Chapter 6
HIGH HOPES
My first love was an older woman
There’s been many since
But there’ll never be another
Built in 1955, snowshoe white, overdrive
I never should’ve sold her, I’ll always love her . . .
Alan Jackson, “First Love,”
As Alan and I started our new lives together, he proved his love for me by letting go of the “older woman” he had treasured since he was fifteen.
By this I mean, of course, the little white Thunderbird that Alan and his daddy had restored so carefully, the car that symbolized his youth, that car that he truly loved as much as a human being really can love a car. At any rate, he sold his T-bird for ten thousand dollars, which became the down payment for our first house.
Our church was getting ready to tear down a small, turn-ofthe-century home across the street to make room for additional parking. Alan struck a deal with the church leaders to give us the house if we paid to have the lot cleared. After the movers removed the house’s foundation and roof and cut it in half, we moved our “new” house to six acres in the country,where we had it reassembled and restored.
Alan was an incredibly hard worker and a great provider, but his sense of humor was a little twisted. One night he was working a late shift, and I was at home, relaxing after a hard day. I had filled our old bathtub with hot water, and I was mostly submerged, eyes closed, blissfully enjoying the moment.
Then I heard footsteps in the house. I’d lost track of time, but it seemed too early for Alan to be coming home from his second-shift job. And usually he called my name when he came in.
Still in the tub, I froze. The steps drew closer to the bathroom, and then they stopped. I watched in horror as the old knob on the bathroom door began to turn, turn, turn. Then the door opened a crack. A hand reached slowly in and snapped off the light switch, leaving me in total darkness.
The only thing that saved me from having a fatal heart attack at that moment was the fact that I had recognized my husband’s long hand as it reached in the door. I jumped out of the tub, pulled a towel around me, and started screaming at Alan to never, ever do something like that again.
Later someone actually did break into our home and steal almost everything we had. Because of Alan’s night hours, there was no way I was going to stay there any longer. We sold that little house and bought another one in town. A year later, we bought the next house, renovated it, and repeated the process. Meanwhile I worked at the bank and took a class load that would allow me to complete my degree in three years rather than four.
Second Grade All Over Again
I finished college, got my teaching certificate, and eventually taught second and third grades at Atkinson Elementary School, the same school I had attended as a girl. Some things there had not changed. For example, I partnered with one of my former teachers, but I couldn’t bring myself to call her by her first name. So I called her Mrs. Mann, just like I did when I was eight years old.
The kids, however, seemed quite different from my memories of my elementary friends. They were much wilder than we had been. I came in on the first day of school with all my handmade learning games, neatly organized and laminated. My lesson plans were ready to roll, the classroom was creatively decorated, and I knew this was going to be the best learning environment these kids could hope for.
By the end of the first day, however, the room was in shambles, my games were strewn everywhere, I was a mess, and I didn’t think any of us would make it through the year.
But we did, and I grew to love the kids, particularly the ones who came from disadvantaged backgrounds. They were so hungry for love and attention, just as we all are.
Sweat Equity
Alan had dropped out of college so he could work full-time to support us while I was still in school. Over the years, before he broke into the music business, he sold cars, built houses, did carpentry, and took tests to be an air-traffic controller, a postmaster, and an airline baggage handler, though none of these jobs was his life’s ambition. He drove a forklift at the Kmart warehouse, a huge distribution center that supplied the surrounding stores with merchandise. On the weekends he played at clubs and at special events with Dixie Steel.
Alan quickly had enough of unloading boxes at the Kmart shipping dock. When we’d talk about our future, he already knew that he would love to sing for a living.He had seen how big goals could be realized when two of his friends from Newnan, Doug Channell and Bubba Whitlock, had dreamed of becoming pilots. It wasn’t the norm among our small circle of friends back then to leave town to pursue your dreams; most people stayed in Newnan, some doing what their daddies had done. But Doug and Bubba had worked hard, gotten their pilots’ licenses, signed with an airline, and taken off for the wild blue yonder. If they can get to where they wanted to go,Alan thought, I can do it too.
* * *
OVER THE YEARS, BEFORE [ALAN] BROKE INTO THE MUSIC BUSINESS, HE SOLD CARS, BUILT HOUSES, DID CARPENTRY, AND TOOK TESTS TO BE AN AIR-TRAFFIC CON-TROLLER, A POSTMASTER, AND AN AIRLINE BAGGAGE HANDLER . . . HE DROVE A FORKLIFT AT THE KMART WAREHOUSE.
* * *
But it wasn’t until we bought tickets to several country music shows in nearby Franklin, Georgia, that he really started to seriously consider music as a career. The first show we attended featured “The Kendalls”; another was “The Whites,” a father/ daughter group that included Ricky Skaggs’s wife, Sharon. Alan loved these shows. We also saw George Strait, a real cowboy, whose career and songs greatly influenced Alan back then . . . and Alan still holds George in extremely high esteem today.
In early 1985, one of my closest friends I had taught with, Margie Moore, urged me to join her in becoming a flight attendant. She had left her teaching job the previous year to work for Piedmont Airlines. I had never even flown in an airplane, so becoming a flight attendant sounded exotic and sophisticated. Plus, the pay was higher, and the hours shorter, than teaching.
So the next thing I knew I was in Greensboro, North Carolina, for three weeks of flight training with Piedmont Airlines. This was back in the old days of air travel, long before stringent security and the tight rules of the post–September 11 world. Back then, flying still had a certain panache to it . . . particularly for me, since this was so foreign to the down-to-earth world in which I’d grown up.
Around this time, Alan bid the Kmart a less-than-sad farewell and quit his night job. We sold our house, and while I was away for flight training, he moved to nearby West Point Lake, taking up residence in an old trailer we used as a weekend getaway.
Every morning he got in our little boat and zipped across the lake to the marina where he was working. In the evenings he came back and put a burger or two on the grill. Sometimes he had a melody in his head all day, and that night he’d play the guitar and work out the lyrics. It was a lonely time for him, but one in which he had unprecedented time and solitude to develop his songwriting skills.
A “Chance” Encounter
Looking back, I can’t help but see God’s hand in providing this quiet time for Alan, as well as giving me the airline job. Becoming a flight attendant gave me opportunities to literally try my wings, to grow in independence in ways that I wouldn’t have down on the ground at Atkinson Elementary School. It also provided the doorway, oddly enough, for Alan’s big break, career-wise.
One day, after I’d completed my training and was flying regular routes, I was in the Atlanta airport. As I walked toward the gate, I saw a man standing in the boarding area. It was country superstar Glen Campbell.He was dressed casually, traveling with several guys, probably his tour manager and band. I recognized him immediately; he looked just as I remembered him from The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour on TV when I was a child. He’d also been on Hee Haw and was one of the best-known singers in the world. Songs like “Rhinestone Cowboy” and “By the Time I Get to Phoenix” started running through my head. All this took about a second, and then I knew
what I had to do.
I wasn’t the kind of person who felt comfortable approach- ing celebrities, but I knew this opportunity wasn’t going to come by again anytime soon. I took a deep breath and went over to him. He was chewing gum and smiled when I approached. I assumed that was because he was getting ready to laugh and tell me to go away.
“Mr. Campbell,” I said, “may I talk with you for a minute?”
There was plenty of time before his plane.
“Sure,” he said. I told him that my husband wanted to get into the country music business, and asked what advice he might have.
He paused a moment, then asked if my husband wrote songs.
I thought of Alan, sitting up late every night with his guitar, making memories into music, and love into lyrics.
But all I said was, “Well, yes, he does.”
Glen said, “That’s good.”He gave me a business card with the name “Marty Gamblin” on it. “This is the man who runs my music publishing company. Have your husband send his songs to Marty to see what he thinks.”
I held on to the card like it was a passkey to our future.
Years later, when Glen wrote his autobiography—Rhinestone Cowboy—he said that he gave that same advice to plenty of others. For whatever reason, most of them never followed through—or if they did, the songs were just plain unusable.
But, as Glen put it in his book, “[Denise’s] husband wasn’t like most songwriters.”
Within two weeks of my “chance” meeting with Glen Campbell in the Atlanta airport, Alan was standing in Marty Gamblin’s office.
After listening to Alan’s plea,Marty graciously committed to help him and act as his manager, even though he continued to work full-time running Glen Campbell’s music publishing company. Alan returned to Newnan. We packed up all our possessions (which didn’t even fill a small U-Haul), and away we went, driving toward our dreams in Music City.
Our first-ever home away from Newnan was an apartment complex near the Nashville airport, which made sense, given my flying schedule. What didn’t make sense when we arrived was the dirty parking lot with rusty cars up on concrete blocks, the wild kids running around, and the swimming pool that was just a dry concrete bowl, empty except for a puddle of scummy water and a dead rat lying in the bottom.
So began our grand new life in Nashville.
Chapter 7
DAUNTING DISAPPOINTMENTS
I’ve played for empty tables and chairs
For drunks that don’t listen and crowds that don’t care
Been told countless times Boy you ain’t goin’ nowhere
To do what I do
Tim Johnson, “To Do What I Do”
There’s usually a big difference between what you imagine will happen when you go off to pursue your grand dreams and what actually takes place. Alan and I both knew that Nashville wouldn’t exactly welcome us with open arms and a key to the city, but still, our early days there were pretty depressing.
We stayed in that dank little apartment for two months, which was exactly two months too long. Drug deals were going down in the hallways; strange men came and went at all hours of the night. I wasn’t comfortable going to the laundry room if Alan wasn’t home. There was a fire in one of the apartments, and then a domestic shooting in another.
After that, I was by the front door when Alan got home: “I love you to pieces, honey,” I told him, “but I am not staying here.”
Thankfully, God had prepared a place for us. A little notice had just gone up on the bulletin board in the employee workroom at the Nashville Network, of a cozy basement apartment in a quiet, nice neighborhood, for $350 a month. We jumped at it. On our moving day, when we stopped at a 7-11 store on our way to the new place, a man saw our truck loaded with our old, battered furniture.
* * *
I WAS BY THE FRONT DOOR WHEN ALAN GOT HOME: “I LOVE YOU TO PIECES, HONEY,” I TOLD HIM, “BUT I AM NOT STAYING HERE.”
* * *
“Hey!” he shouted. “You just come from a yard sale?”
We hauled our hand-me-down furniture into the little apartment. It had brown shag carpeting that blended just fine with our old brown and orange patchwork sofa. In our bedroom, our mattress had belonged to Alan’s older sister. We could see why she’d decided to give it away: it had a trench worn into the middle, and Alan’s feet hung off the end. But at that time we were glad to get anything.
Alan, who is six foot four, had to sleep on it diagonally. Since he was heavy, I spent half the night trying to claw my way out of the “Alan trench,” and the other half curled into a little triangle of space.
Busy Airports and a Lumpy Mattress
In order to have a regular flight schedule and not be on call, I had to be based in Washington D.C., which meant that I had to start and end my trips there. While other flight attendants bid for layovers in the most exciting cities, I just tried to get schedules that allowed me to spend as much time in Nashville with Alan as possible.
So I was getting up very early in the morning, flying to Charlotte, North Carolina, to make a connection, then to D.C., just to begin my scheduled flights. On the way home I’d run through airports to catch the late flight home to Nashville, Alan, and that lumpy mattress.
Alan would pick me up at the airport. Since this was before the tightening of airport security, he could just idle at the curb outside Piedmont arrivals, waiting for me to emerge. Our only vehicle at the time—a Dodge Transvan—happened to look a lot like the shuttle vans that transported travelers to and from their parked cars. One night Alan was waiting for me at our usual curb when a businessman opened the van’s door and hopped into the front seat.
“To parking lot G, please!” he commanded.
Alan sat at the steering wheel, pondering whether he should take this guy for a little ride around the airport or let him go. In the end he informed the businessman that he needed to catch the airport shuttle, that Alan in fact was a private citizen waiting to pick up his wife. The man reluctantly got out. For our part at least we knew that if Alan’s music career never took off, he could always get a job at the airport, driving a shuttle bus.
I loved flying. I enjoyed making passengers feel welcome and comfortable; I liked taking care of their needs. I loved getting to know the other crew members; there was a fun camaraderie between the flight attendants and the pilots. Though some of them partied together, I wasn’t interested in getting together with anyone. I just enjoyed the meals out as a group, the laughter, sightseeing in places I’d never been (which weren’t difficult to find, since I’d hardly been anywhere), and shopping (even though I browsed a lot more than I bought, since we didn’t have much money).
Paying His Dues
In the flying world I felt competent and connected with others . . . but then I’d come home to Nashville and feel a bit disconnected from what Alan was experiencing in the music world. Much of it was pretty depressing anyway. One time I flew up to Canada to meet him at a gig somewhere. Alan’s band was playing at a bar that was connected to a hotel. The floor was sticky with old beer and who knows what else. The patrons were drunk and rude, and most of them could not have cared less about Alan, the band, or music in general. They just kept downing drinks and coming and going from the strip joint that was next door to the bar.
In the music business, playing in these kinds of places to crowds that don’t listen is called “paying your dues,” and if anybody paid his dues, Alan did. He’d drive to a gig maybe six, ten, fourteen hours away,with the heavy music equipment loaded into a trailer he pulled behind the Dodge Transvan, which we jokingly called the “Country and Western Showbus.” (Saying “country and western” is like saying “stewardess” instead of “flight attendant.”)
* * *
IN THE MUSIC BUSINESS, PLAYING IN THESE KINDS OF PLACES TO CROWDS THAT DON’T LISTEN IS CALLED “PAYING YOUR DUES,” AND IF ANYBODY PAID HIS DUES, ALAN DID.
* * *
Alan would unload all his stuff, do a sound check, pl
ay from 8 PM to 1 or 2 in the morning, inhaling dense clouds of smoke, then crash in a cheap hotel, get up the next morning, head for the next destination, and do it all over again. Even worse than that was having to play at the same dreary place for more than one night—at least going to a new place gave Alan some slight hope that conditions might be better at the next stop.
By the time he paid his band and the expenses, there wasn’t much—if anything—left. Sometimes he even lost money. But even back then, he knew that murky gigs on the road would give him the experience that he needed for the bright future he was determined to reach. Meanwhile, he was writing songs for Glen Campbell’s production company—for the grand sum of $100 a week.
The lonely nights of dark bars, stale pretzels, and sticky floors were so different from my earliest musical memories. I remember my mother’s family reunions when I was a little girl. As I said earlier, Mother was one of thirteen siblings. All the Browns, large and small, would gather at an old Methodist church in the country, where earlier generations of Browns were tucked under warm, gray stones in the old cemetery.
Everyone brought picnic baskets full of crispy fried chicken and creamy deviled eggs. There were vegetables fresh from the garden, a rosy ham, sweet cornbread, baked beans, a snowy coconut cake, and crunchy pecan pies.
After we were full from the feast, we’d all gather around the old piano in the church fellowship hall. One of my aunts would play, and everyone would sing,with wonderful harmony, the great old hymns that were part of the ties that bound us together.
That rich fellowship was a far cry from Alan’s drab life on the road and my hectic commutes from airport to airport. But nothing in our experience is wasted, and I know that God used that time in our lives in a variety of ways . . . ways I couldn’t appreciate until many years had gone by, when I could see God’s purposes in the rearview mirror.
It's All About Him Page 4