Bill Shelton has been dead a long time. His son, Scott (actually William Scott) died 14 years ago today.
Bill became my friend shortly after I moved to Clarksville,
Tennessee, in 1974, to work for The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper.
I actually remained in Clarksville too long, but when I did
finally get the torturous personal roadblocks out of my way, I left. Ran for my life, really. Seldom go back.
But I do time-travel there, and in my deranged head I visit
with my friends, mostly dead folks, and we talk about our time together.
Actually, today’s ramble is supposed to be about Scott, who
was among my best friends. He rode with me and my brother, Eric, and Rob Dollar
when we went to meet The Lone Ranger, forming deep relationships with Clayton
Moore that lasted until the masked man's final adios. "Hi-yo, Silver, away!"
Scott’s role, though, was as a facilitator to lawlessness, a condition to which I am dangerously prone. Scott got so excited that he leaned over my shoulder and pleaded, loudly, for me to
run for the state line when Kentucky law was on my tail and the sanctuary of
Tennessee was just a few miles away.
“He can’t follow us into Tennessee, Flap!” Scott said. “He
doesn’t have the authority.”
“Flap,” is short for “Flapjacks,” a nickname and pseudonym in
which I threw caution to the wind, drank too much alcohol and coffee, smoked
too much, adopted stray humans and animals, fought for the First Amendment and
against Korporate Amerikan tyranny and contributed mightily to charity.
We met up with The Lone Ranger in 1983 at the fairgrounds,
or whatever they call it in Hoptown, where Rob, aka “Death,” still lives in
virtual anonymity, even though he was the editor of the newspaper there for
decades and also was deputy mayor.
He took that latter duty so seriously that he and Mayor Rich
Liebe (aka "Da Mayor") and Rob would go so far as even empty trash cans if the
public works guys missed a house.
They did it on horseback, too. Nah. That’s something of a lie. Well, it’s purely a lie. They did, however, go out and collect the trash if a citizen called and said public works had skipped their home, their street, their trailer park. The duo even had to pick up trash at the Insane Asylum one evening. (The "mental hospital" is near the edge of town and is not far from the house where Lonnie Lankford first told me about the Little Green Men who attacked his family out in nearby Kelly, Kentucky. There's a book -- "Monkeys Don't Wear Silver Suits" --about Lonnie and that alien invasion. Rob and I wrote it. We spent a lot of miles driving Da Mayor's official Cadillac in pursuit of interviews for that book.)
On those garbage collection runs, Rich, who is a car connoisseur, was driving that huge, shit-colored Cadillac, and he’d pull up to any still-full garbage can. He and Rob would leap from the car, grab the cans or can – any that public works had skipped – and they’d empty them into his trunk. Sometimes they emptied them in the back seat, which was especially stupid, considering it was pure Corinthian leather and the garbage – consisting of banana skins, Alpo cans, fetuses, soft onions, watermelon rinds, chicken bones and old tea bags (if they were in the wealthy part of town) – was baked in the 98-degree Hoptown sun.
Since they wore their suits and ties when serving the
public, they often had to brush the maggots from their clothes before going to
City Council meetings. “Those are the real maggots there,” Rob and Rich agreed.
Probably wasn’t an attitude good for their political futures, which basically
ended with two giant thuds. And I was the only one who cared.
Occasionally, Rob and Da Mayor would fill in for the fire
department and take the smaller of the two tankers out of the firehouse to
extinguish grass fires along Fort Campbell Boulevard. I rode with them once,
and it was fun. I did burn my right pinky toe, though.
Now, Rob is unemployed (what we like to call “retired”) and
Rich roars around Hoptown in a 1962 Corvette convertible, always hollering to
strangers: “God Bless you extra good.”
Or something like that. He’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and
he always pays when we go out to eat. He was the nicest mayor of the dozens I've known as a journalist. He's even
nicer than “Wild Turkey,” who is dead and who I may visit later.
Well, Rob and Rich remain alive at this writing. This really
is supposed to be about Scott, who was only 57 … 14 years ago, when that
fucking cancer took him.
“At least I lived long enough to see The Lone Ranger,” he
would tell me during our frequent calls in the last few years of his life, even
before he was dealt the news that cancer was going to kill him.
Afterward, too. And in the years since he died. We still converse.
I started out this little stream of mind-snot
by talking about the Sheltons, Bill and Little Bill (remember, his full name
was “William Scott Shelton,” even though that was a fact he kept secret. I
believe he finally told his wife, Elise, when he was on his deathbed. But she
won’t confirm that. Unfortunately, I have unconfirmed reports that she often
referred to him as “Little Willy.”)
In Clarksville, he was just “Scott,” a radio journalist who
almost died of a stroke when I had Jimmy in the Morning play The Beatles’ “Helter
Skelter” during a 5-9 a.m. shift at WJZM-AM. I was there as a close friend of Scott’s and
an admirer of Jimmy – who drank too much and became an HVAC repairman in later
years. He was every bit as good as the
deejays on the big stations, but he never got his big break. He didn’t wear socks, and never was in
public without a gold neck chain and sunglasses. Even when he was passed out,
drunk, at a place called Camelot.
Jimmy also would buy me and Rob an endless stream of scotch
when we ran into him and Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Eddy Patterson at Camelot.
Jimmy would lift his head from the tabletop and wave at bar owner Buford
Thaxton, who personally would deliver the huge tankards of scotch to us. Rob and I went there every Sunday morning, just after midnight, after I inspected the "first run" and gave the OK for the presses to roll. Buford would close the doors at 2, but
allow me, Rob, Jimmy, local cops and usually our pal Jerry “Chuckles” Manley to stick
around until 3. He didn’t sell liquor after 2, by law, but he gave it to us as
sort of a customer-appreciation gesture.
Jimmy’s dead too. I really liked him. Because I was a
journalist and the front-page columnist and associate editor at the newspaper,
I often was rambling around Clarksville pre-dawn (we had to be at work by 5 or
some fucking hour on weekdays). Since
Scott was my pal – although as noted earlier, he later became “Badger News
Brother,” as dubbed by head News Brothers Tim “Flapjacks” Ghianni and Robert
“Death” Dollar. (Actually, I mostly call him “Rob,” but he is "Robert" to the
family, his mom, sisters, nephew, great-nephew, cats Columbo and Bob, all of
whom he cares for in Hoptown).
Other than having two sons and a wonderful wife and career
as a radio newsman and later a public relations specialist for a power company,
being a News Brother was the most important thing in Little Willy’s life.
Circling back a paragraph or two, I often would wander up
the stairs and into the WJZM studios, above a furniture store and a bordello,
and visit with Scott, who did all the news breaks, and Jimmy in the Morning.
More than once, I would appear as a guest either on a news break (I did radio
news in college when I was sober or not) or spinning stacks of wax with Jimmy.
Jimmy turned over a three-hour block to me one day, just for
me to talk about The Beatles and to play their recordings. Both of the radio
men were shocked when I slipped the 45 rpm version of “Helter Skelter” – aka
“Charlie’s Theme” -- on the turntable. The Beatles’ song that laid the
foundation for heavy metal rock is truly disturbing to the naive.
“Well will you, won't you want me to make you?
I'm coming down fast, but don't let me break you….”
I believe they broke the record after jerking it off the
turntable. "I may be your lover, but I ain’t no dancer," I reminded them.
Scott, who was a deeply religious Beatles worshiper while also a
Methodist, only liked the Fab Four’s “Moptops” era. Kind of made me sick, but he was my pal, so I
forgave him with a simple “Love, love me do…,” which I’d sing while sliding
down the banister from the radio station and to the door to Madison Street.
It was during that famous Beatles broadcast that Jimmy asked
me if I liked any of the younger acts that were on the radio in the late 1970s
or early 1980s. All I could come up with
were Springsteen and Petty and the Heartbreakers, and he told me he was not
looking for even-then “oldies” acts. So, I told him that most of what he played
each morning was shit. I pronounced it “sh-eye-t,” so sponsors like Don’s
Donuts and Wilson’s Catfish House wouldn’t pull their sponsorships. They paid
for their commercials by delivering crullers and fried filets to Scott and
Jimmy.
Since I was working basically for free at The
Leaf-Chronicle, it was great to be able to drop in on Scott and Jimmy and
grab a handful of catfish filets for me to share with my long-dead-now friend,
Skipper, a retired carny and sailor (if you believed his tales. Veracity is only important for some preachers and women who maintain they are virgins, so I made up stories of my own to tell him. None of mine were as good as his "the day I served spaghetti to Al Capone.") Skipper liked to sit with me on the bench in front of The Royal York Hotel
and Flophouse, especially when it was hot outside. Boy was it hot. That
run-down former luxury hotel was halfway between WJZM and the newspaper. And,
according to its neon sign, it was “Fireproof.”
But this is supposed to be about Scott, who died 14 years
ago today. He should not have done that. Most of my real friends are dead, so I
can’t talk with them too often. It was unfair that Scott, who was my biggest
cheerleader (other than my friend Rob, brother Eric and The Lone Ranger and
Brooks Robinson) when it came to my writing, died so young at 57. I was his favorite writer and he was sure I’d be able to make it as a
freelancer after I got butt-fucked by one of our sick nation’s largest
newspaper chains. Those “newspaper” execs had made the decision that old men
who knew where the stories were, had sources in government and on both sides of
the law and who knew how to navigate Nashville streets no longer were needed.
They went for young kids who could type press releases and kiss korporate ass –
sometimes French-style -- instead. Now newspapers are dead. (I should note that
in that “cheerleader” clause above, Rob’s all that’s left.)
Well, as I noted earlier, this is supposed to be about
Scott, who I really miss. He was a yellow-dog Democrat, so I’d love to hear his
take on the Emperor and his new clothes. I’ve never been to Greenland, anyway,
and I stay out of political commentary here, though I am disturbed … on many
levels. It's just the condition my condition is in.
One day I was sitting in my office here in my Nashville house and I called PR man Scott at the power company serving rural Clarksville, and I
was told he was out for a long lunch. I called him back a couple hours later.
“I’ve been driving around town pulling ‘Bush for President’
signs out of people’s yards,” he said. I drove up to Clarksville the next day, and
we emptied out his trunk and burned the pile of signs in the wishing well on Public
Square. My friend, the previously mentioned Mayor Ted “Wild Turkey” Crozier
came out of his office and poured vodka on the fire.
Actually, most of this is true, except Mayor Ted never would
waste vodka like that. I loved that crazy fucker, who wore a “Tim Ghianni for
Mayor” lapel button when he went out to greet Senator John Glenn at Outlaw
Field. “Johnny Boy,” as Rob and I addressed the first American to orbit the
Earth, was in town for a fund-raiser as he was exploring a presidential
run. Truly, and there is Zapruder-like
film to prove this, Secret Service agents reached for their shoulder holsters
when Rob, me, Jerry “Chuckles” Manley and John “Street” Staed ran onto the
runway to greet Johnny Boy.
But this is about Scott today. Because he died 14 years ago
and with that zapped away a guy I loved and who I considered to be among a
special band of derelicts who didn’t mind hanging around with me.
I actually knew his dad, Bill, before I met Scott.
Clarksville then was a truly special place. The Leaf-Chronicle was a really
excellent newspaper. Course now it’s a worthless piece of shit. But back then,
we put out a great paper, sometimes even being named “Best in the South” in
contests.
Clarksville lifers like Bill Shelton and my late pal the motorcycle-riding meter-reading cop Russ Herndon viewed the paper as theirs. Nobody
views online “news’’ sites so personally. I had become well-known in
Clarksville for my sportswriting and then, for years, as featured front-page
columnist and associate editor.
If Bill had a complaint or, more often, a good idea he wanted
to share, not just about or for me, but for the newspaper staff as a whole, he
would wander up into the newsroom and plop down in the visitor’s chair by my
desk. I’d generally take the opportunity to lean back and fire up a Merit 100.
“Tim, you are a smart guy, don’t you realize that you can’t
beat those things? They’ll kill you if you don’t quit,” he’d tell me often.
When I finally did quit in January 2000, snuffing out my
last cigarette in the ashtray near my charcoal grill in the middle of my Nashville
yard, I thought of Bill. Long dead, but I figured he was smiling.
Anyway, it was somewhere in those long and drawling
conversations that he admitted he had a son who would be named “Badger News Brother” by the
time he died.
Scott was still away at the University of Tennessee – where
he was known for taking off his shirt at football games and flashing his perky
nipples – studying to eventually take over for Huntley and Brinkley, both long
dead by now and perhaps even by then – as TV/broadcasting’s best journalist.
Bill -- whose middle name was "Hardy," keeping son William Scott Shelton from being a "Jr." -- often told me I’d probably like his son, but asked me to not
lead him astray, something I always enjoyed doing, when he graduated and
returned to Clarksville.
In short order we were friends. He also befriended my News
Brothers pals “Chuckles” and “Death.”
Chuckles is still alive, by the way, unlike most of my friends. But he
forgets stuff, like where he been. (The previous sentence is not poor grammar; it's just the way I talk when I'm enjoying hijinks with my News Brothers, living and dead.)
Eventually, “Badger” was there for many of my adventures. I
don’t think he drank much and liked to stay home and cuddle his still-extraordinary wife Elise, so he missed
about three-quarters of the free time when I was with Chuckles and Death.
But he was there when The Lone Ranger came to Hoptown. Let’s
get back to the story here about me stepping on the gas and trying to get away
from a state trooper who simply desired to give me a speeding ticket as I drove –
with my brother Eric and Scott in my old Duster, with the bad brakes – from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to Clarksville, Tennessee, back in the winter of '83.
As soon as I saw the blue lights in my rearview mirror, it increased my paranoia. I said “Fuck me,” but
instead, Scott urged me to speed up and “run for the Kentucky-Tennessee state
line.”
It was quite a chase for a few miles, as Trooper Rudy pulled up alongside me and pointed his pistol
at me. He signaled for me to pull over.
“You can outrun him, Flap!” urged Badger.
Most of that is true, except the pistol and the race for the
border. And Trooper Rudy even told me later that he “might have made a mistake.
Sometimes radar is wrong.”
Of course, he told me that after I had served as my own
counsel and went to Christian County, Kentucky, court in Hoptown to fight the ticket.
“Whatcha in here, for, kid?” said more than one of the
father rapers, mother fuckers and murderers on the docket that day. I had been erroneously assigned to a circuit
court day reserved for real criminals. I sat there with really bad guys. Like
most people they liked me, a lot.
“I was arrested when I was running for the state line after
I saw The Lone Ranger,” I told them. That seemed to satisfy them.
They all applauded from the holding cell at the back of the
courtroom after I concluded my defense and rested my case.
That didn’t affect the judge’s decision though, even my
sterling cross-examination of Trooper Rudy – he said “He did it, your honor”
and pointed his pistol at me in the courtroom – fell flat.
So I paid the $50 or $100 plus court costs – a week’s salary
from the slimy bastards for whom I worked.
But this is supposed to be about Scott, who has been dead 14 years by now.
But he was there -- with Rob, Danny and Tennessee Williams (an admittedly off-kilter fellow who did not write plays and used an ax to protest "Reaganomics" in a bank lobby) -- when I nearly fell off the roof of the
newspaper building and smashed thin as a flapjack on Commerce Street three floors below. We were
making a movie, but that’s a long and tawdry tale of greed and corruption and the long-dead Tony Durr and The Big Guy, and complete with gunfights and police chases.
"Badger" was there, I think, at my Clarksville Bicentennial party
that ended up with me and Rob doing laps in a five-foot-long kiddy pool.
Chuckles didn’t dive in because he couldn’t figure out what we were doing or where we been.
Badger was there when we – me, him and Rob – became best
friends with Hall of Fame Third Baseman Brooks Robinson. Brooks, who played four-corner catch with us
that day, became a great admirer of The News Brothers, especially Scott, who
told Brooks “you are a lot Whiter than Henry Aaron but not as White as Whitey
Ford.” Brooks agreed and gave Scott his
ball-glove. None of this was racist, just fact from observation, which you'd expect from journalist like Scott. I had developed a friendship with Henry Aaron, and even he agreed he was not as White as Whitey Ford.
Mostly, as I note above, Scott – “Badger News Brother,”
William Scott, Little Willy – Shelton was a great friend, a confidante. A true
pal.
The last time I saw him alive, The News Brothers were in his
basement/Beatles room, drinking coffee and lighting farts. Elise served us
chocolate cake and pretended not to be offended by our aroma. She also made sure Little Willy’s tank always was filled with oxygen – his life-sustenance late in his mortal struggle – and was
operating OK. I think the aroma of the farts threw her off a bit.
Scott was gleeful as we – Chuckles, Rob, Scott and Jim
“Flash” Lindgren tried to do a “Beatles Abbey Road walk” across the room. I
kept getting lost. And Chuckles couldn’t figure out where he been then, either. He was positive it wasn't Third Street, though.
Unfortunately, through the glee of fine Brotherhood, I could see the tombstones
in Badger’s eyes. He wasn’t going to give up easily. He was too ornery for
that.
Yet, as we all left, I hugged Scott long – but not too hard,
because I reckoned his frail bones, likely brittle from his mortal war -- might
break. I told him “I’ll see you again soon.” Neither of us believed that.
He died a month or two later.
That really pissed me off.
When I think of Scott, I usually get sad, cause he’s gone.
Today, I’m pretty happy. Not ‘cause he’s dead, but because we had a lot of fun
with The Lone Ranger, Jimmy in the Morning, “Chuckles,” “Death” and Brooks
Robinson. And I always have loved his
wife and boys.
I wish I could celebrate his 72nd birthday next month, maybe let him spin some of The Beatles' early pop music he loved so much. I’m more for the later stuff, but Scott, who is dead, could choose whatever he wanted to play. "Turn me on, dead man," as John Lennon once said on "The So-Called White Album," which Scott despised.
"I don't know why they had to change like that," he said. I told him people always change, right up til they die. He wasn't given the opportunity to keep changing.
Regardless, he loved The Beatles almost as much as I do.
As our Scouse-spewing heroes told us “All You Need Is Love,” and that love, at least, lives on when I think of Scott.
Then again, John, Paul, George and Ringo also told us about “yellow, matter custard
dripping from a dead dog’s eye,” and that became the phrase we’d yell at each
other if we were walking on opposite sides of Third Street. Or if one of us was
dead and the other sitting alone at his computer listening to “Anthology 4” and
thinking about “those thrilling days of yesteryear” as the announcer said
before Clayton Moore and Silver tore across the TV screen with Jay Silverheels and Scout close behind.
But unlike The Lone Ranger,
Scott won’t ride again. There aren't reruns in real life. And death.
Today, to quote the Eggman, “See how they smile like pigs in a sty, see how they snied....I’m crying...."
"Goo goo g'joob," Badger. You were, in highest News Brothers' praise, a damn nice guy.
The last night at Badger's house: Rob "Death" Dollar, Scott "Badger" Shelton and Ricky "Dumbo" Moore (front row), David "Teach" Ross, Jerry "Chuckles" Manley, Tim "Flapjacks" Ghianni and Jim "Flash" Lindgren. This was photographed in Badger's recreation room. Harold "The Stranger" Lynch would have been there, but he already was dead.
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