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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”