is a story that at the beginning kinda featured him -- remembers that loss himself. And just by talking to him, I could tell he generally and genuinely hurt for me as I prepared for that big journey. "I'm sorry for you, man."
On Skype last night, her first as a college student, I talked with Emily in her dorm room. It was after 10 and she had just opened up a microwavable spaghetti meal. Would have been too late for her to eat like that here.
The first sign of liberty I suppose. I’m sure she’ll remember her first night at college like I remember mine, even though mine involved color and kaleidoscopes and tear-rolling laughter and bonding around a bonfire. No spaghetti, though.
Guess a good way to end this little tale is by quoting another line from Don Schlitz (and his pal Paul Overstreet): “I’m gonna love you forever, forever and ever, amen….” I can’t sing that very well. I do have more the vocal skills of Keith Richards than Randy Travis.
You know this thing about kids growing up?
I don’t like it. Not one damn bit.
I may make some spaghetti and Skype her at 10 tonight. Hope she’s not out.

Marshall Grant's death has me thinking about Carl and Johnny and June, but also of Scotty and Fats Domino

2011-08-07T15:20:00.000-07:00

When I heard that Marshall Grant had died, I reflected back on the blistering cold day in January of 1998 when I reached for the newsroom phone.
I was going to call a man in Mississippi to ask him what he remembered best about Carl Perkins.
I was a huge Perkins fan, knew him slightly, and the news had come over that the Rockabilly Cat was gone.
I was the features editor and columnist at the old Nashville Banner. My music writer, Jay Orr, wasn’t in that day. I think he was “working from home” as we used to say, probably writing about Garth Brooks or something else to me inconsequential. (Don’t get mad, Garth. I still love you man…. Gotta add that because I don’t want him to get insecure.)
Jay, who now is some sort of erudite white-collar executive and archivist, didn’t want to come in to write about Perkins. He suggested I call Marshall Grant, who lived in the wilds of Mississippi, down near Jerry Lee.
So I called directory assistance and got the number and dialed. Little did I realize how important that call would be to me.
I can still hear the sadness in the voice of Marshall Grant in the moments after he answered the phone. It wasn’t that he had no recollections, for he had plenty to share.
It was that he didn’t know that one of his great friends from the rockabilly scene -- from Sun, from the small studio that had sprung Elvis, Scotty and Bill, Roy Orbison, John R. Cash and the Tennessee Two, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich and Conway Twitty – had died.
He asked for a couple of minutes to collect himself, then, in true human-being form, for he was a fine one of those, he began recounting tales of Carl, who had succumbed to throat cancer.
As it was noon and the paper had to leave the floor of the composing room by 12:30, I explained to Marshall what had happened and asked for a few comments, promising to call him back after deadline.
Which I did. Probably called him a dozen times since and even hung out with him at a cemetery on one Hendersonville afternoon and also helped him tote his old bass into the Musicans Hall of Fame back when it first opened … before it was blasted away to help suit somebody’s godforsaken view of what Nashville needed to become. That’s another tale, of steamy politics and that’s not what I’m writing today.
On other times I’d just call Marshall to talk. I wrote about him a couple of times and used him as a resource on others.
Our bond grew, based on death and me being the bearer, inadvertent as it was, of bad tidings.
I called Marshall to get his reactions to June Carter Cash’s passing. Again, I was the one who broke the news. And he wept.
By the time Johnny Cash – the voice and front man who was Elvis to Marshall’s Bill Black and Luther Perkins’ Scotty Moore – died, I just figured I was not really calling for comment, but to break the news.
Which I did. He wept and recalled a man he loved.
He later introduced me to a crowd of musicians and historians as the one who told him his friends had died.
But he was just joking. He liked to hear from me. It’s probably been a year or so since I called him. I check in on musicians I care for who are in their advancing years periodically. Not to be a vulture, but to be a friend.
Did the same for other guys who became friends. Bobby Thompson. Vassar Clements. Josh Graves. Chet Atkins. Eddy Arnold. Captain Midnight. Used to call Louise Scruggs occasionally as well, as she was the only person who ever tried to get me Bob Dylan on the phone. She would let me talk to Earl.
There have been others.
It wasn’t that I was calling because I needed anything or because I wanted to write another story, although it would have been my delight if my employers at the time, another “newspaper” here in Nashville after the Banner folded, had cared.
“That Eddy Arnold story should have been a brief,” I was told after writing a happily drawling tale of a day spent with Eddy.
While I was told I should have dedicated the space to Shaggy or some other superstar, I was the entertainment editor and I gave over the space to Eddy.
It was the last time he was interviewed by anyone.
But mostly I just made these calls because I cared about these people. Many, if not most, had been bypassed by the desire of newspapers and media to focus on the Shaggys and the like.
I wanted to make sure they knew that at least for one old man, they still mattered. So I’d call, we’d chat. We’d laugh. They’d tell me off-the-record stories. And we’d hang up.
It was as much therapy for me as anything, as needing to connect with these people who had contributed so much to my life and my own strange life’s soundtrack, made me feel better.
Well, my relationship with Marshall was pretty much like that. Except I used any excuse possible to talk to him. When my bosses wanted me to write about that one-dimensional biopic about Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, I was asked to contact some of the young people who played roles in that over-rated film.
I took the opportunity to call Marshall, just because he was there when it happened. (His autobiography, not a masterwork by any means but worth a read by any Cash fan is called “I Was There When It Happened.” )
Over the years I learned a lot about Marshall, about his long separation from Cash – John’s drugs seriously damaged that relationship – as well as their teary reunion at June’s grave.
I learned that he was such a packrat that he not only kept souvenirs, he kept the house in Memphis where he and Luther and John began their work together, where they hatched songs and melodies in all-night sessions.
I think about him often and wish someone cared enough to let me write one more story about this great man and his career not just as an artist but as a promoter and manager…. a good man of music and faith who drove the car while June sat on John’s lap in the back seat from Dallas to Oklahoma City or somesuch and sparks (at least) became hotter than a pepper sprout.
He told me many stories about Cash. Most were tales of a good man with demons. Not a demon who tried to be good.
Many tales he asked me not to write, so I didn’t. Just hearing them was joy enough.
My friend Peter Cooper called today while my family was out to lunch – we were celebrating Gotcha Day, the 16th anniversary of the day we picked our beloved Emily up at the orphanage in Arad, Romania – to leave a message.
“Your friend Marshall Grant has died,” said Peter’s voice message.
Peter’s among the few really true good friends I have and need, and he figured I’d want to know.
Of course I did. I began thinking back to the conversations I’d had with other fellows I like to keep track of.
First thing I did was call Scotty Moore, a dear friend of mine, whose meager accomplishment in life is inventing rock ’n’ roll guitar while playing with Bill Black and Elvis (and later D.J. Fontana).
Even though I was carrying bad news, I figured Scotty ought to know. And it gave me a chance to catch up with a good guy.
Then I picked up the phone to call Fats Domino ….
Come to think about it, that list of people I call to check up on is getting shorter these days.
What a drag it is getting old, as Mick Jagger sang while Scotty’s No. 1 acolyte, Keith Richards, played guitar.
Thanks for your friendship, Marshall.
And for the tunes.

Personal reflection on the 3-0 mark for a real newspaperman, Bob Battle

2011-08-02T12:12:00.000-07:00

I wrote this on Jan. 23, 2010.

Another old-time journalist died Friday, Jan. 22, 2010. Bob Battle was a good guy. He loved the Nashville Banner. He went on to write a column for Williamson A.M., the Gannett suburban product, after circumstances killed the city's very good afternoon newspaper.
Anybody who knew and loved Bob remembers the Banner's last day. While others drank and partied about a job lost, Bob wailed and wept, for the Banner was a living, breating entity, squashed by korporate journalism and greed. I helped him to the door. I didn't think he'd make it. A part of Bob Battle died out there where the Gannett reception desk now stands sentry.
Those who still walk the earth who are considered unfit for Korporate journalism lost a treasured alum today. Some of those who used to love newspapers and considered PR a necessary evil rather than a corporate-sanctioned co-collaborator were there on the final day of publication of the Nashville Banner almost 12 years ago. That newspaper -- a truly local newspaper in a world where news increasingly was and is being determined by demographic studies and corporate trend-spotters -- was sold out from under 100 people, most of whom still loved newspapering better than the promised land of public relations. Many of them have bounced well into that sector. Good for them.
But then there are the "mavericks" ... people who cannot by nature succeed in the world of news-gathering as determined by the gods of Rochester or the Space Coast or wherever they may entrench themselves.
Bob Battle was one of those. Yes, he wrote his final column for the Gannett suburban product targeted for the richest county in the state. And I'm sure those columns were as hard to edit at the end as they were if anyone had to edit them back in the old days.
But Bob had soul. And he had institutional knowledge. He knew everyone in Nashville and knew where they drank. He was to the drinking journalist what Eddie Jones was to the smoking journalist: the real deal. The "Hello, Sweetheart, get me rewrite" kinda guy.
If there was a greatest generation for journalists, it would be guys like Bob, Eddie, Jerry Thompson, Fred Russell, John Bibb, Gene Wyatt, Edgar Allen, Jimmy Carnahan, all dead. I'm fortunate to have spent time with each of those men and to have considered them friends.
To these guys the story was the thing, not the spin. Little thought was given to how it would play in Green Hills or Belle Meade or if it would impact sales at mall boutiques negatively.
Yes, Bob had his faults. He sometimes even bragged about them. Yes, he liked his white wine in the bottomless glass after he gave up the harder stuff.
But he also knew when to seek out the opinion of journalists, perhaps a generation or at least a half-generation younger, and ask for advice or even proof-reading of a column or a business story.
When Garth Brooks first began to make a little noise, Bob told everyone that Garth would be as big as Elvis one day soon. And he was right. No surprise. Bob knew his shit.
This rambling comes as I'm sitting in my basement, my own fortress of sorts, which, among other wall-decorations, has the final edition of the Nashville Banner. My farewell column to that newspaper is right above Bob's.
Good company to the end, I figure.
He was a good guy to start the day with during my 10 years at the Banner. He usually was there at 4:30 or 5 when I arrived at work, generally beating not only me but even Tony Kessler, Jane Srygley, Mike McGehee, Left-Hander and C.B. Fletcher.
Sometimes, perhaps, Bob hadn't had a lot of sleep. And perhaps there was that more than faint hint of the night before on his breath. But he kept on going. He was working for a newspaper he loved, a living and breathing dinosaur.
Well, those dinosaurs are extinct now.
In an era when backing down and back-stabbing are the keys to success, not just in journalism but in Amerika, some still are able to keep their dignitiy even in a world where perhaps they are out of step.
I treasure the fact that I could call Bob Battle a friend.
I don't drink much or any at all now. But maybe I can figure out how Bob kept that one glass of wine from ever getting anywhere near empty.
I'll never be able to reallly figure out why the world decided it didn't need journalists like Bob Battle, dedicated to a newspaper and its audience and not bottom line figures. People who didn't back down when they knew they were right.
R.I.P.
--30--

NEWS BROTHERS TO THE END

2011-07-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

With ink in their veins and big hearts, The News Brothers take a stroll down Memory Lane, reliving the Glory Days of the newspaper profession.

Every picture tells a story, don't it?: A melancholy tale of four dedicated young guys who loved newspapers

2011-07-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

It may be my favorite picture of my newspaper career. It’s not one of the shots I got of O.J., Ali, Waylon and Willie. John R., Magic, Henry Aaron. It’s not even the one that Johnny Cash Kristofferson, Kris’ son, took of me and his pop singing one day at the corner where the Tally-Ho Tavern – which we both frequented lives ago -- once existed.
Nope, it’s a photo of a quartet of journalists – three guys I loved and me – sitting on a curb on a deserted downtown street. A bottle of cheap champagne by our feet. Likely a trail of empties followed us to that spot, like so many broken hearts.
We’d just finished screening a movie called “Flapjacks: The Motion Picture,” a crude-by-today’s-techno-standards Super 8mm film that chronicled the birth of The News Brothers. I don’t need to go into it here. Buy the book if one ever becomes available. (Yeah, Mr. Dylan, I am workin’ on it, so quit riding me about it. Damn, Zimmy....)
I write pieces of the News Brothers book now and then. Sometimes I laugh. But at times like this it hurts. The movie featuring those four men – including that dashing young man in the yellow Fedora – is a skewering of pop culture, society, ruthless authority and the korporate mentality. But for all of its rudeness and satire, it also is a love letter to newspapering.
Working as a newspaperman was my life’s goal. It was ripped from me a few years ago, although I still have the pleasure of writing for a living and for life.
Some of the fellows in the picture didn’t become journalists on purpose.
The guy in the white top hat, my pal and still-colleague in the News Brothers business, is Rob “Death” Dollar. He’d been destined for a job in the CIA when a newspaper job and family ties came calling. He had career setbacks, thanks to corporate politics and big money small-town bullying, but he went on to a distinguished career as a journalist. You’d probably not have expected that if you looked into the bleary eyes of the guy in this Saturday Morning, 2 a.m. photograph. Of course, you’d have to remove the shades to see those eyes.
News Brothers always wear shades because our futures are always so damn bright, as life has proven.
Rob was on my staff and he was the best police reporter I have ever known and, though I never worked for him, I’ve been told he was a good and fair boss, willing to go to the mattresses for his troops after he moved to his hometown to take over the daily.
Jerry “Chuckles” (damn he hates that nickname) Manley is the guy in the green tuxedo. I know you can’t tell colors in this black and white picture, but he’s the guy on the far right, his arm on my shoulder. And that tux is green.
He looked like a drunken and somewhat overweight leprechaun that night. Hell, many nights for that matter. I remember one night he and I went to see the Little Ole Opry – Jack Greene, George Morgan, Jeannie Seeley, Little Jimmy Dickens – in a not-very-secret after-hours club behind Pal’s Package Store in Clarksville. It was a joint that perked up at about 10:30 on Friday and Saturday nights and featured the Grand Ole Opry stars who came up to Clarksville after finishing their weekly shows. If I remember correctly, it was corporate Opry clout that caused this Little Ole Opry to close. Not surprising.
After the Little Opry show ended and Jerry dropped me off at my thankfully temporary home (another story), he drove back to his. When a dog came running out in front of his blue Prelude, well, he chose wisely. He left the road and rolled the car. “I didn’t want to kill the dog,” he explained to me the next day. News Brothers are, as we like to say, damn nice guys. I think he only took one sick day, but he looked like something the … well. .. dog dragged in…
Jerry was, like me, never planning to be anything but a newspaperman. It was his calling. As a writer perhaps his words didn’t sing. But as an editor who finds holes in stories, who asks the right questions, who writes headlines, who exercises humanity with staffers, he was among the best in the business. I love the guy like a brother.
Then there’s the dark-bearded Cajun in the purple Fedora, Thomas Anthony “Tony” Durr. He kinda stumbled into journalism by accident. His life, it turned out, was one big accident after another, leading to ultimate tragedy.
He had been a computer guru with a company out of Florida. When he sold his company’s products to the newspaper in Clarksville, he pretty much came along as part of the deal. I mean, early newspaper computers had a lot of problems.
What could be better than hiring an editor who helped hone the system and plopping him in the newsroom to try to keep things straight?
Of course, Tony’s greatest contribution as an editor is that he also liked to play golf, so he pretty much relinquished the control of the newspaper to me, coming in for conversations or calling in, but I was the associate editor and, well, he figured I could take care of things. (Actually I shared the authority with another sub-editor, a guy who had a face like a death mask and a personality to match.)
Tony was what they call an “idea” man. With the help of Rob and Jerry and a few other brave souls who lived hard but worked harder for the sake of good newspapering, we executed some of his ideas.
We also had plenty of our own, and Tony, to his credit, knew enough to step out of the way if the News Brothers were chasing a story, covering a tragedy or consoling a grieving mother whose murdered daughter’s skull had been mistaken for a milk jug when the dogs dragged it out of the woods.
Tony really wasn’t a News Brother, but he enjoyed the fruits of our hard work in his role as editor of the newspaper.
Jim “Flash” Lindgren isn’t in this picture, because he was young and went home by 1:30. He was like our little News Brother, among the original foursome. We loved him and took him on our outings and figured he’d carry on the tradition, which he did in Indianapolis, where he now sells bogus penny stocks to unsuspecting retirees. Nah, that’s not true. He’s distinguished himself in journalism and in academia at Butler University.(That's the school that keeps on almost winning the NCAA title, choking in the big games? Talk about "the curse of the News Brothers....")
But this is about the picture and I’m kind of getting off the track here. But that’s my right, as I am the writer of this piece and I no longer report to soul-snuffing corporate bean-counters and butchers of hope and dreams.
What this photograph represents to me is love of friends, for sure, but love of friends who also were in love with the act of committing good journalism.
Proud, hard-smoking, far from pure or Puritanical, these good and decent men prided themselves on being solid newspapermen.
At the time this picture was taken, that’s the way we all figured it would be. Newspapers would be around forever and we’d be able to enjoy the ride and the responsibility and, especially, serve our duties as members of the Fourth Estate.
This picture was taken in Clarksville, Tenn., where all of us worked together and where I spent the first 15 years of my newspaper career.
Tony had already gone on to his next job, weekend editor of the San Antonio Express-News, by the time we coaxed him to fly up to spend the weekend in my apartment and go to the movie. I remember him as a perfect house guest, a good gumbo cook and a guy who loved my old cat, Sly (“C’mon, get up and dance to the music.”)
Sometimes now Rob and I joke that this early morning after the movie premiere was at the peak of our careers and we should have driven off into the Cumberland River or disappeared like Jim Morrison after the police arrested us while the credits rolled. That statement may raise questions, but I’ll answer them another time, perhaps in the book. This is about newspapers.
It turned out it wasn’t our careers’ peak. For another decade or even two, there still was newspapering being committed around Tennessee and even in some of the other colonies and commonwealths.
Not too long after this photo, Jerry went on to a short stint at the Daily News Journal in Murfreesboro (Yes, that used to be a helluva paper and not a shopper at all) before landing his dream job as a copy editor at The Tennessean.
He’d wanted to work there because John Seigenthaler was his hero and because he loved that newspaper, the one that was delivered to his home down in Petersburg, Tenn., when he was a kid and playing Tiddlywinks and Mumbly Peg, while getting sugar drunk on Nehi on the town square … Of course he may not have done that at all, but I never can figure out what he might have done in Petersburg. I think he kept his pants on most of the time.
He rose fairly quickly at The Tennessean because he is, was, remains, a great newspaperman. He not only was content, he was jubilant that he was going to spend the rest of his working days at the paper he had loved all his life.
I was still in Clarksville, sucking on smokes, listening to the scanner and minding the night shift when he’d call me and say “I just wrote a good headline and thought, man, a million people will look at this headline tomorrow.” Of course, there weren’t a million Tennesseans sold then. But there were probably four or five times more than the measly 55 copies they sell daily now. OK. OK. I’m kidding. I don’t know what the circulation is or how the “Internet” clicks factor into the equation. Mind you, there’s still good work being done there, but you can only stretch a staff of five so far…. Well, that’s an exaggeration, but bean-counting is the name of the game and they have continued to lop off staffers.
But Jerry was in his glory back in his early Tennessean days. Sometimes, as he still lived in Clarksville part time, he’d spin by my house at the conclusion of both our shifts and we’d chase the dawn. “C’mon, man, let’s go for a ride in this Pink Cadillac…” and Bruce Springsteen would scream from the speakers as we played chicken with deer and ran full-tilt on reckless adventure, sometimes to Nashville or Guthrie, Ky., once to laugh at death on an interstate overpass. But we don’t need to share that story here. Glory Days, indeed.
Rob’s newspaper career also was glorious for nearly 24 years as he became the backbone of the Kentucky New Era in his hometown of Hopkinsville, Ky. He helped turn that small-town, daily rag into a respected, hard-news paper. He made enemies.
But he earned a lot of respect from his staff and even from his bosses. That’s back when bosses in upper management showed respect to their staffs. And sometimes the bosses even deserved it.
Me, well, I was the last News Brother to leave Clarksville, taking a sip of brandy and turning out the lights on my last night in that newsroom. I had been hired by Editor Eddie Jones and Managing Editor Tony Kessler at the Nashville Banner and served a variety of jobs for the 10 years I was there. In whatever role, I was also the designated No. 2 man, the bullpen, if a decision needed to be made. I loved the Banner, which eventually was killed by greed, both corporate and personal. I went down with the ship.
Because I was in the middle of an adoption, I accepted the offer of a job that wouldn’t force me to move. I went to work for The Tennessean and served as a copy desk staffer, entertainment editor (about six years), senior entertainment writer, senior features writer and then, as they apparently -- at least I interpreted it that way -- were trying to make things uncomfortable enough for me to leave, I was moved to night cops. Almost a full-circle career.
I figured that buyouts were going to come, so I held on for the better part of a year, working the night shift, never seeing my kids. One of the few pluses of that job was that my boss was Jerry, who had been on my staff in Clarksville, but had been more of a comrade than an employee.
When my buyout did come through, Jerry could hardly stand it, keeping his head down and hugging me quickly before he went out the door. He was going to be night editor for another four years, but I was the last full-time staffer he’d ever have, at least as far as I know.
Of course, I survived and continue to squeak out an income but hold my head high as a freelance journalist, writer and even part-time news-writing instructor and journalist-in-residence at a local university. My family and my forays with Rob and the occasional other News Brother or Americana star help keep me sane (so to speak).
Rob finally left his newspaper job on his own terms, resigning as managing editor, after disagreement with the way his paper was going, his staff was being treated and his powerlessness to change it. He wouldn’t backstab his people. Money talks. Good men (and women) walk.
After reluctantly leaving journalism, he went on to serve as deputy mayor in Hopkinsville, and later had a pretty good temporary job with the federal government, responsible for overseeing public relations and community outreach activities in 21 Western Kentucky counties during the 2010 Census.
When he accomplished that task with great success, the Census Bureau gave him a lapel pin and said, "Attaboy." Now, in polite terms, he's in "transition" or "between opportunities." But, he keeps pounding the pavement to get a job, and he’d make anyone proud. Hell, I'm proud of him.
Tony left San Antonio for newspaper jobs in Chicago, back to San Antonio, Anchorage and Kodiak. He tried to recruit me for each one, but I knew he was never going to be at one place long enough to pin my hopes to his career. I did get trips to San Antonio and Chicago out of the deal, though.
It would have been my luck to have moved to Anchorage just in time for his firing there. Even if he’d taken me to Kodiak from there, he also got fired there.
I occasionally would talk with him after he left newspapers and joined the Coast Guard. He seemed happy, had survived his seventh or eighth divorce.
But there always was the hope he’d go back into newspapers. He didn’t know where or when, but he figured he would. I’m sure he would have wanted to come wherever I was so I could cover for him. But I loved him.
Tony’s Coast Guard career ended one apparently lonely night. An empty bottle of prescription pain-killers was found by his body after he didn’t show up for duty the next day.
It should be noted that the other original News Brother not in this picture, "Flash" Lindgren rose to great heights as a senior copy editor in Indianapolis, before his paper was consumed by korporate cannibalism and he exited rather than compromise his principles. Apparently his News Brothers training "took."
There were others who joined, proudly. Scott "Badger" Shelton was a correspondent for The Tennessean (by the way, Rob was for a time, too in his Hoptown days.) Scott also was a radio newsman, who became infected by the News Brothers and their enthusiasm while covering us as a news story.(Our movie was designed as a fund-raiser for a variety of worthy causes.) I don't know if Badger left journalism to go into a media relations job or if journalism left him. Regardless, he has ink in his veins. He is waging war with a deadly disease right now, but we hear he wears his shades during chemo treatments.
John "Street" Staed left Clarksville to pursue the heights of management superstardom in the news business. He reached them all right and even admitted once in a note that he was a "management puke" and no longer worthy of the News Brothers affiliation. Perhaps not .. until he was lopped from his lofty position and turned back into a reporter. Last I heard he was working part-time at a newspaper while training to be a respiratory therapist or Popsicle salesman.
I think Ricky "Dumbo" Moore has so far survived as a newspaperman. The sports editor in Clarksville back when the Brothers raged, he's some sort of high-falutin' copy editor or something in Chattanooga. I'm sure he worries, though, as he's not getting any younger, is overweight and has a variety of health woes.
There are others ... Harold "The Stranger" Lynch died long ago of lung cancer. Billy "StrawBilly" Fields left newspapering early enough to survive and he now is a high-ranking government official in Nashville (as if that's a good thing). David "Teach" Ross got out when he could and now is a schoolteacher in Erin, Tenn., and plays guitar in roadhouses at night.
I could go on, but I want you to scroll back to the top of this column for a second and look at the picture of four guys who just wanted to be newspapermen, who loved each other and loved exercising the First Amendment as well as helping the underdog and uncovering corruption and, always, sticking to their principles.
On the far left is Rob. As I said, he’s "between opportunities."
Then comes Tony. He committed suicide.
The happy fellow with the yellow Fedora is me. I left newspapering on my own terms, but I both regret and resent what has happened to newspapers since. My heart aches for my profession and its people as well as for the readers who no longer are fully served, for the underdogs who are ignored and for the fact big business and government go unchecked while a country is in despair.
You see, I got a buyout four years ago. In the months and years after that came a wave of buyouts and layoffs, shrinking a once proud staff to just a few. It's not just a Nashville malady. It has happened everywhere there is or has been a newspaper. The bottom-line is key. Sacrifice enough people so the CEO can get a $1 million bonus or whatever.
My old friend Jerry toiled in the trenches of middle management, a night editor without a staff, for almost four years after I left.
Last Thursday, while he was on vacation and bound for the annual Manley family pig roast and clambake in the countryside near Petersburg, he was notified his job was being vacated. Time to pack up your stuff old man.
I’m sure he was told “Thanks for all you’ve done.”
Several other good people – including an exceptional young journalist and rock drummer named Nicole Keiper (I put her name in here because she’s still young enough to hire, folks) – got axed. As did Ellen Margulies, who spent 25 years at the morning newspaper. There were many more corporate-wide.
Some didn’t expect it. For that, I am most sorry. I’d been telling them it was coming. But nobody really accepts that the worst will happen. Until it does.
By the way Larry McCormack -- the official News Brothers photographer (I'm not sure if he took this shot as it was 29 years ago and very late on a night when $3 champagne was involved) -- did make the cut and remains employed. At least last time I checked.
I could go on and protest what happened to the guys in the picture, but I’m particularly angry with the way Jerry was treated.
He had his dream job, and the corporate guys, who come and go, took it away from him.
I’m sure he’ll bounce back. Or at least roll back…. Maybe he can return to Petersburg to play spin-the-bottle with the local school marm. I don’t know.
All I really know is that when I look at the picture at the top of this column, it used to make me happy. Still does, until I realize that the four men there just wanted to spend the rest of their lives as newspapermen. And, for whatever reason, those dreams were crushed.
They say daily newspapers are dying. The reason is simple. People, not necessarily me, but I am a good example, are being dumped on the curb as the korporate juggernaut kills a most wonderful profession.
It’s not over yet, of course. So beware if you remain in a newsroom. George W. Bush never had an exit strategy, but you sure should. Does anyone want to be the last one standing in America's newsrooms? I don't know and I assume it would be some korporate type with a parachute, anyway. I do know that's one story no News Brother would want to report ... turning out the lights on what once was a noble profession.
There are a few things that come with a life spent in newspapers, triumphs and friendships as well as nightmares from tragedies covered, human beings in suffering.
One thing you never forget is the stench of death.

Loving the little girl I met in a Romanian orphanage, a kid who changed my life, as she graduates from high school 16 years after becoming a Ghianni

2011-05-31T08:14:00.000-07:00

“Man, your daughter’s beautiful,” someone said, looking at the pictures of the recent high school graduate.
“Yep,” she is, I respond. “I wish I knew who her mother was.”
Well, that’s just a joke. It works better when my wife says “Thanks. I have no idea who her father was.”
I know my Emily’s birth mother’s name and I know that she gave birth to my precious daughter on Aug. 21, 1993 in a hospital in Arad, Romania. A few days later the mom left the hospital, leaving the infant behind. It’s an all-too-common fate in Romania, and the baby was turned over to the local orphanage, a massive, gated, almost ominous complex, something worthy of a movie about national hero Vlad the Impaler, aka “Dracula.”
Emily’s biological father was a farmer or some sort of agrarian in that country that defines poverty between the long rows of sunflowers and hops and below the soil in the salt mines.
At least it defined poverty back in 1995 when we traveled over there to bring Emily home.
I thought about her humble beginnings (and relative humble upbringing, I should add), the other day when she graduated from Nashville’s John Overton High School. My gut rolled and my heart ached with alternate pride and melancholy.
Proud because she truly is my daughter, has been since the day the caretaker brought the sweaty 23-month-old kid in from the playground where she’d been playing soccer.
The caretaker paraded Emily and Nita, Cara and Lexi – the other three girls who came out that day with parents who have become part of our lives – and up to the dormitory room where they dressed the kids in their “Sunday” best for their new moms and pops.
My little girl was a chubby child, so the dress, woven of pink yarn, had to virtually be cut off her, as all clothes the children wore had to be left behind for other kids to wear in the orphanage.
Her lower body was swaddled in plastic, thick as a shower curtain, that was wrapped around her. No Pampers in the orphanage.
We cut that plastic off and chose fresh items from our overnight bag to dress her. This was before the internet age. Adoptive parents got little more than a name and an age and “healthy” on the back of a snapshot from the adoption agency. So we had to guess at her size, and any clothing that was either too large or small we left behind for the kids who weren’t getting out that day.
I’ve written the story before and perhaps I will again in detail.
But, cutting to the chase, within an hour we were on the Orient Express, bound the breadth of Romania in an all-night ride through the Carpathians and deep forests of Transylvania. The toilets were inoperable, so men, at least, trekked out between the cars to relieve themselves as the cold mountain darkness rushed past. Women, I believe, just elected to hold it for 10 or 11 hours.
It was a full-speed, almost all downhill run from Arad to Bucharest, where we were greeted by children who had climbed from the sewers beneath the depot – that’s where they live as bait for pedophiles – to swarm around our legs.
They wanted to rob us, of course. But one of the boys said he wished he could go with us. And the young cop who shooed them away said he wished he’d been adopted by Americans.
I replayed a part of that scene in my head as I sat in the stands at the Curb Center at Belmont University a week ago, where the Class of 2011 was taking its bows and salutes and diplomas.
A lot of family had come in for the celebration, but I took Emily to the arena early. Grads had to be there 45 minutes early. Emily was there an hour early. She may not be particularly punctual but her dad -- a 59-year-old journalist who apparently was judged a misfit by vile Korporate Amerikan standards -- is always on time. Course, lots of times nowadays, I’ve really got no place to go, so why be late? Another story sometime.
The ability to be on time had been tested 16 years ago when we were told a daughter had been selected for us … if we could be in Romania in 10 days or so.
They’d told us we’d get two months or so notice. But they had found a girl who matched my curly and unkempt hair (mine was brown at the time) and handed us the picture asking if we wanted them to proceed -- very quickly -- in the Romanian courts to finalize our adoption. We dropped everything to get there, to retrieve our baby.
My son, Joe – we adopted him three years later in Giurgiu, Romania – and I took Emily over to the Curb Center and we staked out a long row of seats for the expected family of spectators. They all love Emily.
I don’t know if anybody could love her more than I do. So as I stood there, 50 or 60 feet from Joe – who was at the other end of our reserved seat aisle – I looked around the arena.
I saw the stack of diploma covers on the stage. Some of the kids – those who are less punctual or at least who have less-anal-punctual parents – arrived later.
I had time to think about my daughter. No, she’s not perfect. A smart enough kid, perhaps needs a bit more motivation sometimes. A nice girl who seldom shows the scars of abandonment.
Emily, your birth mother did the right thing. She loved you enough to give you a future, we tell her.
But I know it aches and I ache for her.
And now I ache because she’s almost grown up.
It’s been a long time since she jumped up and down on her bed singing “Love, Love Me Do” or “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” – some of her early English lessons involved, for some reason, singing along with the music of The Beatles.
There was the occasional nod to The Stones – “Jumpin' Jack Flash” – and even Dylan.
You ever hear a 2-year-old Romanian take a crack at "Bob Dylan’s 115th Dream"? I have, of course. I taught her the lyrics. “I asked him what his name was and why he didn’t drive a truck…”
There was Emily with me, riding around town, eating McDonald’s french fries or M&Ms, after I picked her up from day care.
And the little girl who dressed as a black cat for her first Halloween with us -- trick-or-treating at my mother’s house, back when her Nonna was still alive -- and who posed with our huge dog, Buddy, in our first Christmas picture. Mom’s been gone almost a dozen years now. Buddy’s been gone seven.
There were the piano lessons and the recitals. The good grades and bad grades. The fine teachers and the horrid.
The eyes which drifted eerily when we first got her long have healed. She doesn’t have to wear glasses any more. Her teeth, weak from baby malnutrition have been fixed and filled. Like most kids, and like her dad, she doesn’t particularly enjoy flossing.
One of the strongest memories is the aroma she filled my car with on the first afternoon after she’d spent the day with Suzanne’s parents in Cookeville. I met them after work – I was a 4 a.m.-2 p.m. Nashville Banner editor and columnist back then – and picked her up at a gas station in Lebanon. They said she’d not gone “No. 2” all day and she’d been a delight.
“Daddeee … Daddeee … Daddee…” Emily shrieked in joy when I lifted her from one car seat and put her in another.
We were about one mile down the interstate back to Nashville, The Traveling Wilburys singing “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” on my tape player, when she apparently felt relaxed enough to, well, be herself. I thought I’d have to burn the car.
I can’t say her whole life flashed before me as I watched her and the other kids eventually file into the arena.
Maybe mine did, though.
Earlier in the day, I had learned that one of my life’s friends had been placed in a hospice and was not expected to wake up. He didn’t. He was gone the next morning. A part of a tribute I wrote to him was read at his funeral.
That was a reminder of just how special each bit of life is … and how so much of mine has been counted down by watching and enjoying and mostly just loving my children.
Sure, they are a pain in the ass. I now can tell them that, as they are old enough to deal with it and to them, well, it’s not news. But I love them and their mother more deeply than I thought I could love anything back during my rambling and painful days when I waged war with the storms of life.
I remembered dancing with her when she cried. I remembered crying with her when I was too tired to do otherwise. She was a comfort to me when my mother died, as she was an example of the circle of life.
And when my favorite newspaper, the old Nashville Banner, folded and left me in professional limbo, her hugs helped.
Later, when suffering through the torture of mean-spirited bosses and their corporate ass-kissing, I knew that when I got home, the kids – both Emily and Joe by then – would help me put it in perspective.
Some people tell me Suzanne and I’ll be lucky when the proverbial “empty nest” becomes a reality. Fortunately, Joe’s here for three more years.
And Emily is going to college an hour or two away. She says she’ll come home to visit often. And I hope she does.
When I was in college, my parents lived 823 miles from my dorm, so I only went home at Christmas and during the summer.
That was OK with me, as I went through the rigorous, red-eyed life of a baby boomer who would walk to class singing “I’m Free” from The Who’s Tommy, who hung out with Howling poets and Howlin’ Wolf and who embraced that most special part of life on a razor’s edge. And the wonder is, I lived through it.
My family, Suzanne and our children, are really my inspiration. I lived a hard and too-often reckless life until I was almost 40. I don’t regret that, but I am proud of the fact I was able to give up that lifestyle for the love of a family.
Having kids isn’t for everybody. But it was and is right for me. If my daughter hadn’t pleaded with me “stop using those fire sticks” I may not have quit smoking out in the back yard when I watched Buddy.
I hope Emily keeps her promise and comes home to see me.
These thoughts and memories danced beneath my long, gray hair as the relatives arrived and took their seats, as the ceremony began.
There were short speeches by the principal, the class president the valedictorian and a couple others. I really didn’t pay much attention. I kept watching the pretty “little girl” on the aisle seat near the back of the sea of red and black caps and gowns.
When it was her time to walk across the stage my heart pounded.
It did bother me a little, not much, when her name was mispronounced, when it was given a soft “jee” rather than a hard “ghee” (as in “ghost”).
Still I sat there and smiled as the kids tried their version of the wave, as my little girl threw her cap in the air.
Quickly it was all over, as the graduates filed out and I went to meet her in the conservatory area outside the arena.
At first I didn’t see her and she didn’t see me. But she is small and I am tall. I called her on the cell phone and told her I’d hold my arm up in the air.
Soon, she emerged from the sea of people, a bright smile, brighter eyes.
“Dad,” she said. “They mispronounced my name.”
I told her it didn’t matter. That we know how to pronounce Ghianni, that name she was given back in the courthouse in Arad 16 years ago.
“Emily Mariana Ghianni,” I said, pronouncing her name correctly while hugging her and returning her quick kiss. “I love you.”

Damning cancer, praying for a miracle and bidding a loving farewell to Red Oak's finest, my friend, Uncle Moose

2011-05-16T07:23:00.000-07:00

The thick-chested (some say thick-headed) guy with whom I shared some of life’s great adventures is sleeping most of the day.
The cancer has spread to his spine.
I’ve written before about my Uncle Moose -- aka Steve Mainquist -- and his fight with cancer. He’s an Iowa farm boy… well farm owner, big cheese, top wrangler of the massive Mainquist spread outside Red Oak ….
I can’t remember the last time I mentioned him. But I believe it was a few months ago and he was going outside to sit, reflect on his family, soak in the autumn sun and pet one of his cats.
He’d been too weak to help with the harvest last fall. And the two or three falls before, as the cancer ate away at him. But his friends and neighbors jumped in to help. There is a kinship to life on the Great Prairie.
He was, he told me, determined to live. His son, John, was going to graduate May 21, 2011 – that's this Saturday – and he wanted to be there. He also, I believe, had just purchased John a car.
Moose has been sick a long time. His battle has been hard-fought and vicious. Perhaps there’s a miracle there.
But I’ve lost too many friends over the years to believe much in miracles. Life’s a roll of the dice. Miracles happen in Christmas movies.
I met Moose back in the middle of August of 1969. I was a young guy, an incoming freshman, moving into Storms Hall at Iowa State University.
I guess I didn’t meet Moose until the upperclassmen showed up. He was a junior. He was a farmer. He wouldn’t show up until the last possible minute, because there was too much work to be had on the farm.
But there was something about this big guy that I liked. I don’t know exactly when I met him. Perhaps it was in a flying chest bump in the hallway of Hanson House. The big Nordic fellow enjoyed that. Or more likely it was at the cigar store down on Lincoln Way.
I’d stop there to buy a couple of good cigars a day from the twin brothers who ran the shop. One would be for smoking during the mile walk back to the dorm. The other one would be for the evening.
Perhaps our friendship really was cemented on the first round of finals I had at Iowa State. I ran out of cigars in mid-study. It was the middle of the night, so I went down the hallway to find Moose studying as well. I asked if he had a cigar I could buy or borrow.
Nope, so he accompanied me to the cigarette machine downstairs, where I bought a 50-cents pack of Camel straights, the beginning of my long addiction that ended perhaps 13 years ago.
But this really isn’t a blog about smoking. I’ve written before about the nasty habits of my early life and have been fortunate enough to get rid of them, to live through them. I hope.
Moose and I watched the draft lottery together. I drew 280. He drew 4.
As soon as he left ISU, he was drafted and spent six months trying to get out. It wasn’t so much an anti-war statement – I was the radical among my friends – as it was survival of the family farm.
His pop was dead and he was the sole proprietor of the farm and he took care of his mother.
Of course he opposed the war, most of my friends did … even those who went on to fight and die there…
But mostly all he wanted to do was to be allowed to go home to Red Oak, take care of the farm and his mom. Maybe one day raise a family.
In a momentary lapse of idiocy, the Army relented, giving him a personal hardship discharge just a few weeks shy of sending this big strong man to help his Uncle Sam in Vietnam.
I could talk all day about Moose. We haven’t seen each other in a few … well, way too many … years.
But we’ve been in each other’s hearts. Every once in awhile, he’d write me a long and long-winded draft, in his nearly impenetrable handwriting, which detailed -- in florid and insane language worthy of Ivanhoe, Groucho or Dr. Seuss -- his adventures.
True? Did somebody’s baby brother really “get et up by the hogs?” Were there really horsemen with sombreros riding spaceships just outside the south gate?
Oh, I can’t remember all the stories. Those two above are just examples and I probably made them up as a way of illustration.
I have a way of coping with life and for the most part it is to shut the door behind me as I pass through. “Excuse me… I’m done with this chapter.” Spares me emotional baggage and mental clutter, I guess.
But for some, the door is always open. Perhaps it would be two years between phone calls, but we’d connect. And we’d laugh.
He’d tell me about his farm life. About his family.
We told each other about our mothers’ passings.
I reminded him that his mom always was someone I cherished. I can remember the 5 a.m. breakfasts out at the Mainquist spread. And the ham sandwiches at lunchtime, washed down by lemonade and accompanied by those cookies that had the chocolate-covered marshmallow on top.
I guess my only long visit there was in 1974 or ’75. I went back out to Iowa to visit some friends on campus. And once the weekend frivolity ended, I climbed into the 1965 Falcon and drove to far southwest Iowa, to a special spot in the universe called Red Oak.
I helped with the corn harvest there for about a week. I suppose I really got in the way, but I ran the elevator, filling the silos up with feed corn after he’d combine the rows.
And then, when the day was done, we’d climb on the smaller tractor, with a flatbed filled with hay and rumble and bump across the pasture to the cattle.
In the evening, we’d go to the saloon in town. I can’t remember the name. All I know is we’d drink beer -- likely Schlitz, Stroh's or Falstaff -- and laugh. He’d be smoking a cigar. Me, well, I was a Winstons man at that point in life.
We rolled through the frosty night back out to the spread.
We sat outside and listened to the coyotes howl. We smoked cigars then and talked about our friend, the great poet and how we had both been astounded and perhaps confused when he performed “Howl” at campus.
Moose also returned to Ames, to campus, to go see Groucho Marx when I was a junior. It was Groucho’s last performance. He was coming out of retirement. He was warming up for Broadway in Ames. He died, literally, when he hit New York.
I have never seen nights as pure and clean as those over the Iowa prairies. I’ve been camping in the Rockies and the Sierras and those perhaps are close seconds. But there was a sense of infinity about standing on a rise by the darkened barn and looking out over the hillsides. Listening to the coyotes. And to the nothing.
I think of those nights in Red Oak often. I even had a Red Oak centennial T-shirt that Moose sent. I wore it until it wore out or perhaps it got lost in life’s storms. If one of Moose’s friends is reading this, I could use another Red Oak T-shirt, XXL.
Red Oak occupies a special place in my heart. And I have other friends there, particularly Leonard Sandholm … “Nardholm” as he was known in college. I think Nardholm is a year younger than I am.
And occasionally I hear from him. Which is fitting, since I was there when he and his now wife had their first date in the upper bunk of his dorm room. I think Inna-Gada-Da-Vida was blasting on the stereo. Nardholm’s room was something of the destination for everyone that night, so the pretty girl joined him on the upper bunk. Nothing wild here, just a kid with a Brillo shock of blond talking with the girl who would be his wife. I like Nardholm a lot too. I’d like to see him again as, they say, sand goes through the hourglass of life.
Anyway, Nard wrote me a note Friday on Facebook.
“Moose not doing good” is all it said.
Which was all I needed to know. I got to Facebook and wrote notes to Moose (he actually never uses his site, but his wife set it up for him), his wife Sheila and to Moose's beautiful sister Linda, who, works for the Maharishi in D.C. (No not the president, the real Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.) I remember her as a wonderful college girl with a charming smile and other amazing attributes.
Linda wrote back:
“Yes, Steve's health has been in sharp decline. About 2 weeks ago, had to be moved into a full care center. It's actually quite homey in that they have their own family suite. He's grown so much in these last three years--opening up to experiences way beyond his identity, "doing" personality. His heart is wide open with a more palpable serenity. He mostly rests while all his friends and neighbors visit and entertain him and then has to sleep for about 24 hours. I am going to see him on Tuesday for a week. It seems that his final transcendence is quite near . . . Thank you for reaching out. I know that Steve is more in his soul dimension than his earthly one, so your loving attention is felt deeply and immediately. You can call the home number and leave yours if you get a message. We can call you back from wherever we happen to be. His son John's h.s. graduation is next Saturday, so many of us are gathering in IA to give John proper recognition for his achievements. He's quite a guy--a leader, singer, loves people. Much love, Linda”
And from Sheila: "Steve is now in the care center as he is unable to walk. The cancer has moved to his spine. He had three bouts of radiation, but things are just moving along too quickly. Right now he is not in a huge amount of pain, but sleeps much of the time. He has always valued your friendship!! I will tell him you asked about him. If I can find your phone number at home and if he is up to talking, I will have him call."
I’d love to have a happy ending for this tale. But it’s not quite over.
Of course we all know how it ends.
But it’s not how he dies that matters. It’s how he lived. And, man, did he live.
I love you Moose.

Peggy's brave battle and Dorian's funny hats

2011-05-05T20:08:00.000-07:00

A friend once told me, after the docs gave him his cancer death sentence, that he hadn’t been very good at showing people how to live but “by God, I’m going to show them how to die.”
He did, quietly, with honor and dignity. And I think of him, one of too many journalists and friends I have helped bury, almost every day.
I started to think of my old friend tonight when I reflected on the life of Peggy Arrington, a pretty woman with a quick laugh and self-deprecating sense of humor even in the depth of battle with cancer.
I first made Peggy’s acquaintance when I was doing the annual Acts of Kindness feature for American Profile magazine. I have the good fortune of getting that assignment each year.
Basically, the deal is that the magazine, with its 10 million circulation, reaches out to its mostly smalltown newspaper audience and requests that folks nominate other people for their genuine acts of kindness each year.
After consulting with my editor, who culls through the sea of nominees, I get a couple of fistfuls of nomination letters to go through and try to come up with the best ones to interview, to tell the stories of human kindness, to let people know there are good people out there. Most of us are good, after all.
And we all are in this struggle together.
One of the stories I chose last year – the feature annually appears around the holidays – sprang from a letter written by Peggy, who lived in Jacksonville, Fla.
She described her own battle with breast cancer and how a woman she didn’t know all that well changed her life and her outlook. So I called and interviewed her as well as other people involved in the battle she was having.
The story I wrote from those interviews was boiled down for the publication, but here’s the draft of what I turned in, prior to the editing, etc.:
When Peggy Arrington, 55, was diagnosed with breast cancer, the prospect of the treatment terrified her almost as much as the disease.
With husband Steven, 61, by her side, she began bi-weekly chemo sessions, the object to shrink the tumor with the hope of limiting the surgery to a lumpectomy.
But he wasn’t able to take her to the routine follow-up visits, which included a shot the day after each chemo to stimulate bone marrow to produce more white blood. And during the “off” week from chemo, she went to the clinic for blood tests.
She admits she easily could have made those treks herself, but she gladly accepted the offer of Dorian Eng, a member of her rubber-stamp club, to take her.
“What nobody knew is that I have an extreme fear of doctors, needles, hospitals and anything in connection with them,” says Peggy. “When I finally let out my deep, dark secret, Dorian devised a plan to distract me every time I had to face an injection or a blood test.”
It’s all in the headgear: as soon as Peggy sat down “waiting for my blood to be drawn, hoping I wouldn’t hyperventilate. Dorian pulled a hat out of her handbag and put it on.
“It was the silliest thing I had ever seen – kind of like a black aviator hat with big blue rubber spikes coming out all over it. Before I knew it, the blood test was over and I had laughed through it.
“Dorian wore the hat out and you should have seen the smile from people in the waiting room…”
A happy tradition was born and every visit after that, Dorian pulled a different hat – from Mickey ears to a tiara with pink feathers to a clown hat, never the same hat twice. It never failed in its mission to make the needle fear pass but also get smiles from other patients.
Peggy’s chemo failed and eventually she had a mastectomy, but “if there are truly angels on earth, I think Dorian is one of them.”
Dorian, who lives with husband, Doug, 56, a couple miles from the Arringtons, says she got more out of it than Peggy.
“I didn’t consciously think of doing anything. It was just how can I help? I always love a good laugh, so I pulled that hat out of the bag the first time and it worked.
“I really got to love her during that time. That was the gift to me.”
As I normally do, to alert people that their stories are going to appear in whatever magazine I might be working for in my never-ending effort to make a living, I planned on picking up the phone in November and telling both Peggy and Dorian the story - "Dorian's Hats" was its title in the roundup of good acts -- was about to appear.
Peggy beat me to it, sending me an e-mail, wondering when the story would appear. Because of the nature of her illness, I sensed a fair amount of desperation in her e-mail, that normally cold form of communication.
So I picked up the phone to call her.
She told me the news hadn’t been good, that the struggle, though it continued, was wearing on her. Basically, she wasn’t going to make it.
The cancer may have been winning, but the spirit wasn’t faltering.
She thanked me for writing the story, for allowing her to share the tale of Dorian’s kindness to her. She laughed again at Dorian’s silly hats and said it was a pleasure to meet me.
And she thanked me for my own sensitivity in writing the story.
Well, I told her then, and I still feel that way, it was my privilege.
Sure, it was a simple little story, but it may give people with cancer a reason to hope. And it may inspire those who have friends in that struggle to jump in and do whatever it takes to make the fight at least more bearable.
I called her back a month or two later to see how things were going. Not well, she said. Not well at all. She again thanked me for telling the story.
I thanked her for opening up to me and told her she was helping other people. Promised to send good thoughts her way. And I said goodbye.
I also called Dorian, who told me she was doing her best to help, but her dear friend was slipping… badly, quickly.
Late this afternoon, I received a note from Dorian that both made my day and broke my heart:
Hi Tim,
I just wanted to let you know our friend Peggy passed away a few days ago losing her battle with breast cancer. She was a kind and gentle soul that touched many lives through her caring ways. Thank you again for including us in your article last December. It is a gift her family and I will treasure for a lifetime.
Your friend,
Dorian Eng
With Dorian’s help, Peggy Arrington showed people how to be brave, how to fight and how to die.
But mostly she showed people how to live each day…. Even if you fear the needle…. And how to be thankful for grace.

Thinking about escaping to 'A Place to Come To' and visiting Robert Penn's ghost while Sparkplug serves us burgers

2011-04-22T16:24:00.000-07:00

For acclaimed Southern writer Robert Penn Warren, Guthrie, Ky., truly was A Place to Come To, his hometown, which he would visit to reconnect with his roots.
For me, it has not been a place to reconnect with roots, but rather a place to go to escape stress, where a girl named “Sparkplug” strains against her tight T-shirt while peddling burgers and fries at the American Café, where Mennonites mingle with their more modern agrarian brethren of multiple races and colors.
In my early escapes to this village, on the Tennessee-Kentucky state line, I was running from murder. No they weren’t murders I committed, but murders I covered as an editor and columnist for the newspaper 15 or 20 miles south in Clarksville, Tenn.
I wasn’t really running away from my job as a newspaperman telling tales of life and death of young people cut down by vile punks.
Rather I was running to Guthrie.
To a place that for more than 30 years now has become at least in my mind, a Mayberry.
Oh, there have been acts of violence here, too. I once wrote about a merchant whose life’s blood ran out on the steps of his store on U.S. 41.
Here I could find an uncommon peace, though. Decades ago, it was found in the warm embrace of a fellow who was a stranger just once, Louis Buckley, a native son himself, who was battling colon cancer.
He too had run to this town. He’d been a record peddler in Nashville, but decided to close up shop after one of his clerks was murdered.
He hauled his records into a series of deserted storefronts, welcomed collectors.
Gave away more records than he sold, I’d reckon.
At least to me. On my first visit he not only loaded me down with albums, he also opened the doors and the heart of the city to me.
He introduced me to Reuben Toliver, the king of the whole hog barbecue. This peculiarly southern traditional food still can be purchased in Guthrie. But it truly isn’t what the Rev. Reuben cooked in the pits outside his church in nearby Sadlersville as much as it was the spirit of the man himself. Reuben Toliver’s annual Labor Day picnic, a family dinner on the grounds, was a sight, and experience, to savor, as I spent the night out there in Sadlersville, helping as the old preacher maintained the coals, sizzling with the aroma of pork.
The first time I tasted this barbecue was when Mr. Buckley took me into Longhurst's General Store. At the time it was the rare thriving business on Ewing Street, U.S. 41, as it rolls beneath the blue Kentucky sky.
It was in that store that I first met William Longhurst Sr., the proprietor whose mantra was “If We Ain’t Got It, You Don’t Need It.”
His son, Bill Jr., inherited not only the business, but the smile of an attitude, the warm welcoming character of his dad.
It was also in this store that I first met Thomas Warren, Robert Penn’s brother.
Sometimes the visits would extend to the skyline’s most-imposing structure: the grain elevator that Thomas ran. “I love my brother, but I don’t understand what he’s writing about” (or words to that effect) the gentle soul confided one long-ago afternoon when his office was my refuge from the cold.
Oh, it’s a hard-scrabble town in the middle of the “prairie.” Mennonite carriages and tobacco farmers’ tractors rattle slowly through.
Some people escape the storms of life by visiting spas. Others play golf or, if they are fortunate, visit exotic ports of call.
For me, the moment I step from my car and onto Ewing Street, the moment I go into Longhurst’s to see how things are going, it is as if a weight is lifted.
Many people I’ve known here have died.
The old poet and great novelist Robert Penn Warren never made it back to town after the home of his birth, a block from downtown, was turned into a museum 20 years ago. He'd planned to. But he became ill.
Through his relatives he passed on word that he was a fan of my writing, that he was glad I loved his town, his people.
Among the items inside that museum are baseball trousers from the poet’s best friend, Kent Greenfield, whose first pitch for the New York Giants was a fastball knocked out of the park by the Philadelphia Athletics’ Cy Williams. In later years, Greenfield raised bird dogs and occasionally welcomed young reporters.
Most of the men I first met here are buried in the cemetery at the edge of town.
When Mr. Buckley died, Song of the Islands, a scratchy old 78 rpm recording by Louis Armstrong, was played at his funeral. It was by his instruction. A note requesting that song was found tucked into the album sleeve in his home. A column I’d written about Guthrie, about Buckley was also tucked in the sleeve with the record. It was one of many I wrote about the town, about Robert Penn and Jesse James, about Reuben Toliver and the befuddled bicycle rider who lived in an open shed on Ewing Street. About the murdered hardware merchant. And tattooed redneck women. All parts of this wonderful town.
Yet I still come to Guthrie.
No time hasn’t stood still. Yet it is a place where for almost half a year the high-noon siren pierces the peace at 11 o’clock. Why bother changing it? It’ll only have to be changed back when the time changes is the logic. Sounds reasonable to me.
Today, yesterday, rough struggles continue for us all, not just for this old man still making his way, searching for answers. Asking "Why?" So I stopped for a few minutes to think about, to write about Guthrie. I'd written a part of this tale long ago and, every so often, I either read it or add to it or both. Today, a bit gloomy perhaps on a Good Friday, 2011, seemed a good time to post it.
And it also is posted as a way of promising myself that soon I will return to watch the red-tail hawks sail over the cemetery, the Buckley and Warren plots, to wander in and continue a conversation with Bill Longhurst Jr., as it we'd never stopped talking.
Maybe meet my old pal, Rob Dollar, and go to the American Café to see Sparkplug and have a burger.
Walk down Ewing Street. And take a deep breath of a place to come to for freedom.

Treasuring Magic moments at 1979 NCAA basketball tournament when Al McGuire & I defined the proper urinal-interview etiquette and I befriended Earvin

2011-03-24T13:41:00.000-07:00

Standing elbow-to-elbow with Al McGuire, I figured I’d strike up a conversation. Obviously, neither of us was going anywhere soon, as we were using adjoining urinals.
Besides that, we both were raised in the North, loved basketball and had just relished watching a young and lean Earvin “Magic” Johnson offer proof that he was the best basketball player in the universe.
I was looking for some happy banter, anyway, as I had just been talking to Bobby Knight and was feeling the need to escape that egotistical throw-a-chair-across-the-court hangover funk that resulted.
And Al, well, he was such a contrast to the perhaps brilliant, but erratic, Knight, who these 32 years later has said “Jimmy Tressel represents all that’s good about college athletics” or some such. That’s another story, of course. If that’s true, then Bruce Pearl also is a similarly stellar representation. Wonder if Pearl took that orange sport coat with him when escorted to the door at UT? Great for grilling out.
Normally I don’t conduct interviews at urinals. First of all, at least in my case, it’s difficult to take notes. But urinal etiquette usually calls for a couple of guys to brag about the number of Buds passing through or complain that the Cubs haven’t been the same since Ernie Banks last played two.
It’s generally a guy thing as well. And in most cases, I prefer it that way.
“So, Flap, what’s this have to do with going to the bathroom at a local university the other day?” you might ask if you were reading my mind or had been with me.
As “journalist-in-residence” at one of our fine universities in Nashville, I teach young people about writing, ethics, AP style and also advise the student news web site.
And when I’m not talking with these bright young people or drinking Pepsi Maxx, I’ll occasionally – like many of my friends across the U.S., including in Libya and our other recent acquisitions – take a bathroom break.
Other than the every third or fourth decade occurrence, like when I’m chatting with Al McGuire about Magic Johnson and personal hair styles – Al was of the slicked-back persuasion and I am, well something altogether different – I try to pay attention to my own business when in the john.
I’m sure women do the same, but I’ve never been one (although I remain an avid fan), so am not sure what goes on in the women’s restrooms. I have seen couches in there, which does give me pause to wonder just what kind of lurid things are happening in there. But it’s none of my business.
Speaking of minding my business, that’s what I was doing the other day at the university when a when a young man – wearing a T-shirt proclaiming allegiance to God and country – stepped up two urinals away and turned on the speaker function on his iPhone, so he could have a loud conversation with his girlfriend while he was going to the bathroom.
Between the “I’m sorrys” and “I love yous” and “I can’t wait to see yous” and “what did your parents say when they found out” conversation bouncing off the tile walls, well I have to tell you I felt violated. The girl’s voice was so loud that it was as if she was in there too.
And I personally couldn’t believe this young man – a smart and rich young college lad I’m sure – would continue his elimination process while love-cooing his girlfriend. I mean, I’m all for multi-tasking….
Few call me a prude … with good reason and reputation, I’m afraid … but this whole thing turned me against iPhones. If I’d been at Greer Stadium, where they have those big troughs, I’d probably have knocked the phone in there. The girl’s voice would have faded into the sea of recycled Buds.
Which brings me back to Al McGruire in the restroom at the Murphy Center in Murfreesboro back in 1979.
It was my favorite time to be a sportswriter, as generally the first round of the NCAA tournament would be played within a couple hour’s drive. It would be in Murfreesboro, Tenn., or Bowling Green, Ky., and once we even went over to Lexington to watch the first weekend’s games and then the following week’s Regionals.
What was special about these tournaments was that, to a young sportswriter/editor, I got to spend time with the best young athletes and broadcasters, watch remarkable basketball and, if necessary, eat for free in the media lounge.
On that particular weekend in 1979 I was in Mufreesboro primarily because I wanted to see Earvin “Magic” Johnson and his pal, Greg Kelser (the only Spartan to ever score 2,000 points and 1,000 rebounds ) tear into Lamar (Not ALEXANDER … the University … although I’d have gladly watched them tear into the governor as well.)
I’d also been a huge fan of Al McGuire, especially liking it when he reamed out Billy Packer. Hey, Al’s dead. Don’t be silly: Whatever happened to Billy?
Al didn’t hold himself as better than anyone. He and I had just ended up in the same bathroom because back then, the NCAA tournament was not owned by General Electric, Disney World, Gannett, CBS, the oil cartels and the law enforcement Taliban. Even small-time newspaper sports editors and their pals were afforded press credentials without fingerprinting, genital fondling, DNA analysis and blowing into a blood-alcohol machine (a fortunate thing in many cases).
It was in the era of “jump balls.” Remember them? If so, I’m sorry for you. You are pretty damned old.
Anyway, I wanted to talk to Al for one of my slices of life columns I was providing from this tournament. I was covering the games, but I also was writing color stories.
Which would be the only reason I’d ever go into a press conference held by Bobby Knight and ask what he’d tell me was a stupid question. You know, all I did was ask him why he was such a turd. The answer was obvious to us all, and I don’t think he took particular objection. But every question was stupid then for Bobby, long before they tarred and feathered him and ran him out of Bloomington, Ind., in a straitjacket with a bottle rocket up his butt.
But then there was Al McGuire, who coached his Marquette team – a gang of very skilled pseudo-Catholic outlaws – to an NCAA championship in 1977 and retired to the broadcast booth.
He was a likable coach, who proved even more likable behind the microphone. And since I’d won $136 on the Marquette victory (office pools were illegal back then .. .much as they are today), I really liked the guy. After all, he and “Bo” Ellis and the gang had defeated Dean Smith’s Tarballs for the championship.
Anyway, let’s get right to the point, as my pal, Tom Petty, likes to say, I found myself standing at the urinal next to Al McGuire in between games.
Since this was one time when I was alone with one of the great characters in basketball history, I decided to conduct an interview. I mean, I already at that point in my life had spent days with Muhammad Ali (clothed and unclothed – him not me), John Wooden (generally well-clothed), Henry Aaron (in a nice suit), Joe Montana (wearing a dozen Super Bowl rings) and O.J. Simpson (who kept sharpening his knife on his shoe soles while we spoke).
So, with Al, well, I just started chatting. We had bladders filled and so there was time to talk about basketball, about Magic and about his championship season. It was obvious to me that we’d both had our share of “Tab” back in the media lounge. Remember “Tab”? Tasted like Diet Coke.
After we zipped up that conversation, we converged on the single sink. I always wash my hands. Not just after I use the facilities, but always. In fact there are times when my hands turn raw from the repeated washing. Yes, I am the lunatic you’re looking for.
There was just the one sink, so Al and I washed our hands together. Soap brothers. Then he smiled and looked at my shock of hair. My hair, although somewhat shorter back then and almost black, always has exceeded societal-norm standards.
“I guess you don‘t use one of these, do you?” he said, as he pulled a comb from behind the hanky in his breast pocket. “See, you go like this….”
At which point one of the great basketball coaches in NCAA history gave me lessons on combing hair while I finally retrieved my notebook from my back pocket and began scribbling down notes.
“Well, Tim, I gotta get back to work. See what happens in the next game,” he said, as we shook clean hands and walked back toward press row.
Probably nowadays, sports announcers have security clear the rest rooms so long-haired smalltown journalists won’t bother them in their hour of darkness. For all I know Billy Packer left broadcasting not just because he insulted Duke students and alienated almost everyone but because he was afraid I’d catch up to him one day in the john.
I loved Al McGuire and Marquette, and his street-guy-gentlemanly ease with a young reporter proved his image was just him being him. And the urinal interview would have been the capper on a great weekend.
But then, as Al walked away, I looked up, and there was Magic Johnson, standing in front of me, in the hallway.
He’d already done his dog-and-pony press conference, his NCAA duties, smiling and capturing hearts, just as he did the remainder of his ball-playing years.
He had no reason to stop when I asked him if he had time. Course he was standing in front of me, but much lesser athletes and musicians and politicians have ignored me and wandered off, haven’t you Senator Sasser, Mickey Mantle (course you were drunk), Toby Keith and Al Gore.
I looked up at the guy blocking the hallway, who was, to my way of thinking, the best, most-complete basketball player on the planet. And he was there with Kelser, his support man.
This was long before Magic became famous for contracting HIV. Long before he took over the helm of the Los Angeles Lakers after Jabbar went down and guided them – from the center spot – to a world championship.
He was just a big kid, a sophomore in college, and that day he and Kelser had put on a Globe Trotter-worthy exhibition, crushing Lamar, 95-64, in the second-round of the Mideast Regionals.
During my life, I’ve covered a lot of basketball games and met a lot of ballplayers. But, other than James “Fly” Williams, who was a gunslinger for then-outlaw school Austin Peay State University, none of them had a bigger smile than Magic.
And, to be fair, Fly’s smile was enhanced by the fact he was snaggle-toothed. His Peay pals apparently didn’t take care of his dental work. He became a friend of mine and sometime I’ll go up to see if he’s still alive in New York City.
That’s another long story and I may get to it today or it may be next time. Or later on to be sure.
Because this one really is about Magic. Well, about Al McGuire and Magic.
I’ve been thinking a lot about both men as this NCAA tournament – as Al called it “The Big Effin’ Dance” -- progresses.
I love basketball, but there never has been another player who could not only dominate a game but capture hearts like Magic Johnson.
I saw Michael Jordan in the rafters up in the Charlotte Mausoleum the other day and it made me think two things.
No. 1, Michael Jordan was a great basketball player and I loved to watch him play. But I don’t think I’d like to know him, as I’m a Fruit of the Looms guy.
No. 2, Magic Johnson was better. And I am glad I got to know him a little bit back during his playing days.
For me that 1979 season, which ended up with the storied Bird-Magic showdown – won by Magic – may have been college basketball at its best. I later met Bird, and he too seemed like a nice guy, even when I laughed at him for growing up in French Lick.
Anyway, after our conversation, Magic told me he wanted to watch some basketball. So I let him go.
A few minutes later I walked back into the arena, and was looking for a place to sit in the stands. Magic and Greg Kelser waved me up to sit with them.
So I did. Just a scruffy-haired sports editor, wearing Acme cowboy boots, sitting up in the stands watching basketball games with Magic Johnson.
And, a few rows below, Al McGuire was sipping on a Tab.

On Mardi Gras, Fats Domino offers hope, pounding piano and friendship from a city I fell in love with when I killed Jesus in Lower 9th

2011-03-08T20:26:00.000-08:00

The first time I was in New Orleans I killed Jesus.
That’s a long story.
Now whenever I think of that city, I think of Fats Domino.
Of course, the two incidents and the two main stars in my New Orleans dramas aren’t the same.
Fats helped invent rock ‘n’ roll.
Jesus, of course had plenty of other accomplishments, what with the water into wine and the other miracles of faith.
But I think the ignorant white trash who burned Beatles albums back in the 1960s call rock ‘n’ roll “the Devil’s music.”
Course it’s not the Devil’s music that came from my friend Fats down in New Orleans. It was equal parts tabernacle and temptation, boogie and bordello stomp, sung by a man with the voice only an angel could emulate. Or was he a devil in disguise?
Many have laid claim to “inventing” rock ‘n’ roll. Little Richard. Chuck Berry. Ike Turner. Sam Philips. Elvis never claimed he invented it, even after he was crowned king.
Carl Perkins’ role in the “invention” of the music is under-appreciated, at least in part because he was seriously injured early in his career, allowing Elvis to leap frog. And in another part because Carl was humble.
Well, Carl said that Fats was the one who kept the rock flame burning while all others extinguished. His flamboyant showmanship didn’t become a self-indulgent caricature. Instead, the Fat Man just kept on making music.
And, as for the Devil’s music, well in one of the interviews I’ve been fortunate enough to do over the years, Fats said he was “lucky” that songs like “I’m Walkin’” and “Blueberry Hill” and “Walkin’ to New Orleans” allowed him to make a good living while still allowing him to stay true to his gospel and family roots. Not just in spirit but by living in one section of town, he hoped, for his whole life.
“Nobody lives forever,” he told me once. “Stay as close as you can (to the teachings in the Bible). That’s the main thing.”
A bit of Fats on the CD player (for I still listen to music that way) I was thinking about the day I killed Jesus and about the great and humble rock pioneer Tuesday, Mardi Gras, so I picked up the phone to call Fats to wish him a happy Fat Tuesday. After all, if anyone should enjoy Fat Tuesday, it should be Fats Domino.
Fats lives not too far from the Lower Ninth Ward, where he lived with his family in a colorful compound virtually forever, until Katrina. In fact he never would have left if it hadn’t been for that disaster.
It was his home, his part of town.
People who had all but forgotten about him were reminded first when authorities said they thought Fats and his family were among those washed away, and then later when Coast Guard boats rescued the whole clan from the second floor of the house.
While cultural historians have helped to restore the old office of the man who took New Orleans funk to the people, it is still in a desolate and unfortunate part of the city. The surroundings show the disgrace of abandonment, of ignorance and neglect of those who have been in power since and before the Hurricane.
Now, back to the first part of this New Orleans love story. How did the guy who loves and has befriended Fats kill Jesus in New Orleans?
Well, first of all I was still a juvenile, so it can be forgiven this “sin” that took place in between a couple of hours of jump jiving gospel music, chicken and sweet potato pie at a church in the Lower Ninth.
I was there again as something of a rebel. While I was good about attending church, I was (and remain) a “non-joiner.” So, I didn’t participate in the youth group activities, other than the night The Byrds played in the teen nightclub in the church basement. Our own cellar full of noise, I suppose.
Oh sure, I was a good student. And I was a good usher in the early service, primarily because the offertory came pre-sermon. We could collect, go downstairs and count, put it in the safe and head to the kitchen for donuts and coffee.
Yes, sweet caffeine. So while they were upstairs singing the praises, I was double dunking and enjoying the fruits and bounty. My Sweet Lord indeed.
The problem was that, despite my misgivings, the youth minister wanted me involved. There was a choir trip coming up around Easter time and she wanted me to try out for a play that was going to be the centerpiece. I looked at the script for “Christ in the Concrete City.” I still have it around here someplace.
Basically, the stark play put Jesus in a modern environment. The four –person cast had multiple roles.
I was typecast from the outset: “Tim, I want you to play Judas, Pilate and the Roman soldier who nails Christ on the cross,” said the preacher.
OK. Other people got to play Peter, Paul and Mary or whatever. I get to be the combination of history’s greatest villains. Appealed to the side of me who enjoyed breaking noses in soccer games in p.e.
Course, if you see me, you’ll notice I had my share of busted noses as well. Two in football and probably two or three playing soccer. Pleased to meet you, I suppose. And we all shine on.
Anyway, I won’t bore you with details, as this really is about New Orleans, but the play was presented throughout the South, in urban, black churches. We stayed in those churches and enjoyed the best food they had to offer.
My favorite performance was in New Orleans, as a matter of fact. For when I came to the line where I actually nailed Christ to the cross (he wasn’t played by anyone… merely a holy air space we played around), my line was “Down goes the hammer!” and I was supposed to drive my right arm down, invisible hammer driving invisible spike into invisible savior’s hands and ankles.
Well, the church kneeling rail was right up next to where I was killing Jesus, and as my arm went down, I caught the underside of my forearm on the rail. It cut my shirt and arm. Blood came rolling down my arm. Peter, Paul and Mary came over to look at me and see if I was all right. It had been an awful sound after all. I don’t think I cursed.
“Just got some of Jesus’ blood on me. It splashed,” I adlibbed, quietly.
Play was almost over.
Anyway, that was in New Orleans. I’ve been back plenty of times, though seldom have killed the savior again.
I’ve been there when I slept in my car next to the Mississippi and spent another night sleeping in an all-night showing of “Live and Let Die” in one of those old theaters on Canal.
Been down there to cover sporting events, like Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks’ prizefight in 1978.
Taken other business trips there and even have taken to enjoying family vacations there….. The last one, though, came about two weeks before Katrina.
I have no great claims on the city, other than that it is probably my favorite city in North America.
Of course it has had its problems, with violence and corruption. And it has been ignored. Many thousands who fled in the days after George W. Bush and the Corps of Engineers exercised due diligence in saving the city, have not returned.
Many more people died.
And now, much of the city remains in ruins.
So it cheers me to see that it is Mardi Gras and that the people down there are celebrating again. Of course the skin tone of celebrants is increasingly white, since large black sections of town were obliterated by the storm. Never to return.
Still it is Mardi Gras. The big blast before Lent.
So, I called Fats and asked what he’s been doing lately.
“Been playing a lot, you know, keeping fingers loose,” he said, with a laugh.
He also likes to watch TV, sleep and visit with his family and friends.
He’s got new songs he’d like to record, but, since he just turned 83, he may or may not have a chance.
Still he was glad to hear from me. “You call any old time,” he said.
“You going to party today, since it’s Mardi Gras?” I asked.
“Believe I’m just gonna lay down on my bed,” he said, again his soft laughter rising. “You call again, Tim. Anytime.”
On Mardi Gras, the great rock pioneer set down the phone in the city where I killed Jesus. And he went to bed.

Night of neon, Shel memories, smiling with squeezebox queen and savoring Don Kelley & Dave Roe while young cowboy dreams

2011-02-26T20:34:00.000-08:00

The kid with the Brad Paisley Stetson caught up just as I stepped past the statue of Elvis on the sidewalk and kept going straight, glancing, as I usually do, up the hill at the Ryman and remembering when I used to sneak in the alley door into the Opry every week.
“Man, they won’t run over both of us, I hope,” said the kid as he and I stepped --- with the little green-dude walk signals – in front of disobedient traffic and across Fifth Avenue. We both were bound uphill. He for the Masonic Lodge parking lot – where his band’s van was parked – and me to the old white Saab parked on Broadway in front of that monument.
“Me and my band are playing at Cadillac Ranch and I gotta get the van with the instruments in it and pull down there for a minute,” said the kid.
“We been playing together awhile. Mostly down in Alabama, but now we’re working hard to make it here,” said the kid.
I stopped so I could turn to him and extend my hand, introducing myself. After all, he and I had just completed a death-defying act in the middle of lawless Nashville, where red lights are mere bothers.
Stewart Halcomb laughed, easily, and met my firm handshake with his own. Sensing he might be a musician, though – although not just musicians wear cowboy hats on Lower Broad – I didn’t tighten the throttle on my hand-grip.
I reserve a slightly softer shake for guys who use their hands to play guitars and for prizefighters. I remember one of the times I hung out with Muhammad Ali, he winched when I shook his hand. Course he’d spent the prior evening beating up Leon Spinks. All I’d done was write about it and hang out with Larry Holmes, Joe Frazier and the really pretty woman who’d stepped into the ring naked.
The young cowboy and I began the gentle uphill stroll in front of the urban atrocity that is the convention center. If this one’s bad, what’s the next one gonna look like? Anyway, he went on to talk about the hard life he and his band mates in The Springs had chosen, but how they were chasing the dream that had lured so many country acts to Nashville over decades.
Yep, Hank done it this way, after all, I shrugged.
Stewart added that his band was still smoothing its edges and that, while there’s a CD out, I shouldn’t judge them by that. “We like to play live and we really don’t know yet how to record right,” said the affable kid, the leader and songwriter of a band that is aged 19-22 and that plays most nights down in Nashville’s Disney World.
I call it “Nashville’s Disney World” because it’s not the Lower Broadway that I first fell in love with 40 years ago. Course I had dark hair and a less-firm grip on reality back then. This was going to be a town that I’d write about for life. The musicians, the dreamers, the whores.
It was in a time when Roger Miller still could be found sipping coffee in an all-night diner and Shel Silverstein and Bobby Goldsboro would stop to help a young guy rescue old bricks from a road that was being “resurfaced” to asphalt. I’ve told you about that. They even helped young guy load the bricks in the trunk of the ’65 Falcon.
Same car took me all over the country for awhile. Spent a lot of time sleeping in it in the streets of New Orleans, San Francisco, San Antonio, Kerrville or next to it out at Joshua Tree. Course Wizard traveled with me. I wonder what happened to the Falcon after the engine blew? Sought out Wizard once on the internet a year or so ago and made contact. Realized then there was a plenty good reason we weren’t friends any more. No need to go into them here. Too many a--holes in the world would be offended.
But then that’s a side story for another day. Right now, I’m talking about Stewart, the nice kid with the dream. He didn’t talk just about his dream, though. He asked about mine. Yes, I still have some, even though the booger-eating Ghadafis of Korporate Amerika tried to beat them out of me… but failed.
Anyway, we talked about songwriting and people writing, about guitars and Tennessee Titans while we walked to our vehicles. I told him I’d hit his bar one night. I don’t drink nor do I ride mechanical (or even real-life) bulls anymore, but I’d like to see this kid. It’s nice when hope and optimism brighten a young guy’s face.
I had gone to Lower Broadway as a part of a magazine assignment that has taken me to music venues all over the city in the last week or so.
As I’m old and don’t drink beer, I tried to hit the places relatively early, before busy bartenders tired of offering up icy glasses of free water to the guy with the pony-tail and wearing a 25-year-old Bob Dylan concert T-shirt. That came from when he was touring with G.E. Smith. Horrible show, but I love Bob.
I actually go to Lower Broad fairly frequently. Sometimes it’s just for a walk. Sometimes it’s to relive memories. Sometimes it’s simply to wonder where I been since the days when this was my turf.
Back then it was sticky-floored peep shows and propositions from working women to join them “upstairs,” someplace above the row of neon buildings and souvenir shops that now offer up a G-rated version of Nashville for mass consumption by tourists and hockey fans.
Before the city’s real flesh was covered by Chamber of Commerce boosters and the like, a cigarette smoking writer could easily jaywalk from the Wheel to Tootsie’s, as long as I didn’t trip across some stoned loser or Willie Nelson sprawled in the middle of the street.
Tootsie’s back then was a favorite, because the Opry stars used to hang out upstairs, near the back door. I’d get there early enough to drink beer at the table next to Lefty, ET, Cash, Porter and even old Mooney.
Now, of course, it’s different. City planners helped the once run-down area get “pasteurized.” Souvenir shops and Elvis statues. A huge hockey arena and a convention center. Family restaurants even. Wouldn’t have taken a family down here 40 years ago, I laughed as a group of Japanese smiled at me when I rubbed the nose of one of the Elvis statues.
I wonder if anyone’s heard the news that Elvis actually was from Memphis? He just recorded here. His last few visits to Nashville, he stayed at the old Sheraton on Harding Place at Trousdale – about a mile from my house.
What used to be a top-quality hotel and small convention center became a seedy Ramada before being torn down to make way for a CVS. “Nashville: Where there’s a church on every other corner. A CVS or a Walgreen’s is on the other.”
A part of my mission the other night was to check out an old friend and his outfit. The Don Kelley Band is, for my money (freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose…) the best country cover band in a city overpopulated by country cover bands.
But while guys like Stewart in the Springs are busy writing their own material and trying to bust into the bigs and outlive Luke the Drifter, Don is not following that dream.
Decades ago he began playing at Robert’s, not singing his own songs but the songs made famous by ET, Cash, Waylon, Tom T., Willie, Marty, Roger and even Patsy.
A good soul, he always surrounds himself with the best musicians, many of whom advance into the ranks of elite touring bands or session pickers.
Don’s not that kind of guy. He likes a steady job, a good girlfriend, his house way north of the city and his motorcycle (although he tells me he’s getting too old to ride it).
“I’m not a great singer,” Don will say. “But people kind of like what I do. I can do those Tubb and Cash songs pretty good.”
His current lineup … or really, the lineup during my visit, because it has changed … was him on the bulk of the vocals and rhythm, JD Simo on lead guitar, Dave Roe on slap bass and vocals (have you ever heard a better version of “Pretty Woman” since Roy Orbison died?) and Artie Alinkoff on drums and vocals.
It was among Roe’s last performances with the band. “I’m going to start having the weekends off,” he said, between sets, after he passed the tip jar around the house and sold and autorgraphed CDs
“I like this job, but it’s every Wednesday through Saturday, 6:30 til 10 and it’s time I did some other things. I’m gonna freelance. Like you, Tim,” said Roe, who used to play slap bass with John R. Cash.
I first met him back then. I told him he’d probably have more luck in the freelance world than I, as he’s a much better bass player. But it was good for the ego – and I admit I enjoy a nice stroking now and then (but that’s another story, too) – when Artie, Don and Dave all bragged from the stage about my writing.
“You’re brilliant man,” said Artie. “Really cool.”
Kindred spirits, I’m sure. They must toil hard to make a living out of tips and CD sales – I did buy a copy of their "best of" album. It’s not John Lennon or Johnny Cash. But it’s not supposed to be. It’s a great cover band singing other people’s songs. It makes me smile while I sit here and think.
After a couple of sets, I had to move on. I was going to a bar in East Nashville, where my favorite squeezebox player and Earl Scruggs’ grandson were playing with Paul Burch. Great show there too, though the highlight for me was – again between sets – standing out in the cold and semi-dark of East Nashville and talking to that squeezebox player.
Very few people try as hard to stay solemn when playing, only to bob their heads and smile like Jen Gunderman, who handles accordion and keyboards by night and teaches rock ‘n’ roll at Vanderbilt by day. “I used to think I needed to be, you know, a surly rocker chick,” she said. “But I really love playing. I’m so lucky.”
I wound my way out of East Nashville, trying not to run over crack dealers and prostitutes on Main Street, and pondered the evening.
Pretty enjoyable, thanks to the kid with the musical dream and the band that never stops and the squeezebox queen
And that’s despite the fact I spent a good part of the evening in Nashville’s Disney World, the now brightly lighted section of town that’s featured on Chamber postcards and marketed on "Monday Night Football" and the like.
Tootsie’s long ago was a treasure. Now it’s just a joint. And Tootsie herself is long dead. (I’ve paid my respects at her suitably simple and modest grave before, as she was an interesting woman.)
Sure, I love this new Nashville, even though I can’t find an orange neon glow proclaiming “Possum Holler” – Jones’ old club – anywhere on the skyline. But I guess I’m a relic. I kind of liked it better when a guy could buy coffee and chat with Roger Miller, turn down the advances of the whores and scoot past the peep shows for fear of catching some sort of air-transmitted sexual disease before dodging into a club where Tom T. Hall was singing for beer and laughs with the house band.
Shel Silverstein’s dead and Bobby Goldsboro moved to Florida. And the bricks, well they got displaced during the storms of life.
Still I felt energized, by the kid. Stewart Halcomb. I don’t have his CD yet, as I haven’t been to Walmart since that night.
But after a life of writing about those who chase dreams, whether as musicians, athletes, women and men of the cloth or just plain old church janitors, I’ve often had to chronicle how those dreams fell short or ended tragically.
Here’s a kid who says, with a lot of work, he’ll make it. And Nashville’s Disney World will have a brand new star.
I had the urge to go back down to the strip on my way home, buy a pack of smokes and go back into the bars.
Course I didn’t . First of all, I quit smoking 11 years ago. Besides that, I think smoking is illegal down there in Nashville’s Disney World.
It’s just running red lights and almost killing old guys with pony-tails and young cowboy singers that’s still legal.

Savage murders of teenagers, memories of friends past and lost and the April 1 miracle battle with fear inside the ferocious MRI tube

2011-02-22T15:25:00.000-08:00

Visions of two teenagers, savagely murdered, stung my brain as it was being magnetized and resonated and otherwise probed by kindly science wizards and their crypt-like device.
Perhaps those memories, which danced with other flashbacks good and bad, were set off by that MRI’s sounds, the incessant beeping, thudding, growling, crunching noise – robots dancing in the dark -- crushing my brainwaves. And what could I do?
The sounds surrounded me, as my head was locked dead-still in a device that seemed like a hockey goalie’s helmet. My only view was the top of the tube in which I was being tortured… or examined … just inches from where the tip of my nose would be had it not been smashed inside the goalie’s helmet.
I thought about those dead kids. But other things flooded my mind. I smiled when I thought about Charlie Chaplin in “Modern Times,” and the cacophony and confusion of the industrial revolution in that old B&W flick. Saw that movie in Dr. Perkins class at Iowa State University, circa 1971. “Damn near publishable in academic journals,” he wrote on my term paper that compared the movie “M*A*S*H” with the Marx Brothers’ “Duck Soup.” Did I ever tell you I met Groucho Marx? Another story, another show. What’s the secret woid?
After film class, I’d go take a steam and then allow myself to be the “dummy” – literally and figuratively -- that Olympic gold medal wrestler Dan Gable, then a workout chum, would toss around the mats. Nope, never beat Dan….
The dead teenagers came back to my mind briefly.
But then, as the magnets ripped into my brain, I was adrift in waterfalls of color, reminiscent of the night Smokin’ Joe and I went to see Leon Russell and the Shelter People after hitching from Ames to Iowa City. Freddie King was the opener. Watch out now…..
The fact that I kept thinking about Rodney Wayne Long and Kathy Jane Nishiyama, the two slaughtered teenagers, isn’t surprising. When my mind wanders, taking inventory of my life and where I been, those handsome faces often reappear.
As do the faces of friends, a diminishing list, either due to age, death or, far too often, corporate fear.
In a phone call not long before he killed himself in a lonely Coast Guard barracks in Alaska, Tony Durr, who really was among my truest friends – oh, he lied, but he loved as well -- told me this truth.
“Tim, if you can make it through life and look back and have enough real friends to fill up the fingers on one hand, you’re lucky,” or something like that. When he emptied the pharmaceutical bottle, I lost one finger, I guess.
Anyway, I couldn’t help thinking about friendship and dead teenagers … two topics which seem to coincide in my sometimes blood-spattered life … when I was in the MRI the other day. This was the most recent reminder of the summer that won’t go away, the summer of 2010, when I lost half my house to a flood and then, before it was even finished being rebuilt, was T-boned at an intersection.
For a day or so I stumbled around, like my closest pal, Champo, used to do back in his college days as dawns approached. He and his friend, Jocko “the hippy hippy shake” expert, had good times chasing windmills and damsels who would be in distress. Of course, I was and remain Champo, though you may call me Flapjacks.
Course, I don’t drink anymore, so the stumbles bothered me. I went to the doctor last July and he said “man, you have one effin’ bad concussion, Flap, old boy.”
I said “doctor, ain’t there nothing I can take?” But there wasn’t. Time heals all wounds, even badly concussed noggins.
It was checking up on the healing process all these months later that had me jammed into the MRI the other afternoon at one of our finer Nashville hospitals and legal drug dispensaries.
I am a claustrophobic, which may account for aspects of my life, the seemly and the less-so and my reactions to smothering authority of all stripes. The likes of Shotgun Dick, Korporate China (owners of the land of the free), George W. and “Big Mac” USA Newspaper Giant – all who/which think Amerikans should be happy with “special sauce” rather than substance … almost as bad as those who allow them to continue to run the country without question.
Hell, I get almost as angry when my basketball-playing pal the Big O says he’s going to cut the budget by taking away heating supplements for the indigent, allowing old people to freeze in order to please the likes of Mr. Bean or whatever that worthless Joker of the House calls himself. Doctor, doctor, ain’t there nothing I can take?
Claustrophobia in the little tube for a half-hour is only easy with eyes closed. But to keep the thought of where I am from turning me into someone resembling the mentally twisted who think it was good to get rid of Mubarak, but we ought to back up the crown prince/emperor/torturer of Bahrain… could it be oil? Black gold? Texas tea? … Well, the first thing you know, old Jed’s a billionaire…. And there’s blood on the sands.
But the bouncing magnetos kept bringing me back to the two teenagers. Murdered. Their deaths scarred me as I orchestrated coverage for the newspaper up in Clarksville. My boss at the time was Tony Durr, by the way.
Three decades have passed since Kathy Jane and Rodney Wayne were killed by the slugs who populate society’s darkest underside. I learned, first-hand about that underside.
So, the two dead teenagers often visit me when I’m just sitting there watching the wheels go round and round. Or, perchance, if I’m lying in a contraption that’s taking magnetic images of the brain of a man who has seen too much and forgotten too little.
Fortunately, the deaths also bring back images of my closest friendships, the News Brothers, a gang of hard-smoking journalists who, by fate, had to cover the two murders as they unfolded and were solved and tried at almost the same time.
Then, as I lay there, trapped in this chamber like some sort of Michael Jackson wannabe, the brain-crunchers not only squeezed my head but began lifting my fillings … nah, I made that up …. Just my ‘magination, runnin’ away with me.
Anyway, my thoughts about the dead teenagers led me to my thoughts about that April 1, 1982, when my co-conspirator, cops reporter Rob “Death” Dollar, co-founder of the News Brothers, and I dropped our pants in the newsroom while the whole building watched.
Well, at least that’s what everyone thought was going to happen that day in history.
The word had spread, Lord knows how …. that the two young men, the associate editor and the cops reporter, were going to bring their nighttime, do-anything-as-long-as-no-one-gets-hurt, frivolity to daytime. Were these boys ready for prime time?
In those days, the hundred-plus in the building believed that we, indeed, would do anything to perhaps take the edge off what had become more Korporate-style management. My pal Tony had disappeared to San Antonio (the scene of one of his many marriages and career stops before he killed himself), Max “the Silver Hammer” Moss – a damn nice guy and great editor -- was sort of shuffled off to a second-in-command role.
Korporate crackdown had brought a new tone, where an editor, whose introductory words to the staff included “reporters are a dime a dozen” would complain that “you boys need to cut your hair” (I didn’t, of course) and perhaps we should join the Chamber of Commerce. Nothing wrong with the Chamber, but when I was back there in journalism school, they put forth the proposition that you should never be a member of a civic organization if you are a journalist. Fear of conflicts of interest. Lots of publishers and editors are Rotary and Kiwanis presidents and Chamber board members these days.
All of these stories are told more in a book I’m trying to write. And, of course, the adventures of Flapjacks and Death are spoken of, softly, whenever unemployed journalists gather over canteens of white lightning in train yards and a toothless man with one leg blows on his harp while his blue-tick hound barks and the wind begins to howl.
Anyway, back to our story: The two News Brothers, it was said, were going to come into the newsroom at 2 p.m. (the official start of our workday) wearing only boxers with hearts on them.
I don’t know how the rumor started. Of course I do, as we had assistance. Still, people believed. Perhaps even hoped, that this would happen. Some wanted it to be the act that would lead us to the door. Others wanted to just be there to witness this strange chapter in the history of two good journalists who did anything they could to get the story.
And even more than anything to try to both celebrate and forget the two murdered teenagers.
Anyway, there’s more to it. But everyone from the Big Guy, our publisher, to the composing room crew to the ad department to the circulation and press room guys showed up at the precise hour, lining the newsroom, looking in the windows from the hallway.
Fully clothed in our high school letter jackets and jeans, Rob in a top hat and me wearing my yellow fedora, we just walked through the crowd, looked at those gathered, shrugged and lighted up our smokes. We sat down at the computers and began to write stories before looking up and saying “April Fools.”
I’d like to say the event ended this way, with a subtle dash of cool. But suddenly two friendly coppers burst into the newsroom with a warrant for my arrest on charges of, I believe, “failing to amuse the public.”
I was hauled off in handcuffs and all who gathered were stunned as the squad car whipped away from the curb.
Actually I hadn’t been in on that part of the gag. Rob had arranged for his friends in the department to come and “arrest me” as the clincher on the joke. (I was glad the gag didn’t include the one cop we liked who enjoyed back-shooting fleeing felons and singing “Happiness is a Warm Gun.” Again, another story.)
A few minutes later, after my release a half-block away, I strode back into the newsroom and saluted my comrade for getting the better of me.
And I waited. … for hours … for retribution …. You see, sometime in all the commotion I had stuck a “load” in one of his Kools….
So well into the evening, that cigarette exploded and my pal dropped from his chair.
We laughed. It had been a good day. For a few hours we had forgotten the faces of those dead teenagers.
Then we went back to work. Hoping the day would end so we could get to Camelot where the chief deputy would buy us drinks and spill his guts about crimes and about why he hated most journalists.
The only problem with having memories like these playing in your head while you are being scanned for brain damage is you wonder perhaps if the images will reflect years of wear and tear … and even show pictures of the dead teenagers.
The scans, surprisingly, showed I’m "normal." Doctor, ain’t there nothing I can take?

Champo and Jocko: A tale of friendship, chasing the devil in pink long johns and bunny ears and, surprisingly, reaching age of replacement parts

2011-02-14T16:29:00.000-08:00

Four decades ago, when he stood on his head, among the shards of broken whiskey bottles that had been tossed against the wall, he probably never even thought he’d be at the point where he’d be getting a new hip.
When we slalomed down the steep hills at The Ledges, Jack Purcell’s or Chuck Taylor's for skis, coming precariously close to the edge of the bluff over the Des Moines River, I don’t imagine his hips even bothered him.
Of course when the floods came from the spring thaw, we couldn’t slalom any longer. We just would find the closest cliff from which to leap into the churning, angry brown water, enjoying our favorite compound or concoction … and drift away … bound from Boone to Des Moines in our boxers and Hanson House T-shirts.
I think it was around that time Nardholm discovered the top of a chimney, protruding from a burned-down log cabin, made a dandy outdoor toilet. A conspicuous throne, high above the woods.
But this isn’t about Nardholm, although I sure like that guy. I’ll call him a kid, as the last time I saw him he was a year younger than me. I understand he still is.
Nardholm, Titzy, Carpy, Capt. Kirk and before them Dennis Eggers, Schultzy, Jay-Dub, Hondo (aka Creamjeans) and Dogshit joined our adventures. Mule. I think even Wizard and Holtzy were involved sometimes. In fact, I may have ridden with them to Juarez, where I got lost in the rain when it was Christmastime too.
Occasionally Uncle Moose would join in, too, although he was mostly down on the farm in Red Oak, because his dad was dead and he needed to tend to the critters and the corn on weekends. Damn, though, he was a tough hombre when it came to full-speed, aerial chest-butting. Now he’s fighting cancer. That’s another story.
This one’s really about the reason I was in Juarez and why I was slaloming down hills in that altered state of Iowa.
For Jocko and Champo (me), life was not to be savored like fine wine but gobbled like a dozen 10-cent greaseburgers. After all, there was a war out there those days. And some day we were bound to grow up. Perhaps I still will.
Jocko did, though. Kind of.
While I’ve been a journalist and continued my allegiance to life’s sometimes tattered edges as well as The Beatles and Stones and international adoption, Jocko has been a successful inside salesman for a couple of companies, beginning with Rapid Roller, the Chicago company across the street from the bar where I watched the Cubs beat the Pirates in 23 innings one day.
He moved on to EverPak or something like that in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, decades ago, but we had mostly lost track of each other, life got in the way. There were reasons. But no use crying over spilt Mad Dog 20/20.
I sure wish I’d been there when his Granny died. She’s the one who made us some Bohemian Rhapsody fried chicken the morning or early afternoon when we reappeared after sleeping in a boat … don’t know whose, but it was handy up in Antioch, Ill., the summer or two before he got married.
And I wish I’d been able to turn to him when similar sadness and personal and professional disasters hit my life. But while we weren’t together, I know we always loved each other.
It was telling that when I took him to see 'Easy Rider' – I’d already seen it a half-dozen times – he came out imitating Jack Nicholson and I had memorized the Dennis Hopper lines.
Now he’s gotta get a new hip.
I’m worried as well as more aware of my own mortality. Fact is, I’m going in for an MRI this week to check out the after-effects of a wreck last summer on my still-concussed brain.
Who would have thought the two young men – Jocko and Champo -- who greeted countless dawns with parched eyeballs focusing on test patterns while waiting for the morning farm report or Howdy-Doody reruns -- would live long enough to wear out our body parts?
It’s not too surprising that death reunited us a few months ago. His ex-wife, Nola, who I remember as a beautiful, leggy pompon girl for the Iowa State Cyclones, died after a horrid battle with cancer.
I contacted Jocko to express my remorse and, in the process, help him laugh. I did, too, as we talked about how we prepared for the wedding ceremony all those years ago.
I was the best man and he was the groom, of course. By the time we got there, I guess it’s good Nola could tell us which was which. For some reason Jocko and I had arrived a bit, shall we say, dazed by the hours of preparations. Lotta stress, man.
During the laughter and tears of that telephone reunion, Jocko told me he was getting his hip replaced in the middle of February. So, as time has gone by, I’ve picked up the phone and called. He doesn’t answer. One trait we shared was that while we both ran with the devil – sometimes wearing pink long johns and bunny ears -- and generally made our friends laugh, we were highly private people, in a peculiarly public fashion, confidantes to each other and few outsiders.
I’ve been calling a few more times in recent days. He’s not answering. Why would you want to hear from people who are calling to make fun of you for being old?
But each time I dial, I think of the two of us, walking into parties, where people would instinctively put on that old Carly Simon song. Yes, we watched ourselves gavotte.
Hard-core scholars at Iowa State University, I remember Friday nights. Saturday nights. Usually Thursday nights were reserved for our favorite team sport. We called it “Rolling.”
With a simple hand-over-hand motion, I would signal the night adventures should begin. Pretty harmless adventures, at that. Beer occasionally played a part. By the way, Sundays were reserved for pizza crust soup -- my personal specialty -- and warm Van Merritt beer while watching Maverick reruns.
Heck, guys like Sly Stone and Dennis Wilson and Mike Love even played roles in our adventures. Too many tales to tell.
I was kind of the Rolling Team captain. This wasn’t an approved intercollegiate sport – Jocko couldn’t have participated if it was, as he was on a football scholarship. No. 63’s biggest accomplishment was breaking up a fight involving Tommy Nobis of LSU and some scurrilous Iowa State Cyclone back during the 1971 Sun Bowl, in El Paso.
I was proud ... and lucky … to see him perform so honorably. I had been released by the border guards in time to see the game. To this day, I can’t figure out why every time I crossed the border from Juarez into El Paso, I was detained by the guards. They always apologized afterward. But it did make the border crossing a hassle and kept me from getting to the Sun Bowl with much time to spare.
The fact I was toting a black velvet painting of Jimi Hendrix I bought for $2 in the market outside the donkey show joint slowed me down further.
Probably the greatest and still under-known anti-war protest ever staged at Iowa State came on the Sunday we were recruited to play Viet Cong for full-scale ROTC maneuvers. Seems a massive blizzard had kept the scheduled foes from making it from Iowa City (where the University of Iowa is located), so the top enlisted ROTC man on campus, “Admiral Bruns,” asked me if I could round up a few fellows to be the enemy.
I went two doors down, carrying a bottle of Gordon’s completely dry martinis, to hold under Jocko’s nose to stir him awake. Then we rounded up our comrades, a gang of reckless Cong, ready to die to train Uncle Sam’s next crop.
The maneuvers – observed for the record by real-life Army guys -- were and remain top-secret. Even 40 years later, all I can tell you is that if snowballs had been hand grenades, those gun-toting ROTC men were just so much body fluids and bones along the creek bed.
Sadly, some of those ROTC troops soon found out that the real Viet Cong had more than snowballs in store for them.
I salute and remember the snowy battle we waged and their final bayonet assault on our snow tunnel whenever I’m at the Wall in D.C. I remind their ghosts that I sang Beatles songs at them as they plunged their fake bayonets into my heart. I guess I should mention that the contingent of Cong that day dubbed themselves "Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." I'll tell the rest of that story one day. It was wonderful to be there.
Here is where I should get more into the adventures of two young men who didn’t mind wearing tie-dyed underwear on their heads to impress the ladies.
But I’m getting tired. I mean I’m not young any more. My old running buddy’s getting a new hip tomorrow morning.
Soon, we can go slalom out at The Ledges again. At least in our dreams.

Life's lessons aren't always pleasant: A final conversation with a good newspaperman discarded after loyalty went unrewarded

2011-02-01T16:30:00.000-08:00

A few months ago, as a way of expressing sorrow at the death of a former colleague, I wrote this blog. I didn’t post it at the time because I wasn’t sure it was appropriate. But today, as I sat in my basement, I decided that the fellow would have liked this. I will refer to him as “Kevin” in this dispatch. May he rest in peace and make sure St. Pete sticks to deadlines.

At the time, I wasn’t sure why I was meeting the former colleague.
It’s not that we’d been particularly close for some time.
And I feared that he was going to try to sell me one of his phone plans, as I‘d heard that was one of his enterprises since he was shooed out the door by the newspaper to which he had given his life.
I was aware that he had personal problems, at least one of them unfairly publicized. Nobody’s really mentioned that in all the wonderful things they’ve said about him in the days since he dropped dead of a heart attack. But we all have personal problems.
Those who know me best know I’ve confronted many a demon and have come out the better man on the other side for the most part. I “swapped” demon stories with Kristofferson once and I think even he was amazed.
So Kevin’s more recent problem certainly wasn’t something we’d talk about unless he asked for advice, which I didn’t anticipate to be the case.
I had no interest in it and I’m nonjudgmental unless you are preaching the virtues of bland, uninspired, bottom-line information sharing (I believe that is a form of what once was referred to as journalism) or if you shoot somebody more than once in the head and then gut him, sternum to scrotum. I’m not sure which of those types of people ranks lower in my esteem.
I viewed my departure -- from the newspaper that Kevin loved and lost -- as perhaps one of those innocent Iraqi civilians probably felt after a few hours of water boarding by some of my Green Beret friends. I’d embraced the freedom, despite the big question marks about the future. I knew I had to feed a family and pay bills. I no longer felt like I was suffocating beneath a tsunami of dishonesty and the back-stabbing disrespect of even people I thought had once been good journalists… friends even.
At least I got out with a modest buyout that enabled me to go about getting established as a freelance writer and a part-time college educator.
It was our difference in opinion as to our employer, or at least some of the people and policies, that perhaps drove me and the guy I’m calling “Kevin” here apart years ago. He was so loyal that he was blinded and eventually blindsided by that employer. I think that broke the heart that eventually ceased beating a week or so ago.
But one thing I always liked about Kevin was his interest in music, a passion of mine, and his love and depth of knowledge in some types of the art form that exceeded my own by a long ways. He also had an affinity for the work of Elvis’ original guitarist, Scotty Moore. And since Scotty had become a friend of mine over the years, that was one thing Kevin and I could discuss. I also was a friend of Bobby Thompson, Vassar Clements and Josh Graves, all of which I guess raised me in Kevin’s rankings.
It was his love of music that brought us back together, almost three years after we’d had any contact other than an occasional e-mail.
I’d read his blog about country music and sent him a note saying I enjoyed an entry. He responded with a request for coffee sometime.
OK. The last time I’d seen him, we weren’t necessarily friends. I was being held up as the poster boy of the kind of journalist no longer wanted. And I had politely, always, resisted what newspapering had become while I continued my refusal to partake in the back-stabbing and bending over that it apparently took to succeed any more. I may be right, I may be crazy… Actually, I guess there’s little doubt as to both of those qualities.
I’d been in newspapering for almost 35 years and if I had anything to show for it -- other than slow aches in my heart when I thought of some of the stories I covered, bodies and splattered brains seen, innocents and innocence lost -- it was that I could sleep at night, at least when the caffeine wore off. I tried to treat people fairly.
Kevin instead had chosen to embrace, for the most part, the newspaper. Now I’m not saying he was wrong. He had his motivations. And besides that, from where I sat, at least he had earned his spot on that up-elevator through hard work and misplaced loyalty.
And while I’m not sure if he fully bought into what had become of newspapers, he represented that hellish and heartless descent to me.
He also shaved off his beard, wore ties and pretty much excused or made excuses for the hierarchy. And once, when an otherwise good employee used profanity, in exasperation, in an e-mail about a story running late, Kevin exploded and said he was going to report that to the big shots. Let me be specific here: The big shots in this story are not the big shots, necessarily, still involved at the unnamed newspaper. They’ve either moved on, been farmed out or been decapitated while, out of corporate habit, bending over.
I knew Kevin was a better man than that and that he knew better. But he loved his job, for the most part. And that is to be admired.
I had loved my job sometimes during my life.
And he loved the newspaper. I wish I had that same love for the newspaper at which I was his colleague, but it didn’t deserve it. It did deserve loyalty from me while I was employed there, though. Loyalty and respect are not the same thing. But I would never bad-mouth an organization and still accept their paychecks.
Where in the past we could discuss things as more or less equals, he became, to me at least, the voice of rigid authority.
I do not like rigid authority. So, as is my nature, I rebelled in the only way I could. I did the right thing, at least as I perceived it, whether it bothered anyone or not.
I tried to work hard, earn my pay and as much as possible steer clear of the man who actually loved the newspaper that was losing its spine after long losing its soul. I do not back talk my bosses unless they are attacking someone I love or someone who is my charge. I must amend that to add that I do back talk my boss now and my son keeps telling me to quit sitting in my office cussing at the guy with long, white hair.
After the early years, in which I called him Kevin, I began to call him “Mr. (Insert last name here).” Sometimes I called him “Boss.” It was not said sarcastically. I just couldn’t call him Kevin any more, but as I was collecting a paycheck, he was one of the bosses and I did as I was told, at least most of the time, unless someone was going to get hurt. Or I had moral objections.
So, when I left my final shift in corporate journalism, I shook hands with Kevin, kind of like Jake saying goodbye to the prison guards while being released at Joliet.
The phone call from Kevin came about three or four months ago or so. I do keep a fairly busy (thankfully) schedule, so it was a month or so before we could get together.
He was going to be in my part of town after some sort of job-search seminar.
You see, perhaps two years after I left the newspaper, more or less on my terms, he had been escorted to the door. It was a part of a purge of many of the old hands, a talented and loyal bunch who’d invested their lives and hopes and dreams at that newspaper.
I much preferred my prior newspaper locales, but I actually had dreams at the newspaper where I worked with Kevin, too. Until one of the bosses, similarly put to pasture, told me my dreams and goals “didn’t matter.” I also had been told I was “too old.”
As for Kevin’s job loss, well, I’m not sure if his problems had anything to do with it. I doubt it. For all I could find out, it was a simple matter of streamlining, of cutting out the people with institutional knowledge in favor of the younger people who matched, more perfectly, the demographic. Upper middle-class white shoppers who like second-hand lace panties and Taylor Swift music seemed to be the target.
But even though I didn’t have a lot of affinity for Kevin at the time I heard he had been let go, I viewed what happened to him as a betrayal by his “family.” Here was a good man who had sacrificed, perhaps even bent over a little too much, because he believed in the ultimate product.
He believed in putting out a good newspaper with correctly written headlines and good attributions.
He believed in working hard to make sure that happened.
Yes, I regarded him as a corporate guy, but his elevator to the top already had begun its descent by the time I left. If he couldn’t see it coming, I could.
Still, he believed in the product. And he believed in treating people fairly.
Pretty good traits for a guy who I had come to regard, at least for a time, as just another corporate puke.
Well, there’s not a lot of sense in dwelling any longer on this.
When he and I met, it was over iced coffee at a local bread shop. We joked a little about the days we’d worked together.
Then he said “Tim, I think it’s probably my fault for the fact we somehow drifted apart. I did and said things, or maybe I didn’t say things when I should have. But I’m sorry. Really sorry.”
That’s really all it took. It’s not like he was the epitome of what had happened to my beloved newspaper industry. It was just a guy who said he had made some bad choices. Heck, I’ve done that myself.
And I really felt badly that he had been betrayed by something he believed in.
So we finished out the long afternoon drinking iced coffee and talking about Scotty Moore.

Retired fireman Neil Starke, 90, offers words of encouragement and kindness from the North Woods while vile cretins fan flames of hate

2011-01-15T12:57:00.000-08:00

Neil Starke has no idea how much it mattered to this cynical and sometimes sour soul that he wrote that note.
Constant blood-drenched, hate-filled news reports have me mentally replaying the too many times when I have seen bodies on the ground, bullets in the head.
Or bodies of young women I knew burned up in a car, the only thing that didn’t turn to black ash was a Bible.
Or a teenage murder victim in a casket while a mom who remains my friend, these almost three decades later, wails so hard my heart still hurts to think of it.
The day the Klan protested the newspaper I worked at and I had to interview the puss-filled venomous Imperial Lizard or whatever.
Or picking up a phone at 4:30 a.m. and hearing James Earl Ray, calling from Brushy Mountain Pen, wanting to talk with one of my reporters. “Charlie’s not in yet, you ignorant, murderous asshole…” I’d say. Or at least think. It was 13 hours until I’d be home and be able to wash away the filthy leavings of speaking with this vile slug. I think of those frequent, not-brief-enough conversations with Dr. King’s killer often, even more frequently as the day that honors the preacher who changed the world approaches.
We Shall Overcome?
Maybe. The hate in our country flared up in Tucson the other day. Pure horror. The fruit of a country teetering on hate’s brink where people believe they have the constitutional right to violently disagree.
A land ruled, apparently, by the spiteful, soulless principles of Beck, Limbaugh on one side and the increasingly irrelevant posings of Olbermann on the other.
I got nasty habits. Take tea at 3, but I don’t watch that crap. Why does anyone? Perhaps because they need to know how to think?
The hate is growing in this country where a future wannabe president espouses the targeting of certain states and congressional districts – like Gabby’s in Arizona – for “takeover.” Of course, Sarah says it’s the media’s fault.
Perhaps, in most fetid fashion. Because “the media” nowadays is not the media of the Huntley-Brinkley-Cronkite-Sevareid bunch or the many fine newspaper reporters. Remember newspapers? Used to be the source of information rather than maps and diagrams and internet links to bra sales.
Guys like Seigenthaler, Battle, Russell – and, I flatter myself, Ghianni -- staked their reputations on what was in newspapers.
Of course that was before editors began having their reporters “tweet” at their readers (or is that twit on their readers?) to make flimsy publications lively. Before shopping for shoes, finding the best price on third-hand edible underpants, the best worm-free sushi and viewing Nicole Kidman’s breasts became the morning’s dose of “reality” delivered in a plastic sack.
OK. Gone off track again. But back to the subject of dumb twits (or words that rhyme), return with me now to the thrilling paragraphs above and the discussion of the gun-toting moll of hate and division whose very white followers and her own ghost writers want to take back this country from the likes of you and me. Yes, I thought this land was my land… Not anymore, eh, Chico?
Oh yeah, I’m white enough. But, you know, I’m no WASP. Too many vowels in the wrong places. (Talk about wrong places, let me tell you where I’ve been in my life and what I did there. Nah, not today.)
I used to think the followers of the shotgun-toting reality star and John McCain’s gift to America were restricted to WWII veterans, the so-called Greatest Generation that as they enter the doddering years have turned out to be the Gang that Can’t Think Straight. A deadly mob of faltering heroes in stained trousers, pulled up over their bellies, who wear flag lapel pins and believe this woman is “smart.” (I actually believe it’s a hankering for the return to their testosterone-fueled days of five-day passes to Tokyo bath houses and Brussels brothels.) She would have been a hot commodity in those joints. Right at home, too.
Anyway, I felt horrible last week when I heard the news about the shootings in Tucson. But I felt more horrible that it didn’t overly hit me in the gut.
Sad, sure. Vile. For sure. A product of the hate in our land fueled and fanned by the few who are ruining what the country was supposed to stand for. Remember that old “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” thing? Don’t you think that 9-year-old girl had a right to grow up and flourish in this country?
But then again, what about the boys and girls, perhaps twice her age, who occupy those caskets that roll down the cargo belt at Dover AFB? Give Peace A Chance? Yeah. Sure.
Another story, of course. But dead is dead. A bullet to the head is just as deadly when fired by some wacko in the wild, wild (radical right) west as it is when coming from the rifles of Osama’s Pakistani pals.
Anyway, I lament the fact that the news out of Arizona didn’t bother me so much. It has come to seem almost routine in this cruel divided and divisive land.
Of course, my own senses are somewhat numbed because of a life spent as a newspaperman. Before the corporate slaughter, I may have been the last one left… I don’t know.
In my life, there are faces and places I remember. Rapists. Murderers. Burned corpses. Plane crash victims. I’ve been to the field where bodies lay. The killing fields.
One of my reporters once wrote a story about how a murder victim was skinned. Another story revolved around the sexual assault and murder of a young woman … and the tools for the assault and the murder were, respectively, a wooden mixing spoon and a steak knife.
I’ve stepped, or so I was told by police, on the brains of a wreck victim at 3 a.m. on the bypass. Which bypass? Doesn’t matter. The bypass from life?
I have held the moms of teenagers who lost their lives senselessly. I’ve described the scattered bones of a beautiful high school junior as they were dragged out of the woods by blue-tick hounds.
And these things don’t turn me cold. But they make me put up a barrier, a way of dealing with calamity as only newspeople (remember them?) do. Perhaps there was laughter when the exploding cigarettes filled the newsroom with smoke and noise. But there were tears later, over a long, deep breath of nicotine while watching the bats converge back into the downtown church steeples.
And I’ve written before about my personal mood of late. And it’s not that good.
The economy.
“Friends” who don’t come through when I need a pal or a plate of eggs.
Wars that I abhor and don’t understand. Big O: please explain this “floating” promise to bring the troops home.
The “holiday” experience of my friend Rob Dollar’s 4-year-old great-nephew who was hospitalized for ear infections and for a time was in dire straits (the condition, not the Knopfler band).
The cancerous bladder and kidney of an older fellow (yes there are some older fellows left) I like to joke with when they occasionally find me in church. I’m easy to spot: the nice old man with the pony-tail and the Jerry Garcia necktie.
The fact that some kids are mean to my own kids, partly, I believe, because my children came from Romanian orphanages where the closest thing to silver spoons were the fingers with which they ate their nasty, slushy meals.
The list goes on. I was reading a book recently where a guy I admire described one of the worst events in his life that occurred when he fell off a tree while vacationing in Tahiti. He suffered a concussion and other injured-noggin woes.
Hell, I can’t get to Tahiti. I’m still suffering from the concussion and related noggin woes caused by the famous T-bone a mile from the place I like to call home.
All of this leads up to why I’m so glad (I’m glad, I’m glad, I’m glad) I have made a friend in the Northern Woods, a 90-year-old retired fire investigator named Neil C. Starke. Remember him? He was at the top of this story.
One of my regular delights each year is to write a story for a well-regarded national magazine about the kindness of people who, through simple, heart-driven acts, help others. We’re not talking about lung transplants here, but simple random acts of kindness.
Folks nominate others and then I track down those who did a kindness. It is heartening. Here is part of the tale that I wrote about Mr. Starke:
When the phone rings at the 90-year-old retired fire captain’s house in rural Wisconsin, Neil C Starke answers, smiles and, when he hangs up, counts his blessings.
“I have several neighbors living within three miles of my home. Every day I get a call asking some question of me or telling me about something or someone.
“They’ll ask things like ‘what did you have for breakfast?’ Or they’ll call when they are on their way to work to say ‘Just wanting to make sure you didn’t oversleep.’ ”
Starke, who worked for 34 years as the captain in charge of the Oshkosh Fire Prevention Bureau, began getting these calls not long after his wife of 57 years, Gladys, died in 2002.
He says Randy and Becky Gramse and Jon Barthel, are the ones who most frequently call his house that’s 12 miles outside Wautoma.
Starke, who spends some of his free time trying to lift the spirits of area nursing home residents, can’t overstate how important those calls are and that he even looks forward to them.
Without saying so, he knows what they are really doing is checking up on him, making sure he’s OK. But since he’s an independent sort, they don’t want to put it in those terms.
Course, he’d be disappointed if he didn’t get those calls now.
“I think they know I’m onto them now,” he says, as he prepares to sample a bit of the strawberry pie brought over by Donna Goldsmith, another neighbor.
“You can’t imagine how good I got it,” he says. “People are always talking about how good heaven is. I feel like I’ve had a little heaven here on earth.”
The editors, top-notch pros, cut some of that out for the magazine – I always write long, as you likely notice today --but they left the heart of it in.
And when the edition of the American Profile magazine came out, I was asked to send e-mails, including the link to the story, to the seven different subjects of the acts of kindness to make sure they’d seen the magazine.
Problem is, of course, most 90-year-old retired firemen living in the deep woods don’t spend a lot of time on the internet.
So I called Mr. Starke (pronounced “Starkee,” kind of like Richard).
During the course of the half-hour that followed, we talked about many things. I told him about my family and my dreams. He talked about his most recent visits to the nursing homes, to cheer the old people. He talked about the dreams he already had fulfilled.
He had remembered I had just had a car wreck before our last conversation. He asked about that and the flood.
And we talked about the Wisconsin Badgers – one of the players, I can’t remember which – began as a pee wee player on the firefighter-sponsored team in Oshkosh and Mr. Starke used to go to all the games.
I told him I was pulling for his Packers this year. And also described my own ramblings across Wisconsin, either to baseball games in Milwaukee when Henry Aaron played there or to football camp in Eagle River or cruising through the Dells with my mom and dad and my big brother, Eric. (He is much nicer than I am in general -- even if the girls always liked me better, for good reason.)
I smiled so hard during our conversation that my dimples, which disappeared in recent weeks due to frustration, deepened and ached.
I told Mr. Starke that I wished he was 10 minutes away instead of 10 hours. I’d be over for a piece of pie and a cup of coffee.
He told me the same, adding that the fact I wrote about him in a national magazine was the highlight of his year, among the highlights of his life. People from all over the country who had forgotten about him as their lives progressed, had read the story and called.
“You made my 90th year,” he said.
“You made my 59th, Mr. Starke,” I said.
“Neil,” he said. “My name to you is Neil. Mr. Starke was my dad.”
A few days later, a note arrived in the mail.
It included the letter he put in his annual Christmas card that listed among his year’s highlights the phone call he got from a nice young man at a magazine and his hopes that a story would appear soon.
He had forgotten my name at that point. And when he saw the story, after he began getting the calls, he wondered how to get in touch with me.
And then, in the handwriting of an older, established citizen, he wrote an addendum on that Christmas letter:
Dear Tim,
Your call was answer for what I was searching for. How to contact you and express my thanks.
The Lord provides all for me. It was a pleasure visiting with you.
Again thanks, Neil.
It was my pleasure. Thank you, Neil, for allowing me into your life and reminding me that most people -- despite the hate and rhetoric and handguns -- are, indeed, good.

Skipper and Rick Nelson help me say farewell to a difficult year that was no 'Garden Party'

2010-12-31T10:58:00.000-08:00

I don’t think there are any pictures left of the New Year when my old friend, Skipper, appeared as both the Baby New Year 1983 and Father Time.
Nor do I have pictures of the last meaningful night I spent with Skipper. It, too, was a New Year’s Eve, but it was the end of 1985.
Ricky Nelson’s “Travelin’ Man” was playing on the radio in Skipper’s Royal York Hotel apartment/room as we packed.
The great and under-appreciated rock singer – who has been bestowed posthumous News Brothers honors largely because of my memory of that night and the 80-plus-year-old man I was helping – had just died that day in a plane crash. (In his final show, Dec. 30, in Alabama, Rick and the Stone Canyon Band ended with Buddy Holly’s “Rave On.” As he left the stage, he hollered to the crowd: “Rave on for me!” – a plenty good “final words” sentiment to earn New Brothers status.)
On that New Year’s Eve, Skipper was going to move out of his room and, eventually, into the first of many nursing homes he’d occupy until he died and donated his gnarled body to medical science.
He’d been keeping the room in the Royal York for the better part of the last two years without ever really living in it. He’d been staying with his wife, Rose or Onion or Jasmine, some such name, out in the Clarksville, Tenn., projects. I called her “Mrs. Skipper.” Nice woman.
When they married, she kept her apartment and he stayed at the old hotel. He would usually go see her on Saturday nights and stay until after Sunday dinner. That was about all the domestic bliss he could stand, I think. Her too, I imagine. I think it also had something to do with her having approval to only have a single person living in the cramped government flat.
It also was easy for him to walk to and from docs and the pharmacy at the Royal York. And besides that, the damned old flop had the aroma of busted dreams and stale testosterone … or was that rotting flesh? … from all the old guys who lived there.
Anyway, as countdown continues on this year -- and I will be glad when it’s done -- I stop to remember Skipper. Oh, the old arthritis gnarled former Merchant Marine and carny -- who claimed to have served spaghetti to Al Capone and to have witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor from his apartment terrace -- has been a part of many adventures.
There were times when the News Brothers needed an old salt to take with them to Camelot, where cops could be plied for information over drinks and then began buying drinks for us so we’d keep them company. Skipper sometimes was there with us when we got plenty of good news stories from loose-lipped lawmen.
We’d get off at maybe 1 in the morning and go get him. Call a half-hour before. Usually we’d make these arrangements a day or two in advance so he could rest up for what would be a 3 a.m. or later night. I remember he always had his black wingtips glistening for those forays into the night.
Anyway, this is supposed to be about New Year’s. Not much really to say about the Father Time/Baby New Year photos, other than that they likely provided a lot of good cheer for people in Clarksville who had come to look up to Skipper as something of a celebrity after I had the good fortune of becoming his friend and writing about him occasionally. Perhaps he felt he too had the good fortune of meeting me and my buddy, Rob “Death” Dollar. But the pleasure was mine. I loved the little guy. I still miss him all these years after that final donation to medical science, that strange fraternity where docs and insurance co-ops play dice to see who gets the most money out of Americans. Snake-eyes for me.
Back to Skipper.
Sometimes, if I was going out in pursuit of a column or just going for a ride, I’d pull my old Duster with its bad brakes to the front of the hotel and ask him to hop in. Took him to Guthrie, Ky., to meet Reuben Toliver, preacher and barbecue king. Drove out to the Mennonite bakery for donuts and apple pie.
Took him down to the river where he and my pal, Rob, and I liked to skip rocks. We called him Skipper because he had been an old salt and he was covered with tattoos of naked women and snakes. Actually, age had distorted those tattoos. They could have been pictures of all the dead presidents for all I could tell.
But I’ll tell you, if you ever bet on rock skipping – and there are few people who ever have – Skipper earned his nickname name.
Little fellow, probably 4-10, could flat-out SKIP those rocks, particularly if we took him to the shallows of the Red River, over near Port Royal. If he wasn’t wearing his teeth, he’d tease us with the Andy Griffith theme.
The wagers were usually small, a pack of menthols or a pot of coffee. Sometimes it would be eggs over-easy from Raissa’s café, in the lower level of the Royal York.
When I made mistakes in life, and I have been known to do just that, Skipper was usually the first one to console me: “It’s too damn bad. But I knew you shouldn’t do that in the first place. Just didn’t think I was the one who should say that. We all need to make our own mistakes.”
Talk about a shoulder to cry on.
Anyway, I’ll write more about Skipper some other day if I haven’t already. But on the last meaningful day with him -- for he was going to share a room with his wife, Rosie or Pearline or whatever her name was -- at the nursing home once they cleared out a corpse or two – I took my dinner break and shuffled through the light snow from the newspaper building in downtown Clarksville to the hotel.
A life in four small boxes. He had a little black-and-white TV with tinfoil subbing for rabbit ears that he used to watch baseball and Matt Dillon and Death Valley Days reruns.
He had seven pair of socks and seven white T-shirts, for that’s what he wore most of the time. He had two pair of well-pressed trousers, including the ones he was wearing. He had sweaters he wore over the T-shirts in the winter. He had an old pea-coat Rob and I bought him at the Mustard Seed. One blue Hawaiian shirt.
He had a stack of Zane Grey westerns as well as a copy of Ginsberg’s “Howl” he liked to read out loud. He said he met Ginsberg and Kerouac at City Lights out in San Francisco when he was working out of that port. Truth? Didn’t matter. Ever. Just the love.
Skipper had a few other things, like a few News Brothers pictures, including the ones from the New Year’s paper of a couple years before. A yellow alarm-clock radio played Ricky Nelson songs while we packed and talked.
We hauled the boxes down and into the elevator and out to a car, where a kindly fellow was picking him up to run out to Opal’s place for the night. The nursing home check-in would come first of the week, contingent on the right combination of people dying.
“This will be it, Tim, son,” Skipper said, as he hugged me. “Won’t ever be the same again.”
And it wasn’t, although I admit there was the one time Rob and I borrowed Skipper from the nursing home, without permission, and took him back down to Camelot. One last ride to beat the devil.
Anyway, I think of Skipper today because he was like the grandfathers who had long since died. He was full of tales, both tall and short. He doubtless stretched the truth, if there was any to begin with. For all I know his worldy adventures of warring and whoring and praying to outrun the devil occurred in his head while he spent his whole life in the hotel. Didn’t matter to me one way or the other. I believed him. Sometimes you gotta believe in something. Or serve somebody.
But he loved the News Brothers, particularly me and Rob, because we loved him. No question about it. In fact, when I moved from Clarksville a few years later, I made one last stop.
I visited his final nursing home destination, and rolled him out into the common area, where we smoked and tears streamed.
“This is goodbye, Tim,” he said, or words similar. “Thanks for being my friend. Now you go out and have a good life.”
And it has been. Skipper is long dead. But he’s with me always, like so many of the great and warm-hearted people who have shared my life.
I am just thinking of him today because the New Year’s Eves with Skipper were some of my life’s best. They weren’t wild celebrations of parched-eye extremes and “how’d I get here?” awakenings.
I guess I’m thinking of those New Year’s Eves with Skipper to cheer me, because 2010 has been the worst year of my life.
Oh, there were more traumatic years, with the deaths of loved ones.
But from start to finish, this was a year of horror and despair. If it wasn’t for my memories of Skipper, my long-time friendship with Rob, who would listen to me rant, the kindness of my old managing editor Tony Kessler (perhaps the nicest bald distance runner and hockey dad you’ll ever meet), the loyalty of the musician (and sometimes reporter) Peter Cooper and my family, I don’t know if I could take it. Oh yeah, bless the rest of the News Brothers and a few special Facebook confidantes, for they have done me more good than they know.
There actually have been many who have expressed concern and kindness, so I don’t want to run a list of names. They know who they are. The ones who really didn’t and don’t care know who they are as well. And they have their reason.
And, thanks to this social media crap – and I am a believer and avid user – I was reacquainted with my old college running mates.
Captain Kirk, the Vietnam Navy veteran who played professional softball and hustled pool to pay his way through Iowa State, has been with me in almost daily dispatches since we “rediscovered” each other. Cappy almost got me killed when he hustled a heroin dealer one night after I had served as the set-up guy at the pool table. I think that incident occurred at the bar where mentally challenged twins – back then we called them retarded, with no ill intended – wore cowboy hats, plucked on Gibsons and sang Hank Williams songs every Tuesday night.
Carpy, the famous veterinarian who shared some college adventures, is now practicing in Southern California where he has perfected the art of running long distance races while neutering prairie dogs. He’s a good guy. Although I think of him as a good kid, as he was and I suppose still is, four years younger than me.
And Jocko, well, he’s Jocko. Killing animals, drinking beer and laughing during our phone conversations while he relaxes in the farm country of Iowa. His ex-wife, and I was their best man, died this year. I let time get in the way of saying goodbye. You can read about these people and more by going back through my blogs of this horrid year.
It’s been a year in which I felt like my old friend Muhammad Ali, in his later years. Didn’t matter which way I turned: I was getting clubbed, figuratively and literally, by luck, by the economy, by friends who really weren’t and have subsequently lost that title for good by simply not caring. (Note: You can crap on me a few times, but if you crap on my family when they need help, you are scratched from the list permanently. Dead to me). Other uppercuts and low blows came from the whims and rages of nature and by a Scion that ran a red light and left me still concussed.
And then there is the fact I’ve been underemployed and fighting for pennies in a cruel economy. There are the Bulls and the Bears. And then there is this economy, which could be described by what bears do in the woods.
So, in a random manner, let me start by saying that the first part of the year was OK. Oh, I’d lost another part-time contract job, but that wasn’t new. The economy is that way. And I’ve been fortunate enough to find other jobs, thanks to people I respect and who apparently respect me.
Then came May 1-2, 2010, the days that changed my attitude about people and nature and along the way came to despise the Corps of Engineers (“hey, if we just go home and sleep, maybe this flood won’t happen, so we don’t need to monitor the dams,” is the way it seems to have occurred.)
Anyway, my little house is far from the dams. But the weather guys said that 24 inches of rain fell in the 36 hours or so in my neighborhood. When they showed the instant maps of neighborhoods on TV, you could almost see me and my family bailing out the house.
Of course I wasn’t alone. And though the total repair and replace cost was insurmountable, we were able to get back into something of a lifestyle relatively quickly. It was a lifestyle cluttered by piles of books and CDs and albums jammed into every available space in the upstairs of the house.
You may have read it before. Here’s a brief summary of the events.
“Dad, I’ll get the records first!” said my daughter, Emily, as she sloshed through the rising water in the basement – which actually was the living room, my office, library and the music room as well as utility room and garage – and grabbed armloads.
She is my daughter, damn the Romanian passport and parliamentary adoption decree, and she wisely started out with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones as she began clearing the shelves. Next came Dylan, Cash, the Dead, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Kristofferson. Hell, by the time she was done, we’d even rescued Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Met Herb once when he came to Nashville. Good guy.
That was just the vinyl. I didn’t raise stupid children. I mean, they may not always be perfect, but they know their old dad -- a very old man – loves his vinyl albums.
The CDs and then the books followed, with an assembly line rescue that began with Emily and then went to me, to Joe and to Suzanne before settling in on the main floor of our home.
I didn’t even lose many. I mean there may have been a random Los Lonely Boys or Tracy Lawrence CD that got too wet to salvage, but most recordings – I keep about everything, as evidenced by the fact I still had Tracy and Los Lonely Boys to lose when the water rose – were OK. There were a few hundred cassette tapes that got water-logged and tossed.
The books came next. A few had to be thrown out, soaking wet. But those that survived were carried upstairs and stacked around the living room, where peculiar combinations like Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road” rested atop a copy of the Associated Press Stylebook, the Bible and the Qu’ran or Koran…. I should probably look in the stylebook for preferred spelling.
I could continue to tell you about the flood, about how I coped with it by writing nightly blogs that included my own regular basketball adventures with The Big O while Bob Dylan and Magic Johnson watched.
Or I could talk about the huge pile of furniture and floor, carpet and drywall and appliances that had to be torn out and left in the driveway. The whole basement had to be gutted, as the water wicked up the drywall.
I could talk about the limp-handed insurance company that tried to sell me flood insurance, after collecting premiums for 20 years and declining to help at all in my family’s recovery.
And then there’s the great work of FEMA and how it has restored my “faith” in government.
Yeah, Uncle Sam: Thanks for the $400 or whatever I was allowed to pay for the lost clothes dryer. Surprised you could spare that much to help me when you are busy killing civilians in foreign lands. I think you could have spared one burst of ammo into an empty building and helped me more than that.
But I’m OK. I do understand, though, the bitterness of the real and still homeless and hopeless flood victims. Every time the Big O’s boys make an air strike on civilian populations in Pakistan, that’s several million dollars less for the good of the country itself. Oh well, at least you haven’t declared “Mission Accomplished,” Big O. And you may not like country music, but could you please help Nashville? There are rows of homes in North Nashville and Bellevue that are still unoccupied. I’m OK, though I could likely fuel many fires with the amount of paperwork I had to file in quintuplicate in order for each appropriate official to have copies on which to stamp “No.”
Ahh, but that’s enough about the flood. I’ve tried to move past it. Well, actually I was forcibly moved past it by a dozen feet or so when a car ran a red light at full speed and T-boned me as I was making a pleasant little turn on the green arrow after returning some flood recovery rental merchandise to the Home Depot on July 4.
My car was totaled and I’m still suffering from the after-effects of the bad concussion. Almost no money changed hands so far thanks to the diligence of the insurance industry.
Dizzy, bad headaches and sudden bursts of anger at the establishment are some of the symptoms. Well, those angry bursts were part of the deal before the year I hate took place. You gotta serve somebody.
I could go on, but it would bore you. Also, I’d prefer you read my blogs. For example, I could have easily lived with the physical destruction of the flood and even the wreck if it hadn’t been for the fact my cat, Pal, died.
Yes, I’d rather have the one little cat than all of the material stuff that I lost.
Oh he was old and he had cancer and he had earned the right to die. But I held onto him as he went on. The only good thing about the flood is that his litter box had been moved from the old former basement/utility roof to my bedroom during the course of repairs.
Pal didn’t have to struggle downstairs in his last few months. And he could easily get onto the bed and talk to me.
Damn, though. I wasn’t ready for him to die. I don’t want any more pets. They break your heart.
I have to admit that I was far better off than many of you out there who had to deal with the flood. At least I could get to the upstairs, where the kitchen and bathrooms and bedrooms are. And my family was safe.
I didn’t need help. I’m OK. But there are so many who did and do. I’ve been wondering when they are going to get some of the bucks from the fund-raising concerts.… I mean, how much did anybody get from shows put on by good-hearted souls Vince Gill, Keith Urban and Garth Brooks? I don’t know anybody who got any help to speak of. I’m sure there are happy stories out there. But no one has told them to me. I guess the people who could afford to pay the scalpers’ prices of $500-$1,000 for the $25 Urban and Garth shows have plenty to be happy about.
People, my family included, learned that the only aid we can rely upon lives inside our four walls. It’s a wonderful life if you have family to depend on.
But I am lucky as I face down this horrid year. I do have a loyal family and friends. And I do have my pride and my honesty and my ethics.
I am sure the next year will be better for a lot of us.
I don’t fool myself that the war will be over and that cancer will be cured.
I do not believe that the Big O and the vile bastards of Congress will go dancing hand-in-hand through the Rose Garden for the good of the American people.
I do believe, however, that the good guys will win, eventually. And, as my long time friends know, I am a good guy. I befriended both John Glenn and the Lone Ranger. John Wooden thought of me as a grandson. John R. Cash liked me enough to give me his final interview slot, except he died before he made it home from the hospital.
No, I’m not perfect. Skipper would tell you that.
But I’m pretty damned proud to have made it through this year -- and the almost six decades before -- by staying true to principles that would have held back so many korporate ass-kissers from reaching their levels of success in journalism, my profession, and elsewhere. At least I can sleep at night.
I always kidded Skipper that he reminded me of “Popeye,” you know the sailor man who ate spinach and hollered “I yam what I yam.” Me too.
So, as this year of the damned passes, I think again about that New Year’s Eve when I loaded up Skipper’s belongings in his Royal York Hotel room.
Rick Nelson’s hour of death tribute was in full force on the radio. And the deejay – it may even have been Jimmy in the Morning working a late shift -- cued up “Garden Party” with the line:
“But it's all right now, I learned my lesson well.
You see, you can't please everyone, so you got to please yourself….”
I smiled, unplugged the radio and helped my old friend down to the car that was going to haul him toward eternity.

1982: Murders of children, trailer park rapes & blood-slick roads take holiday as News Brothers spread Christmas cheer and anger Big Guy

2010-12-22T20:21:00.000-08:00

“Have a Damn Nice Christmas.”
Makes you feel like breaking out the hot chocolate and singing about that Wenceslaus fellow feasting on Stephen or whatever.
That Damn Nice holiday sentiment nearly cost me my job back in the winter of 1982. Fortunately, I was able to make The Big Guy, our publisher blink. Perhaps the dollar signs I’d help him earn blinded him temporarily, long enough for me to back out his door, put on my yellow fedora and fire up a smoke.
Hell, for all I remember, and sometimes that isn’t much, The Big Guy maybe even smiled. At the very least he jangled the change in his pockets and nodded, blankly, thinking “How in the world can I get back to Carolina and out of this institution....” He was from that state populated by basketball and Biltmore and his prize, upon retirement, was to get back to the mountains and drool.
Call me naive or innocent (few do, you know), but I was surprised by the fuming anger of The Big Guy, as I didn’t understand what was so wrong with this sentimental greeting. I even sent one of the cards to my mom, and she didn’t object. She was willing always to have a Damn Nice Christmas right up til she died. I think she hung the card on the Christmas Tree. Still she had been a journalist, so I suppose she got it.
That greeting that was broadcast around Clarksville came during the heady early days of the fraternity of nicotine-stained journalists who came together with purpose and pride and along the way became known as the News Brothers. Blue-collar journalists, telling blue-collar stories to a blue-collar (and Army-drab-collar) town.
Most people liked it when we wished them a “Damn Nice Christmas” 28 years ago.
After all, wasn’t that the last line from It’s A Wonderful Life? Jimmy Stewart looks into the camera, eyes twinkle as the bell tinkles and says: “Attaboy, Clarence: Have a Damn Nice Christmas!” Listen closer next time, as that part of the line gets drowned out by all the joyous singing.
In the weeks and months leading up to delivering the holiday greeting to The Big Guy, our publisher, I’d been helping to guide what came to be prize-winning coverage involving the deaths of two beautiful and innocent young people. Of course, we weren’t looking for recognition. We just were looking for the truth. And justice. And, when the adrenaline and nicotine wore off, perhaps some sleep.
Kathy Jane Nishiyama and Rodney Wayne Long still stir nightmares in sections of my soul scarred and raw by their monstrous murders almost three decades ago. There still are the sweats on cold nights.
Children, really. Promise extinguished. Forever frozen as “mug shots” that ran daily on the front page with eerily parallel dispatches about the mysteries, searches, chases, savagery and mourning.
The newspaper wasn’t large in staff, but the staff was large in heart. We were pretty young ourselves, though our own innocence had been washed away by years of covering trailer-trash murders and gunfights involving prostitutes, transvestites, serial killers and soldiers. Our photographer would show us some of the not-ready for prime-time shots he got of bodies and bullet holes. Even I was shocked by one of a fatal wound right below a guy’s testicles. He not only bled out, but his once-proud – to him I’m sure -- private parts were making the photographic rounds of police departments and newsrooms.
Sure there was gallows humor. When you are making $150 a week and aswirl in bodies, sometimes you just had to laugh when you saw the photograph. Sorry. But it’s true.
The Kathy Jane and Rodney stories touched us and I’ll tell you much more about them some other time.
Suffice it to say that for the most part, we worked around the clock to tell those stories, to cover the deaths and the get to know the families of the teen-age victims and the killers. Some of the finest police coverage ever by my dear friend, Rob “Death” Dollar, with the occasional assist by me and by our vigilant Baptist wordsmith, the near-legendary Frank “Wuhm” White, a successful businessman and downtown roof owner. Another story. Another night. For this is Christmas.
Long-time copy desk pal Jerry “Chuckles” Manley, a semi-portly boy with a reddish beard, edited the copy with expertise and with at least one keen eye while Virginia Slims smoke made the other eye run. His sidekick, “Flash” – a fresh-from-school news virgin – aged every time he helped copy-edit those stories and write a headline about a body found or a gleeful, boasting killer.
My boss Tony Durr – whom I still love and miss a couple of decades after he killed himself in a lonely Alaska Coast Guard barracks after washing out of journalism and a half-dozen marriages -- pranced around the newsroom, excited by the grisly coverage and his occasional assist and /or attempt at deflecting the slings and arrows of upper management .
Sure, great coverage of two murders that occurred at about the same time in the same Southern town. “Things like that aren’t supposed to happen here in Clarksville,” barked one police officer who enjoyed back-shooting dope-smugglers, pimps, throat-slicers, chicken thieves, father rapers and other everyday perpetrators and predators.
Sixteen-hour work days could be punctuated by cigarettes exploding in the newsroom. Yep, we booby-trapped the open packs on our desks with “loaded” cigarettes. There were those who never wanted to admit they smoked by buying their own. Wives would object if they openly indulged. So they bummed and as a result I loved watching them jerk around in their chairs, gasping when the smoke cleared, the frayed cigarette pursed between Lee Oswald lips.
Seems pretty juvenile, but then again, so does rubber vomit.
But this is a story about Christmas 1982 and the card. You remember the Christmas card, don’t you?
It actually seemed like a great idea, guaranteed to raise a smile, in the wake of all that had gone on in the news. And besides that, Rob and I were coming off the success of the movie we’d produced and directed, written, whatever the word might be, and even starred in ... along with “Flash” and “Chuckles” as co-stars and others who occasionally dropped in to take part. Half the town’s police force and firefighters and charitable organizations were involved to some extent. Even the mayor and the first American to circle the globe participated.
“Flapjacks: The Motion Picture” -- with its intricate plot revolving around news events, along with its slapstick and satire poking fun at journalism (we didn’t realize we were the last generation of practitioners of that profession at the time), law enforcement, pop culture and current events -- holds up to this day.
With all the pie-throwing, gun-slappping, confetti-flying, car-chasing and finger-flipping scenes, it also really is a portrait of my life at the time. I could have called it “Weird Scenes Inside the Goldmine,” after the Doors album, because it came out of my head – and out of Rob’s – as we went along, coping with the disaster and death we’d been covering.
We’d meet for coffee at 7 a.m. on Saturdays with a “script” for the day’s shoot, film for a few hours, then wash the shaving cream from the tossed pies or the sideshow elephants turds off our sneakers, go to the newsroom with a couple fresh packs of smokes and put out prize-winning newspapers well into the night and next morning. I was associate editor, so the night shift, the result of our collective labors could easily be blamed on me. But I took great pride in the movie and, more so, in the great journalism the staff was committing, against all odds.
OK, you may be wondering what this all has to do with Christmas.
You see, "Flapjacks: The Motion Picture" played until dawn in an abandoned theater in the city and raised a few hundred bucks that went to a homeless agency, the fire department’s Christmas toy drive and the Police Department’s children and widows’ fund.
Even the newspaper hierarchy was pleased by the movie that came a month before Christmas ... some young staffers, after all, had done this on their own time, made headlines in Clarksville and in the corporation for raising money for charity ... and at the same time won journalism awards.
Of course, with all this holiday cheer floating around, Rob and I decided the best thing a group of guys can do is put together a Christmas card to thank our friends and to express our belief in peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind.
It in turn would reappear the following December on our planned News Brothers calendar, again a fund-raising proposition. More on that too another day, as I’m sure you are anxious to get out and shop for some children who really don’t care what you give them, as long as they get something. See the loaded cigarettes or rubber vomit section above for last-minute ideas.
When we weren’t immersed in the most heinous of murders, driven to drink (and sometimes getting a ride home) by the human carnage we’d witnessed, we got further involved in charity.
We wore our shades to give blood and to visit dying children. There even were plans under way for a News Brother Basketball Tournament, that we were going to host at one of the local high schools, again to raise money for charity.
There was nothing complex about the Christmas Card. We’d wear our News Brothers’ best – bits and pieces of the tuxedoes we’d worn in the days of the “Flapjacks” premiere.
Rob, Chuckles, Flash and I showed up in our finery. Our clerk, a pretty woman named Neesa, was good enough sport to show up to don the top half of a Santa costume and expose what were and likely still are damn nice legs.
Fresh from the photo shoot, Rob and I dashed to our favorite printer and ordered a few dozen postcard-sized copies of that picture, with the phrase “Have a Damn Nice Christmas” printed below the picture.
Delighted by the result, Rob, in his white top-hat and I in my yellow fedora immediately distributed these cards around town.
We started out in the old Royal York Hotel, a high-rise former swank joint that had degenerated into a flop for widows, widowers, lovable losers, liars and murderous drifters. Many of them were our closest friends. “I was so tough my spit would bounce,” one of my friends told me when I wished him a happy 83rd birthday. Again, another story.
We went up the elevator – it was one of those you drove yourself by pulling on a lever – and stopped at each floor, sliding a card beneath each door. “Gunsmoke” reruns blared from the TV sets in 90 percent of those rooms.
We then left a stack at the desk to be distributed in the lobby.
In the next hours, we wandered the streets of the city, handing them out, sliding them into the mail slots for county and city officials. It was sort of a Charlie Dickens scene we were creating in the cold, snowy Clarksville night.
We even saved one in case Chico the Monkey ever came back from the dead. I still have that one. Just in case. That too is another story and it actually took place later. I have told you about that tragedy before and likely will again, as Chico’s death haunts and delights me to this day.
Then, spreading Christmas cheer, we went to the newspaper complex, going from the press room to the advertising offices, to the camera room, to the job shop, sliding cards beneath doors and leaving them on desks.
The last one, and we didn’t hesitate, went beneath the office door of The Big Guy, our publisher.
“He’ll like this,” said Rob.
“Yeah,” I said. We didn’t really think he’d mind one way or another, as long as he could jangle the change in his pockets as loudly as possible.
Perhaps he was angry by the Chico coverage. Maybe it was my long interview with a drifter named W. Robert Cameron. I’d caught him while he was resting along a railroad siding, taking a breather from his mission of hitchhiking to Austria.
Maybe it was Rob’s steady stream of stories about death and destruction –”No more wreck stories” we were commanded after about the 24th traffic fatality involving a drunken soldier in six months. Not good for the Chamber image, I suppose, in hindsight. Especially at Christmastime.
“Tim, uhh, this is The Big Guy, uhhhh,” was the voice the next morning when I picked up the Flap phone, one of those blue plastic contraptions that I kept next to the Mr. Potato Head collection on my associate editor's desk. “Could you come down here and see me.”
I still didn’t know what was going on. He didn’t sound angry. Just self-important.
“Uhh, Tim, uhh, could you close the door and, uhh, sit down.” I noticed he was jangling his change harder and faster. I wondered if I should offer him a loaded cigarette.
He held up the card. “This is wrong,” he said, sounding like a sinister Walt Disney. “You do not put ‘Damn’ and ‘Christmas’ in the same sentence. You guys have gone too far. Do not give any more of these out.”
Once I explained that half the town had them, he stood up and walked across the room. He was jangling wildly. The rosewater scent of his hair spritz filled the tiny confines.
“Tim, uhh, you are a great newspaperman, uhh, but this is too much. Do you have any of them left?”
I nodded. “Sure. How many more do you want? And I can order more.”
He stood there, in silence, nodded to the door and then said “don’t do this again.”
I looked at him and smiled.
“What?” he said, in a benign bark.
“Big Guy, Have a Damn Nice Christmas.”
He shook his head. “You too,” he muttered. “You too.”
I ambled back upstairs to the newsroom, where Rob greeted me. He put on his top-hat, fired up a Kool and we went for coffee.
A dozen hours later, about five blocks from the newspaper, a house caught fire. A guy dressed like Santa Claus, apparently en route to a party, stopped.
By the time Rob and the Fire Department got there, a soot-covered Santa Claus, with a handicapped woman slung over his shoulders, walked from the fiery house.
He handed her over to the rescuers and anonymously disappeared into the night.
At first we didn't know the name of the Good Samaritan with the jiggling belly and the soot-covered white beard. Had he been the real Santa Claus? I’d like to say there were flying reindeer involved.
But after the story went viral, appearing on the front pages of newspapers all over the world, Santa stepped forward, visiting us at the newspaper office the next day.
It was Christmas Day, and we were wearing our tuxedoes, and the rescuer, David Rodriguez, was wearing his Santa suit. A high school choral teacher, he had been delivering toys to underprivileged children and came across the fire after taking a wrong turn on his Chrstmas rounds.
That wrong turn really led to what always will be something I regard as a wondrous Christmas miracle.

The follow-up, detailing Santa Rodriguez and his anonymous heroism was a great lead story on a holiday that should revolve around generosity, love and peace. As papers rolled off the press early the next morning, I carried one outside, onto Third Street, where a little snow was falling. Rob was standing out there, with our old friend, Skipper, the old carny and merchant marine who once served spaghetti to Al Capone. Rob had rousted him from his room at the old hotel. It was cold. Boy was it cold.
We shared nips of cheap brandy and wished each other a great holiday: “Have a Damn Nice Christmas.”
Skipper looked up as Tony, Jerry and Jim arrived. He handed them the bottle of cheap brandy.
Skipper, who wasn’t wearing his teeth, looked up to the sky and began singing “Silent Night” in his amazing Irish tenor.
With that beautiful voice echoing off the old buildings around us, I looked to Rob and the others and smiled. “God Bless us every one.”

Ron Santo's life centered on the promise of spring; his death sparks memories of Grandpa Champ, friends, war & shoe-store monkey

2010-12-05T14:51:00.000-08:00

The kind third baseman’s death exposed raw pieces of my soul.
No. 10. Ron Santo. A picture in mind’s eye of vitality and happiness, a part of my youth, of my life and dreams, gone.
Perhaps it is not really a raw feeling, but simple melancholy that set in, a realization of how many years have gone and how many miles I still need to trek to find, even find out, what I’m looking for during this sometimes savage, other times honey-slathered journey.
All I can tell you is Ron Santo’s death Thursday, Dec. 2, sent me swirling in “Hey-Hey and Holy Mackerel” memories that included not just this great player and captain of the Chicago Cubs -- my life’s ball club -- but also had me thinking about the brightness of spring dreams, the renewal, when the waiting ‘til next year is done and fresh hope thrives. That’s the real truth behind baseball’s allure and life’s promise.
But in addition to Ron Santo, I also thought of my first baseball hero, my Grandpa Champ, dead 36 years. He used to take me to see the Detroit Tigers play when I would visit his house at Walnut Lake in the summers. It was always a big deal. If the Yankees were in town, that made it just right. Grandpa was a big Tigers fan, knew Ty Cobb and the early guys from the days he would finish up his shift at the Nash plant and wander to Navin Field, later Briggs Stadium, when he was a young man.
He was by all accounts a great ballplayer back in Clayville, N.Y. Only his busted-up fingers kept him from pursuing a career in baseball rather than as a thresherman and later a factory line foreman. Ran for sheriff once too.
Grandpa Champ didn’t live in the past. He had a great appreciation for the players who delighted me as an 8 or 10-year- old. Stormin’ Norman Cash, Al Kaline, Jim Bunning (yes the politician with the click-heels demeanor was a fine pitcher), Dick McCauliffe, Phil Regan, Charlie Maxwell, Dick Wertz, Bill Freehan.
And when I met many of them at Howard A. Snope’s shoe store in Grand Rapids, Mich., where I lived for awhile as a grade -school kid, they all were good fellows. Howard A. Snope (I may have his name wrong, but he was a nice, bald guy and we got our school shoes there) was a part-time pool-hustler, with a table in the lower level of his store. He may have been a yo-yo champion as well. Can’t remember. Perhaps I’ve gotten the whole thing blended in the time machine that is my cluttered and concussed mind.
Snope, or maybe it was Swope?, also had a STORE MONKEY. Can’t remember the name, but I know it wasn’t Chico, a monkey I encountered later in life. That’s a whole different story, though.
When the Tigers came into the store to sign baseball cards and help the old pool shark or yo-yo hustler sell shoes, the monkey roamed freely. Everybody’s got something to hide, they say, but me, well I just let the monkey climb my shoulders. From that point on I always wanted a monkey … at least until the sad tale of Chico getting run to the ground and much worse by the dogs years later.
Anyway, Grandpa Champ first got me interested in baseball mainly because it was the soundtrack of summers at Walnut Lake, which then was intensely rural, where deer and wildcats roamed freely. He even convinced us one night there was a bear out there. Never saw one, though. Now that is an upscale suburb of Detroit. I doubt the little four-room house he and my Uncle Les built even exists any more. In reality, that is. In my mind, it is always there, especially on days like this, when I ponder what it means that Ron Santo has died.
Not all games were on television back in those Walnut Lake summers. So when they were just on the radio, that was the entertainment. We’d sit and listen to the Tigers. Van Patrick and later Ernie Harwell described the game, in detail. My imagination, as a youngster, embellished and thrived on the mental pictures of what was said. Meanwhile, we’d generally be playing poker.
I don’t play anymore. But back then, Grandpa Champ, who went out west at age 16 to work the threshing crews beginning in British Columbia and working as the wheat harvest moved Southeast, spent a lot of time teaching me and my brother, Eric, and cousins, Marc and Jeff, the tricks of the game.
And no, this wasn’t some soft chump of a Grandpa who would let his 6 and 8- year-old grandchildren win. He played for keeps. Matchsticks? He wanted them. Plastic chips? He raked them in. Got pennies, boys?
So on the occasion we did win a hand when we were listening to the Tigers it was a real victory, doubly so if Kaline made a spectacular play in the outfield or hammered the winner across. (Santo, by the way likely fueled young minds similarly during his two decades as the radio voice of the Cubs after his multi-generational career in the infield and as a pizza salesman.)
Of course when the Tigers games were on TV – usually the televised ones were day games – Grandpa watched them. Crippled by arthritis, he’d sit in his lounge chair, his pipe or cigar going, uttering the occasional “Gawd Gawd Gawd” at his team. Really angry by a bad relay, he’d punctuate it with a “damn.” Not too loud or Grandma would say “Oh, George!” while frying up his afternoon lunch of scrambled eggs, dosed with a blanket of black pepper, and a can of kippers on the side.
So you’re asking what this has to do with Ron Santo? Well those summers and the monkey in the shoe store were a part of the reason I fell, deeply and forever, in love with the Chicago Cubs.
When I was 11, we moved to Chicago. Among the first things we did for recreation was go to Wrigley Field as a family. Grandpa would go with us when he visited Chicago.
It also was a place of my liberation. As I got old enough to take the train into the city or bum a ride with a pal, the friendly confines became a place to escape with buddies, 13 or 14 or 15…. Easily old enough to buy an Old Style in the left field bleachers.
Now, those bleachers are the place yuppies go to be seen -- or to cause the Cubs to lose their only chance at a pennant in the last several decades.
Back then, and we are talking the late mid-to-late-1960s, the bleacher bums were blue-collar souls, working stiffs who had the night shift. Daytime was the only time they played ball in the beautiful confines before the bastards who govern Korporate Amerika succumbed to the TV schedulers and insisted lights be put in at Wrigley.
I may be oversimplifying, as is my right as a human being, but basically the Cubs had to put lights in if they were going to have home games in the World Series, which had begun being played at night because of network TV revenue. Otherwise, they'd have to play World Series Games away from the field built by chewing gum's success. Gasp... even perhaps at Comiskey?
(Hey, who else remembers taking the transistor radio to class in elementary school and listening to the World Series when all baseball was played --- as it should be – beneath the sun? Listened to the astronauts take off and land also.)
Anyway, I never understood why the Cubs succumbed to that blackmail and installed lights at Wrigley. It wasn’t like they ever were going to be in a World Series, anyway.
I am one of those fans who have cheered for them for five decades. They are my team. I don’t get to see a whole lot of their games. But they are in my heart and in my soul or however that Rod Stewart song goes.
But this is supposed to be about the now-dead Ron Santo.
And the summer of 1969.
That was the year that the Cubs were destined to win the pennant, rolling through the season.
Jack Brickhouse, the announcer for WGN at the time – he later became a friend – would sing “Hey-Hey and Holy Mackerel, no doubt about it, the Cubs are on their way” on the radio and television after the Cubs dropped the Dodgers or the Giants. Unfortunately they didn’t beat the Mets often enough. More details on that later.
I got to know Jack a little bit because I would go up on the ramp to his press box to meet him when I was a kid. Later, I befriended “Clarksville’s Marilyn Monroe,” a large and wonderful spinster named Mary Harris, who ran the almost males-only club known as the tobacco board back when that was the king crop. Miss Mary was always there for me when I needed fresh tomatoes or a cuss-filled dose of Clarksville history.
She was an old woman by the time we met. And her cousin used to come to Clarksville, Tenn., to spend summers with her when he was growing up. His name: Jack Brickhouse.
Miss Mary cut my columns about Clarksville from the local newspaper, The Leaf-Chronicle (named for the aforementioned tobacco leaf) and sent them to Jack. He’d write me notes or even call me. “Any friend of Mary’s is a friend of mine,” he’d say.
“Hey-Hey!” I’d say, with a laugh.
Both of them are long dead. I know later-comers to the Cubs worship Harry Caray. And that’s fine. But to me, I knew Jack Brickhouse and Harry – while quite an entertainer – was no Jack Brickhouse. Course Harry’s got the bronze statue.
There were days in the 1960s’ bleachers when I would cheer my Cubs and curse at Pete Rose, who loved every second of it, even the beer showers presented by anonymous donors. Of course, the Old Style was just so much mist by the time it reached the ball field beneath the ivy.
As those as old as me know, every time someone with a blue hat and pinstripes pumped one over the fence Jack hollered “Hey-Hey!”… or “Holly Mackerel.” (Harry added “Holy Cow” to the North Side vernacular later.)
During the 1969 season, at the games’ ends, Jack’s recorded song “Hey-Hey and Holy Mackerel, no doubt about it, the Cubs are on their way…” pumped through the speaker system as the boys took their bows and ran to the clubhouse, beneath the left field bleachers.
Ronnie Santo, their captain, would jump up and click his heels all the way to the lockers.
Ernie Banks would laugh and cheer his teammates. If they’d played two that day, he’d say “Let’s play three.” I love Ernie Banks, too.
Fergie Jenkins, Randy Hundley, Billy Williams.
My friend, Jimmy Hart – I wonder what happened to him? – and I would finish our jobs at the park district and head down there as frequently as possible. Catch the tail end of a double header or go spend Saturday and Sunday there. We’d go in my 1965 Falcon or on the train.
Jimmy once stepped on my prized aviator’s sunglasses – they were in our cooler box – which really bothered me, as everyone knows how much I like my shades.
Yes, you could sneak a cooler into the games then. It’s not like now when all sports are controlled by the fellows with the screw the public rules and mentality of their hero, war profiteer and Korporate cheerleader Shotgun Dick.
It was a sport in which Golden Glovers made 50 grand. You could watch them smoking cigarettes in the dugout, perhaps tossing ‘em in the dirt by the on-deck circle. If they struck out, it might be worth picking the smoke up and finishing. After all they still were suffering the hangover from the night before.
Jimmy Hart broke my sunglasses on Billy Williams Day, a great occasion for a great man. It was standing room only, and Jack stopped by to chat with us during the seventh inning.
But this is supposed to be a story about Ron Santo.
You see, if Ernie Banks was the soul of the Cubs – and he earned that with his glove, his bat and his spirit – then Ron was the heart.
On either end of the infield, these were the team’s giants. Not those Giants. Lowercase giants. Uppercase HUMAN BEINGS.
Anyway, I got to know these boys, my boys of summer, a little back then. It was before the days of high security and Arab terrorists and American wackos with fertilizer and hate. There were no security guards with Tommy Guns, Tazers and Poisonous Snakes by the player’s entrance and exit outside the stadium. Perhaps a single beat cop with a checkered headband, but that’s about it. And he’d be as eager for fun as anyone else.
Get there early enough; a kid like me could talk to Fergie Jenkins, Billy Williams. Ernie would pass by and say “it’s a beautiful day for a ballgame. Let’s play two.”
Here comes Don Kessinger or “Hello Mr. Hickman.”
Likewise Ron Santo would stop and talk to the middle-class American dreamers who still had their lives ahead of them.
Of course we know what happens in this story.
The Cubs did not win the pennant.
The Mets – you know with Tim McGraw’s pop (who I met a couple of times and liked) hollering “You Gotta Believe” – came from deep in the race and ran the Cubs into the ground in September. Damn Art Shamsky, Cleon Jones, Tommie Agee….
Anyway, I was only 17. I graduated in 1969 from Deerfield High and I had gone to Iowa State by the time the horrid end to the season came. I sat and watched, when I could, the games in the dorm recreation room. Or I listened to them. I watched the Cubs swoon.
Those were the least of my real concerns, of course. I was out on my own. I was among new people, no friends came with me, living in a new place. I was worried about the draft and the war in Vietnam. I was meeting Black Muslims and Panthers. I learned that Jimmy Hart had gotten married and was quickly to become a father back in Chicago.
But when the season was over, there was no back-biting among the Cubs. Ron Santo and Ernie Banks still smiled.
They said that phrase which has been uttered every season since: “Wait ‘Til Next year.”
In the years since then, of course, baseball has remained a poetic passion for me, although the rules guys need to cut down on the length. Nine innings needn’t go four hours.
Although I like the violence of football as well, partly because at a time in my life I became very good at dishing out that violence before it began to disgust me.
And as the Cubs were swooning in 1969 I was deep in the pursuit of life, which sometimes led me into strange corners from which I’d escape as I pursued my tomorrows.
I can’t remember if that was the year I went backstage with the Vanilla Fudge. That may have been 1970. That was another big turning point for me.
That year, 1969, remains stitched on my yellowed Deerfield High School letter sweater. Was looking at it the other day thinking I need to throw it away. Haven’t yet, though probably will. Still got my letter jacket, too.
Anyway, all of these thoughts and recollections came flooding when I heard Ron Santo had died.
I thought of my Grandpa. I thought of my cousins. I remembered the monkey in the shoe store.
I thought of my old pal, Jocko. He was a Chicago White Sox fan, but he drank warm beer with me – 69 cents a six for Van Merritt out in Iowa in 1969 – and consoled me. Or at least helped me laugh about it before we headed over to Tork’s Pub to initiate what we later would christen “Rolling,” as good a team sport as any young man could want.
That’s another long story and perhaps I’ll tell it soon. But When Ron Santo’s death was reported, I thought about Jocko, who recently lost his ex-wife to cancer. I was their best man. They still loved each other. I’ve been thinking and writing about death a lot lately, it seems. And so often cancer plays a role. “Gawd” damn cancer.
My friend and marathon running buddy, Tom Carpenter, a world-renowned dog and cat doc in SoCal, reminded me that Jocko once played against Ron Santo in a charity basketball game. Jocko was virtually chased from the game for being too rough with the captain.
(Tom … or “Carpy” as I still call him … I believe is the guy who talked Bob Barker into ending broadcasts with his plea to “have your pets spayed or neutered.”)
Lucky Billy Williams didn’t use one of his bats to tee off on Jocko’s sweaty, bald skull on that day. He did like them high and inside, after all.
There were plenty of laughs, still are, as I sit here writing this.
In 1969, there still was the endless highway of life ahead for me. So I could console myself that the Cubs would be back, that I would be able to cheer them on for decades as they continued to be winners.
But the promise was short-lived. The following year, I was in the draft lottery. I pulled a high number, but some of my friends went. Some of them died. I protested and cried.
There were so many things that were going to happen by this time in my life, by that I mean by today.
I mean, don’t trust anyone over 30 turned to don’t trust anyone over 80….
I’m 59 now. I was 42 years younger back when Ron was clicking his heels.
Those years have been good, for the most part. Bad and ugly at other times.
But that’s life.
Still, when I learned that Ron Santo had died, I knew I wasn’t quite where I was figuring I’d be by this point in my life. My late friend John Lennon sang “life is what happens while you’re busy making plans” or something like that.
He was right, of course. He didn’t plan to be gunned down 30 years ago this coming Wednesday. That may be the subject of another story, another day.
But this is about the Pizza Man, Ron Santo, No. 10, the third-baseman who embodied what the Cubs were all about.
Back when he was playing, I just knew that by now my novels would be published and I’d be a natonally recognized newspaper columnist. Some of that happened earlier than reckoned. Some of it has not happened, thanks to the economy, Shotgun Dick, the times, the death of legitimate newspapers, whoever and whatever you want to blame.
But if there’s one thing Ron Santo and his pal Ernie Banks taught me, it was patience.
Wait ‘Til Next Year.

I read the news today, o boy: surveying the Fourth Estate so it can be auctioned off at a bankruptcy sale & God save the Queen

2010-11-24T13:53:00.000-08:00

It was one of those perfect autumn days, where the sweat trickled slightly beneath my Paul McCartney conquers Nashville T-shirt and there was a skip in my step. Or was that a stumble?
Doesn’t matter. At 59, at least I’m glad I’m not drooling. Hold it, let me wipe my lip.
So, I was in a good mood, which is probably my excuse. You see I didn’t tell all the aspiring journalists that the news business, a calling for me, is dead.
Oh, I know it will continue to function in some manner and I’m glad to share my wisdom now before being relegated to “relic” status.
Well, truth-be-told, Korporate Journalism already bestowed me that honor. I wouldn’t back down from my own nicotine-stained newsroom ethics. Seems they didn’t translate well in the age of “information centers,” where back-stabbers play king of the mountain till they are heaved onto the rag pile.
On this happy day, though, I’d been talking with some aspiring journalists about the tools of the trade: how to interview, how to interact, how to get good quotes, how to spell names correctly, how to always tell the truth, how to provide the most-important information to the public.
These are not necessarily things deemed important these days, but perhaps this younger generation will find a way to incorporate these basic tools into the age when the latest news will flash on the back end of the person walking in front of you, or however it will end up working.
I suppose it’s sad, for a guy who is striving to feed his family and the like, that I am so passionate about this truth and accuracy thing. That coupled with belief that journalists are serving the public … I’m not just a relic: I’m a dinosaur.
Surely, the journalists know what is important to the readers, the American Public, citizens of what I like to call – at least during my happy days – The Greatest Nation On Earth That Still Does Not Believe Health Care and Education are Rights. Yes, there are major flaws here.
Oh, I’m a proud U.S. citizen. My grandparents came through Ellis, and disappeared with Vito and the rest into Little Italy before eventually moving to Buffalo where Grandpa Ghianni worked on the railroad, all the livelong day.
And I firmly believe in the Fourth Estate, that the news organizations present the important material, educating and enlightening the public. However, I’ve been told that the Fourth Estate was sold at auction by bean-counters, trend-spotters and the leeches that run American business, industry, the government and the War Machine. Speaking of which, one day, back when I was a student at Iowa State university, some great philosopher once told me: ”I don’t need your war machines I don’t need your ghetto scenes ….”
OK, colored lights may hypnotize, but you know when I was speaking to the young people I found them both encouraged and encouraging. They were attentive and delightful. They wanted to know the little tricks. They wanted to talk about stories. I can’t remember when I was their age. I mean, I really can’t. Perhaps it is because of that concussion from the T-boner last July 4. Perhaps it was that night backstage with Vanilla Fudge back in 1970. More likely it is age.
Anyway, the day was good and fruitful. And, as is my habit when I get home from anywhere, I first look at the local newspaper web site and then at the television station web sites, scoping out the news, trying to glean just what is important, like, for example is it time to finally build one of those tornado and bomb shelters in the garage floor?
That’s the big commercial these days on the news. Meteorologists can’t yet frighten us with the blizzards – I think my old comrades Jocko and Capt. Kirk are breaking out the sled dogs up in Iowa as I write this – but down here in Nashville, it’s still tornado season.
Oh yeah, it’s also flood season here. Always is, especially when the Corps of Engineers closes up shop and refuses to answer the phone during the height of the 500-year flood. Thanks for your diligence guys. Maybe you should go over and help North Korea with its infrastructure problems. Hey, there’s another reason to build one of those sub-garage-floor bomb and tornado shelters… Thanks Commander Sick or whatever your name is, you crazy bastard.
By the way, when you watch those tornado and bomb shelter commercials, do you wonder the same thing I wonder: These little shelters are dug into the garage floor, beneath where you park your car. Unless you always park outside, that means the first thing you have to do when North Korean artillery starts shelling the suburbs or a tornado spins down the street is unlock those garage door – warped from that aforementioned floodwater -- and back the 1985 Saab out into the driveway while two-by-fours, bricks and bicycle and body parts zip past your head?
Back to the news. There was nothing really new on the sites, so I climbed from my little Fortress of Solitude, Da Office, The Flap Cave, Champo’s HQ to the living room and turned on the television.
Time to watch Brian Williams or (name your favorite anchor here, but remember Walter Cronkite is Dead and Dan Rather is still asking Kenneth about the frequency.)
But I really don’t watch just one channel. I am a clicker fellow, beginning with the local news and running through the national and back into the local. (I have my local news favorites and they know who they are… in case they want to offer me work. )
Anyway, on both local and national news on that otherwise balmy day, I found out that a Tea Party princess was going to be competing for the championship “silver chalice” or whatever it’s called, on Dancing With the Stars. I’m not against that show, because I’ve never watched it. For all I know it is highbrow entertainment.
So this was the big news of that day, the stuff that would enlighten me. They were talking about Bristol Palin. I mean isn’t it enough that we have to put up with the constant stream of books her mom writes? Or actually, perhaps, hires people to write. (Dear Sarah: I’m apparently desperate. I think your politics are vile. But, well, how about, you know, hiring me to ghost-write the next tome, about how you are going to be president of the Greatest Country on Earth that During Your Administration Will Ban Health Care and Public Education?)
Already told my pal, The Big O, to start slipping some of the butter knives into his luggage each time he flies back to Chitown.
Course Sarah won’t miss the butter knives. She only uses them to gut polar bears and rally her following of semi-comatose old men, members of the Greatest Generation, her supporters, now known as “the Gang that Can’t Think Straight.”
Back to the news today, o boy, about a lucky man who made the grade...
Nah. That’s the wrong story.
The news outlets did mention that there were some GIs killed in Afghanistan. Unfortunately, this is happening so often now that it’s just “filler copy.” You know, these guys are dead, with photos. No mention of the hopes and dreams that died fighting to save the warlords and their poppy fields from the maniac who serves as president. My friend the Big O told me that “Karzai” means “Crazy” in the strange language they speak over there, English that is learned in England and translated in a boiler room in Bangladesh.
Speaking of England: Do you really care to have a daily update on the pending nuptials of the prince and his shack honey? I mean they seem like nice kids and they will do well. But, I don’t really care. (Prince Bill: Send me an invitation. I think you need to have me work for you and make sure the story is told without any sort of self-serving liberal slant.)
Love grandma, by the way. As John, Paul, George and Ringo once told me: “Her majesty’s a pretty nice girl but she doesn’t have a lot to say.”
She should work in the news business.

Loving brothers-in-arms look back on old times, dead friends, dying newspapers and death of Chico the Monkey... and I miss my mom

2010-11-18T15:59:00.000-08:00

“The press stinks, too: history on the run. That’s all you’re interested in,” he said, emerging from the shadows of his Korean compact in the subterranean garage.
“Things are past that,” I responded. “These are men with switchblade mentalities who run the world as if it were Dodge City.”
I told him that I was scared of these publishers and corporations. Life is short. Was it worth the price that journalism exacted? After all, aren’t newspapers dead, simply the refuse of a proud profession in which we apparently wasted our lives?
Then we laughed. In the old days, we would have tossed lighted cigarettes on the floor for punctuation after playing out our little scene from All the President’s Men. Of course no one really smokes those little cancer sticks any more, do they? No one blows carcinogens in your face to make a point in a dark garage.
We all smoked during the first half of the 35 or so years I spent enveloped in blue smoke clouds in newsrooms, cussing and laughing, riding the adrenaline rush of bodies found on deadline.
It was the business we had chosen, the only life I’d ever wanted to lead, at least partly because my mother had been a newswoman on Chicago’s South Side during WWII and encouraged my love of words. “Got tired of all the bodies,” she said. “Asked to be moved to society pages.”
I did, of course, enter the business hoping to bring down another corrupt president, like Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford did.
But they’ve come and gone and I haven’t succeeded.
Instead, I spent the decades meeting and spending time with the homeless to the hopeless, the honky-tonk heroes and, of course, making friends with guys like Cash, Kristofferson, Tom T., Earl Scruggs, Henry Aaron and Muhammad Ali, who can’t remember that any more. Glad I can, given the still-concussed brain I’m suffering since a T-boner sent my skull crashing into the driver’s side window July 4.
Had a hard time today remembering who played wide receiver before we got Randy Moss. Oh yeah, Kenny Britt. Kenny, may you stay forever young.
Speaking of Randy Moss, it was old age that had me down in the underground garage in the bowels of Nashville.
The big secret, the reason for the meeting was that 59 years today, there was a snowstorm in Pontiac, Mich. My mom and dad trudged from their apartment to nearby St. Joseph’s hospital where I was born at 7:30 a.m.
My mom used to call me every birthday at precisely that time. It didn’t matter if I had been out on the parched-eye express, embracing life’s sweet and warm as well as raw edges. I knew that on the morning of Nov. 18, I had to get home in time to pick up that phone.
“It was 18 years ago today, right at this time,” she’d say. Or 19. Or 29. Even 39. “You were a beautiful baby. You still are my beautiful baby.”
Whatever life’s circumstances, happy and bleak, for a couple decades – say from age 18-38 -- there was a good chance I’d been out all night, either as a newsman, a sports reporter, a columnist and always a robust embracer of life. And if I hadn’t been out all night, the chances are I didn’t sleep well. “No one .. but no one… drinks more coffee than the Caffeine Kid,” one of my good friends wrote in a newspaper column about my 40-cup a day habit.
I thought about him today too. Tony Durr. My friend, my editor. A dreamer and schemer. He told me he promoted me to his “special projects editor” so I’d do the work and he could play golf with StrawBilly Fields, now a respected civic leader in Nashville. Living is easy with eyes closed and a government job, but I love StrawBilly Fields forever.
They found Tony’s body in his Coast Guard barracks in Alaska after his newspaper dreams expired and apparently, given the nearby empty prescription bottle, so had his hopes.
But I loved Tony. Still do. And today, as names and lives of my 59 sometimes good years flashed through my mind, I thought about the most important one. My mom and her birthday phone calls. The last time she called to wish me “Happy Birthday” -- to repeat the tale of the blizzard and the labor, the beautiful boy, darling boy -- was 1998. She died a few months later.
I still miss that phone call. I expected the phone to ring today. Went out to the cemetery instead. That’s what I do on my birthday. Sit by the tombstone and talk to my mom. “It was 59 years ago today that you went out in the blizzard and walked to the hospital,” I said, after installing the poinsettias in the vases on the tombstone and brushing tree leaves and bird leavings away.
Told her I couldn’t stay long. Had a lot to do today. I could hear her, in my heart, telling me to “sit down and talk to me for a few minutes” during her last, many, bedridden years.
I did, and “spoke” to her of life’s choices and heavenly voices, but then I had to depart because a group of people were gathering for a tombstone unveiling two plots downhill. I wasn’t dressed appropriately in my cardinal and yellow Iowa State Cyclones T-shirt. Yep, a T-shirt on a day like this. It was cold. Boy was it cold. But again, the shirt was specifically chosen for this day. I didn’t want to wear my “No More Mr. Nice Guy” Alice Cooper shirt today, after all. Don’t want to make any false promises.
And besides that as birthdays are times to reflect, there were good and furiously lived years spent at ISU. Just ask my friend Jocko if you ever meet him. He’d probably remember. Maybe tell you about the two giant pink bunnies who stalked the campus in their tie-dyed long johns and rabbit ears. One had long, curly hair beneath his bunny ears. The other was nearly bald. Both were quite charming and, no doubt fetching to the ladies.
Getting a little far afield here in these birthday ramblings, so let’s get back to the underground garage. Two of my good friends – at least those who remain among the living … for Harold Lynch, Richard Worden, Tony Durr and other great newsmen I loved, smoked and drank with are long dead … met me on my birthday eve aka “yesterday.”
It was Rob “Death News Brother” Dollar with whom I played out the scene from All the President’s Men. We are always doing that. I don’t know if you caught our Jack Nicholson/Dennis Hopper rap about freedom in our last “movie” – our series of films date back to the Super 8 days and I hope will be played at my casket covered with dead flowers long in the future, when I figure out where I been.
If you didn’t catch that, look back on The News Brothers page and look for the Give (In)Sanity a Chance video. Here’s the Facebook link: http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100001757294701#!/video/video.php?v=1572748353219&oid=212057599823&comments
Anyway, you probably can guess which one of us got the George Hanson (Nicholson) part and which one played Billy (Hopper) in the classic scene from Easy Rider. “What the hell’s wrong with freedom, man? Freedom’s what it’s all about.” I still ask that question.
That little film was made a couple of weeks ago.
This week, on birthday eve, we weren’t meeting in the garage simply because I was turning 59 today. Nov. 18. Rob turned 54 Nov. 16. Jerry “Chuckles News Brother” Manley turned 59 Nov. 9.
Jerry was waiting for us upstairs from the garage, smiling in the downtown library lobby, after checking out a copy of a recorded book. When you get to be our age, it’s easier to listen than to read, I guess. Except you may be deaf or perhaps, in my case, really tired of listening.
There were no great truths discovered as we wandered the streets of Music City, wisecracking about windblown skirts and fat guys with guitars.
“Look at us, we’re another year older,” said Rob.
“Who’d have guessed that would ever happen?” I said.
Jerry shrugged and looked to the horizon, talking about rabbits. Nah, that was in Of Mice and Men. He actually talked about the times we’d shared, our friendship, life’s sometimes cruel direction that brought the three of us together on a cold and rainy day in Nashville.
There were times, we reckoned, that people didn’t think we’d make it this far.
After roaming along Lower Broadway, past the gangster-run bars and the souvenir joints, we found ourselves at Dunn Brothers Coffee, my new favorite downtown haunt.
There we talked about newspapers, as we all had spent our lives in that profession. Jerry still does.
And I freelance for newspapers still, among my other jobs. My days as a fulltime newspaperman ended more than three years ago, when I got a buyout just ahead of the layoffs.
So, yes, we talked about the glory days. And the gory days.
The murders of young people that changed all of our lives. We laughed at The Big Guy, our publisher long ago, who once called me to his office after I’d led the paper with the story of an escaped pet monkey. Chico, the monkey, had cops and deputies all occupied well into the night in the darkness at the edge of Clarksville.
“Deputies go bananas: Monkey at large” or some such read the headline the next day.
Rob had written the story about a Chico, the monkey. I was the editor and threw in as many primate puns as possible. Jerry, well, he was my copy desk chief and he played along too.
“Good story,” The Big Guy said when he called me into his office the Monday after that was published. “But I probably wouldn’t have done it quite that way. We’ll have to agree to disagree on that,” he said, standing up and jingling the change in his pocket.
So Rob, Jerry and I laughed about those days, about the top secrets we’d uncovered at Fort Campbell, about the adrenaline we all felt as young men chasing the good story, the fun story, wars, commission meetings, Little League championships, drunken soldier traffic fatalities and some still-unsolved murderous sex crimes.
Most of those types of stories aren’t found in newspapers these days, unless the mayor or the chamber are putting positive spins on them. Nowadays Chico could be just another missing pet.
Newspapers changed. But we haven’t. At least not much. My hair’s longer. And the weight has shifted some.
OK, so life sometimes has changed more than we would prefer. Nothing we can do about it.
Instead of grousing, we laughed as we wandered through downtown Nashville, talking about news stories past and reflecting on our fallen friends, the guys who grew up with us in the smoke-filled newsrooms. It was a “Hello sweetheart, get me rewrite!” kinda day. (That phrase screams from the framed poster in my office, two feet from where I'm writing this. It was a gift from Tony Durr 28 or 29 years ago.)
And we laughed at our own funeral plans that include Cadillac convertibles, cigarettes in holders, ashes and some of the world’s best scenery.
The smiles, as usual, lasted well after we climbed back into our cars and went back to the real world. I had a story to work on for one of my many fine employers.
Jerry had to get to the office.
Rob had a film to work on and a great-nephew to entertain.
It was a good birthday eve.
After Jerry left, Rob and i descended into the lower level of the underground garage.
We thought again about the reason we’d chosen journalism and where it has come and gone.
“Where we been?” We asked each other, with a shrug as we drove off, promising to get together soon, whenever one of us put a flag in a flower pot.
I smiled to sleep on my birthday eve.
But this morning was different.
I cleaned up the poinsettias and knocked back three or four double-mugs of coffee. The 59-year-old Caffeine Kid watched the clock and waited for 7:30 a.m.
The phone didn’t ring….

(By the way, Chico, the Monkey, was finally chased down and killed by a pack of dogs. I wrote his obituary. We ran it on the local news front, with the headline: “Chico, the Monkey, is dead.”)

Jocko's loss, Uncle Moose's furious, vile cancer have me following John Hartford's plea and sending bouquets of love to comrades

2010-10-14T13:50:00.000-07:00

Life’s laments, time passed never to be recaptured, aren’t setting so ‘Gentle on My Mind.’
I was thinking of that old John Hartford classic, perhaps the best song from a genius’ catalogue, as I talked to a wandering minstrel the other day.
We actually were talking about music and musicians, but when the minstrel mentioned his favorite artist’s farewell bow after a 21-year fight with cancer, that dreaded disease and its cost to me, in terms of memories and friends, began attacking the otherwise gentle afternoon.
I didn’t know Hartford well, although I’d met him and admired his music and his riverboat captain’s outfit. I know Glen Campbell, the guy who took that song to the top, a little bit better.
But when I spoke with the minstrel, my mind wandered, first to Hartford’s “comfortable” grave in Madison – he has a gazebo there for pickers to visit and play in his memory – that I visit when I’m in that part of town.
But really the conversation with the minstrel, who has become something of a friend, made me think of loss.
“Remember that last concert over at War Memorial. Everyone knew John was dying. He sang ‘Give Me the Flowers While I’m Living.’ I don’t know how he did it without crying. I sure did. Everyone was bawling,” said the minstrel, as storm clouds began settling in, for once, over the city.
I thought then about the flowers I wish I’d delivered to Nola, the ex-wife of my old running buddy, Jocko. And I hastily sent a mental bouquet to another old friend, Uncle Moose.
I don’t want to let cancer make me miss telling Uncle Moose how much I love him. Course, he may survive his long war. He’s always been ornery. Heck he stared down the draft board after drawing No. 4. They drafted him, prepared him for Nam. He’d have gone, too. Much more of a heartland patriot than I, despite his sometimes dabbling in Scandinavian mythology and having a beautiful sister who was a devotee of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
Oh, that shouldn’t be held against him.
Anyway, he was able to convince Uncle Sam to send him home, as he was the primary breadwinner, his dad was dead and he had to go run the family farm. I think, if my often-funky and lately concussed memory serves me, Moose had aspirations beyond the farm. He wanted to study more. Oh, I’m sure he would have eventually settled on the Circle M Bar, Grill and Homestead with its motto: “You bring ‘em, we’ll cut ‘em and brand ‘em and fatten ‘em up to eat” flashing in neon into the cold Iowa nights.
Tasty eatings at that cutting time, by the way.
The need to make sure I tell Moose how much I love him – even though I thought his mutton-chops were way-too-Elvis back in the 1960s and early ‘70s – is fueled by the fact a woman I loved died and I’d let life get in the way so much that I didn’t even know she had cancer until she was gone.
Nola’s cancer is making me lament lost opportunities and make the most of the ones I have in front of me, the opportunities to be with friends, to embrace them, to forget about life’s pettiness and instead look to the now.
Problem is, too many people are running out of NOWS.
I wrote the other day about Nola and her marriage to James Edward “Jocko” Mraz, my partner in life-at-the-edges, high-speed, statues-be-damned, quarters-on-the-bar exploration. No boundaries, especially on laughter in the grocery aisle at 3 a.m. Or when making the most of the flooded Des Moines River by foolishly linking arms, I think with Nardholm and Captain Kirk, and letting the current carry us downstream. “Anybody going to Des Moines?”
Jocko is this weekend going to a memorial service in Florida for Nola, who had a horrid battle with cancer. Next weekend he’ll be at another memorial in Iowa.
I wish somehow I’d known. I’d have called her. Perhaps comforted their kids. At least I would have listened to Jocko talk about his own regrets and pain.
As it is, I can regret that for whatever reasons, and there were some, Jocko and I pretty much ceased regular contact for the past couple of decades.
But there wasn’t a day I didn’t think about him. Maybe laugh about the day Old Man Hanson took flight. Well, it was dawn really. It was one of those particularly-parched eyeballs mornings when we greeted the sun’s glow, marveled at its blur.
We also confided in each other things I would not tell anyone else.
Enough about that, though. I am fortunate that I have reconnected with that friend, that I find out he has thought of me often. That now we are together, running mates in spirit though old men in body, we need to take advantage of it before the obituary I read is his. Or, more likely the one he reads is mine.
We have missed consoling each other on the loss of my mom and his mom and dad, though I knew them and was welcomed in their home.
I missed out on the death of his grandmother, of course. But I do remember the fried chicken she made for us that second dawn we saw in Antioch, Ill., after, for the lack of other places to sleep that were peaceful, we crawled into a boat when the sun rose. I don’t know whose boat it was….
The chicken went down hard. And a nap was in order before that night -- I believe it was the Fourth of July 1974 or 75 -- began in earnest.
More about Jocko, I’m sure. And about Nola soon, I imagine. I was their best man on that less-than-sober occasion. At the reception, punch was served in the house, beer in the barn. I don’t think I ever went in the house until the next dawn.
Anyway, this brings me back to my Uncle Moose.
Steve “Uncle Moose” Mainquist is a good man. He was a big man. I haven’t seen him in almost four decades. The last time, I believe, was when I drove up to his farm in Red Oak, Iowa, during a couple of weeks of vacation I took in my first year or two in the workforce.
I spent a week in Ames, Iowa, with Jocko and Carpy, Nardholm, Captain Kirk and the boys. Then I drove on over to Red Oak. It was harvest time.
Uncle Moose, he was nicknamed that for his massive size, graduated two years before me. He didn’t engage in much of the weekend frivolity because he always went home to work on the farm. His dad was dead. He was the man of the family.
Other than the weekends when his own childhood chum, Conrad -- the skittish, bud-toting, gun-shy Vietnam grunt who jumped to his feet as if he was going to kill me one Saturday, visited -- Moose was in Red Oak.
He was tending his cattle and the corn. He was helping his mom. He was lamenting that his sister had become a follower of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
When Moose was in school, sleeping on sheets he washed at least once a year, I would sometimes hang out with him or he with me and Jocko and the rest of us who lived there seven days a week. He was a cigar-smoking guy, so we enjoyed a fine cigar together.
On the night of my first all-night finals studies, I ran out of cigars. I believe we were calling them “Ginsbergs” then for the poet we went to see and meet together. We also saw Groucho together in his last standup performance, although it seemed the old comic already was as dead as Lydia the Tattooed Lady.
Anyway, Moose had no cigars to help in my all-night study either.
So at about 3 a.m., he accompanied me downstairs to the lower floor of Storms Hall – long since demolished -- where I bought my 50-cent pack of Camel straights. I’d smoked a store-bought cigarette or two before, but had been a pipe, cigar and roll-your-own kind of guy.
That night I began a habit that lasted 30 years. I quit because of a tumor scare and because my children, fresh from Romania, both told me to stop using those “fire sticks” in the back yard.
Moose didn’t smoke the cigarettes … Jocko and I called them “snarfers” … and yet Moose is the one who is battling for his life with cancer eating away at his body if not his resolve.
After hearing about Nola’s death, one of the calls I made was to Moose. Oh, I’d been in contact, but it seemed important that I reach out that day. He said he was doing OK, that they were changing his medications. That the cancer apparently had spread.
He was weary yet cheery. He talked of his summer vacation with his kids to Washington. He talked about his promise to buy his son a decent car -- ”you remember how it is when you’re 18, don’t you, Timmy?” – I do barely -- and he bragged about his daughter at Nebraska Wesleyan.
He talked about his neighbors and how they were helping him with his chores. It’s a tough and tight-knit group out there on the Great Plains. They look after their own.
Anyway, as we talked, I traveled in my mind to the time I spent on the farm. I was helping, supposedly, with the corn harvest.
I actually was running the elevator, unloading the corn from the combine. Moose told me to be careful as he didn’t want one of my arms to be a part of the harvest.
We had pre-dawn breakfast, those marshmallow/chocolate cookies and lemonade for a snack, a huge lunch.
In the evenings we rode down into the back field to throw hay out for the cattle before hitting the pub in Red Oak and listening to Ernest Tubb and Eric Clapton on the jukebox.
The crisp clear nights allowed me to see the hills for miles and miles as we rode back to the farm.
On the day we spoke, Moose was going to go outside, after he put the phone down, and spend time with one of his cats, petting her and, I’m sure, describing his distress and his joys. Moose has a hard time talking, but he sure enjoys it.
I’m hoping to one day in the next year make it back to Iowa. I hope to visit with a feisty, battled-back Uncle Moose.
For sure he doesn’t have the shock of long, blond hair and those mutton-chop sideburns that are in my mind’s-eye. And the chemicals I’m sure have taken their toll on his body mass. But he’s still Moose to me.
Of course, when I’m there, I’ll also be making up for lost time with other friends with whom I’ve reconnected.
We’re all getting old. Captain Kirk has a stent in his heart and is taking nitroglycerin rather than the compounds he’d likely prefer.
Carpy, a distance runner by passion, also has suffered heart woes.
Nardholm, well, as far as I know he’s doing fine. Lots of acreage, a lake house. I can remember when he was just a curly-haired blond kid in gray gym shorts cuddling his now-wife in the top bunk in the room he shared with Titzy. Now, he owns two combines. That’s a big deal.
And, of course, I’ll see Jocko.
He and I grew up together. Bailed each other out. Cried with each other. And even when we were separated by the woes and misunderstandings of “growing up,” we still thought about each other.
As I wrote the other day, his wife Nola was among the most beautiful of brides. She entrusted me to get her husband to the church on time. And we did, barely.
It was our last real run as carefree boys, although we did get together a few more times before circumstances got in the way and the black dogs of depression and disappointment became a part of my life. And I’m sure a part of his.
What separated us doesn’t matter. It vanished with the first laugh Saturday night, with the inflection Jocko put on “professor” when I told him I was working part-time at a university. You see, we had a certain way of pronouncing that title way back then. Just the fact he remembered, and used that, two minutes into the call, made my stomach ache in laughter. “Champo, you mean you… you are a Pro-Cressor?” he said, incredulous and mocking happily.
It was as if there were no decades, no years, not a minute passed. Although there were too many. Perhaps a half-life has gone since we witnessed Old Man Hanson’s remarkable display of flight and gravity.
I’ve also made a point of telling my family how much I love them. And, of course, I continue detailing the story of The News Brothers, both in film and in written form.
If it hadn’t been for The News Brothers – Rob “Death” Dollar, Jerry “Chuckles” Manley and Jim “Flash” Lindgren and, later Scott “Badger” Shelton and assorted hangers-on and groupies – I don’t know if I would have survived the first real challenges of being a so-called grownup.
They were my comrades as we raged against newspaper deadlines and the night back in Clarksville.
“Death” and I are always plotting the next move, the next film, the next reunion. It was and remains a gang of misfits that perfectly fits the life I’ve led: A good and honest man who was perhaps born to run and to love.
Oh, I’m not old. Not really.
But I always got by with a little help from my friends. And I need them to know how much I continue to love them.
Now, as I write this, I reflect on how Moose’s little sister, Linda, irritated her big brother when she cast her family beliefs in Scandinavian mythology aside and became a devotee of the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.
I like Linda a lot, so when I see Uncle Moose, I’ll have to jump to her defense. You see, I also like an old Yogi, the one who said “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

Nola's death brings memories rolling back to the guy in the power-blue tux, Jocko's best man

2010-10-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

When I learned Nola had died, my first thought was to look for that picture of the two guys in their power-blue tuxedoes standing at the front of the church in Marion, Iowa.
Of course, the two men, boys really, weren’t the focus of that picture. The focus was the beautiful blonde, a tall, former pompon girl at Iowa State University, full of life on that day. The smiling and happy bride. Nola.
As I’m not the world’s most physical guy, I would always greet her with: Nola. N-O L-A. Nola. No-No-No- No Nola … especially if I drank champagne that tasted like cherry cola. Again, another side trek here. But it’s true. I never hear that Kinks song without changing from "Lola" to "Nola" in my head and heart.
The guy next to her in the picture was Jocko, my comrade with whom I chased many dragons and caught a few. Sometimes he didn’t go along for the most reckless of the rides, as I pushed both limits and sky, but he was always there to greet me, literally standing on his head on my returns. He was a loyal and good friend, a guy I loved. Still do. A brother-in-arms.
We’d actually arrived on the cusp of late, at the wedding ceremony.
I had been asked by the tall woman, the bride, to drive her future husband because she was afraid he might be too nervous. Jocko’s mom concurred. “Yes, ladies, I’ll drive.”
Instead, we did as we’d done for years, sped through the countryside, spinning Iowa gravel. Our tuxedo jackets were in the backseat, because we were sipping and sliding toward destiny. Everything was going to change. So we stopped for a bag of grease burgers, as I called them. We tried to make sure they didn’t drip over the fancy suits.
The bridegroom goosed his GTO or whatever the muscle car was … I can’t remember … other than it was brown with a light top and I had driven it a time or two when we were out on our night-time patrols. It drove faster than my ’65 Falcon, although that too found its share of duty as we escaped into Iowa nights.
Finally, a couple of miles from the church, Jocko pulled the car into a picnic area, one of those old roadside things with a turn-around and a picnic table, and said I’d better drive, as everyone expected the best man to be in the pilot’s seat when the groom arrived at the church.
I was the best man that day. I think it was 1974, but it could have been 1975. Perhaps 1976?
Doesn’t matter. It was a long time ago.
Ages of memories and heartache, good things, sad things … just life really … separates that that day from this one.
This morning, Oct. 7, 2010, I learned that Nola was dead. Cancer. A week ago in Montgomery, Ala., where she’d ended up after the divorce that I guess came 20 or so years into the marriage.
Even if I can’t find that picture of the boys in powder-blue, it is in my heart and my sometimes fuzzy, still-concussed brain. The beautiful blonde bride smiled, as did the bridesmaid, her sister, who herself was to get married two weeks later in a bowling alley. There is a side story there that I may tell one day.
I kept that picture among the pictures of my life in an old file cabinet next to my desk in my office before the flood of May 1-2. I didn’t look at it often, but when I did, it always made me smile. It was piled in that drawer with pictures of my grandparents, my various pets, an old drifter pal named Skipper, my mother and a “Have Gun Will Travel: Wire Paladin, San Francisco” calling card from an old Tide box when I was a kid. There was a picture of a young man with long, dark hair and a scraggly beard walking out of the Grand Canyon and sitting by a redwood in the High Sierras. Looked a lot like me.
Parts of my life long gone, people, for the most part, long gone. In the massive Nashville flood that washed away a part of my house last spring, I rescued that cabinet, but it had to be separated and carried to dry land drawer-by-drawer. Some things from lower drawers washed away. Others still are piled, awaiting their turn to be rediscovered, in the garage.
That picture may be there. But I really don’t need to look at it today.
I remember the bride and groom looked nervous. I looked a little nervous myself, even though I was reinforced by vodka and, of course, Lifesavers. As was the groom. A good best man, after all, has to take care of his charge.
The bridesmaid looked magnificent, as well. Always did.
It really was among my life’s happiest days.
The whole world was ours to unravel, to chase. I was a year or so out of college and I was still going to be Jack London or Jack Kerouac or Woody Guthrie. Kris Kristofferson. Tom T. Hall. Hemingway maybe, but I wasn’t going to blow my brains out. At least I didn’t think about it at that point in my life.
The bride and groom were going to settle down in a farmhouse on her parents’ farm in Marion, just outside Cedar Rapids.
He was going to work an inside-sales job at a local company. She was going to be a teacher. They were going to have children and live happily ever after.
In my roaming, I’d visit occasionally, if for no other reason than to chase away the pheasants and squirrels when Jocko went hunting on his property. I’d get him to laughing so hard that there was no reason to kill, a hobby he’d picked up from life on the farm.
I don’t drink any more, but back in 1969 when I first met the guy on whose right I’m standing in the picture, it was about 10:30 a.m. on a Saturday. My dorm room door was open. Actually I seldom closed it, ever. I looked down the hall to see this big guy I’d met only briefly in our first three or four weeks of freshman year. He’d been busy as a football player, so I didn’t know him that well. He looked exhausted from morning drills.
I reached into my footlocker and produced an almost full bottle of cheap gin and hollered down the hallway: “Hey, Jocko, I’m having dry martinis this morning. You want one?” With that both a nickname – I called him Jocko because he was a scholarship athlete – and a friendship was born. And we took turns pulling very dry martinis out of the bottle that morning and probably into the night.
I’d say it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.
For the next four years, no party was off-limits. No excuse for laughter ignored. I was a good student. But, even back then, I believed time was running out. Of course it was, slowly. So, I got mostly A’s. Profs loved me. I never missed class. I did my homework. But then it was time to signal, with that hand-over-hand motion, that it was time to roll. Studies done. No one had been called by the draft board. Let’s roll, baby, roll.
Sometimes it lasted days, like the time Jocko and I planned and executed the Viking Fest – a debauched feast ripped from either the movie Tom Jones or the life of the Rolling Stones. We charged boys $5 a head for all they could eat and drink if they brought a girl. We charged men who came alone $10. Unaccompanied girls were admitted free. Such festivals, where we cooked turkeys and pheasant stew, drank from spiked kegs, were the way Jocko and I made pocket money.
Of course, we also were the primary beneficiaries of the frivolity, that night at “Lean Feeners Lodge” or elsewhere. After expenses, we could easily clear $200 or $300 and it beat working at Taco Tico.
We were the guys who walked into parties singing that Carly Simon song, who rode motorcycles long and hard into the night, who saw way too many sunrises through parched eyeballs. We knew every obscene word and gesture to throw into the Guess Who’s “American Woman” and the Doors' "Touch Me." He cheered me on when I first established my Joe Cocker party routine or became the notorious and still-famous-in-Ames guy known as "the Dancing Bear."
When we’d enter Tork’s Pub, now long gone, the bar would grow silent. It was like those old cowboy movies when the gunslinger comes in. We weren’t looking for trouble, though. Just laughs. I never set out to hurt anyone. I just had to laugh.
I had other sidekicks for some of the adventures because Jocko was on a football scholarship and things like practice and games got in the way. But still, when he had time, he was there, with gusto. He was a brother in arms in my helter-skelter race against depression and war.
There were others I loved as well. Captain Kirk. Carpy. Uncle Moose. Titzy, Nardholm.
Life changes things and people. After I left college, I moved South to be with family – my mother already had begun showing the symptoms of the suffocating disease that slowly and finally killed her 25 years later --and because I loved Tennessee. I talked with Jocko about every day for a few years, until we had a falling out that needn’t have happened. But we both had our reasons and, well, those phone calls stopped, with a few rare interruptions, more than 25 years ago. I’m sorry. But that’s life.
I am one who goes through life closing doors on the way. It spares heartache. It’s kind of that “Don’t Look Back” philosophy.
But it really never works. For the last decades, I’ve thought of my friend often, daily at least. I knew he’d gotten divorced … we did talk about that. I had heard that from other people and called to make sure he was OK. But I hadn’t been in touch in the years since his wife was remarried and perhaps began something of, I hope, a truly happily ever after existence.
I have both ridden the white horses and worn the black hats in my life.
But one thing that can’t be questioned is my loyalty. You hurt anyone I love and I am slow to forgive.
You ever own a piece of my heart, you are there to stay.
I really don’t know much about the lives of Jocko and Nola since their divorce. Last I heard from him, he was dating a nice Lebanese woman. I hope he’s happy.
And I hope Nola was happy too, although, from reading the obituary in the Montgomery Advertiser, she apparently died a slow and painful death.
While I hadn’t been in touch with Jocko I always looked for him and Nola on Facebook, which is where I have connected with other friends from my wild and carefree days.
One of them forwarded me an e-mail today from Jocko: “Nola lost her battle with cancer. Kids were with her when she died. Kinda sucks,” he wrote. Simple, true statement. I knew there were tears there somewhere.
I’ve tried to reach him. Sent him an e-mail. Found the obit on line. And inside I have cried, for Nola, for Jocko, for their kids. For myself, I guess, and the fact time really is running out on lives and dreams.
The years haven’t all been kind, although I am in a wonderful place now in my life, thanks to my wife and kids and my good friends in Nashville and, of course, the notorious News Brothers, especially my appropriately named friend "Death," who help me stay focused and laughing.
But there were years when I was in free-fall, when I needed that old friend who I’d let get away or who had done that to me. A few times, the black dogs barked at 3 a.m. or so and I'd dial his number. Hear his tired -- not irritated -- voice, hope to hear back sometime. Perhaps he needed me too at that time, too. But we just kinda lost contact. Except in our hearts.
No one’s to blame. I know that’s life. We all change. Years fly by.
Tork’s Pub has been torn down.
Nola’s dead.
“Kinda sucks,” Jocko wrote.
Makes me want to go up to Iowa and scare away the pheasants while my old friend totes his shotgun. Maybe we can even have a Geezers Fest and sell admission to those of our friends who are still alive and mobile.
By the way, for the sake of uncommon modesty, I had to buy powder-blue boxers to wear under that tux. Still got 'em.

Compassionate, brave and ethical life of journalist Jack Shelley left lifelong mark on the soul of a no-longer-young hippie lad

2010-09-20T07:00:00.000-07:00

“Jack Shelley, longtime voice of radio and TV, dies at 98,” reads the headline.
Below that headline is Jack’s face, smiling robustly, from the Des Moines Register website.
I lean back in my well-worn office chair – my perch on this well-worn life – and for a few moments, well, probably longer, think about Jack, what he meant to me, how important a role he played in my life just by being himself.
He was of journalism’s greatest generation, a man who served his public by going overseas during World War II, sending taped dispatches from the front during some of Hitler’s worst brutality and from the days when U.S. airmen began the nuclear age by dropping A-bombs on Japan.
First thing I did was type in a Facebook update, letting people know that we had lost a journalism giant who also was a friend and mentor. He wasn’t a household name, like Reasoner, Cronkite, Huntley, Brinkley or Murrow. He had his opportunity to join that crew in the public perception, but he turned it down in favor of serving his own state, the pig farmers, educators, businesspeople, grain elevator operators,barkeeps and store owners across a gloriously beautiful state.
In the hours after I learned about his death, I did more than lament it … for after all he had lived a good and honorable life. But I was transported to the day I first met the then-retired journalist who had taken on a role as a professor at Iowa State University.
It was that smile that greeted me on my first visit as a prospective student to the then kinda shabby confines of the Journalism and Mass Comm building, where cigarette butts littered the stairwell and burned coffee’s aroma flavored the air.
Jack’s also was the smile that consoled and counseled me as I made my way through the four years it took me to earn my degree in journalism and mass communication, graduating with “borderline-almost-honors” after indulging in the passions, pursuits, whims and rallies that tore through campuses where males were pitched on the precipice of war. Friends were drafted and died. Others came home and twitched and turned in the night, sometimes springing from their bunks and prepared to kill at the slightest interruption. Talk him down, man. This isn’t Saigon.
That’s just the time it was, a time I wouldn’t trade, filled with mistakes and experiments and experiences savored and regretted and sometimes forgotten. These years – 1969-1973, when Jack was a constant in the life of a young man teetering precariously between cold-sweat fear of war and exuberance of living life to its fullest -- flavor me and the writer, the journalist I have been and always will – even though corporate newspapers seem to feel me old and in the way, as my late pal Vassar Clements might say.
That picture of Jack Shelley and the obituary saddened me and made me proud at the same time. It also launched me into memories of anti-war rallies, time spent with the Black Panthers and Black Muslims, Give Peace a Chance seriousness and Sly and the Family Stone escapism. Suddenly I was in the lecture hall near the administration building and my history professor came into the building, tears rolling down his cheeks, exclaiming “I’ve tried to be neutral and calm about the war in Vietnam, but God damn a country that shoots its students. Class dismissed. I don’t care what you do, but you need to make your voices heard if you think this was wrong and cowardly. Damn. Damn.”
Four dead in Ohio.
Oh, that really doesn’t have anything to do with Jack Shelley, other than that he framed that time for me, made me welcome, a young hippie drifter and Kerouac wannabe who came to ISU because I was kinda pissed off at the state of Illinois.
I had earned the honor of being named an “Illinois State Scholar” for pretty much an A-minus average in what was then considered, at least by Life magazine, to be one of the top 10 high schools in the country. I’d worked hard (played hard, too, but I was sober during much of my high school career) to become a recognized student, athlete (not so good, but popular because I would mouth off to coaches if they were in the wrong), a friend of greasers and a dater of cheerleaders and princesses.
Neither a renaissance man nor a man of means by no means. Which is why I ended up in Iowa and made a close friend in Jack Shelley, perhaps the greatest journalist I’ve ever known personally.
You see, the state of Illinois, while it recognized my “scholarship,” was not going to give me a penny toward my schooling. They said I didn’t qualify because of my father’s income. The fact I was paying for my own school -- that I worked as a night stock boy at Jewel (quit because I hated to wear bow ties at midnight while ink-stamping prices on cans of corn and stew) and did yard work and shoveled stalls at a nearby day camp as well as worked for the Park District (big responsibility: learn to drive the stick shift so I could get donuts from the nearest bakery at break time) – didn’t change that a bit.
So, since they didn’t want to give me any state money, I wasn’t going to give any to them. Which meant going to school out of state. I’d been to Iowa State before, because my big brother was a knee-damaged and shaved-headed football player there. He’s a nice guy and not a bit like me.
As I looked at the catalogues – remember those big catalogues, glossy pictures and text that all universities had before the internet? – I saw that the university had a solid journalism program, featuring print and broadcast reporters who had covered World War II. These guys didn’t have Ph.Ds in journalism. They didn’t have master’s degrees. They weren’t scholars. They were cigarette smoking, whiskey drinking professionals. That appealed to me, as those passions, along with writing and enjoying life and running scared from a war, were prominent on my own life’s resume.
At that point, I was thinking of going into broadcasting, so I honed in on the fact that one of the great reporters from TV’s early years – Jack Shelley – would be my adviser if I went to ISU.
On our first meeting, we hit it off well. I know I was not the prototypical Iowan at the time. My hair was a bit longer than many of the kids from the cornfields and I drove a Ford Falcon instead of a GTO and a John Deere. But did you know that the farm kids grew hemp between the cornrows? Did you know that possession of pot in Iowa at the time was a simple $5 fine, less than a traffic ticket?
A lot of hog farmers had started growing hemp to help in the manufacture of rope during World War II and, well, they learned how to dry the leftovers on the pot-bellied stove out in the barn.
This did not play into my choice of ISU as a place to go to school, oddly enough. Really, the deciding factor was Jack Shelley. Oh yeah, I was there to see him because I wasn’t going to give Illinois my money and I couldn’t afford Northwestern. I had considered the University of Michigan for a time, but it too was expensive and there was something about the wide open prairies of Iowa I relished after a youth in the Windy City.
It was later that I met Uncle Moose, Capt. Kirk, Smokin’ Joe, Nardholm, Carpy, Titzy and Jocko – some of the boys who helped me in my pursuit of embracing life before life began to consume us and turn us old. These fellows would come and go from my life, some entering school before me and leaving sooner, some arriving later.
But Jack Shelley was there from the start to finish. I had heard of him, as he was the biggest name in Iowa television.
In addition to his famous stories of hometown heroes or whatever they called his “nice” features, he was a hard-news guy who honed his chops on Hitler’s ass.
You see, in his younger years, this jovial man – I considered him old then, though he was only the age I am at this writing – Jack had covered the Battle of the Bulge in the defeat of Hitler’s Europe.
From Fortress Europe, he went to the Pacific Theater, where he had the first recorded interviews with the men who dropped the A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He also attended the signing of the peace treaty in Tokyo Bay and covered the A-bomb tests in the Nevada desert.
In his obituary in the Register – anybody else remember the “Big Peach” of the Register’s pre-Gannett emasculation? -- it is reported that Jack is held in high esteem in the history of broadcast journalism, right up there with the likes of Murrow, Cronkite and Sevareid.
Fact is, if my ancient and concussed memory serves me – and sometimes it does not -- back on the day I met Jack in 1969, among the things he said was that he actually turned down the opportunity to be the talking head on ABC, a job that went to his friend, Eric Sevareid, in order to remain in his beloved Iowa.
You see he was born in Boone, Iowa, just west of Ames, where ISU was located. Best thing about Boone was it was on the way to the Ledges and sometimes gas was 15 cents a gallon there.
The basic news reports of his death mention that he began as a reporter for the Clinton (Iowa) Herald in 1935. That was back when every journalist honed skills at newspapers. TV was just being “discovered” and radio was king. It was when broadcasters didn’t need to have pretty faces and nice hair. Good thing, too, eh Jack?
He went from the newspaper to WHO radio in Des Moines and quickly rose to news director, remaining in that role after the station became both TV and radio in the 1950s and people began buying those blond-wooded Philcos.
Oh, I could go on and talk more about his role as a hero, covering the great events of the 20th century.
I could talk of the comfort his voice brought to the farmlands. He still did some substitute broadcasting when I was living out in Iowa and I was always a fan of the soothing tones of a man who had seen humanity’s best and worst.
He chose to live his life celebrating the latter.
I opted out of broadcasting rather quickly. I had too much passion as a writer, but when I changed paths, I asked to keep Jack as my adviser. He helped me negotiate the precarious path of a student who was living sometimes in the fast lane but also attentive to school work and dedicated to his profession.
Yes, I am a writer. Sometimes I wish I had gone into broadcasting. But then I’d probably have to giggle at puns by weathermen and wear my hair short.
But the lessons of fairness, the principles of press freedom, the lessons of the responsibilities those of us who entered that then noble profession – either print or broadcast – Jack (and a couple of other professors, long gone), taught me have been my guideposts.
In my lifetime as an editor and writer and now a part-time educator -- I am journalist-in-residence at a local university and have similarly served at another Nashville bastion of learning -- I hope I have and can continue to pass on the principles,hope and lust for telling the story right that Jack embraced.
I loved the old guy. I loved the profession which he helped me enter. Now Jack’s dead and some might say so is real journalism.
I’ll miss them.

Reflections on 9/11, an idiot with a walrus mustache, moon shadow and yearning for the peace train

2010-09-11T16:37:00.000-07:00

“Yes, I’m being followed by a moon shadow, moon shadow, moon shadow.. and if I ever lose my eyes, if my colors all run dry. Yes, if I ever lose my eyes, OOH, I won’t have to cry no more.….”
Yep, just the terror-filled message of another Muslim, from which we should cower. Obviously this is a man who is filled with hate for all of us, the kind of messenger of Satanic evil whose sacred book should be burned before … well, before he runs a plane into another building and kills thousands of innocent Americans and civilians from all over the world. Heck, if I’m not mistaken, there were even some Muslims who died on Sept. 11, 2001 … not the ones in the planes, but the ones in the buildings.
Yes, this is the kind of person we should obviously fear.
On this day, 9/11/10, nine years after that horrid day in all of our lives, I began to think about just how evil this message was that earned Yusuf Islam the reputation of persona non grata in the U.S. a few years ago, even earning him, if memory serves, deportation when he flew into Nashville for a recording session.
Yep, the artist previously known as Cat Stevens represents all that is the evil that backwater preachers with walrus mustaches – no he ain’t the real walrus, goo goo ga job, because he’s an ignorant headline grabber --- want to abolish, to humiliate, to cast asunder, to throw under the bus, perhaps even to stone.
At least the preacher has advocated burning the Quran, Koran or however you want to spell the name of the Muslim holy book.
Wonder if he realizes just how terrified we should be of guys like Yusuf Islam. Ooh baby, baby, it’s a wild world, isn’t it?
I mean, isn’t God, God, no matter the name? At least that’s what I thought. But of course, now on 9/11, the purveyors of hate have tried to tear us apart. And it’s apparently not difficult.
Here’s another example of the Islamic hatred of Yusuf Islam: “They used to call him Jesus long time ago. They’re still calling him Jesus, don’t you know. They crossed the wood and hanged him, a long time ago. They still misunderstand him, those who don’t know.”
How can we let this kind of hate for all things sacred to America go unpunished?
OK, I don’t think a mosque a couple of blocks from Ground Zero is necessarily a great idea, only because of the hate it seems to bring up in what I loosely refer to as “the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.”
Of course, how wise an idea is it to have, pardon my language, “Titty Bars” right there in what the guy who ain’t the walrus and other hate mongers are referring to as hallowed ground?
No don’t get me wrong, I like a naked woman as much as the next guy – always have -- but a smoky bar where exotic dancers rub private parts on chrome poles while leprous, snot-dripping old men and tattooed, broken-toothed young men stick dollar bills in barely concealed crotches is not my idea of a holy place. Those aren’t spirits which are getting lifted there.
Yet, those strip joints haven’t caused redneck pastors to rally around the burning of G-strings and tasseled pasties.
But, of course, that’s beside the point. Muslims flew stolen jets filled with innocents into skyscrapers, into the Pentagon and were going to go for the White House when some Americans re-hijacked that jet and crashed it into a field instead.
Damn Muslims, right. Hate them all. After all, shouldn’t we hate all Christians because some cowards blew up children in a church all those years ago. If I’m not getting my religions mixed up, I believe people who at least called themselves “ Christians” incinerated six million Jews? Now I sometimes get my history confused, but if I’ve got it right, folks who worshiped in the tabernacles of the South “owned” other human beings, whipping and raping them as if they were … well … I suppose as if they were Muslims showing up at some of those same churches today.
Now, 9/11 still makes me ache. I hate the sound of that date. I remember hearing about the first plane smacking into the Twin Towers when I was on my way to work – yes, I used to hold a steady job until I got old and in the way – when my pal Brad Schmitt, then host of one of those crap-rock/hip-pop early radio shows interrupted his on-air pretend foreplay with Scotty O and Cindy to describe a stunning scene on the TV monitors. Even Brad, who is Jewish by the way, was stunned to silence.
I rushed into work and, since I was toiling at what then was referred to as “a daily newspaper,” I prepared to help in the coverage of that day.
When the afternoon drew to an end, I went home to embrace my then small children and help them understand what had happened – which they really didn’t understand – but also to assure them we were all right and the world wasn’t coming to an end.
That night, we went to a candlelight service, sang “God Bless America” and prayed for the dead and for peace and for our nation and for our world. I still get chills recalling the resonance of that song on that night.
But already, the talk shows – not just Fox, but all of them – were talking about the threat of these Islamic cells in our country. Suddenly, people looked at the Muslims -- who otherwise were basically allowed to flourish in this “Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave” (there I go again) that has freedom of religion at its very core.
I mean, folks all saw them as they assembled at their mosques. A bit different perhaps. But then again, so are Mennonites. And they’re Christians. I’d say “fer Christ-sakes” here, but that’s not really my style.
Anyway, I had spent a fair amount of time with Muslims and very seldom had one thrown a bomb at me or tried to amputate my hand with one of those big swords. Instead, they were prayerful, thoughtful people, as shocked as anyone else by the acts of 9/11.
And they had more reason to be scared, because of the festering hatred that was directed at them.
I called one of these Muslims the next day and invited him to come to a men’s group at the church I was attending. I wanted him to describe his faith to these men and to also share his thoughts about the vile killers of 9/11.
He was a gentleman, in the truest sense, and he was angry with the mass-murderers of the week before. Of course, he could have been frightened by being among those of a faith that was unlike his own. But he wasn’t. He bravely offered answers, explanations and reassurance. He was applauded and embraced.
OK, so I’m getting a little rambly here. This surely isn’t the definitive 9/11 recollection. I’m just me, a fairly simple guy who likes most people, as long as they aren’t mean to my family or my friends. Hurt somebody I love and I may come after you. Other than that, I’m sort of a turn the other cheek sort of guy.
Which brings me back to the pop/folk prophet Yusuf Islam, formerly Cat Stevens, and the messages of obvious hate that had him for a time banned from America.
“Why must we go on hating? Why can’t we live in bliss?
For out on the edge of darkness, there rides the peace train. Peace train take this country, come take me home again.
“Peace train sounding louder, ride on the peace train.”
Pretty damned chilling.

Fats Domino finds solace and hope in the piano five years after Katrina stole the neighborhood of his life

2010-08-29T15:20:00.000-07:00

“This is Fats,” the gentleman says over the sound of conversation and music in the living room of the house he’s called home since Hurricane Katrina wiped out his homeplace, his neighborhood – the Lower Ninth Ward – and nearly cost him his life.
Fats Domino is one of my favorite musicians -- a gentle, bear of a man, whose flamboyant dress, songs and piano pounding that offered up a mix of the bordello, the tabernacle and the streets of his city, make him a unique figure in the history of popular music.
On the fifth anniversary of the hurricane, I figured I’d just check up on him, wish him well.
I actually expected one of his family members to answer the phone. In previous calls, a friend or family member has answered and said “the Fat Man is asleep” or “Call the Fat Man back in an hour when he’s done playing the piano” or perhaps watching TV.
Much as he was in the home in the Lower Ninth Ward – where he and his family were rescued from the second story by searchers who had feared that the rock ‘n’ roll legend had perished in the floods – he is surrounded by family.
“Yeah, we all livin’ together now, like always,” he says from the house in Harvey, on the West Bank, where he moved with his family after the rescue.
I’ve written a few times about Fats in the years since Katrina. And sometimes I just call. Since I hadn’t called in awhile, I figured the hurricane anniversary was a good time to catch up with him a little bit.
“I can’t talk much,” he says, “but I’m doin’ all right.
”I just stay at home and fool with the piano.”
As for the damage by the hurricane and what it did to his section of town, well, he laments that it happened. But he’s a pragmatist. Can’t change it.
“No, well, it’s the truth,” he says. “Everything is pretty good.”
In fact, his home office, the colorful heart of the Lower Ninth Ward has been resurrected with funds from Tipitina’s Foundation.
But it’s one of the few bright spots in a wasteland. There’s no place to live around there.
In a story I wrote for Goldmine Magazine a couple of years ago, I addressed Fats, his legacy and the fact that many people say he doesn’t get enough credit for helping create the musical style we call “rock ‘n’ roll.”
“Well, that’s the way people feel. It don’t make no difference to me,” he said back then.
That story talked about his humility when we talked about Elvis, his old chum, who is called “the King of Rock ’n’ Roll.”
Fats wanted nothing to do with that crown.
Here’s a bit from that story:
“I like Elvis and Chuck Berry and all of them,” he said in that interview for Goldmine. “Elvis, I went to see him when he was in Las Vegas. He was a real nice fella.”
He, too, regards Elvis as “the King.” “I like him myself. So does everybody,” he says.
Antoine Domino’s large stage persona, dancehall piano playing and drawling tales of love and home made him Elvis’ top rival, if not as a sex symbol, then at least as a box-office attraction and hit record-maker, during the birthing of rock ’n’ roll.
He calls himself simply “lucky” that such songs as “I’m Walkin’” and “Blueberry Hill” allowed him to make a living while staying true to his religious beliefs. “Nobody lives forever,” he says. “Stay as close as you can [to the teachings in the Bible]. That’s the main thing.”
He could easily argue that he doesn’t get enough credit as one of the originators of rock ’n’ roll. After all, he “sold more records (65 million) than any other ’50s-era rocker except Elvis Presley,” writes the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame about the man who was honored at the organization’s first induction dinner in 1986.
(The class of ’86 also included Elvis, Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, James Brown, Little Richard, Ray Charles, Sam Cooke and the Everly Brothers in the performers’ category. Early influence honorees that year included Jimmie Rodgers, Jimmy Yancey and Robert Johnson. John Hammond was honored for lifetime achievement and non-performer inductees were Alan Freed and Sam Phillips.)
Fats thanks fans for their loyalty. “I never thought about [being called “King”]. But I know people bought the records, so I appreciate that part. I sold a lot of records, so I say, ‘Thanks‚ to everyone.’”
I pointed out in that story, John, Paul, George and Ringo as well as Bob Marley (who said Fats inspired reggae music) as well as Elvis and Carl Perkins all pointed to Fats as the man.
I also ruminated that much of the world likely had forgotten that Fats was even alive until Hurricane Katrina struck.
In fact, as the floodwaters rose in the Lower 9th Ward, and as National Guard helicopters plucked the victims off roofs, there were broadcast reports that Fats was missing.
Many musicians were accounted for at evacuation sites from Houston to Austin to Nashville and Memphis. But no one could locate Fats, who had chosen to ride out the storm at home. There were real fears about his well-being.
That changed with the mass publication of a New Orleans Times-Picayune photo of Domino being helped off a boat after being rescued from his house.
“We were on the second-floor balcony. The water kept coming up,” Fats recalls.
Finally, it was time to summon a boat to rescue the singer and Rosemary, his wife of almost 60 years, as well as many of their eight children and countless grandchildren (“Oh, I never count ’em. I got a lot of them,” says Domino).
Like almost everyone in the Lower Ninth, he lost everything. But to Fats, that’s just material stuff, and it’s not that important. “I ain’t missed nothing to tell you the truth, and I was able to replace what I lost.”
But it was only through Tipitina’s fund-raisers, including a recording and a show at which Fats appeared, that his landmark home, his sanctuary during his years of stardom, was reclaimed.
At the time of the interview, the home was being rebuilt and the family was hoping to move back in.
In a bit of optimism, either my own or Fats’, the story speculated that he would move back home, providing a beacon of hope for the thousands displaced.
I love New Orleans and Fats Domino, and I bought into his vision of returning home, to his happily ever after existence, occasionally venturing out to play.
Truth is, he’s probably not going to return to the Lower Ninth Ward, at least full-time. For some reason, the federal government has allowed that to become a complete wasteland which has shown little sign of rebirth in five years.
And, while he is surrounded by family, his beloved Rosemary has died … far from their compound in the part of the city that was their life’s home.
Still, on this anniversary of Katrina, while Fats isn’t full of conversation – he’s always enjoyed letting the piano keys do the talking – he’s pretty upbeat.
“I still get back to my house,” says the 82-year-old. “It’s only 20 minutes away. Go back often enough.”
Then he asks me to call back sometime … soon and “whenever you want to talk some more.”
But on this Sunday afternoon, I’ve interrupted a session on the piano. No he may never tour again to delight thousands of cheering fans.
That’s not stopping the music in his heart.
“I’m getting ready to record again,” he says. ”I got a lot of songs.”
Is there a market for new music by the Fat Man?
That’s not really the point. “I just want to play again.”

Scotty Moore content to live quietly in a world that won't let his musical co-conspirator rest in peace

2010-08-25T14:47:00.000-07:00

The deet-deet-de-deet of the guitar break from “That’s All Right” played in my head long after the speakers turned silent.
So I reached for the telephone. Actually I call it “The Flap Phone.”
It was time to call Scotty Moore, the underappreciated man who fashioned that sound -- the sonic mold of what rock ‘n’ roll guitar is supposed to sound like -- as well as the perfected head-bobbing, smiling role of the lead guitarist.
Recording in a cramped studio with a “very different” cat named Elvis, standup slap bass-master Bill Black and with fiery Sam Phillips in the control room, Winfield Scott Moore, now 78, combined the licks he perfected as the boss of a country swing outfit with the sounds of the Mississippi Delta, Beale Street and gospel tabernacles.
The recording session on July 5, 1954 is sometimes credited as the birth of rock ‘n’ roll.
While that may easily be disputed by other artists who had already recorded in a similar style, it can’t be overlooked that something different had been cooked up in the studio that night. As the late Bill Black said when the stew was ready to serve to wild man DJ and raconteur Dewey Phillips: “Damn. Get that on the radio and they'll run us out of town."
Of course, they weren’t run out of town. Soon that town belonged to them. Elvis and his Blue Moon Boys cut across racial boundaries entertained all who would listen, cruising the two-lane blacktops to world conquest. Well, eventually, anyway. At first the roads led to high school gyms in Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas, where the girls swooned and some surrendered.
And the beat went on … to the Louisiana Hayride, where some said the kid with the wild lick of hair and his colorful sidemen were, well too much. Others couldn’t get enough.
Then there came the Sullivan seat-wetting, and the singing to the dog with Sinatra (an embarrassment in hindsight, but given it was at the request of Ol’ Blue Eyes, it really may have been an offer even Elvis couldn’t refuse. No one would want to wake up to Bassett hound’s head in their bed.)
Scotty Moore was really the driving force, in so many ways, behind that threesome’s early success. Yeah, everyone still misses Elvis. But the early, pre-Colonel Tom records were credited to “Elvis, Scotty and Bill.”
Later on, D.J. Fontana was stolen away from the Hayride and joined up for the big ride, but at first it was that tight little threesome, having fun, stealing hearts, changing the world.
What influence did Scotty Moore have on the world, on rock ‘n’ roll music?
"When I heard ‘Heartbreak Hotel,’ I knew what I wanted to do in life. It was as plain as day. All I wanted to do in the world was to be able to play and sound like that. Everyone else wanted to be Elvis, I wanted to be Scotty,” said Keith Richards, a fairly well-known rock guitarist and rock innovator by most accounts.
He of course achieved his dream. And Richards and Ronnie Wood (Faces and then Stones guitarist after Brian died and Mick Taylor drug himself loose) not only learned from Scotty, they drank with him. Scotty’s lessons were so desired that when he was in England, the men – back when they were all heavy drinkers – would trade guitar licks and whiskey bottles.
Getting way ahead of myself here as I think about Scotty and that “deet-deet” plays in my head. Think I’ll put it back on the stereo as long as I don’t have to make a stop for “Love Me Tender.” Great song, sure. Not my style on a day when I want to rock and listen to Scotty Moore. A high-ticket collectors’ box is coming out soon with all of the Elvis stuff remastered. This will include the early Blue Moon Boys stuff. Too rich for my meager soul, but I’ve got the 45s and a turntable. So that’s all right.
Of course I’ve written about Scotty before, both on the internet for fun and before that for various publications.
Today, though, I’m just writing about a guy I’m privileged to call a friend. One of the joys of living in Nashville is that I can pick up the phone and call Scotty Moore, Tom T. Hall, Earl Scruggs, Mac Wiseman and Bill Anderson.
I’m writing about Scotty today because he’s one of the last true vestiges of the music that changed my life when I was an elementary school kid who dyed his hair black and Bryllcreemed it into a ducktail for Halloween when I was in third or fourth grade. A little dab’ll do ya, indeed.
By the way, if anyone out there is seeking a writer for a story about this great man, born in West Tennessee cotton country – which has produced musicians from Carl Perkins to Tina Turner to Isaac Hayes and beyond – I’d be glad to do it.
But that’s not why I picked up the telephone, just as I do every so often. I just wanted to say hello.
“I’ve just been hanging out here, trying to keep cool,” says Scotty, when asked how he’s been faring this summer.
He didn’t feel up to normal trips to Memphis or New Orleans. The air-conditioned confines of his home suit him just fine. He’s been waiting for this weather to finally break. Perhaps in a day or two, he’ll venture outside.
I’d been thinking a lot lately about the guy who lives on a hill in rugged Northern Davidson County.
First of all, he has had constant health scares. In fact, he can hardly play the guitar anymore.
“I got the arthritis so bad that when I do try to play, it hurts,” he says, his voice a touch sad, but resolved. He knows he can’t play guitar any more, just like he knows his old pal Elvis has been dead 33 years and knows that a lot of people these days don’t really care or know his history.
I try to call Scotty fairly regularly. Just like I used to call Vassar Clements, Bobby Thompson, Josh Graves, Eddy Arnold, Bobby Hebb, Captain Midnight and Chet Atkins. They were my friends. Sure I told their stories for the newspapers. But it became much more important to me to chat, at least on occasion, with these guys, after those stories had been published.
I miss them all.
I also regularly checked in on Johnny Cash. In fact, as I’ve said before, I was supposed to see him for an interview as soon as he got back from the West Coast. That trip was never taken. He went to the hospital and died instead.
So I covered his funeral, just as I did that of his wife and life partner, June Carter Cash.
Speaking of the Cash family, Rosanne’s new book ‘Composed’ is a definite “worth-reading” entry. I didn’t find it particularly focused, but it is random by design. And the ruminations on her dad, stepmom, mother and even her divorce from Rodney Crowell are worth reading. And there’s a funny section about John R. burning down the California desert.
But this isn’t a book review. It’s just a note about friends I keep track of not because I’m anything special, but because they are.
My regular phone calls to Scotty began long ago, when he was being inducted into the “sideman” category of the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame.
The local newspaper here in Nashville didn’t seem too excited to send a reporter… “Who is Scotty Moore?” asked a “hip” editor who knew all about Shaggy and Sneezy and Dopey and Grumpy and Bashful or whoever the current pop-rap-crapper was. FYI, the only Bashful I knew well at all was neither a dwarf nor a rapper. He was Bashful Brother Oswald. I’m not going to explain who he was. If you don’t know, I suppose you too think I may be old and in the way. I probably am.
So I was asked: ‘’Who is Scotty Moore?”
No there was no reporter dispatched to New York City (get a rope) to cover his induction. But I wasn’t about to let it go unnoted, so each morning, while he was up there, I’d call and get his insight into the big celebration. For the record, he didn’t really enjoy it. And he thought he and Bill and D.J. should have gone in with Elvis, just as he thinks Garry Tallent and Clarence Clemmons and Little Steven should have gone in with Bruce.
I inserted Scotty’s observations in the local celebrity gossip column – the one with the “zoinks” and “mazel tovs” and boob jokes as compiled by my friend, Brad Schmitt, with whom I often sang our famous newsroom rendition of “Your What Hurts?” Another story, but tell me, exactly what is it that hurts on you?
When the festivities ended in New York, I continued to call Scotty every month or two, just to see how he was doing.
A few years ago I wrote a long story about Scotty for the newspaper. Again, I was criticized because I was “wasting too much space” on an old man who isn’t part of the target demographic – the young, white women who apparently can’t get enough pictures of the Swan Ball and trendy shopping tips. Did anyone notice the other day that the lunch wagons, long a staple of Little Mexico and other ethnic areas of Nashville, finally became worthy of news hole when they were found to be a trend in East Nashville? Almost choked on my charred pollo
Back to Scotty Moore. I am thankful that my work at the newspaper allowed me to tell his story.
For this is a man who changed the world. He won’t admit it.
In fact, in this most recent conversation, I asked Scotty if it was time for us to get together again, maybe even write a long magazine story or a book even.
After all, what he knows and saw is unique.
“Nah, Tim,” he said, with a laugh. “C’mon up anytime you want. But I really don’t want to be interviewed any more. And I don’t want to tell the story in another book.
“What’s left for me to say after that last story you wrote? I guess I could begin making stuff up.”
We laughed and went on to talk about the weather, about the guitars he can’t play without pain, about the home studio where he used to gather with Billy Cox, Carl Perkins, Mitch Mitchell and others.
“No one wants that music anymore,” he says. So he’s stopped producing it.
Oh he’s not bitter. I guess maybe I am.
How could a world of quickly made, assembly line, electronically tuned and polished music be unaware of the importance of the gentle soul whose analog equipment and guitars sit unused, on top of a hill?
Of course, the answer is right in the question. There would be no room in the digital world for the imperfections and improvisations that made the music sprung from that cramped room in Memphis so special.
While Scotty is lazing away his retirement in relative contentment, his pelvic-thrusting friend simply isn’t allowed to die.
We have just passed the 33rd anniversary of Elvis’ death.
Scotty used to go to Memphis to participate in what has become known as “Death Week” activities. Back then, he’d play music in the Overton Park Bandshell, just like he did with Elvis. What has evolved into a necrophiliacs’ carnival began as a tribute to a great artist and a great friend of Scotty’s.
When it changed, well, Scotty decided not to head west on I-40.
“Nah, I don’t go any more,’ he says. “It’s like a circus. Everyone just wants to make money off him.”
“Him” is his old friend, the "Momma-loving" truck driver who liked to dress funny, curl his lip and drive pink Cadillacs.
“Yeah I miss him and Bill,” says Scotty. “I mean I don’t sit around and think about it all the time. I like to watch TV. But when you spend so much time together, there’s a lot of stuff you know that no one else does.
“We had some good times.”

Recalling the gift of having been allowed to spend 'Sunny' hours and days with my friend Bobby Hebb

2010-08-14T12:36:00.000-07:00

"We're in the university of life and last time I checked, no one is in a hurry to graduate."
Perhaps the gentlest soul I’ve ever met in the years I’ve been privileged to interview musicians, Bobby Hebb looked up at me and smiled when he said that.
I quickly scribbled that down in my now unreadable reporter’s notebook, took a long deep sip of the Scandinavian roast coffee that he’d prepared.
“I think you’ll like this,” he had said, urging me to go ahead and try his formula for boosting the coffee’s spirit-lifting taste, attitude even.
Hebb spooned some brown sugar into my cup and poured in some real cream, not of the low fat variety – for he was only 5-foot-6 and 130 pounds – and we looked out the back door of his tidy home in Bordeaux.
“It’s nice to be back home,” he said, before leading the way back to the living room/dining room/family room combination that was filled with the tools with which he served humanity.
There was a baby grand, some guitars, a keyboard.
“Listen to this,” he said, walking over to the stereo near the front window. He put a CD in the changer, let it load up and then pushed play.
The song that was Hebb’s greatest gift to the world – one composed of his own despair, alone in a New York apartment – softly escalates in volume, gradually filling the room. Bobby’s eyes glisten with soft tears of joy.
“This is my favorite version,” he says as a very different – though still oh-so-familiar – version of Bobby’s classic, “Sunny,” escapes from the speakers.
“This is Eugen Cicero,” he says, softly, so as not to interrupt this music. For the next seven minutes or so, the living room in Bordeaux is filled with the European pianist’s version of “Sunny.”
It’s all instrumental – although in this listener’s mind, the lyrics are ever-present – and is deceptively simple: piano with upright bass backing. While exploring ”Sunny” in a way that would have made Bobby’s old friend Thelonious Monk proud, Cicero offers up doses of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and Chopin's Polonaise in A-Flat Major.
We sip our brown-sugar-hinted, almost espresso, and listen. Neither of us wants to speak, as Bobby’s eyes dance, his denim-clad leg bounces oh-so-slightly to the beat.
But even when music isn’t playing or being performed by this gentle and disarmingly humble pop star, this friend of Beatles and jazz greats, who left Nashville to conquer the world only to return when there was nothing left to prove and perhaps he needed refuge from the storms of life, there is a rhythm to this day.
Bobby hadn’t been interviewed for a long time, other than by my friend Michael Gray, who was curating the Night Train to Nashville exhibit at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.
Michael’s exhibit – born of his own enthusiasm and embraced by his bosses at the Hall – was groundbreaking, in that it recognized the R&B side of Nashville, Frank Howard and the Commanders, Eddie Frierson, Earl Gaines, Roscoe Shelton, Jimi Hendrix, Billy Cox, Ted Jarrett, Marion James.
It was mostly an observance of what had happened on Jefferson Street – before the historically black nightclub district and thriving surrounding neighborhood was cut in two, basically murdered when Interstate 40 brought “progress” to Music City.
The interstate, when constructed, surgically separated that district right at its heart, a concrete and steel amputation that killed a district and clubs that had not only nurtured local musicians but brought in the best of the touring R&B acts. Word pictures offered up by those who still survive – and so many of them have died even in the years since the exhibit – paint a picture of a lively strip that would compete with Harlem and its Apollo and other clubs as musical venues.
But Bobby Hebb was one who was not really an R&B star. Though he was a black artist nurtured in Nashville and though he played and sang R&B, he also played and sang jazz and pop. His truest early musical friends included Hank Williams, Roy Acuff, Bashful Brother Oswald – among the best purveyors of the White Man’s Blues – from his days with Acuff on the Opry.
Later he came to know and be known in the New York jazz circles, where Monk was a pal and his dark influences became a part of Bobby’s musical palette.
And later still, he, like so many black artists, found greater acceptance in Amsterdam and Tokyo than in the U.S.
But during decades in which he had been all but forgotten here in his hometown, Bobby’s most famous tune had become a part of America’s musical vocabulary.
“Sunny,” at its heart, is a breezy song. But it was born of sorrow, both personal and national. Bobby was in his New York apartment when he learned his brother Harold, among his musical heroes, had been stabbed to death.
Harold was a member of the Marigolds, a group that was an offshoot of Johnny Bragg’s The Prisonaires, an all-convict band that spent its time away from the penitentiary playing for the governor and other members of Tennessee’s ruling class.
In fact it was Bragg, whom I knew slightly, who had provided the perfect entrée to my desire to speak with Bobby in the first place. When Johnny died back in 2004, I wrote the obituary and pushed for my employer at the time, The Tennessean newspaper here in Nashville, to give it decent play. Johnny may have been a convict, but he also was a musical wizard and he too had created at least one classic in the song, “Just Walkin’ in the Rain.”
When I called Bobby to say I’d like to interview him – after I was told that he was relatively reclusive – his first response was: “I know who you are. You did a really nice job on Johnny’s obituary.”
Then he told me to come out the next day to his home to do an interview for the newspaper and, in the process, gain a friend
Anyway, I got a bit sidetracked here, Harold had been stabbed to death outside the old Club Baron – now the home of the Jefferson Street Elks Lodge.
The day before Harold died, the whole country had been thrown into a down spiral of mourning when JFK’s brains were blasted away by a weasel-faced coward who hid in the Texas Book Repository in Dallas.
Both these events were a part of the inspiration for “Sunny.” It wasn’t that Bobby was using those events as his lyrical and musical driving force. He actually was pushing away from those melancholy events and the black dogs of depression when he wrote what may be the perfect pop song.
He simply wanted to lift both his own mood and those of anyone who would listen.
On that first day we spent together -- and it truly was a day, and there were more – Bobby told stories of his life, of Nashville’s black music, of Mr. Acuff and of Luke the Drifter.
We drank cups of brown-sugar-flavored coffee and we laughed at old pictures and listened to music.
And Bobby’s lilting voice and laughter as well as his Zen-meets-Instant Karma rap – for he would take off on long and philosophic tangents that mixed hippie ideals with Christ’s teachings and Eastern mysticism – are in my head and heart even today.
The most powerful images though are of the slight man, who at his piano, at his keyboard and with a guitar, performed not only “Sunny,” but other songs of his life and of my own.
The day was flavored with music and tales of Dylan, Seeger, Monk, Lennon/McCartney and the slight giant who had all but been forgotten named Bobby Hebb.
To sit in the living room and listen to the composer and the first voice to record the classic “Sunny” sing that tune and then playfully move away from it in lyrics and texture, sampling other sounds and other times, was one of the gifts life has given me.
In the years since that long and happy day in October 2004, I’ve called him a few times. We’ve joked on the phone. And he always thanked me for telling his story, finally, in his hometown.
In recent years, he was very ill, although the last time I spoke with him he wasn’t letting that stop him from dreaming.
I had tried to get publications, both local and national, to let me tell his story one more time. But no one was interested. That didn’t bother Bobby, though.
He had made his mark. His story finally had been told here. A local museum had helped him celebrate the music of himself as well as that of his family and friends.
I have been privileged to share time with so many great people, from famous artists and athletes to regular people who have thrived and made their own marks on the world.
When one of them is gone, so is part of me.
And I felt that loss, that amputation of a piece of my heart when Bobby died Aug. 3. I was out of town, on vacation at the beach, when I was told Bobby’s long battle with lung cancer had ended. My friend, Peter Cooper, the Tennessean music writer, had been tasked with writing the obituary, from which I am proud he was able to find some useful information in the story I wrote after my first “Sunny” day with Bobby. He knew I’d want to know Bobby was gone.
I went for a walk on the beach and “Sunny” played in my head.
And it did as Bobby always intended: it lifted my spirits.
Thank you, old friend.

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For the Tennessean obituary written by my friend Peter Cooper as well as photos of Bobby Hebb, visit http://blogs.tennessean.com/tunein/2010/08/03/bobby-hebb-sunny-songwriter-and-revered-singer-dies-at-72/
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What follows is the Oct. 17, 2004, story I wrote for The Tennessean newspaper in which Bobby Hebb allowed me to share his story with his hometown. There are a few “sidebar” stories at the end.

HEADLINE:One so true to the music

From gospel singer on the streets of Nashville to member of the Smoky Mountain Boys and opener for The Beatles, Bobby Hebb has always felt the music. Now, the artist whose signature is 'Sunny' returns to Music City and his family's roots.

By TIM GHIANNI | Senior Writer
Bobby Hebb's legacy is Sunny. So is his disposition. The former has a lot to do with the latter. His song about the girl whose smile eased pain and erased rain is a pop/rock classic, ensuring this animated 66-year-old Nashville native will never vanish nor starve.
Perhaps the seed to that song was planted by Luke the Drifter, Hank Williams' gospel-wailing alter-ego, who gave the kid a few kind words about writing songs. Or maybe it started with Bashful Brother Oswald, the Opry legend who told Little Bobby to "feel what you sing."
We know for sure The Beatles liked the song. They told Bobby as much when he opened for them during their last tour. Heck, he says his piano playing almost got him a job as the fifth Beatle. "Ringo wanted me to come back to England to work in the studio." Hebb recommended Billy Preston for the job.
Despite all his stellar connections, Bobby's song and the attitude can be most attributed to the careful nurturing of his mother and father, blind musicians, who set all of their children on the path of musical and spiritual greatness.
"They were always my inspirations," he says now, thinking back to his youth spent singing, spooning and dancing for tips on the streets of Nashville with the rest of the Hebb family.
The Hebbs may not have been the von Trapps, but they surely were the inner-city equivalent. Instead of the Austrian Alps, the Hebbs' sound of music was birthed in south Nashville's Edgehill neighborhood.
There were two Hebb outfits. The four girls sang with their mother, focusing primarily on gospel music and churches.
"Daddy had a washboard band," he recalls. "Hebb's Kitchen Cabinet Orchestra."
Bobby and his two brothers joined their pop. "Daddy played the guitar. Harold played the washboard. Melvoid played the lard-can bass. I did the tap dancing and played the spoons."
The sound still can be heard in gospel gatherings around town and in Bobby's performances as an easy-listening, guitar-strumming pop star in Europe and Asia.
And it is being heard more here in his hometown now. After decades in New York and in Rockport, Mass. (a seaside village on Cape Ann near Boston), he's returned to his roots. Yes, he'll still travel the world to please his fans. But planes fly out of Nashville, too.
Oh, some of the boxes are still unopened. Other stuff remains up north for now. But the guitar and baby grand in the living room are proof he's home in Bordeaux.
"Listen to this," he says, his piano noodling leading up to some of the chords of his most famous song.
He pushes himself up from the piano bench and takes a step, then pauses to look toward the ceiling, right hand counting the beat into the fan-stirred air. And then it erupts, that voice, softly at first, then building.
"Sunny, yesterday my life was filled with rain.
"Sunny, you smiled at me and really eased the pain."
The song that became his signature and his livelihood was born in his apartment at 2186 Fifth Ave. in Harlem.
He'd gone to New York to seek his fortune in the music business after years spent as a member of Roy Acuff's Smoky Mountain Boys.
Some stories have him writing Sunny in response to the slaying of his brother, Harold, outside the Club Baron. Others say it stemmed from the death of JFK in Dallas the day before.
Sunny has more to do with mood than history.
On the day he died, Harold Hebb was a member of the Marigolds, a group sprung from Johnny Bragg's all-con band The Prisonaires.
An armed robbery conviction sent Harold to prison. His singing abilities caught the ear of the band leader.
Outside jail walls, the group flourished, although Harold's career and life ended as he bled to death outside the club that now houses the Jefferson Street Elks Lodge.
"It was so sad," says Bobby Hebb. "Such loss."
While the Hebbs felt personal pain, they were hardly immune to the pain that had a nation weeping.
Bobby wasn't helped much by the fact that musical cohorts, such as Gerald Wilson and Thelonious Monk, produced dark sounds.
"I needed to pick myself up. I needed an upper. It all goes back to playing with Roy Acuff and feeling the music."
Writing Sunny "was therapy."
He stands and walks across the room, dropping into an easy chair. He reaches to the coffee table to rescue a ceramic cup half-filled with Scandinavian roast coffee.
"I usually drink tea," he says, sipping robustly on the coffee that's well flavored with brown sugar and cream.
He surveys his surroundings. "What I like about this house is that it's not too big. Everything I need is here. That's not to say it's got everything I want, just everything I need.
"I didn't need much yard. I have someone cut it for me, anyway. But I also didn't need to have a really big house. I needed to have room for my things, but not so much room that I needed to spend a lot of time cleaning it. I needed to spend my time on the music."
There are three bathrooms, including one upstairs. "I don't go up there much, because there's no furniture," he says. There's also a black 1991 Mercedes in the driveway. "I bought that on Clarksville Highway."
The 5-foot-6, 130-pound fellow in denim is pretty much like anyone else in this upper-middle-class development. But when he opens his mouth, in speech or in song, it becomes apparent he's someone special.
And it's not just Sunny. His satchel is filled with songs he's written. And he's certainly not averse to singing the works of others, guys such as Dylan and Hank Williams.
"I recorded Cold Cold Heart for the new record," he says, pointing out his admiration for Hank's work.
"I don't know Bob Dylan personally. I do know Pete Seeger. And Leadbelly (Woody Guthrie's folk-singing black associate of Goodnight Irene fame) was a cousin of mine. Used to be at all the Hebb family reunions."
Without warning, he leans back in his chair and mixes his own soft, sweet voice with Dylanesque rhythm and attitude.
"It ain't no use to sit and wonder why, Babe/It don't matter anyhow
"And it ain't no use to sit and wonder why, Babe/If you don't know by now.
"When your rooster crows at the break of dawn/Look out your window and I'll be gone
"You're the reason I'm traveling on/Don't think twice, it's all right."
He laughs at himself. "That's my favorite Bob Dylan song."
Perhaps Dylan's tale of rambling and lost love strikes a chord with him because it describes parts of his own past, which includes two divorces and a definite rootlessness.
But that clearly is not the direction of his future.
First of all, he remains in close contact with his daughter, Kitoto, 27, an aspiring actress and bus driver who lives in Massachusetts. "I love you, too," he says at the end of a phone conversation during which she's calling to check on her pop's health now that he's moved home, embracing his roots.
"My main thing now is to work with my family, get the Hebb family singing gospel together," he says.
"I want to teach it to all my nieces and nephews. I want them to carry on the family tradition."
He looks over to the piano, where the sheet music for Will the Circle Be Unbroken shares space with a couple of other gospel songs the family is working on.
"I loved my childhood. It was rough, but what's not rough? Life's not a piece of cake." Then he cues up a familiar song on the CD player.
"Oh, the dark days are done and the bright days are here,
"My Sunny one shines so sincere.
"Oh, Sunny one so true, I love you."

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WHO IS BOBBY HEBB?
o Bobby is the last male member of the original Hebb family singers, who trace their origins to 1708 12th Ave. S. Harold, Melvoid and Jerome are deceased. There are four sisters living: Helen Hebb, Ednaearle Burney, Shirley Trotter and Cleavette Davison. Among Hebb's many cousins: state Sen. Thelma Harper.
o Hebb remains popular in Europe and in Asia. "I love Germany and Japan," he says. He also loves England, noting that one of his songs Love Love Love remains a hit "after all these years."
o Sunny, of course, is Hebb's biggest claim to fame. His favorite version of the much-covered song is performed by European pianist Eugen Cicero, with upright bass backing, in an all-instrumental version. Over almost seven minutes, Cicero blends in doses of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata and Chopin's Polonaise in A-Flat Major. It is available as an import on an album called Swinging Piano Classics.
o A devout "old school" Christian, Hebb also observes Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, during which he fasts from sunset to sunset. "Christ did this for the Christians, he atoned for our sins. But there was something I felt in my heart that I should do that."
o Schooling? "We're in the university of life and last time I checked, no one is in a hurry to graduate."
- TIM GHIANNI, SENIOR WRITER

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'SUNNY' FOR 34 YEARS
Sunny is a 6 Million-Air, which means it's been broadcast 6 million times, according to information provided by BMI.
Based on an average length of three minutes, one million broadcast performances are the equivalent of 50,000 hours or 5.7 years of continuous airplay. In other words, if you linked all of Sunny's plays consecutively, it would last more than 34 years.
- TIM GHIANNI, SENIOR WRITER.
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ADVICE AND INSPIRATION
o Roy Acuff became a hero to Bobby Hebb not just because Acuff hired him, but also because he would refuse to stay in a hotel if the black youngster was not allowed to stay, too. In that regard, the singer and fiddler became something of a pioneer in the world of civil rights.
o Acuff's Dobro player, Bashful Brother Oswald, gave the kid some advice heeded by the Smoky Mountain Boys. "The fellas could not read music, but they could learn to play it how it should feel," Hebb remembers. Oswald took the youngster aside: "He told me, 'Feel the music while you're performing it.' "
o Learning to write songs with emotion was the goal when Hebb approached Hank Williams backstage at the Opry. "Hank was very friendly. ... He says, 'You just sit down as if you were writing a letter.' My mother corrected me on that count. She said you must have a story to tell when you write. She ... showed me the correct way to do it."
o After working on sessions for John Lee Hooker in Chicago, Hebb ended up in New York, where he encountered Thelonious Monk. "Monk was playing this." He stretches out a few measures of classic Monk piano styling. "It was that chord I wanted to learn about."
o "Whoo. I was very excited and very thrilled to get that job," he says, of his spot on the bill during what turned out to be The Beatles' last tour. He played for the biggest crowds of his career, "and the audience listened to me. Some of them sang along with me on Sunny ...."
The performers flew together on the charter and stayed in the same hotels. "All of them were nice. Of course, when they sang on stage, there was so much screaming, they couldn't hear themselves. John and George, well, they were very quiet. But Ringo and Paul were more active and easier to get to know. It was just something to be with those cats."
o One night, at a party in New York, he found himself singing with other guests, including Tony Bennett and Judy Garland. "I was writing songs for (Judy) when she died." Judy wanted me to write a song for her. But her daughter did it. It was called A Natural Man. Liza recorded it. And, of course, Lou Rawls did too." Rawls won a Grammy for his version.
- TIM GHIANNI, SENIOR WRITER

Crawling through oil with 'Snake' Stabler, Rose Garden partying and having 'the shrimp talk' with Big O

2010-08-11T16:28:00.000-07:00

I finished my gentle Australian crawl running parallel to the shoreline – sharks be damned, I tried to tell myself, chasing away the fear while also escalating my heart rate – and rode the surf into the beach.
When I stood up on the sandbar, beginning my 100-yard trek back toward shore, I looked admiringly at my tan.
“Man, Flap, you really got brown out there,” said Kenny Stabler, my old friend, Oakland Raiders’ No. 12, with whom I usually share a breakfast or at least a Waffle House or oyster bar, whenever I’m down on the Redneck Riviera.
I looked at my torso – not a wonderful thing to do these days, as my weight’s down but ever since my brains were liberated in the July 4th car wreck I haven’t really felt like trying the heavy workouts or even the medium workouts that are necessary to keep the body of an almost 60-year-old man (my wife’s favorite description of me … whatever happened “you’re pretty darned good for an old man?”)
Serious about the brain scrambling, by the way. Still missing words here and there and have headaches. “Face it, old man, you are concussed,” says my doctor, every time he calls me to see if I remember my name. Sometimes I do. Sometimes I even remember who my doctor is, good thing since he’s the guy who has to do the prostate exam, which I wouldn’t trust to a stranger, because of possibly vile and perhaps Republican intentions .
Anyway, that’s another story of this long and glorious summer of my discontent, dismay and discovery.
As I noted above, while “Snake” Stabler did his Tai Chi bit on the little spit of sand, I looked at how brown I’d turned. And it was my first real day down at the Redneck Riviera, my favorite relaxing spot in the world next to Ciudad Juarez, where I sometimes go with the Big O – he likes the donkey shows --when he’s ashamed of his wife’s crass and materialistic behavior. The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain, I’d gladly tell her.
She probably reminds the Big O of his age as well, but I get a feeling he’s well, not really whipped… perhaps a bit frightened or at least humbled or tormented. Yep, the Big O, my friend – I was with Magic, Joachim, the late Wilt the Stilt, Derek Rose and the rest of the guys for that hoops and shrimp fest at the White House the other day – just can’t tell Michelle anything.
“I wanted to tell her that she shouldn’t go to Spain on vacation while you and the rest of the country are suffering and wallowing in this deep mayonnaise,” The Big O said, as he dipped his shrimp and his tie in Miracle Whip.
He often confuses malaise for mayonnaise, but that’s OK. Little W, his predecessor (and poker-playing, A&W float-sharing buddy), once referred to a portion of Iraq as “Turdistan.”
I never corrected him, even though I have many friends from that region, because every time I tried to talk to Little W, Shotgun Dick would shoot at one of his friends. Obviously that never meant me, but I do hate for old Republicans to be blasted in the face with buckshot. Some deserve it, but I leave that to the killers hired by Oliver North and the late Soupy Sales.
Speaking of countries in torment – other than our own – how about the floods in Pakistan? It makes me cry.
Every time I see the news reports of the floods in Pakistan, the people having to leave their huts, livestock and Vizio flat-screens and climb aboard relief boats, it reminds me of how lucky I am.
Yes, I lost half my house in the flood and no one, not government, not insurance, not even my pal, The Big O, came to my assistance, even though he ate half the cookies my Aunt Rita sent from Buffalo to help us survive.
Oh yeah, FEMA did finally come up with a few hundred dollars. You ever try to pay for gutting and then rebuilding a half of your house for less than a grand?
And we’re still not done. Just done-for and, well, exhausted.
Part of that tiredness comes from the July 4 wreck, when a nice woman with other things on her mind, ran a red light and hit the family minivan while she was traveling 45 mph. If I’d been in my Saab, I’d be dead. It would have made a dandy coffin.
As it was, the van became trash. My brain temporarily battered, and probably not for the first time. And the insurance check covered about a quarter of what it took to replace it with a suitable, safe family vehicle. Repeat after me: insurance companies and oil barons and evil, gun-wielding terrorists coached by Shotgun Dick – even from his hospital room – run the world.
All of which is to say, my summer has not been good. And while I entered it with a sense of optimism that my professional life was going to take a big turn for the better and I was finally going to be able to enjoy things on the Yummy List and in Marie Claire magazine, I am leaving it with a sense of dazed confusion.
Brian Wilson, I believe I noted earlier, told me “you just weren’t made for these times either, Flap.” That was during one of our many sandbox conversations. I was seeking solace from the disaster, the ruins of my life, furniture and drywall, carpeting and treasured old newspapers piled in the driveway. Brian would visit – often hitching a ride with Petty -- because he couldn’t figure out where he was and where else in Nashville he could go to play in the sand. Tom told him I had dumped a pile on the driveway after using it in sandbags. That wasn’t true. But Brian would sit there where he thought the sand should be and stare, blankly, into the wooded hillside and philosophize: “Those East Coast girls are hip,” he’d say, before napping.
Speaking of which, I have pretty bad headaches since that wreck. Paul McCartney made fun of me by singing “Scrambled Brains” to the tune of “Yesterday” and pointing at me while we rode unicycles around town the day after his concert here. I told you about Paul and me, man. You know that we’re as close as can be man. Turns out he’s a really nice guy. He told me he wants me to join his band. Or was it he wants me to hold his hand? Drive his van? Beep-beep, ba-beep-beep yeah. Can’t keep much straight these days.
Which reminds me, did any of you ever see Faces play when Rod Stewart and Ronnie Wood were doing their best music? First time I caught them it was during an Iowa blizzard in a National Guard Armory in Des Moines. Hitchhiked with Smokin’ Joe from Ames. Ended up sleeping in the back of the station wagon belonging to the girls who picked us up because the snow got too high to navigate.
Speaking of high, there was a big, black guy working with Faces whose only apparent job was to keep uncorking wine bottles and rolling joints for the star and his guitarist. Every picture tells a story, don’t it?
Long time since I saw that show. I was reminded that the other day when the kid from the Iowa State alumni office called to ask for money. He began by asking if I’ve had a good summer. I laughed and said something rude about what he could do to the Iowa State Cyclone mascot this autumn.
Sometimes I’m just waiting for a friend, and that’s why I was at the Rose Garden for the shrimp party that went on for two full days and ended up with half of the NBA’s University of Kentucky Wildcats franchise sick from ingesting too much oil.
The wife was in Spain with Sasha. Malia was at camp. Mom-in-law was rolling craps and gulping down Sloe Gin in Tunica. The big house and the Rose Garden was ours. It was beer and shrimp and basketball. I don’t drink these days, and the Big O only drinks an occasional beer to settle racial disputes. But have you ever seen Michael Jordan and Magic Johnson get in beer drinking contests? Last I saw it was the second day of the party and Bill Russell, who came along as the token black, was stretched out beneath some of Eleanor Roosevelt’s favorite bushes. He was staring at the stars and hoping that no one was pointing a rifle at him from on top of the Executive Office Building, which is, as you know the place where the government snipers are positioned.
It’s a presidential mandate that began back when Truman was president. Whenever black people are anywhere near the White House, snipers with the best weaponry possible are dispatched by the president to hold high positions surrounding the White House. Of course that wasn’t often back in those days, so the guys usually stayed over at the Capitol Grille, drinking casks of Amontillado and eating 36-ounce porterhouses.
The problem came, though, when the Big O decided not to revoke the policy of dispatching the kill-hungry veterans of Desert Storm – for they never did kill anyone there – to the surrounding roofs when black people are within eyeshot and earshot of the White House.
Now I love this president. Not his policies, but he’s a good fella and enjoys Baskin-Robbins with me some days. He didn’t really think his policy through.
“Man, you realize you are black,” I tell him, pointing to the ever-present snipers. Big O doesn’t listen, or it doesn’t click. All he wants to do is sit behind the bushes with me and Tom Petty and try to talk over the police sirens and machinegun fire in the sultry D.C. air.
Which brings me back to my surf and Nerf football tossing with Kenny Stabler last week.
Snake was right about the tan. I’d never tanned so fast. Then I looked down. There was a little swelling down on my inner leg where a jelly fish had stung me a little too close to my tentacles ….
So I reached down to examine the injury, and when rubbed against the spot where I’d been stung, my leg turned white. I looked at the three secondary fingers of my right hand (you know which one is the primary finger, of course) and noticed they were covered with brown grime.
That’s when I realized it. I was not tanned. I had taken a bath in black gold, Texas tea…..
I called the Big O to tell him about it, but he just laughed, “I finally realized why those snipers are always around,” he said.
“Did you change the policy and send them home?” I asked, as Kenny Stabler leaned close to the phone so he could hear.
“Nah, I sent them some of this shrimp,” laughed the Big O. “I’m sure not going to eat it. I don’t know how it got oil on it.”