Stop the Presses!!! Max Moss, dear friend, mentor, best newspaperman I ever knew, grabs his pica pole and wax pencil and puts out his final edition

 Max Moss, the best newspaperman I ever knew, died at 11:30 a.m. Thursday at his home in Pleasant View, Tennessee.

He had been fighting cancer for a long time, and he knew for the last few months that he was going to lose the battle. 

After his first diagnosis more than a year ago, he underwent treatment, and the cancer subsided and it seemed like he may be out of the woods. But, as it usually does, the cancer returned with a vengeance a few months ago, and the doctors gave him at the most six months to live. 

I think, because he was a tough but kind gentleman, Max made it through four of those months in pretty good style, and he really didn’t need to be on pain medicine for much of that time. I believe he was as determined as possible to keep his head clear.

He wanted to be able to talk with his wife of 59 years, Merrily – more on her in a bit – and with his kids and grandchildren. Perhaps 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.

Until recent days, I was able to call him, and he was never one to complain. In fact, the last time we spoke, which was just before this last descent toward death, I asked him how he was doing.

“Can’t complain,” he said, one of his regular expressions. “Don’t really have all that nasty stuff yet.” Or maybe he called it “icky stuff.” Like I said, he didn’t swear.

He didn’t dwell on it, but I could tell he was having a hard time talking, and he needed to get off the phone in 15 minutes or so. Most of our calls lasted at least a half-hour. But my friend was running out of fire.

I also knew that I wasn’t going to interfere with his pride by forcing him to talk when it really was becoming almost impossible, because of the drain on his lungs.  Of course, the cancer wasn’t just in his lungs. It had spread to the liver as well. 

It never got to his spirit.

Here’s a note I got from him on June 11:

The news is not good.

 Monday, I learned the latest scan I had shows I have cancer in my liver and my lung.  Nothing can be done to stop/slow its spread.

"Maybe six months" is what Max Jr., Karen and I learned when we met with the specialist who helps folks dealing with such situations.

For now, while I'm still feeling OK, Merrily and I, with the kids' help, are getting our financial and other such details in order.

Max 

Perfect news writing. Who, What, When, Where, Why and How in the lead. Inverted pyramid. Solid ending adding final information.  

Because of the COVID thing, I could not go up to see him in the last few months. I am fortunate enough that I went up there just before the shutdown.  It was before the final diagnosis, but he knew that time was coming.

I really needed to see him then.  I knew he was failing, not from complaints from him but because his son, Max Jr., kept me informed.

Max Jr. was there the last time I was up there and Max and Merrily were in good spirits, sharing donuts that their son had picked up fresh that morning.  I knew he was getting tired then, too, so I left after an hour or two and rolled back downhill to Nashville.

Besides that, the two Maxes were bound for yet another doc’s visit in Nashville.  Max Jr. took the donuts along when he and his dad climbed into the young man’s fire-engine-red pickup with Oklahoma tags.

The last three times when I have called up there, Max was sleeping.  I spoke with Merrily and Karen while he rested.

 But, like I said, the last time I spoke with him, maybe three weeks ago, he was the same loving old friend who pretty much taught me all I ever 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 in the camera room.  Cigarettes tossed to the floor of the composing room while Glover Williams put the waxed copy on the pages.   

I reminded him again of my “Whitey Ford/Fuchs Winner” headline when we spoke of the art of getting headlines to fit, back before the computer took that task, basically all of the layout and design tasks, over.

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, just enough that I could afford an efficiency apartment in a rundown section of town on the other side of Crossland and near the Cumberland River.

Monday was Max’s day off. Seeing as that was September 12, 1974 or thereabouts and it was sunny, I’m sure Max was out at Lake Barkley, fishing. 

I did go out with him once when he fished Barkley. He wanted to see if I’d become interested. Or maybe he just wanted to spend some time with me – we loved each other as friends and colleagues – so he bought me a one-day license. I think he lacked faith that I’d take up the hobby. He was right. My only passion back then was in the newsroom. Or maybe in a bar.

Anyway, I enjoyed being with him when we launched at Bumpus Mills Marina, in Stewart County, but I believe I only caught one crappie. And I avoided a snake hanging from one of the branches.  

We stopped on the way back at another spot near Barkley where he wanted to show me a beaver dam. No, we didn’t kill any beaver and eat them.

Hell, we’d barely gotten crappie, but thanks to Max, we did carry enough back to the Moss’ North Clarksville home for that evening’s meal. Merrily cleaned and cooked them.

It wasn’t too long after that Max asked me to come out to his house and help him get a pool table down in the basement. It was a tough job. And I know when he moved, he left the pool table in the basement.

Oh, Max and I did take many more drives out to Bumpus Mills Marina, because he and Merrily had purchased land there. They later gave up plans of building a home there.  But he did like to go look at that land and also down at the water. He was good company. We several times paced out his lot, and he continued to dream of walking from his house and dropping a crappie line in off the dock.

Before I go on much farther, I need to mention more about Merrily. She is a wonderful woman, always welcoming me into their home. In fact, on Saturdays, Max and I generally would get into the newsroom at around 10 a.m. or so.  We had about 16 broadsheet pages to fill for Sunday. We’d work until at least 1 a.m.

We’d spend the first couple hours talking to football and basketball coaches to get the results of games we hadn’t covered. Back then, The Leaf-Chronicle, the oldest newspaper in the state, covered something like seven or eight counties, including all of the ones in the immediate area of Tennessee as well as two counties in Kentucky.

Oh, and we also covered the sports at Fort Campbell, the military post near where Max lived and the place where he had served much of his own infantry stint.  He did go to Vietnam once, delivering some top-secret papers from honchos at Fort Campbell to others in Saigon.  He told me he was scared (he didn’t say, “shitless,” but he didn’t need to), and was glad to uncuff that briefcase and leave it in Nam and get the hell … or “the heck” … back to Clarksville and Fort Campbell.   

Anyway, I was talking about Merrily.  In recent weeks, when I have called up to the comfortable house she and her husband shared in Pleasant View, Tennessee – halfway between Clarksville and Nashville – she answered the phone. “Your buddy’s sitting right here,” she’d say. Or “your buddy’s sleeping, so if you can call back later.”

The last time I spoke with her, though, her words were a little scrambled. I figured she was a little tired.  Max Jr. told me, a few days later, that she had suffered a stroke, likely brought on by the stress of caring for her husband. And, of course, knowing all the while that it was a losing cause.

Merrily, it should be mentioned, is brave in her own right.  Long ago, she worked for the city of Clarksville, with her workspace being in the City Garage.  That apparently was before people realized how caustic a workplace can be, and her lungs were permanently scarred by the fumes created when cars and trucks were being painted.

She is down to something like 10 percent lung capacity. But she doesn’t complain, either.  In fact, she joked with me that as Max’s disease got worse, he was even having to use more oxygen than her.

Max told me, with a laugh, that the problem with being on oxygen was that he and Merrily got their hoses – those thin, clear plastic things attached to the oxygen tanks – tangled up.

Since my last call to Merrily – her husband was resting and morphine was taking its toll – I have spoken with their beloved children, Max Jr. and Karen.  I’ve known them since they were children, of course.

Both of them would be in their family room on Saturday nights when Max and I took our dinner break. We’d been in early, and we would close out late. So we usually took about an hour and a half, picked up some Whoppers with cheese at the Burger King by the Red River and we’d go out to the Moss home to watch Archie Bunker. Max provided the beer, although we limited ourselves to one or two, because we still had hours of work to go.

We always were joined by Fluffy, the wonderful black dog with the imaginative name, who was glad for hamburger scraps.  I was very sad when Fluffy died.

Oh, and the smoking.  I had smoked since I was about 16. In high school it was mostly cigars and pipes that I would puff on while walking along nearby Lake Michigan (we lived in the barely-northern suburbs of Chicago).  In college, during my first set of finals, I ran out of cigars in the middle of the night and went down to the commons room below the dorm to put two quarters in the machine for a pack of Camels or maybe Marlboros or Winstons. Not Luckys though, even though LSMFT was their slogan (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco).

My smoking of tobacco and otherwise became a big part of my being as I made it through college.  I liked to roll my own, but Camels probably were my preferred tobacco cigarette.

When I got out of college in 1973, and after I toured the country in my 1965 Ford Falcon, I gave up smoking. Not a big deal. Oh, the occasional “pipe” or cigar, but no cigarettes.

When I first stepped in that Leaf-Chronicle newsroom on September 12, 1974, I quickly learned that quitting smoking for health reasons was fruitless. Everybody, even copy desk chief and religion columnist, Big Jim Monday, smoked cigarettes.  Max was one of the worst offenders. I sat between him and Gene Washer and puffing machine Richard Worden, the city editor who eventually died of leg injuries from his stint as a Marine in Vietnam, was a few feet behind me.

The first day or so, I bummed cigarettes. But then I figured “what the hell,” and went back to the break room and slid in two or three quarters for my own pack.  Before I quit smoking, 20 years later, I sometimes reached three packs a day. That went well with my 40 cups of coffee a day average.    

I’m kind of wandering around here. Even though I knew he was dying, any day, it is hard to grasp fully. He wouldn’t approve of all this wandering around, either. Get to the (fucking) point.

I think about the first ballgame he worked with me. It was Thursday night at Municipal Stadium in Clarksville, where Erin (Now Houston County High School) was taking on The Clarksville Academy. I guess that would have been Sept. 15, 1974.

I can’t remember who won. Doesn’t really matter. All I can remember is Max’s steady reassurance as he taught me how to properly fill out a scorebook and take pictures and notes all at the same time. I must have done OK, since that was my only training session. I went back to the newsroom to write the story. Max went home, apparently satisfied that I’d do OK.

The next night I was on my own, probably at Fort Campbell, while Max went to either Clarksville or Northwest, the only high schools in the city back then.

He’s the guy who taught me the disciplines of newspapering: use of the pica pole, sizing wheel, layout and design, developing film, printing pictures, editing wire and other copy.

I pretty much already knew how to write, but I felt assured when it was Max who was the guy with the wax pencil going through my copy. I knew that whatever changes he made were warranted. He told me I was the best writer he knew. That meant a lot.

He really liked my stories from New Orleans, when I covered the Muhammad Ali-Leon Spinks fight for the Chronicle. Max was managing editor by then and I was sports editor.

He was as much a friend as a boss (he was assistant sports editor when I began there). And he also was a professor, who valued what he saw from his pupils. I was the main pupil for a few years.

I eventually became sports editor after Max had a heart attack or some such, and it was decided he needed to keep more regular hours and stay off the road.

It’s funny now, seeing as how things change, that when I went to the hospital to visit Max after that heart problem, we both sat there smoking and laughing.  As far as I know that behavior is not acceptable in today’s society.

When Max became managing editor, he named me  his associate editor, and that pretty much had me tending to the paper while it was being put together.

There’s a lot more I could say about Max and the lessons I learned. The laughs we shared. The trifecta bets we made weekly during the season at the track in Evansville, Indiana. Ellis Park? I think. Max would go and place the bet as Gene Washer and I chipped in $2 apiece. I don’t think we ever won.

It was like the football cards we played weekly in those days when gambling was illegal. The horizontal pink pieces of paper were available at Poor Man’s Country Club or other purveyors of beer and bait. We’d all go in for $2 apiece. And we’d generally lose.

Max and I went on to work together at the Nashville Banner (he went there a few years ahead of me), where he was wire editor and did some outdoors writing.

When the Banner closed, Max didn't get a job at The Tennessean, which bought us out. I don't know why they didn't hire him. His age or their ignorance? Or maybe he wanted a change. So he took his fishing pole and knowledge and was writer-producer of the outdoors module of country.com, a web site operated by Turner Broadcasting and CBS.

 When that job played out, he pretty much went home to Pleasant View, where he could more easily take care of his bride as her health diminished, while he set up shop as a freelance writer, covering outdoors topics, fishing in particular. His “research” for that was tough: He had to take his boat out and fish for crappie or whatever. And shoot pictures of dawn at Lake Barkley. He didn’t hunt, though. One Christmas his family gave him a deer rifle. I don’t think he ever used it. “I couldn’t go out there and kill Bambi,” he said.

He edited a national bass fisherman's magazine, The Lunker Hole, for awhile. And he was  head of the Tennessee Outdoor Writers Association and other organizations involving hunting and fishing. He also was active in his church and on the local planning commission. 

Max quit smoking long ago, so his cancer came as a shock to me. To him, too. But he was stoic. He sat in his chair, next to the chair where Merrily sat, and watched cowboy movies during the many months leading up to his death.

The last time we talked, before he began his long descent into sleep and death, we were hankering for the days of real film, typewriters, the pneumatic tube that carried stories and art (photos is what they call them now) to be typeset, the art of counting spaces and writing the perfect headline. Carrying pages to the camera room to be shot before they were turned into plates. Standing by the presses with the foreman, checking the pages, making sure they were just right, before we let them go. Neither the pressmen nor the newspapermen wanted smeared pages. Nowadays, there is no such stopgap of running a few hundred, allowing for the good ones to finally begin spitting off the press.  Of course, there aren’t many newspapers anyway.

We talked of our many friends in the business who are gone. And we wondered how many of the coaches we worked with still were alive.

“I’d do anything to go back to those days when we worked together back in the ‘70s,” I told him. I meant it.

“Me too,” he said. “You know, we sound like a couple of old movie gunfighters who are being pushed out by progress.”

I thought of Butch and Sundance, The Wild Bunch, even The Shootist.  The stories really weren’t about the fact they died. But how they lived. And didn’t back down. Time just ran out on them.

Then he said: “You know, Tim, you always were a free-spirit.  You had fun while we worked together.”

Yeah, I did rebel a lot during my life, but only against authority figures I didn’t respect.  Still do, really. My soul hasn’t changed.

I never swore at Max nor showed him disrespect.  Other bosses, the ones who specialized in back-stabbing and lying and age discrimination, well, they didn’t earn that degree of respect.

I always respected … nah, I always will respect Max Moss, a classy gentleman, kind soul, fair fisherman, my mentor, a great boss and fine family man.

The story isn’t that he’s dead, of course. But that such a man lived and will forever inhabit a spot in my life.

Max, Rest In Peace.    

I love you, old friend.  And I’m sure they have pica poles in heaven.  You might see if Glover is there to help you paste up the pages. Hell, Max, now you can even fire up a Winston and see if Glover has the whiskey bottle he always kept in his desk. Sounds reasonable to me.

Max Moss was the best newspaperman I ever met. 

Stop the presses.

   

 

 

 

 

The Thanksgiving Eve that me and Freddy Wyatt used an aluminum baseball bat on a punk and other tales of friendship with a great family

Slowly, I backed myself from the area where the unkempt and threatening young man was talking to my beloved friend Freddy Wyatt.

My slow backward “gait’’ was with purpose. I was going into the “bait room” of the Sack ‘n’ Pack market on Riverside Drive with one purpose: To grab an aluminum Louisville Slugger (it may have been a different brand, as this was the day before Thanksgiving 1976, so there is that blur. Oh, that blur. It only gets worse.)

The Slugger was on the right side of the back wall in the bait room, along with a couple of ball gloves, a badminton-for-beginners set or two, a few basketballs and footballs.  Thank God, no soccer balls, as this was 44 years ago and soccer had not yet infected our American sports world, other than high school intramurals. Oh, I should mention here that one of my three broken noses came playing soccer in high school. I may not be a tough guy, but I played sports for keeps. I kept playing as blood flowed. No Magic Johnson rules back then.

That’s another story, maybe for my obit or something. Broke the nose twice more playing football along with a few “stingers” as they euphemistically refer to concussions on the gridiron. 

Anyway, back to the day before Thanksgiving in 1976. At the Sack ‘n’ Pack. It may have been spelled “Sak ‘n’ Pak,” but I like it better with the “c” in both words.

By the way, also in the bait room was this huge plywood and plastic bin filled with crickets – you’d lift the metal screen door and scoop up some to use in your crappie-fishing expeditions – as well as nightcrawlers in little cartons of dirt. Different kinds of worms for the fisherman. Probably even “Red Wigglers, the Cadillac of Worms.”

Then there was the standard fishing gear, poles, rods, reels, scaling knives, hand grenades to throw in the water so you could kill a batch and scoop them off the top of the water, shotguns and more. I’m lying about the hand grenades and shotguns. If Freddy had those in his Sack ‘n’ Pack bait room stock, I may have used those to try to kill this thug who seemed so threatening.

The guy, probably was my age, which was 25 back then. I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now. Not really, of course.

Most people already were on their way to see their families on this Wednesday, back when the world shut down for holidays and viruses generally didn’t kill whole floors of nursing homes and nice people in general. I had a basketball game to cover that night and would go see my folks the next morning.

Carefree days, with me holding onto a metal baseball bat, preparing to whack the brains out of a guy if he attempted to rob or otherwise harm this guy who I thought of as a best friend. I still keep him among those ranks of best friends, as I love him now, 40-very-odd years after we did our hanging around, drinking beer and playing pinball for quarters in the store.

Love his family, too. Mary Coleman Wyatt remains the kindest friend’s wife in my memory.  And their baby, Diana, was a beautiful and warm little girl then. Baby Freddy T, now a preacher of some renown, came later, though I did get a chance to know him, too. Praise be to God, etc.

Back in those days, I ate at their house at least once a week. I was a single guy working in a town where I knew no one.

I met Freddy one night when I walked from the apartment that I rented in a rat-infested house near the railroad tracks – actually the train went right through my back yard, a sound I came to relish. The Last Train to Clarksville? Shit, trains ran day and night, hauling coal and gasoline and Malt-o-Meal or whatever within 20 feet of my kitchen. The landlord got rid of the rats, after I complained. Her name was Mrs. Blackwood and she always wore a neck brace. Her daughter, paralyzed, always was sprawled out in the back of the station wagon when her mom came to collect rent. I’d go talk to her. Name was Birdie, or maybe not. Nice young woman.

Anyway, when I moved to Clarksville in September of 1974 – went to work September 12 for The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper, the oldest paper in the state of Tennessee; Founded 1808; I think the phone number was 552-1808, but I may be wrong on the prefix – I had no friends in the Queen City of the Cumberland.

The AP Bureau chief in Nashville had – when I inquired about jobs there, fresh from my Easy Rider ramblings in a 1965 Ford Falcon Futura and a short and uninspiring stint at a PR/Ad Agency – told me Sports Editor Gene Washer at The Leaf-Chronicle was looking for a high school sports reporter.

The chief called Washer, who then told me to come on up, which I did, and I got a job. The long version of this story has James “Fly” Williams, a great basketball player with an undisciplined life, now in jail and labeled a “heroin kingpin” in the Bronx, involved. For that you should read the book “When Newspapers Mattered: The News Brothers & their Shades of Glory” that I wrote with my running buddy for decades Rob Dollar.  I’ve been told it would make a helluva movie about murders, alcohol, Tennessee Williams, dead monkeys and friendship, but mostly about how newspapers WERE before Korporate Fukkers gutted them. That happened long ago. Buy the book. You’ll laugh, cry and be amazed. And I think I get $2 for every sale.

Anyway, enough on that. I got the job, mostly working with Max Moss, the assistant sports editor/prep editor, who taught me the veteran’s tricks to covering high school sports. Max – the best newspaperman ever to be my boss – also taught me the fine points of shooting sports events.

 And, with the help of photo chief W.J. Souza, a tank driver during World War II, I learned how to develop film and print pictures. Sometimes if we were in a hurry, the printing was done from wet film and we didn’t let the photo paper dry, we just ran it to Ronnie Kendrick in the camera room. Ah, but that’s another story. About newspapers.

This one’s about Freddy. And it won’t  capture everything I love about the guy because I wrote one before and while I waited to finish it, my computer malfunctioned, the guts needed to be purged and the tale of Freddy Wyatt became so much formerly digital air.

What I really am illustrating above is that while I was working sports, I was working a lot of odd hours. Early mornings until about 1 or 2 p.m. and then again at night. I was not on the same work schedule as the rest of the people in the newsroom, who worked 5-5 or so and then went drinking or to a movie or out to eat.

So for a long time I had no friends there. Only nodding acquaintances … other than with Washer and Max and W.J., and I have to admit I loved all of them, Max best, but they all were good men and were kind to me.

The problem was I had big holes in my day. And after ballgames got done at night or if I had a night off. No friends, not enough money ($125 per week) to have a phone, I’d make my own entertainment or stay in my apartment watching “Gunsmoke” reruns and the news on a TV with a 7-inch diagonal, black-and-white screen.

I hate being stuck inside, so often I sat out on a bench on the porch and smoked. Yeah, I smoked two or even three packs of cigarettes a day for many years as a newsman, but I never liked to smoke inside my apartment.

I had seen the bright Sack ‘n’ Pack sign down on Riverside Drive, about a half-mile downhill from my house (and a block south), so one lonely evening, I decided to walk down there. Buy some ice cream maybe. Some smokes. At that point in my life I wasn’t yet into drinking alone, all by myself, so usually I wasn’t buying the Natural Light that later would become my life’s blood (along with 12-year-old, low-end Scots whisky.)

There was just one person in the store that first night, and he was a little bored. Clarksville is not New York. Hell, back then it wasn’t much more exciting than Mayberry, except for the soldiers at Fort Campbell who kept running off the road and dying after nights on the town.  Liquor store owner Johnny Maddox was kidnapped during a robbery and murdered and his whole family became my friends later, but that was an unusual big-city type of violence.  Different for Clarksville.

The guy at the counter – and I can’t remember now if he was smoking Winstons or Marlboro – was so friendly. He asked me to go ahead and plop up on the second counter, facing him, and we visited for a few hours.

I learned all about Clarksville, golf and running a market from Freddy. I think he just adopted me because I was lonely and was pretty much a foreigner. Back then, Clarksville had only 63,000 people. Lots more now, but from what I can tell from my occasional visits, quantity seldom equals quality in this life.

Basically, what began that night was my new routine. If I had an afternoon off, I’d go down to the store and help Freddy. Sometimes I’d run the register. Occasionally I would do other things, like help him with the sandbags for the storefront when the Cumberland River across the street flooded.

When the Sack ‘n’ Pack empire expanded, with two more stores, I went wherever Freddy was working. In his second store, just across the river in Southside, he had a deli counter. I’d try to get there for the lunch rush so I could make sandwiches.

Half-inch slice of bologna on white bread, all soaked red with hot sauce, was the $1.25 house special. But we sold ham, salami, head cheese, whatever someone might want. And it was busy. The same at the store that was opened in St. Bethlehem.

Again, I’d try to make the lunch rush. And by then, his store was selling beer from a keg -- $3 a gallon or whatever – and we’d do our best to drink what wasn’t sold. No use letting the beer go to waste.

And we’d play the quarter bingo pinball machine.  Put a lot of quarters in, back in the days when such machines were legal. Made $100 one night. The payout, of course, came from the cash register, so the thrill was in the playing, with the winnings going back to the store.

I met most of Clarksville, it seems like, in those stores.  Guys like Peter Primm, an old man from the Trenton, Kentucky, area who liked to go for afternoon drives in the country and who wouldn’t mind a by-then well-known local journalist coming along.

Or the golf partners who met up with Freddy at the store. I didn’t play golf. Still don’t. But he tried to teach me, unsuccessfully, so I became the golf cart driver and beer distributor as we worked the Swan Lake Golf Course perhaps an afternoon per week.

And perhaps the best thing about being Freddy’s friend was the fact he was married to one of the world’s most-wonderful women.  Freddy often would drag me home with him for dinner after a hard afternoon of beer and sandwich-making and pinball.

Or if he didn’t, Mary Coleman would either drop in at the store or call and ask if I wanted to go to dinner at their house.

For a guy who had no friends in Clarksville, they became my family. Diana, too, as she grew.

My only bad experience at store in St. Bethlehem was that one day I entered during a blizzard. I’d just come from Nashville, where my parents lived, and I had an armload of albums to take to my apartment. Because it was so cold outside, I took them all into the store. I forgot to get them before I left that night and they were gone the next day.  One of the workers had likely taken them home. Ralph? Freddy? If you have a vinyl copy of “Wheels of Fire” and more from my collection, give me a call. I still want them back. Still, I don’t suspect anything nefarious. It’s a world of finders-keepers, after all.

I need to wrap back around and get to the end of the story soon, as I’ve got paperwork to do this afternoon.

But I do have to mention that all good things really do come to an end. Freddy and his partner Ralph Mickle (also a nice guy) were slowly backing out of the weird hours of the quick shop world and they’d become grocery wholesalers.

At first, I treated it like I had Sack ‘n’ Pack. Their warehouse was over behind the plaza where Pedigo Hardware was and not far from Camelot, which later became my all-night drinking place, where cops bought me scotch, Jimmy in the Morning also, if he could raise his head from the table. A good night included drunken soldiers fighting over women or football. Bodies flying, tables breaking.

I would walk over to the warehouse after work and hang out with the guys in their office at the new warehouse.

As expected, Freddy and even Ralph, welcomed my visits.  But it was a more-formal atmosphere. More serious business, I suppose. More at stake, I’m sure.

And they had partners. One of them was a former high school tennis coach and I'll bite my tongue before expanding on my description. He was from the “right” side of the tracks in Clarksville. We got along fine, especially when I covered his team’s matches.

But one day, as I was sitting there in the warehouse office, enjoying a Merit 100 or two, Freddy was back in the warehouse, working.

He had told me to hang around, but I was worried I was getting in the way.

That’s when the one-time coach decided it was time, I guess, to claim his territory. “What are you doing here?” he asked, cold and cruel.  “Why are you here every day? We really don’t want you here.”

Actually, I felt like crying. But then I figured that maybe I really was in the way. And I certainly wasn’t welcome by at least one of the partners, so I left the warehouse, essentially ending my daily contacts with my friend.

He was busy anyway, but he’d always have made room for me. But I didn’t want to tell him what his former tennis coach partner had said. Stirring up trouble between partners was something only an asshole would do, and generally I'm not perceived in that way.

So I moved on. Finding friends, good and bad, and living life that eventually ended with great relationships and a love of that town that I probably would have left long before if it hadn’t been for the friendship of Freddy Wyatt. And Mary Coleman. And Diana.

Eventually, I left Clarksville for Nashville, and it became my home. I love it in Nashville. I have a good family, dog and cat, nice little post-War house, decent life (except for the fact I was put out to pasture by the morning newspaper when I was 56. That’s another long story, and, again, check out the “When Newspapers Mattered” book by my friend Rob Dollar and me.)

And I haven’t done a real good job of keeping track of Freddy and his family. There had been years between when the former coach threw me out of the warehouse and I left Clarksville, so I hadn’t seen him much in the last almost 10 years I lived in Clarksville. I always missed our Sack 'n' Pack days and nights, though. Still do, actually.

And I still love Freddy -- and Mary Coleman and Diana -- and I think of them often.

Squashing out cigarettes on the floor in the late-night hours as Freddy and I talked at his store remains one of my great memories of warmth and friendship.

Which brings me back to Thanksgiving Eve in 1976.

It was cold outside. Boy was it cold. And this guy had come in from the highway (Riverside Drive) not making any sense, talking about having no way to get home to see his family, just generally blathering. His eyes darted like a madman or a drug-dazed guy. Either way, it was frightening.

He was pretty big too. And there weren’t any other people in the store besides me and Freddy.  The guy kept pushing himself closer and closer to Freddy and the cash register. He would pat against his upper chest, as if there may be a firearm there.

I looked at Freddy and nodded my head backward, toward the bait room, where the bats were.  Freddy nodded, softly, fear in his eyes.

We both knew this guy was planning on sticking up the store. At least we thought we knew that.

Which is why I stepped into the bait room and came back into the store, swinging the aluminum bat, blood spurting from his head, splattering on the door onto the highway. Fear strikes out.

Naah. Not really, though that might have been fun and make for a better tale. Really I was just holding the bat.. Pounding the barrel into my fist, making intimidating sound of aluminum on flesh, while we told the guy he’d better get going." Happy Thanksgiving, mother fucker."

He looked from me to Freddy and disappeared into the cold. Freddy locked the doors for a few minutes while we caught our breath.

That’s pretty much the end of the story, except for the fact I put the bat away in the bait room and we drove out to his house, near the Swan Lake course, for an early dinner.

I had a basketball game to cover that evening.

I guess I’m glad I didn’t have to use that bat, but I have no doubt I would have killed that punk if he had tried to rob or harm my friend Freddy Wyatt. I always loved a good Peckinpah film, and have little doubt, this would have led to slow-motion bloodshed as my bat cracked punk skull.



AUTHOR’S NOTE:  I have had many friends in life and too often I am writing about them after they are dead. That’s a good thing, as it helps the families and I know it helps me heal.  Today I decided to write this because, as far as I know, Freddy is fine. He can read this and know I’ll always love him and his family.   Then when he does die, I won’t have to spit something out in regret.

          

     

Virus that killed Prine killed CMA fest, but maybe Fan Fair will return to the Fairgrounds one day and I think Cuomo is doing a good job

This started out as a blog about the illness of John Prine, but, tragically and not unexpectedly, he succumbed the other day to COVID-19. It’s a major loss to us as a nation when a humanist who also is a true artist is gone.

And hell, I’ll just miss him as a guy. But I’ve spoken of this before, so no sense revisiting.

A lot has been lost in this COVID world.

Today, maybe I’ll talk about CMA Fest. Gone for this year. Will it ever return?

I was more concerned about Prine, of course, but I came out on the losing side.

But the death of Fan Fair  -- it’ll never be CMA Fest to this old newspaperman who lost too much sweat and sleep over at the Fairgrounds -- of course, is terrible news for the city. But then as my old pals would have said, given the state of things these days “It can’t get much worse.” That’s about when Nashville’s Mayor Mister Fluffy Eyebows … aka John (My brother is a congressman) Cooper announces the need for a hefty property tax increase.

I don’t want to comment on that other than to say the fool on the hill sees the sun going down.

Anyway, back to Fan Fair and its demise for now and perhaps forever and ever, Amen. I really hope not, as this is a massive tourist draw, filling up the hotels and motels and restaurants and bars and whorehouses of Music City.  But apparently none of the taxes from that $65 million annual “take” by the city goes to help property taxes? Help schools? Pay for lunches? Get the mayor an eyebrow trimmer?

Actually, the trimmer probably comes from city coffers. But all the tourism dollars from Fan Fair and from all of those drunken, puking, lovely-when-they-turn-over-and-skirts-drop-over-their-faces bachelorettes apparently do not go to support the city. Bachelorette babies, keep coming. Someone needs to keep buying those three-for-one boots. Well, actually, bachelorettes, please return, come back to us, when this virus leaves.

Unless we’re all dead.  I told my wife to throw my ashes in the backyard or in the stream that runs through it. Maybe do one of those Lord Jim sendoffs.  A flaming raft going down Seven Mile Creek might draw unwanted attention by the time it gets to Mill Creek, though. I’m hoping I have time to figure out other details and the truth.

Truth? What is the truth? I’ve been a so-called coward and a so-called hero, and there’s not the thickness of a piece of paper between them. Maybe cowards and heroes are just ordinary men, who for just a split second do something that is out of the ordinary. That’s all. At least according to Joe Conrad and Peter O’Toole.

Longtime entertainment editor (defrocked, though seldom naked) and columnist for local newspapers – I now write some for Nashville Ledger – I’ve covered a lot of what I still refer to as “Fan Fairs” during the last few decades.

Hell, I was there when Garth Brooks, then a humble and thin guy who may have even had hair, stayed at his Fan Fair booth for 24 hours, signing anything, living or dead, that fans would put in front of him. His wife, Sandy, a fine songwriter and nice woman, often was there at his side. With Trisha. Joking here. I love Garth, who refers to himself in third person “Garth is very unhappy with you Tim. Garth thinks Tim needs to shave his skull and give Garth some of his hair.”

I also love Trisha and thought it piss-poor judgment that when the CMA Awards were held last fall, she was not onstage for the female icons segment. Oh, I like that hockey-loving little girl from American Idol fine, but Trisha opened doors. Like Reba. And me, if a lady is coming and needs to get inside. I may not be “old-fashioned” but my mom trained a gentleman.

Of course, that Garthfest was out at the old Fairgrounds, same place I saw George Jones and Tammy Wynette reunite for their fans and produce new memories. George later became a friend and he died still owing me a steak dinner.  I should go down and tell that story to all the pilgrims at his grave at Woodlawn…. Except no one is out there these days. COVID-19 robs even the dead of their glory. I’m sure the Possum’s grave is lonely.  Course, Paycheck is nearby.

Anyway, I also saw the Fan Fair debut of Billy Ray Cyrus and his Presley imitation “Achy Breaky Heart.” Still a catchy song, though I like “Old Town Road,” his pairing with flamingly hot, pink suited and cocksure Lil Nas X, better.

Back in those days, before the CMA Fest became a huge banner event for Korporate Amerikan greed, I really loved it out at the Fairgrounds, also the world headquarters of the dream to be an international soccer hub when we don't support an over-priced Minor League baseball team.

Everyone from Beach Boys to Jo Dee Messina and Garth Brooks and Trisha (they were otherwise engaged back then, as I noted above) came out to the Fairgrounds back then. Helter-skelter in the summer swelter. Oh yeah, I did spend a couple of hours there with Jo Dee one summer. She was hot (literally, figuratively and otherwise).

What happened to her? I mean she was nice and could sing fine. Well, there were some major health issues.

And, of course, this is a flavor-of-the-month world. Jo Dee’s far from that.

For her, it’s a long way from the edge of the center ring filled with groomed hopefuls in Nashville to the Gobbler Theater in Johnson Creek, Wisconsin.    

Of course, she’s still talented and, without going into details, she is a survivor, and I wish her well. Hell, I’d rather be at the old Gobbler myself these days. Speaking of which, wild turkeys since have begun to populate the hill behind my house. Got deer, fox, raccoons, skunks, opossums and coyotes. And turkey till the coyotes find them.

As for Jo Dee, she was a kinda star on that day as we hung out between a security guard and a porta potty – I visited with both -- talking country music, Fan Fair dreams realized and just about being people.

I liked her and the Fairgrounds Fan Fair guard and hope this summer is fruitful for them both. The guard’s probably dead by now. I hope he had a nice life and enjoyed my company.  If he is alive, he’s old and I hope hiding from this fucking virus.

At the old Fan Fair, I also got to interview the quadruple amputee who was with his buddies from Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, or somewhere. They were anxious to get inside on the day that Billy Ray shook what then was something of a Springsteen-patterned tush. I really liked the guy in the wheelchair. A lot. Hell, he was handicapped, but he was driven to keep up with his buddies and have fun. And he swore like the proverbial drunken sailor. I was able to keep up just fine.

While on the subject of Springsteen -- who is as country as Florida-Georgia Line, actually would blow all the country “rock” pretenders off the stage if he was to participate in what I still call “Fan Fair”-- I looked up his web page to find out he and his wife are doing well, riding horses and singing songs, while waiting out the virus at their spread in New Jersey while trying to raise money for the New Jersey Pandemic Relief Fund.

Speaking of Bruce, man do I miss Tom Petty. All I need to say there, but Tom has been with me a lot these last few months.  And now, well, I feel like we’re all free-fallin’ baby.  And I’ve been a good boy.

Let’s see here. I was talking about the CMA Fest. See I did it. I didn’t call it Fan Fair. I hope it’s back next year.

Course I hope a lot of things are back next year. I love the NFL above all sports, though back when I used to hang out with Muhammad Ali, I preferred boxing. And I like baseball because my Grandpa Champ used to listen to the Detroit Tigers on the radio back when he was collecting admission to the beach at Walnut Lake, Michigan.

And he smoked pipes all the while. He died almost a half-century ago. I’ve got his pipes in his office. I don’t smoke tobacco or otherwise anymore. I also have a War Is Over! (If You Want It) sign from John and Yoko’s web site. And I know war isn’t over. I saw it on Homeland Sunday night.  Damn, that Carrie sure is a character, isn’t she?

Series almost over, so I think Saul will kill the weak-kneed fucker who is the president in the show.

Happy endings. Happy endings.

Oh yeah, back to the Tigers for a second. See a blog I wrote earlier this week about the death of Al Kaline. In today’s “all-for-me” sports world, he’d have been a supermillionaire thanks to marketers of ED medications, four-wheel drive cars that never leave the highway and appearances on Jimmy Kimmel. But most people didn't know who he was when he died. What in the hell is a "K-line?" asked an adviser to Mitch McConnell.

Before I move on, I should say I like Jimmy Kimmel. I'd like to have coffee with him sometime.

I’m going upstairs to watch the news, where some kid who never really paid his or her dues as a journalist by learning how to write obits or take box scores or ask unbiased questions or learned how to use the AP Stylebook or read the Constitution will tell America how to think.

I am cheering for Cuomo. This pandemic is shitty.

It killed John Prine.







  

When a singer names a rescue pit bull Pearl, you just gotta like him: How Kevin Gordon got cut from my column but made folks dance

Sometimes when I write a column, the editors whack out a piece to make it fit. But I feel badly that in this week's Street Level column in The Nashville Ledger the nice little section on Kevin Gordon -- a talent and nice guy -- was dropped.
I contacted Kevin because I like him and I admire his talent. And, in a world of acoustic fellows, he sometimes stands out by staying electric.
Anyway, the story was about how musicians have been affected by the COVID-19 virus and how it has pretty much forced cancellations or, as in Kevin's case, adaptation.
I chose him as one who could represent all the pickers, grinners, lovers and sinners who are out there who have been forced to go to Stageit or other similar online venues to play for tips and to keep their fans in the loop.
I'm sorry it got cut, though the story turned out well (check it elsewhere on my Facebook page) and mentions all kinds of folks from Mick Jagger to Jimmy Church to Suzie Brown Sax to Super T and even my pals Thomm Jutz and Eric Brace and honky-tonk hero Jon Byrd. Actually, I pretty much love everybody I interviewed for this long piece, and I think you should read it. Hell, Duane Eddy, one of the fellows who invented rock 'n' roll and who I love as one of my best friends, even talks about what Waylon called "Skull Orchards."  Anytime I can get Duane Eddy and Waylon Jennings into a column or blog, even, I feel fulfilled, Hoss.
However, Kevin, who is a big name in smaller circles, didn't make it from the big Apple computer machine to the printed or digital page.
I am sorry about that.
But I figure that, what the hell, this is a fine musician and he spent valuable time with me. And anyone with a pit bull named Pearl has to be a fine individual, with the accent on individual.
With all that as a prelude, let me bring the section on Kevin Gordon back from the dead. Well, I've been talking a lot about death lately. Let's bring him back to life.
That lengthy prelude, in which I was able to invoke the names of Duane Eddy and Waylon Jennings, and apology brings me to this point: 
Live from the dining room: It’s Kevin Gordon.
When counting Nashville’s musical treasures, Kevin Gordon is in the first fistful, and, like all independent musicians, he’s a road warrior.
The other day he had one of his shortest gig trips in his long and poetic/rocking career.
“I’m doing one of these live-streaming things from my dining room this evening,” says Kevin, who is hunkering down and staying away from crowds.
“I’ve done a couple of them, and I really like it,” says Kevin, who was to perform for a crowd of one in the live audience: His 44-pound rescue pit mix, Pearl. His wife was in Des Moines, Iowa, visiting their daughter.
“Once I get started, I’m fine,” he says of live-streaming shows. “Beforehand, I get this feeling like I’m producing a television show, and I just worry way too much about it, especially since a lot of the people are going to watch it on their phones.”
His choice for the concert was Stageit, but there are different platforms for live-streaming, and artists from Nashville continue to use them in order to make a little money via remote. 
The basic format of Stageit is artists select their times and places to perform and hope to get the word out to their fans, who pay to hear the intimate show as well as tip the artists. It’s always live, unarchived and offers fans the chance to request songs.
If you look at Stageit.com, you’ll see a large number of your Nashville favorites, from the troubadour types, like Kevin, to the voices from the Lower Broadway bars. Big label artists also are finding online platforms, Facebook, etc., to connect their fans during this time of pestilence and constant sorrow.
 Kevin adds he didn’t lose a lot of gigs, because he is in the songwriting part of his creative cycle, working out songs for a new record.
“I did have a couple of dates in April. Those have been postponed. They haven’t been rescheduled yet.”
And then there was the elaborate staging of his online show: “I have a little amp across the room in the dining room. That’s the best room in the house as far as ambient sound.”
And I'm sure the pit bull named Pearl enjoyed it as much as the fans from around the world who checked it out.

(Note here: Street Level is on COVID-19 hiatus. You'll still see me around, though … writing other stuff I hope, since I try to support my family and pets... And I expect my personal blog "They Call Me Flapjacks" will get pretty active. I hope you like me. This is free stuff. Maybe I need to put out a tip jar. But the loss of a column, even temporarily (I hope), while nothing new to me, is not much to be concerned about when I've lost friends like John Prine and other people are dying all around me. On ABC News David Muir said "small businesses are getting fucked these days," and I'm a very small business. Oh, I also may have only been wishing David Muir, my favorite TV anchor, had used my colorful description, because I talk that way and he probably doesn't. Anyway, if I was you, I'd go upstairs and listen to some  happy music. Maybe something by Duane Eddy. Or Thomm Jutz. Or Kevin Gordon. 
 Me, I'll likely settle for Dylan's "Murder Most Foul" as a pick-me-up. Or "Working Class Hero.") 

Here is the link to the story in The Ledger, my last Street Level at least for now. You'll like it:
 http://www.tnledger.com/editorial/article.aspx?id=127765&fbclid=IwAR0vYEviLOYTgQ_iTDxbhGdJQIVLO8XfX2v8wZ-otTRT0S68feq83NPzRYU

John Prine and me with the Rev. Will Campbell, other dead guys I liked; as well as the Kristoffersons and Peter Cooper

Someplace in a column I’ve never published, I’m sitting by the deathbed of a Country Music Hall of Famer, pioneer and a man I considered one of my best friends.

He was “sharp as a tack,” as they might say and I can’t think of a more-apt description, even during his dying days, when I visited him often. He always was present and filled with smiles and love even though I'm sure he knew he was dying.

 No need to go any farther there or to reveal who I’m speaking about, because, unfortunately, I’ve sat aside too many deathbeds, mostly regular folks, but sometimes a musician or someone else of popular note. Or my Mom’s or Dad’s. I loved them the most.

On this day I'm speaking of, the bleary-eyed fellow in the bed awakened from his medical drifting, looked at me, and smiled. “Hi John,” or words to that effect, he said. 

He later corrected himself after the medical blear cleared up, and he called me by my own name – generally I’m known as “Tim” – and we talked some as I watched him continue toward death. Still sharp as a tack, I should add.

But I had taken no offense that when he had awakened he mistook me for John Prine – that was the “Hi John” of his greeting – because I really liked John and knew of his love for this fellow, a mutual good friend and confessor.

This was one of the  incidents I thought about last night, April 7, 2020, when the expected news broke that John Prine, a great American songwriter and grit-observer of life, had died.

I really have no great John Prine stories.

 I never wrote about him, other than an occasional blurb.  At Christmastime, when I was writing about a homeless-helping-semi-organization’s efforts to come up with goods for the homeless, his wife, Fiona, and John became involved in this effort.

They wanted me to call, so they could endorse this drive. When I did, Fiona told me to call back and John would talk to me about it.  But when I did that, he was not around. I actually think he was, but he didn’t want to talk about personal generosity. He was a humble man.

So Fiona, a kind woman, spoke for them both, quoting the great wordsmith, and "they" sort of issued a challenge to others that they should help my friend Stacie Huckeba’s homeless mission. Don’t need to go on more about this, but I enjoyed talking to Fiona and hearing her quote her rather humble husband with the incredible mind for words.

This morning, as I listened to a bit of Prine on You Tube, I rescued a blog post from a couple of weeks ago, that I’ll more or less regurgitate here, with additions and deletions, because it was about one of my favorite Nashville nights.

Here goes:

OK, so I'm standing outside the Belcourt Theatre on a sticky Nashville night.

It's about midnight and Hillsboro Village is quiet.

"Sam Stone" plays in my head for a moment.

It's just me, the Rev. Will Campbell and John and Fiona Prine.

 I had met John before, but this was the first time we really "talked" as people.  I wasn’t taking notes, was trying for no story. I was just talking with him as a guy. Or guys. One guy who worked for a newspaper and another guy who wrote some of American’s best life-observing songs. They both were rather cynical by nature.

The Rev. Will was a long-time close friend, who would call me frequently both at home and at the newspaper. He viewed me as "the last one left" who really loved the so-called "Outlaws," for whom he was the preacher and absolver and eulogist.  He had started calling me when I worked for the old Nashville Banner and stayed with me when I worked at The Tennessean (Nashville’s morning newspaper.)

Our friendship blossomed because for years, so much of what was covered in the newspapers involved the commercial country acts. And I was stuck, in my heart, with the guys Will had nurtured. Years later, he told me that one day he’d share the details of the lonesome funeral he emceed or whatever you call it, for Waylon Jennings out in the desert.  He got too sick to tell me that story though. Then he died.

Another friend, Billy Ray Reynolds, eventually described that sparse funeral for me. He’s dead too.

Anyway, back to that night in Hillsboro Village, which was Nashville’s hipster district before the conquest of East Nashville by white people.   

John Prine and I talked about the concert we'd just seen.

Our mutual friend -- all of ours -- Kris Kristofferson had just finished a two-plus hour show.

I've seen Kris a score or more times over the years in concert. I also ran into him decades ago at the Tally-Ho Tavern. And his music mattered to my maturation. Still matters as I past maturation and ride too quickly the decline. Anyway, Kris and I long ago became friends and I cherish my relationship with him – and he’s not all that well anymore – and his wife, Lisa, and their children.

The night John, the Rev. Will and I spoke beneath the marquee had been after the best show I’d ever seen by Kris. Another old Pilgrim, Chris Gantry, had done the intermission. I’ve since learned to love him as well. He’s one of a kind and so was his heavily-Christed performance. I can say this now, this Christ stuff, because on the day I’m writing this, the Wednesday before Easter, Christ held his final feast and went to the garden. The rest is history, of course.

The Rev. Will was, I should note, the best Baptist preacher I ever met, and he could talk Jesus with anyone, without judgment. He liked Christ a lot.

Back to that marquee.  John and Fiona and the Rev. Will and I all were waiting for Donnie Fritts, Billy Swan, Chris Gantry, Buzz Cason, Billy Ray and the rest of the "inner-circle" to finish paying their respects to Kris before we would go into the theater to visit with him.

Will told us about the long-ago demolished apartment house across from the long-deceasedTally-Ho, where Kris lived above him and the floor was so thin, he could fall right through.  Maybe he did. That was a long time ago and details blur at times.

John talked about an album he was working on, and after I told him I’d like to write about it, he suggested that maybe I could come and meet up with him sometime to do a story or a column.

 I knew his label's partner/boss, Al Bunetta, pretty well, since my wife, Suzanne, and I had "talked" Al and his wife, Dawn, through the process of adopting a child from Eastern Europe.

I had written about our experiences adopting Emily in Romania for the old Nashville Banner newspaper, and my tale inspired them. That's just an aside.  I probably should note here that we also adopted Joe in Romania, but by then I was at the morning newspaper, for which I was working as a copy editor at that point, and they didn’t encourage me to write a story about it.

 Al was John’s partner and more in Oh Boy Records. Suzanne and I had talked him and Dawn through the back-in-the-1990s rare adoption process of an Eastern European. Tragically, Juri, their son, died in a car accident at 19, but he had all sorts of love to absorb from the Bunettas that he’d never have gotten in the orphanage back in the Soviet colonies.  Al’s dead, too, but he was a helluva character and I was fortunate enough to be at a celebration of adoptees out at the house he and Dawn and Juri shared.

Back to that warm night beneath the marquee in Hillsboro Village. ... 

I was the entertainment editor for the morning newspaper by then, and I had gone to that concert with my friend, Peter Cooper, who was on my staff after I helped him escape Spartanburg, S.C., where I think the revenooers were after him. Or maybe the Marshall Tucker Band. 

We enjoyed a scotch before the show at a nearby (since deceased) tavern. At show’s end, he had to rush back to the paper to write his review.

I lagged behind at the theater while he toiled in the fluorescent light 1100 Broadway, where there used to be a newspaper of some note, at least for a long time. 

After spending the better part of an hour with Prine and Will outside the Belcourt and quickly ducking into the theater to talk to Kris, his wife Lisa and their kids -- then pretty young -- I went back to the newspaper office to see if Peter needed an editor.

Or a friend. Or company. We'd already had a drink. Nothing special. Twelve-year-old Dewar’s maybe. I don’t drink much anymore, but I’d savored that drink with Peter and with his wife, Charlotte, who didn’t go to the concert. She probably had a dry white wine.

But let me jump ahead to after I left the theater, where I’d spent an hour with Prine and hugged Kris and Lisa and as many of their kids as I could find.

From the Belcourt, I went back to the paper to see if I could help Peter with his review, edit his copy or just enjoy his company.

When I told him about Prine's offer for in-person album talking, Peter said he really wanted to do that instead of me.

 I was a good boss and knew his affinity for Prine and his music, so I agreed. I was supposed to spend most of my time in stupid meetings playing games with corporate brass, anyway. The general premise was that  I was supposed to learn about back-stabbing and ass-kissing and success. I left a few years later for my basement without ever learning those traits.

Anyway, Peter contacted Prine or maybe Al, and he was the one who ended up doing the interview and writing the feature.  Probably better than mine would have been. Different anyway.

This story isn't going anywhere today. I'm in my office in Da Basement working, keeping the virus at bay, and I just stopped to think about that precious hour with the Rev. Will, long-deceased now but he loved me, and John Prine. And Kris and Peter and Lisa and the kids.

Funky Donnie Fritts had something to do with it, too. I loved him. He sure knew how to get someone else to pick up the tab, too. An adept expert at it. He’s dead, too.

A week or two ago, I wrote in a semblance of this blog that “If there is a prayer left in you during this horrible time, please send one to John, who at last notice was clinging to life because of this fucking virus.”

“Shit, I wouldn't mind a prayer or two myself and I'm doing OK,” I wrote. Still am.

I don’t need to repeat the rest of that column at all.

Other than to say that's all I've got today. Feeling more than melancholy … or is that worse than melancholy?

I wish I could be as happy as I was that night standing beneath the marquee with the Prines and the Rev. Will.

Funky Donnie Fritts had a lot to do with it, too.

And John Prine died Tuesday night of this COVID-19 virus bastard. It wasn’t a surprise. He was hardly the picture of health and cancer already had "killed him" twice.

Still, today, it’s a mighty mean and dreadful sorrow. I borrowed that line.

Me, Marc, Jeff, Eric and Al Kaline; Blood spurts from my leg; Catching worms at Walnut Lake

When I was a kid, spending summer days and nights at Grandpa and Grandma Champ's house in the hollow by the marsh at Walnut Lake, Michigan, Al Kaline and the Detroit Tigers were always on the radio or the old black-and-white TV.

 Sometimes, the family -- my dad, my cousins Marc and Jeff Champ, Grandpa and my brother Eric Anthony Ghianni would load up and go down to Briggs Field (where I cut my left leg on a headlight, but that's another story, though the scar remains).

Kaline, who died Monday at age 85, was my brother's favorite player.

 As I grew older and more independent and my dad took us to live in the Chicago suburb of Deerfield, my team was the Chicago Cubs and Ron Santo forever became my favorite player. Always will be and he had the fighting spirit that kept him battling despite life’s obstacles until long after most of us would have surrendered. A true Boy of Summer.

That’s another story and you can find it on my blog somewhere if you look.

This is a short little note about Al Kaline, because he died yesterday, April 6, 2020, while we all hid in our houses from the virus.

But this isn’t about deadly viruses and these strange days indeed (most peculiar, mama.)

This is about Walnut Lake, also.

Cigar smoke. Or Prince Albert in the can jammed in a pipe as Grandpa presided over the house he built with help from my Uncle Les, Shirley’s husband. They are dead long ago.

Grandpa thought he ruled the house. Unless Grandma decided otherwise. “Now Bea….” “Well George ….”

Maybe Marc, Jeff, Eric and I would sleep out on the back porch, screened in and not really locked. Can you imagine that in 2020? Course this was back in the mid-1950s, when Uncle Joe Champ’s health was failing from the flame-thrower scars in his lungs, further ambushed by smoking. Everyone smoked back then. (I did, too, as soon as I could. That’s another story and tobacco was only a part of it.) Those days at the lake continued well after Joe died. I think in 1957 or 1958. I was just a kid, but I sure loved him. My son’s name, coincidentally???, is Joe.

Back in the late 1950s, Grandpa once went out into the woods, pounding pieces of timber together in the middle of the night. Scared the shit out of us.  There was a killer … or perhaps a monster on the loose in our eager and impressionable minds.

We didn’t sleep well that night. It wasn’t until the next day, when he showed off the timber pieces over his breakfast of pepper and scrambled eggs (mostly pepper) and kippers (sardines) or fried perch, that we learned the truth.    He had been the monster. Laughed like hell that he’d scared us so.  We laughed, too. We all thought he was the guy who, I think they say “hung the moon.” Whatever. He was a great man.    

Almost everyone is dead now who was there, but those nights and days at Walnut Lake returned to my heart and head after I learned Al Kaline had died.

We had the opportunity to meet most of the ballplayers back then in those gentler times, and he was no exception. We’d always go see games when the Yankees were in town, too. You ever see Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris at bat? How about Whitey Ford on the mound and Yogi Berra trying to throw a pickoff ball to second from behind home? Ahh, wonderful times.

When I think about Kaline, though, it is not so much about baseball, but more with thoughts of playing poker with Grandpa (he didn't let his grandchildren win), while listening to the radio.

Grandma would take us out to the vegetable garden, where we'd dig for night-crawlers and put them in an old cottage cheese carton filled with black soil.

The plan was that we would be ready to get up at 5 the next morning to paddle out onto the lake and catch bluegill, sunfish and perch. Cleaning them later at the stump out back while Grandpa smoked his pipe.  If we caught a bullhead, he’d pound a nail in its head so he could skin it.

Grandpa would bury the innards, hoping that Topsy, the black beaglish hound, would not dig them up, roll in them or eat them. She did frequently. Helluva good dog.

When Topsy died, Grandpa and Grandma got Spuddy, another beaglish dog, who (along with Grandpa) lived with my Mom and Dad in Nashville after Grandma died.  Another story. A dog story. Check out my book about my Mom if you are interested. Somebody ought to make a movie about it, but I haven’t kissed enough ass in life to know how to even approach such a project or who to approach.

Anyway, after the fish were cleaned, the boys would cross on the path through the marsh and then over the black-oiled road to the clubhouse at Walnut Lake. Back then it was a blue-collar town and beach. Now, I think rich people, probably mostly millennial assholes and their parents and offspring, live there with their fancy speedboats and lack of sentiment about what that lake meant to us.

 The boys and my cousin Michelle (Marc and Jeff’s sister who now ferries Amish and Mennonites across Kentucky and always wears floppy hats, but that’s another story and I love her) had fun. She was older than us. Still is, by the way. Sorry Michelle…. Or Mitzi, as Grandpa called you.

I guess I should get back to Briggs Field or was it Briggs Stadium? Shit, doesn’t matter. It was a real ballpark. Hot dogs and beer and Coke were sold. Maybe peanuts and Cracker Jack. No raw octopus and sake or whatever the fuck they serve at ballparks today. If Grandpa Ghianni was there, a flask of brown whiskey was there, too. No security at the gate back then. 

It was in the time of double-headers, and about halfway through the second game, Grandpa got tired.  I think he waited by the park, because of his arthritis. But we, Dad, Marc, Jeff, Eric, me, would have to go get the car. My Grandpa Ghianni, who sometimes visited the Champs, may have been there, too, I noted above. Anyway, we were parked bumper to bumper across that part of Detroit. It was before they burned the city down and Roger Smith killed GM.   

Had to walk across the bumpers of the cars to find dad’s white, convertible Oldsmobile.  Unfortunately, one of the cars had a broken headlight and the sharp glass grabbed my left leg when I dragged past it. Blood spurted like in a Peckinpah film. Nah, not really, but it bled like hell.

I think my Dad, the only WWII infantryman who was nauseated by blood… actually, he probably saw too much of it, caused some I’m sure, while in his late teens and early 20s … panicked. I think they wrapped my leg in a T-shirt and we went home where Grandma and Mom tended to it.  When Dad died last September, and after we buried him, we were at Eric’s house, where my Cousin Marc (or Maurice, as the big-city fancies in Detroit call him) and I were drinking 12-year-old seltzer or somesuch, he asked if the scar was still there.

I showed it to him.

Anyway, I could go on. Maybe I should someday. Walnut Lake was heaven for little boys.  I loved rowing the boat across the lake with Grandma at dawn. Grandpa’s hips were too arthritic for boat rides, though he could sleep while floating on his back across the lake. Sometimes with a grandson aboard.

And then, at night, fried perch, bluegill and potatoes. Corn on the cob, if a neighbor brought some. Strawberry shortcake, perhaps. Or watermelon, but we'd have to go outside to spit the seeds. Before poker.

And Al Kaline on the radio hit another home run for the Tigers.