Thursday, November 18, 2021

A writer looks at 70, wonders how he made it this far & why? Ponders deaths of Roxy, Badger, Tony, Nardholm, Max & Moose, relishes friends, loves family & Peter & Jerry & ... especially: The Beatles

 “Hey, man, did you ever think you’d be 70 years old?”

The question from my friend, Jerry Manley, the pride of Petersburg, Tennessee, basically was an echo as I said the same thing to him.

We’ve grown old, more or less together, at least in spirit, ever since we combined forces as friends without a care … or was that without a clue? … sometime in the 1970s. We were young newspapermen when we met.

All I ever wanted to be was a newspaperman. Always was until Korporate Amerikan politics took that from me. At least they gave me a sendoff (I could not be celebratory or accept in good faith the “Go forth and prosper” of the company Magoos.) Jerry hung on a few years, finally being “bought out” while he was on vacation.  It was not a “don’t look back” message: Just “don’t come back” to a fellow who had given more than 30 years to the morning newspaper in Nashville.

Anyway, that’s sort of the end of the tale. Jerry and I have been friends for nearly a half century, him entering my life a few months after I began work as a sportswriter at The Leaf-Chronicle in Clarksville, Tennessee. (Hindsight has me still there now, after the heartbreak at 1100 Broadway, where there use to be newspapers…. Although, the Clarksville paper has turned soft and flimsy. Like newspapers in general.)

Nashville still is fortunate to have a newspaper, even one of diminishing circulation. I have friends there and hope they don’t get the kind of call Jerry got.

Hell, a woman I love as a friend got a call like that at her grandmother’s funeral. I won’t use her name here, but I’d offer hugs to her and her family if I bumped into her.   

Jerry, at the time we met a half-century ago, was an editor of the paper over in Gallatin, Tennessee, and he and a guy we knew as “The Rhinestone Fat Man” – David Rush encouraged it by wearing rhinestones and being fat – came over to the newspaper building that really was the heart of Clarksville, Tennessee. The Rhinestone Fat Man would also join us, at least back in those days, in our after-hours (they had to be after-after-hours, as I worked until 1 a.m. many days) gatherings and would sing “Mysterious Rhinestone Cowboy” and nasty racist and misogynist David Allan Coe’s “You Never Even Call Me By My Name,” as his gut pushed at the snaps on his cowboy shirt.  Written by Steve Goodman, it is the perfect country song, even if Coe is despicable.  I miss Steve Goodman, though. And John Prine. They were friends.

Coe’s song and much of his catalog, for that matter, was a part of the Rhinestone Fat Man’s party schtick when he’d plop his monstrous frame into a chair. I don’t know whatever happened to him, though I saw “The Rhinestone Fat Man” probably 25 years ago and he was thin and happy and living in Florida. Flipflops instead of cheap Acme Boots. Floral shirt instead of rhinestones.

But this isn’t about Rush or Coe. It’s really about me. And my friend, Jerry, who I love like a brother, and damn I do love my brother, although Eric (my real brother) never wears rhinestones or stayed out all night washing away the arenaline of a newsy night – like the one where Chico the Monkey escaped and Montgomery County deputies mobilized in St. Bethlehem.

“Tim and his friends are crazy,” Eric told our mom after he failed to make it through one of our all-night news meetings and flapjacks festivals.

The way we – The real News Brothers and others who we loved -- lived was better than any other kind of life, even the lives where people were making several hundred bucks a week to our one or two. For $3 you could get a short stack and all the coffee you could drink at G’s Pancake House on Riverside Drive. Open all night long. Constant water refills (necessary for us) .Now it’s closed and gone.   Clarksville, like everywhere else, has gentrified. No room for grease and caffeine overlooking the river at 3 a.m. any more.

I’d been working at The Leaf-Chronicle for awhile – truly loved it so much, I stayed for 14 or more years – and Jerry came over from Gallatin to paste up the News-Examiner, helping Glover Williams’ composing room crew trim the copy with that nasty razor machine (I always fretted when I was around it, as I’m clumsy and bleed very easily. Oh, what pleasant company. We all need someone we can bleed on.)

Jerry, or “Jer,” as I cleverly called him, would need to get his weekly newspaper’s stories waxed and his pages to Ronnie Kendrick, who remains a dear friend, in the camera room and onto the presses before those of us from the daily Clarksville paper – founded 1808, oldest newspaper in Tennessee, phone number 552-1808 back then --could begin our composing room work. Fire up the cigarettes, folks, smoke ‘em and toss them on the cement floor. Hey, Glover, show me the way to the next whiskey bottle to flavor my coffee.

Hell, I’m talking too much about Jerry here.  But he has stood by my side for almost a half-century. Often he stood by my side because it was the only way either of us could stand up. There are photos of me sitting on the pavement outside a place we called “Camelot” that might fool you, thinking I was posing. I was simply holding onto the earth.  

One time we stood side-by-side on an interstate overpass and tried to rain our used beer down on a friend of ours, Max Moss, who died last year, who was commuting from Clarksville to Nashville, where he was wire editor at the Nashville Banner after being shat upon by the corporate types in Clarksville. 

I knew Max drove that lonely stretch of highway at about 3 each morning, heading to the Banner, which was an hour away.  Jerry and I liked being out at 3 a.m., whether above a long and lonesome highway or down in my basement, absorbing concoctions, aswirl in smoke and listening to music until dawn.   We gave up our rainstorm plans because we figured we’d fall onto the highway and die.   

Anyway, most of the above won’t make sense to you, and that’s OK. I’m writing about me today. And as of 7:30 this morning I have 70 years to reflect upon.  If you were part of my life but don’t make it into this tall tale of truth and fabrication, you are better off, because most of the folks whose names will be in here – other than me, at least of this writing, and Jerry – are dead. The rest of you out there, whether here or not, who love me, well, shit, I love you, too.

Anyway, to answer Jerry’s question that started this tale: It really does feel out-of-place to be 70.  I began my day, as I usually do my birthday, by saluting my Mom when I looked at the clock that said 7:28. I expected the phone to ring in two minutes..  Up until 22 years ago, she would call me at 7:30 to remind me that “30 years ago today .. or 40 … (or whatever number I was settling in on that birthday) …it was a snowy day when we walked to the hospital ….”

It was the whole story of my birth, minus the contractions and gory details.  It was almost biblical, though there were no angels nor shepherds present and my older brother, Eric, was staying with my Grandma and Grandpa Champ in the middle-class home in urban Detroit, right across the street from the Vernor’s Ginger Ale plant. They used to use an elf as the advertising trademark of that ginger ale, and as a young boy when I was old enough to visit that house and sit on the porch, I decided that God looks like that elf that was painted, huge, on the side of that building.  Funny thing is, in my mind, when I depict God, he really does look like that Vernor’s elf.  I kinda hope I find out I’m right. Although that discovery can wait.

Actually, once my family moved into Central Time – away from Michigan and to Chicago and then Nashville – I think my mother was an hour off. The 7:30 she told me about when I lived in Michigan is 6:30 Central time. I never corrected her, though, as she had a nice rhythm to her tale.  She was a brilliant woman and kind, except for the time Rusty Perry and I tested our tricycle knowledge by rolling down the hill to the deep canal on the other side of the cornfiled near our house in Sylvan Lake.  Chased us both back with switches. I think I was 3 when I climbed on that tricycle and went looking for adventure in whatever came my way. A true nature’s child, I would get the front wheel of that ride as close to the deep water as possible. And laugh. Man, did I laugh.

So far, most of the people in this post are gone.  Oh, Jerry’s around. So’s my brother. And Rhinestone Thin Man likely still is singing country songs at an alligator farm or somesuch.

Yeah, back to the basic premise here. I didn’t want to die young, though I probably deserved to, at least made all the right moves for way too many years. Sometime around the time Suzanne and I adopted our kids in Romania, I was already an “old” dad, and I decided I needed to behave myself so I could see them grow up.  Emily fooled me, though, as she moved to California, where she is raising my grandson, Roman, as damn fine a toddler as you’ve ever seen on a telephone screen.  Joe still lives with us, though. I enjoy having him here while he commutes to grad school.

Took him (Joe, not Roman) with me to see The Rolling Stones a few weeks ago. Since that time, he keeps playing me Stones songs and performance videos.  Of course, to me, that is sort of a mission accomplished. When Travis Scott and Drake presided over the stampede that left many young people dead and injured the other day, Joe said he liked that music fine. “But this is real music,” he chirped, displaying footage of The Stones during their Nashville show. His favorite song is “Paint it Black.” You devil.

“I’ve seen The Rolling Stones and I’ve seen The Who,” he’ll tell me, and then add that his favorite band remains Eric Brace, Peter Cooper and Thomm Jutz, three friends of mine who make brilliantly enjoyable singer-songwriter-style music. Peter qualifies to be up there with Jerry atop my friends list.  When I hired him to work with me at The Tennessean in the entertainment department he wore a purple tie and worshiped Jason & The Scorchers.  I don’t know if he’s still got that tie.

I’ve taken Joe with me to see Eric, Peter and Thomm about five times, and they are his favorites. Maybe he and I can go see The Rolling Stones four more times.

And I’d really like him to see my honky-tonk-singing pal, Jon Byrd, a refugee from academia who tossed out all of his books and moved, with a guitar, to Nashville many years ago.  Contrary to his hip image, he lives in Bellevue.

I’ve been going to concerts since a mid-teen, when I’d go catch Ike and Tina or Vanilla Fudge at Ravinia, outside Chicago or later MC5, P-Funk and The Byrds at Soldier field. I think James Taylor was at that latter concert as well. He was just breaking in. I think he’s done OK with that Fire & Rain. Mud-Slide Slim.

I once tried to book The Rolling Stones (along with a friend named Jack Meyers, who I’m sure is wealthy and retired now) for a concert at the arena in Ames, Iowa, where I never missed a class nor a beer. We had a formula figured out where they’d make a million, the university would make money and Jack and I would be able to pay back our school loans. The guy in charge of the arena nixed our entrepreneurial adventure on our second meeting.  He blew his nose and then he blew my mind. Or my vision.

Still, Brian, Carl and Dennis Wilson laughed either with or at me on another night outside that arena, when I was leaving with ample assistance.  I think the rest of the original Beach Boys were there, beneath a sweet cloud as I passed.

There have been many adventures along the way, mostly legal and always ethical by my standards.

I made a movie with Jerry, Rob Dollar (a self-retired friend in Hopkinsville, Kentucky), Jim Lindgren and a few others. Someday I’ll share it with you guys. Or maybe not. It was in Super 8mm, with a synched soundtrack, as our production took place in the dawn of the 1980s and long before people had home video cameras and machines. Crude, but it does have Jimmy Stewart and John Glenn in it, among others.d

I married happily one time, and Suzanne and I adopted both our children in Romania. I mention that above as a stabilizing influence on me.  True enough. I love my family.

I’ve lived a life with dogs and cats as my best friends and lament long after their passing. I have been unable to shake the death of Roxy, and her raging cancer led to her a humane death a year ago, the day after Thanksgiving I held her and stroked her head, staring into her eyes, as the lights extinguished.

I’d do anything to have her back. I’d do anything to have any of my pets back. But damn it, Roxy was my best pal.

And that’s not mentioning all the friends I’ve lost, like Scott "Badger" Shelton, radio newsman and pal.

Tony Durr had earned his spot as my closest friend when he died, reaching for a phone, an empty pill bottle by his side, in an Alaska Coast Guard barracks.  That’s more than 30 years ago and I still miss him.

Others: Harold “The Stranger” Lynch, Richard Worden, Max Moss (and his wife Merrily), Glover Williams, C.B. Fletcher, John Seigenthaler, Jimmy Carnahan are just a few of my friends from my newspaper career. Among their things in common: They are dead.

And I really miss Okey “Skipper” Stepp.  I just enjoyed my 40 cups of coffee a day with him at the Royal York Hotel Café. He lived in the hotel, then a flophouse for lovable losers, no-account boozers and even the occasional honky-tonk hero or the arthritic, crippled carny and merchant seaman who once served spaghetti to Al Capone.

My mom and dad are gone, or I’d be having birthday cake with them today. Chocolate cake, chocolate ice cream. My brother, Eric, was the vanilla guy.

In addition to Peter and Jerry, I have many friends. Some newer, like Peter Rodman. Others I’ve known longer, like Thomm Jutz and Eric Brace. Bill Lloyd comes to mind. Billy Fields. Larry Schmidt, whose parents I adored. Elise Shelton (widow of one of my most-trusted friends, Scott “Badger” Shelton, who wanted to kill all Republicans.

Tom Carpenter remains with me from my college years. He’s retired from success as a veterinarian and plays golf almost every day near his Vegas home. The fact we still are friends brings me great joy. John “Titzy” Nitz is also out there, a wealthy agribusiness sort of guy who long ago took me and Jocko and Narholm back to his home farm in Cherokee, Iowa, for the hog-cutting.  Makes me wince when I think of what I witnessed. Jocko and I did the cooking, by the way, as we never wanted to cut off anyone’s privates.

I’ve reignited a friendship with high school friend Josh Hecht, a music man, and also with a woman I once dated named (then) Dee Gerson, who is a helluva artist. They both are out near San Francisco, among my favorite cities.  I’ll probably go out there with Suzanne again next summer.

Other college pals,  Uncle Moose and Nard Sandholm (aka “Nardholm” above) being the best of them, died from cancer, kind of like what took Max and my cousin Marc Champ, who was partly raised by my folks and was like a brother to me. The last time I talked with Moose – long, long ago – he was holding kittens and sitting in the yard outside the farmhouse in Red Oak. He told me he was dying and we laughed about our evenings with Allen Ginsberg and Groucho Marx.

Some friends don’t respond anymore. Which is fine. Jocko I miss the most. But he says he doesn’t feel like reconnecting now. And, of course, now is critical, increasingly so for me. Later likely won’t work.  

We lose friends along the way.  Like a doctor who lives in Carolina and a judge in Florida. Like Captain Kirk, who turned into a Trump-loving, Jesus-thumping asshole, who told me I was wrong about both. Jesus is my friend, but Captain Kirk used him as a weapon, at least until I told him to go to hell. Or actually a much harsher farewell ended our final conversation a year or so ago. A friend since college no more.      

If I was to tell a 20-year-old Tim that one of his best friends by the time he turned 70 would be original country outlaw Bobby Bare, he probably wouldn’t be surprised.  That 20-year-old loved music by Bare, Kristofferson (also a dear friend), Willie (who I know) and Johnny Cash, who liked me before he died.

I’m not going to go on and list all the musicians I have known and loved. For that, well, you’ll have to stay tuned for further stories. Though I sure love Chet Atkins, Eddy Arnold, Mac Wiseman and Funky Donnie Fritts.

Duane Eddy is another friend.

I do feel lonely often as I work alone in my basement office. I have a great family and a fine cat, Champ, who helps me. But Roxy’s gone.

And I need to get down to see Jim Myers at Elliston Place Soda Shop, where he works his bearded ass off. Oh, I guess bearded ass probably isn’t a great description.

Freddy Wyatt is playing golf with his preacher son in Clarksville. And my good friend Pastor Kip is not to me a holy man, but a source of encouragement and love.

Keith Cartwright has a new book out that I need to read. And I miss Charlie Appleton, who wrote of bizarre murderous twists. He’s fine now. Just kind of old and enjoying his family.

There are other friends I should mention. Hell, I almost forgot Phil Lee, former Burrito Brother turned troubadour. And the late George Hamilton IV. George Jones.

I can’t get to all of them or you, so don’t feel badly if you aren’t in this treatise. I love a lot of people until they stab me in the back or, worse still, stab one of my friends in the back. Do the latter, and you are dead to me.

But I know I’m surrounded by love and I know I’ve lived life both fully, until my system couldn’t stand it, and lovingly and with few regrets, but a few costly miscues.

I cherish those who cross my path probably more than I should, as I can’t understand why they drop their friendships after they’ve gotten what they could out of me.

My best friends, though, are really John, Paul, George and Ringo. They’ve been with me through it all, occupying a large slice of my brain.  I listen to them today as much as ever in my life and I did interview Ringo a couple of times. I’ll be cranking up the “Get Back” remasters while I ride my 10-12 miles on my exercise bike in a few minutes.

Mick and Keith and Charlie and Bill and Brian and Mick T. and Ron also spend their time in my head, but only to punctuate my soul. We all need someone we can lean on, as I noted earlier.

I could go on, but I’m tired and need to get to work or at least save energy for my daily bike ride.

Yes, I am surprised I am 70 years old. Only old people live that long.

And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make.  

 

2 comments:

  1. Seventy, huh? You're a damned kid. And get off of my lawn! It is a good read, though. I'll always miss Badger.

    ReplyDelete