Life, death, love, cotton candy and newspapering: Max Moss, my mentor, now joined by Merrily, and they finally breathe free atop the Ferris wheel

They were a team. They both brought me warmth and love. And wisdom.

And now, if you are among those, who -- like them -- believe in an after-life, in eternity, they are sitting together, watching TV, probably old Westerns, in God's reclining chairs. Resting up for the Ferris wheel.  

At least that's what I'd like to believe, what I see in my mind's-eye and in my hollow heart today after I have learned that Merrily Moss died. Max, her partner -- the guy in the adjacent recliner trying to choose between Randolph Scott, John Wayne and maybe Butch and Sundance -- died October 22 a year ago. Merrily died sometime after 4 a.m. October 31, 2021, just over a year after she had to say farewell to her love and lover.

Well, really, I believe she said: "See you later, honey," to Max.

She had been fighting lung damage, work-related, for decades. Doctors were amazed that she was able to carry on, that she lasted this long.

I pretty much figured she'd go right after Max. You hear that sort of thing, of devoted couples dying one right after the other, often. I've written news stories about such happenings, especially if it was involving prominent people. Max and Merrily weren't "publicly" prominent, but they were prominent in my life.

And they remain prominent in my heart today, just after their son, Max Jr., called to tell me his mother had passed.

He's a good kid. Well, he's more than that, of course. He's an accomplished retired military officer and a lawyer who breeds horses out in Oklahoma.

Four decades ago. Well, actually almost five decades ago, Max Jr. was my scorekeeper, walking the football sidelines with me when I was covering high school football games in the Clarksville-Fort Campbell-Erin-Dover-Montgomery Central area. 

He helped some with basketball, too. He really was just a kid then. I think he got paid $15 a night to keep the scorebook for me, freeing me to take notes and photographs, to do interviews to prepare for writing game stories and sidebars and columns on all the prep activity.

His little sister, Karen, always seemed happy when I came by the house in my old 1965 Ford Falcon Futura Sport Coupe to pick up her brother. She was very young. Now she has grown up and become one of the most beautiful and successful women it is my pleasure to know.  Yeah, she's a knockout. She's also one helluva wonderful woman, wife, mother and, I think, maybe even a grandma now. Probably wrong there. Karen, don't get mad. I know you are young and beautiful, still, in heart and soul.

Those two great people, who I've known since they were children, were -- with their families -- in the rehab center Saturday night when Merrily, who had been having setbacks lately, stirred wide awake and talked about the life she'd led, about her long love-affair with Max Sr. (including a cotton-candy flavored night when they were stranded on a Ferris wheel at a fair ... Max hated heights, Merrily loved cotton candy and sweets and especially Max.) 

Max Jr. told me a few more things today about that short conversation with their mother the other night. No sense going into detail here, other than to say that Merrily was looking forward to the other side, to being by her spouse's side.

It's been awhile since I spoke with Merrily. About a week ago I called out to the nursing home where she'd been living and her phone rang incessantly. No answer. I tried again a few times. 

I didn't know it, but she apparently was in dire medical straits, though, and was treated at the hospital and then in rehab. Plans were for her to get back into her assisted living room as soon as she bounced back from this latest setback.

I should note that one of the things that kept her alive so long after her husband died and, indeed, in the long and struggling health years before, was her love of family. I'm so happy her kids were there with her for her little conversation.

She'd been having a lot of health problems  -- all connected to her exposure to paint fumes while working in the Clarksville city garage -- but she was lucid and, I'm sure, even a bit on the happy side to see her family ... while, at the same time, happily anticipating hanging out with Max Sr. again.

In her heart and soul, I'm sure she knew she was saying goodbye to her kids and "Hello, Max, honey, I'm home."

The last time I saw them together was a morning just weeks before Max died at home in Pleasant View.  Max had lung cancer that metastasized.  The two of them joked about whose oxygen cord was longest.

It may seem a funny thing to laugh about, but they were practical people. They were playing the hands they were dealt. 

No, they weren't running around outside getting Max's bass boat ready so he could go to Bumpus Mills and haul in enough crappie for Merrily to clean and fry. 

And they weren't dancing in my living room, as they had on a couple of wild nights decades ago. Too much wine, perhaps, at least for Merrily, who left some on the side of Fort Campbell Boulevard. 

And they no longer could have the belly laughs of laughter they exploded when they saw my film "Flapjacks: The Motion Picture," a sendup of a newspaperman's life that was told lovingly.  They saw it for the first time in my living room where Merrily had tried hard to dance to "Inna-Gada-Da-Vida" for 18 minutes. She asked me to put on some Coltrane instead. Merrily was at the party while Max finished up at the newspaper that night. He drank beer and was amused by her chirpy energy. I'm sure we all amused him by the time he got there.  

The last words in that film "Sounds Reasonable," chirped in unison by The News Brothers --me ("Flapjacks"), Jerry "Chuckles" Manley, Rob "Death" Dollar and Jim "Flash" Lindgren (with a few other fellows who showed up for the final scene on the railroad bridge over the Cumberland -- was Max's trademark phrase.

Tim: "Max, I'm going to take my film into the darkroom and soup it and print some shots. You want me to take yours, too?"

Max: "Sounds reasonable."

Tim: "Max, there's been a big wreck out on Fort Campbell Boulevard and Rob is headed out that way to cover it. We probably should send Larry (McCormack) out there to shoot."

Max: "Sounds Reasonable."  

Tim: "Max, I'm going to lead the paper tomorrow with a story about a manhunt for an escaped monkey named Chico."

Max (this time with a laugh): "If that's the best story you've got, partner,  sounds reasonable."

I could go on, but I think you get the drift.

Max, as I said a year ago and as I told him in person many times, was the best newspaperman I ever knew.

Merrily completed him, though. They were a couple, a team. There was no doubt that if there was ever an opportunity that they could be together, they would be. Even if that meant Max coming to a party at my house late.

And that thought, the love of her partner, is what kept Merrily going as she prepared to go to the other side. She was going to be with Max again. She was going to ask him if he wanted a donut or some ice cream while they watched John Wayne. He'd answer "Sounds reasonable."

Last year, when he died from cancer, Max had told me months before that he was going to lose. Nothing more could be done.

Still, he remained cheerful. In part, I am sure, it was because his wife, his life really, Merrily had been fighting her own battle -- as I mention her lungs were mortally scarred to something like 10 percent capacity by paint fumes on that city job site many decades ago -- tried to keep her own sense of humor.

Even though she'd been told, years ago now, that the end was near.   She kept on going. For Max. For her kids. For her grandchildren. With her faith guiding her to eventually be calm breaking on through to the other side.

Last year I wrote about Max and how hard it was to see him die, gradually.    

In our last visits together, he enjoyed talking his family.

And he liked telling me about the kids and his wife. Always.  He'd take good-natured jabs at his wife of 59 years -- who would quickly reciprocate. 

He'd spin a fishing yarn or two. Maybe talk about his old friend, Bobby Knight, the legendary coach of Max’s beloved Indiana University Hoosiers, whose antics made the old alum chuckle. I’m not sure he liked it when Bob threw the chair across the court, but other than that, the eccentricities of the coach pretty much delighted Max.  

I ran into Knight a few times, and I told Max the coach was an asshole. Max just laughed. “That’s just Bob,” he’d say. Max didn’t swear – I took care of more than the whole newsroom’s share – but I think to Max, Coach Knight perhaps was an asshole, but a lovable one.

Even as his strength, wind and his life waned, his flame flickered, he'd not admit to being anything but content.

“Can’t complain,” he'd say, if I asked how he was doing in my semi-regular phone calls or occasional visits. “Don’t really have all that nasty stuff yet.” Or maybe he called it “icky stuff.” Like I said, he didn’t swear.

Because of the COVID shit, I had been unable to go see him in person in the last many months of his life. That's all he needed were bugs brought in by me. But, when we both dared, I did go up to the tidy house in Pleasant View.

Max Jr. was there. His parents both were in good spirits, sharing donuts their son had brought. On that day, the two Maxes were bound for yet another doctor's visit in Nashville. As I noted last year, Max Jr., took the donuts along when he and his dad climbed into the big, fire-engine red pickup that he used during his regular drives in from the plains outside Oklahoma City.

I called up there a few more times, but he was sleeping, creeping toward death. I spoke instead with Merrily or Karen, who lives in East Nashville with her husband but who camped with her folks frequently.

I remember my last long conversation with Max before he went to play the trifecta (he was horse enthusiast) in the sky.

He was the same loving old friend who pretty much taught me all I needed to know about being a newspaperman.

We talked about our lives in newspapers. We spoke of pica poles and souping film, printing it wet and sizing it for reproduction by Ronnie Kendrick in the Camera Room.

Cigarettes tossed on the floor of the composing room while Glover Williams put the waxed copy on the pages.  The whiskey Glover kept in his desk. Sometimes a dash in my coffee.

I reminded Max of my "Whitey Ford/Fuchs Winner" headline when we spoke of the art of getting headlines to fit, back when putting together newspapers was a human artform, not performed by computers.

Wax pencils. Sizing wheels. Pica poles. Cigarettes. Rude language, assholes. Razors and tape.

We spoke of the first time I met him. It was on the second day I worked at The Leaf-Chronicle in Clarksville. Monday, I reported to work with sports editor Gene Washer, who had hired me the week before for $125 a week, enough for me to find a cheap efficiency apartment on the other side of the tracks, literally, (the last train to Clarksville daily rolled through my yard in the mid-afternoon) and near the Cumberland River and the bridge that sometimes was my depressed destination and challenge.

Max was off that day when I began at The Leaf-Chronicle. Probably fishing at Lake Barkley.  In fact, once he and I became friends -- instantly and forever -- he thought I might enjoy fishing with him. He bought me a one-day license and we went crappie fishing.

I think I caught one. Also nearly bagged a snake that hanged from a tree near shore. Merrily cleaned and fried up mine with all the others that Max had caught.  She may have had to rob the freezer.  

That was the last time I ever fished. My passion, my free time, all was tied up in the newsroom. Or in a bar. Or maybe listening to John Lennon music in my apartment. Or walking on bridges and looking down. 

There's a lot more things I said about Max, over the years and last year when he died. He taught me the technical aspects of being a newspaperman and was my biggest cheerleader when I flourished not just as an editor or reporter but, especially, as a columnist and a leader of the staff. 

"You make sure your fellas don't get out of line," he cautioned me when we used the newsroom for some of our movie.  Max was there, in his office, probably chuckling at what we were up to. It was harmless, especially when we did not burn the building down in the Mission: Impossible scene. 

 Today my thoughts are more about Merrily. But to think about one is to think of the other.

It was the most perfect of love affairs, partnership, two people who found out they were perfect for each other while sharing cotton candy on a stalled Ferris wheel in their hometown of Richmond, Indiana.

She was always glad to see Max and me when we came into their family room, not far from Fort Campbell -- where Max had been posted -- every Saturday night as we took our dinner break during my early years in Clarksville.

We'd stop by the Burger King and get at least one Whopper with cheese apiece and maybe a Frostee and go out to the Moss house for our dinner break.

We'd eat and watch Archie Bunker, eventually washing our Frostees down with beers before we went back to finish out the next six hours until the newspapers came off the presses.

We always were joined by the kids and by Fluffy, the wonderful black dog with the imaginative name, who enjoyed Whopper scraps. I was sad when Fluffy died. I love dogs, but I also loved that family that was broken-hearted by that loss.

Merrily, who ran a lingerie store at the time -- the beloved town madam, a friend of mine, bought her "girls'" work clothes there. That madam, by the way, helped more people without taking credit than anyone I've known.

She'd bring money to me to donate to various causes I'd written about, because she didn't think people would want to know the $500 or whatever came from business between the sheets. She was a beautiful and smart woman, a history scholar, which may be why she took up the world's oldest profession.

Anyway, she was a customer and a friend of Merrily's.

I am having trouble thinking of where to go next. After all, I have a half-century worth of memories of time spent with the Moss family in my heart. 

Merrily will be cremated soon and a memorial service will be held a week from Friday at the same funeral home in Pleasant View where Max was saluted a year ago.

There weren't many of us there, as it was deep in the COVID scare. I sat across the aisle from Merrily and a row in front of my dear friend, Larry Schmidt, who Max and I hired to be our No. 3 sportswriter after he graduated from Austin Peay.

Larry remans my friend. If you ever truly are my friend, you will stay that way. Loyalty is required, but it goes both ways. If you ever turn on me, betray my loyalty or hurt one of my loyal friends, you really are dead to me. A lot of those out there, unfortunately. I've learned in life that most "loyalty" is only make-believe until people get what they want out of you.

Max and Merrily earned a loyalty and love from me that never will end. I am sorry they are dead, but they live in my heart. Life after death. Eternal life. At least in my heart, no matter your beliefs. But theirs were strong beliefs, so I'm sure they registered with St. Pete for the Ferris wheel ride.

Merrily's ashes and Max's ashes -- Karen has kept them, and even spoken with them, I'm told, for the last year -- will be taken up to Richmond, Indiana, to be buried by the rest of their family.

Course, Max and Merrily won't be there. Like I said, they may be in those recliners cheering for Butch and Sundance. 

Or perhaps -- and this is something I'm hoping for -- they'll be once again on that first date, stranded on the Ferris wheel with the cotton-candy.  Max probably isn't scared of heights anymore. And I'm sure Merrily took her sweet tooth to the great beyond.

Sounds reasonable.