Between Wrecks

by George Singleton

  I wish to thank Neil Young for his song, with Crazyhorse, “Stupid Girl.” I can’t say how many times I listened to that song after Abby left me, and how many times I played it for Dooley when he was ignored by some bitch on the streets of Oak Ridge.

  Slim Pender deserves accolades for letting me visit the spot on his land where Columbus Choice got lynched. I could really feel the vibes there, even though Slim cut down the oak tree right after the Plemmons brothers’ trial. I appreciate Slim letting me run my hands all over the beautiful chest-of-drawers, nightstand, armoire, picnic table, high-boy, and three crosses that he puts out in the yard on Easter to represent where Jesus and those two thieves got crucified, all made from the oak tree where good, entrepreneurial Columbus Choice was found hanging. Now, Slim, I don’t want to say anything about how I think you’re a xenophobic, bigoted, card-carrying member of the KKK but maybe I ought to do so. Come on, man. I saw you smiling when I ran my palms against that wood. I saw you laugh when I got teary-eyed and shook my head in disbelief.

  I want to thank Monetta Jones down at the One Spot Café for teaching me that French fries can be eaten with tartar sauce instead of ketchup, and for letting my only friend, Dooley, come inside seeing as the café already had a C rating and couldn’t get much lower even if an inspector came in and saw an exstray dog there beneath a tabletop, licking his balls.

  I would like to thank Richard Nixon for not keeping his promise in regards to getting the troops out of Vietnam by 1971, for in doing so, most of the young men in my hometown were off in Southeast Asia, which meant that the Abracadabra Drive-In Movie wasn’t filled to capacity ever on weekends, which meant the owner had to cut prices down to something like a dollar a car, which meant that my parents went there often seeing as my father’s eyesight and flat feet kept him 4-F, and so I was conceived in the back seat of a Dodge while my parents attended a Two-Lane Blacktop and Willard double feature. Of course I find this symbolic, for writing my thesis—which became my book—probably came to me, I believe, in a strangely genetic way. First off, “blacktop,” contains the term “black.” The movie Willard had to do with rats, which might be considered “fresh meat.” In order to write about Columbus Choice, I had to drive all over the Harriman/Oak Ridge/Roane County region of Tennessee, which is made up of nothing other than two-lane asphalt. I don’t want to say anything bad about Columbus Choice’s restaurant, but I would imagine that he had to stay in control of vermin, viz., rats. At the Abracadabra Drive-In Movie theatre, from what research I’ve done, the concession stand offered popcorn, hot dogs with chili, Milk Duds, and Butterfinger candy bars. I bet there were rats inside that concession stand, too! My father once told me that the whole reason I got conceived was because he said to my mom, “You want a butter finger?” and he didn’t mean the candy bar.

  So I am boundlessly grateful to whoever was in charge of constructing the back seat of Dodge Darts, from welder to seamstress. I couldn’t have done it without y’all. Plus Claude Freeman for having the business acumen to open the Abacadabra. Plus Gilbert Ralston for writing the novel and screenplay for Willard, and Will Corry and Rudy Wurlitzer for writing Two-Lane Blacktop. Plus all the actors involved who wouldn’t ever be able to do anything worthwhile without the writers, outside of mime. I especially want to thank any of the sound effects geniuses—my parents might not have ever screwed had it not been for loud noises all over the Abracadabra speakers that masked their lovemaking sounds. I would like to thank the directors of those two movies, also—Monte Hellman and Daniel Mann—and please know that I would be honored should either of you ever want to direct a movie version of my biography.

  Where I grew up in a small South Carolina town far, far away from the industrialized, modern conveniences of Tennessee, a man named Mr. Pinky Jervey ran a little juke joint roadhouse that may or may not have been built on slave burial grounds. Now, I don’t know if Pinky—he got his nickname from a persistent and near-lethal case of conjunctivitis—couldn’t read altogether, or quit trying due to the stress it put on his eyeballs, but not once did he ever check my ID when I rode my bicycle over there. I got beer, and I drank it in the woods alone until I heard that it was a sign of alcoholism if one drinks by himself. I was fourteen and fifteen at the time. When I heard about the “drinking alone” stuff, I started taking my dog with me, who lapped at the tops of beer cans as if they’d been smeared with canned Alpo. In a previous life I’m pretty sure that dog—politically incorrectly named Gypsy—might’ve been either a drunk or a porn star. Anyway, I want to thank Pinky Jervey for his indirect part in my writing life. In a bunch of the reading that I did as a lackluster and failed punter on the football team at Vanderbilt, both in history and in English classes, I came to understand that a bunch of Southern writers might’ve had a little problem with the booze. So I feel as though Pinky abetted me in ways that he would have never known way back when he played Ray Charles and Ronnie Milsaps inside his bar relentlessly.

  A number of peripheral, seemingly random events and acquaintances helped me immeasurably while I wrote No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee, and I wish to acknowledge all of them heartily. For example, on many occasions I would go over to the Atomic Gas ’n’ Go for coffee in the morning, and stand around talking to Mr. Beach Beacher, who drove a 1962 Studebaker Gran Turismo and parked it across three spots out front. He’d had an idea back in something like 1999 that he could use up all of his savings for such a car—what a car!—restore most of it himself, and then win money in various vintage car shows and fairs and competitions of one sort or another. Beach Beacher wore a red, short-sleeved, Studebaker shirt with two front pockets every day, advertising that he owned the car parked out front should anyone come inside the convenience store for a scratch-off card, and be all gung-ho to say something like, “Hey, does that Studebaker out front have a V-8 engine?” and whatnot. Now, Beach Beacher always seemed perturbed that people forever wanted to reminisce, argue, or use the opportunity to say something mean about foreign-made automobiles. I watched from my stool, drinking regular Folger’s coffee, as Beach Beacher—and that was his given name, according to his obituary, not some kind of childhood nickname—snapped at his interrogators. I thank Mr. Beach Beacher, for it will remind me that if you make a big deal about parking sideways in a vintage vehicle and wear a shirt that might as well be made of neon, then you’re asking for people to interrupt your thoughts. Just like how if I don’t want to ever talk about the tragic life of Columbus Choice, then I shouldn’t go and publish an entire biography of the great man. Anyway, to Beach Beacher, I offer my thanks, and I hope that you know that after you affixed the garden hose to the muffler of the 1962 Studebaker Gran Turismo and died, your son sold the car to a retired nuclear physicist from over at Oak Ridge who keeps it parked outside the One Spot Café in Harriman from about nine in the morning until after the lunch crowd. I know only that his name’s Dr. Heinrich-something. I guess I’ll learn his family name when I notice it in the obituaries one day, after he too understands the pressures of discussing 289 cubic inch engines and Flight-o-Matic automatic transmissions every day to strangers. I’m hopeful that when surrounded by history and civil rights buffs wanting me to sign copies of their books, I never tire from talking about fatty tuna.

  For making me feel better about myself, I wish to thank the people I saw nearly daily in and around the Harriman-Oak Ridge area: the guy who always walked around on stilts wherever he went, and who tried to sue every bank under the Americans with Disabilities Act because their ATMs were too low for him to use; the guy who rode a unicycle wherever he went; the woman who rode, alone, on a bicycle built for two; the woman who stood on the street corner outside Rex Palmer’s Pawn Shop, staring up at the sun, without sunglasses, tears running down her face; the last remaining “shell-shocked” soldiers from World War II who left their long-term residential facility and walked around town wearing motorcycle helmets; the guy who carried a surfboard wherever he went�
�the one wearing the puka shell choker, not to be confused with the guy who carried a surfboard around wherever he went yelling out the theme to Hawai’i Five-O, seeing as he kind of grated on my nerves, which indirectly kept me from concentrating while working on the Columbus Choice biography; the woman who wore galoshes every day, no matter what the weather, forever prepared since the Great Flood of 1971.

  I must offer a zealous thumbs-up to Eric Burden’s version of the Nashville Teens’ classic song “Tobacco Road.”

  Among Columbus Choice’s closest friends in childhood who outlived Columbus Choice, I want to single out for special thanks the third leg on his high school track team’s 4X110 relay team Julius “Cube Steak” Goode for information on the anchor leg’s soft touch when it came to receiving, then grasping, the baton; his senior prom date Ms. (now Mrs.) Jackie Puckett (now Holloway) for information on her date’s soft touch when it came to pinning a corsage on her dress; Ludie Latimer for information concerning Columbus Choice’s short-lived attempt to play the cornet in junior high school, then how he changed over to bassoon so as not to have to deal with marching band and the inherent, ubiquitous, inexorable (my words) practice sessions every afternoon; Marquette “Drumstick” Carter, the first leg on the 4X110 relay team, for information on Columbus Choice’s early competiveness, and the changes that Marquette noticed once Columbus came back from the military; Vanita Tolbert for information about how, in the sixth grade when she wore white pants and had her very first menstrual period during math class and went up to the teacher (Mrs. Blocker? Mrs. Baten?) so the rest of the class had a good view of what happened on the back of Vanita’s pants—and when a couple of the boys in the class (Cube Steak? Drumstick? Ludie?) yelled out, “Nita’s butt bleeding, Nita’s butt bleeding!”—Columbus Choice got out of his desk, took off his coat, and wrapped it around her backside in a manner both brave and chivalrous; Sherry Leverette, Columbus Choice’s sixth-grade girlfriend, for information on how he might’ve been the first “player” in the African-American community.

  For invaluable advice concerning pure-tee fear, I need to tip my cap to Juanita Wilkins’s father, Bernard. In writing such a sad, tragic, fate-filled biography, it ended up important for my knowing pure-tee fear, in order to slightly comprehend Columbus Choice’s adrenaline levels and heart rate when a gun was pointed his way.

  Among Columbus Choice’s closest friends in adulthood, I want to single out for special thanks Wesley Fulmer, of Fulmer’s Work Clothes Supply, for information about Columbus Choice’s need for a three-pocket apron; to Bentley Canfield, of Canfield’s Restaurant Supply, for information concerning how Columbus preferred those flat, no-roll pencils that carpenters normally use on jobsites; to Dean Willis, of Exotic Pets of Oak Ridge, for his unofficial prognosis that Columbus Choice suffered from both arachnophobia and ophidiophobia, but that he came into the store totally obsessed with the lives and habits of most amphibians, and had a special connection with a pair of tiger salamanders (they can live to be twenty-five years old!), who finally died—one right after the other, as if they were love birds, or doves, or beavers, or ospreys, or voles, or any of those other matrimonially significant animals—which caused Columbus to become significantly depressed, which happened (was it a coincidence?) right before he went off with the Plemmons brothers on that ill-fated trip.

  I have read enough biographies of famous biographers—which makes them autobiographers, also—to know that most writers suffer physically, mentally, financially, and matrimonially, just like I did while undergoing my long work project. I have to admit that—because not everyone in mid-central-southern Tennessee has cable access and watches Antiques Roadshow, Treasures in the Attic, If Walls Could Talk, Junkin’!, That’s Not a Bedpan, At the Auction, The Appraisal Fair, Don’t Throw that Away!, Forever Tarnished and Crazed, and/or Flip This Knick-Knack—I ended up being able to make ends meet after I lost that job teaching History 101 at Tennessee Valley Community College because well-meaning people threw away their so-called junk out on the edge of Highways 29, 27, 61, 62, 162, 58, 328, 299, the Oak Ridge Turnpike, and Margrave Drive over in Harriman. So I want to thank all those people who placed their Stickley furniture and Queen Anne chairs out on the roadside, which I shoved into my car, didn’t restore seeing as I knew enough as to not compromise the patina (or patini), and then sold to a man in Chattanooga, who knew a man in Nashville, who knew a man in Memphis, who knew a woman in Chicago, who knew a woman in New York City, who probably sold everything to a man in Atlanta—somebody like Ted Turner.

  I would be remiss in not thanking Ted Turner for starting the entire cable TV industry, which enabled everyday people to start

  up stations like Home and Garden Television, Style, Oxygen, Lifetime, the Learning Channel, Arts and Entertainment, the Discovery Channel, and so on, which air programs daily like For What It’s Worth, et al.

  I would also like to thank the people who developed and aired the Food Network, seeing as I learned many, many new tricks and recipes in regards to cooking on an electric eye, and then a gas stove, and then on an old-school Coleman MatchLight two-burner propane stove. Maybe one day I’ll be one of your celebrity chefs, after No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee becomes well known, et cetera. Maybe y’all will come down here and I’ll show you some of the things that kept me alive while I worked on Columbus’s biography.

  Here’s a taste, so to speak: Kraft macaroni and cheese with a can of Campbell’s oyster stew thrown in. Stir thoroughly. I call it “White Trash Calabash.” Here’s another: Kraft macaroni and cheese, a can of Chicken of the Sea tuna packed in spring water, Dole pineapple chunks, and green chiles. Mix well. I call it “Elbow Chicken of the Hawaiian Sea, Amigo.” There are other recipes that involve Vienna sausages, potted meat, and a variety of food that Columbus Choice, I know, wouldn’t approve of, seeing as he was such a gourmand before he got lynched by the Plemmons brothers. Anyway, I thank the people of the Food Network all the way to a boiling point.

  Juanita Wilkins, ex-History 101 student and current phlebotomist, told me one time that she’d invented a hangover cure that involved day-old Kraft macaroni and cheese, day-old bread, Spam that accidentally got left out overnight, all mixed in with day-old coffee that she called Mysterious Caffeinated Wonder Pasta, but you’d have to get in touch with her if you ever wanted to try it. She’d be good on any of your programs, seeing as truckers and housewives with a curious lesbian side might like to look at her.

  It would be a frightful error if I forgot to include Dr. Sammy Alexander for his free foot diagnosis over at the Oak Ridge Medical Clinic, and for telling me that I didn’t A) contract diabetes; or B) have some kind of disease caused by toxic chemicals dumped into a variety of creeks and rivers where I’d washed by socks and shoes at one time or another. Who would’ve thought that tea tree oil could eradicate toenail fungus? What a miracle drug! Thanks for the suggestion and insights, Dr. Alexander. And I didn’t have to go into one of those chain drug stores and feel like a leper, standing in line with an expensive tube of Fung-Off for everyone to see and make judgments as to my hygienic practices or lack thereof. And thank you, too, for helping out with my good friend J.W. when she couldn’t afford those women’s clinics in Memphis or Nashville or Chattanooga.

  I am indebted to Python Dave McCarter for his fine tattoo artistry on my biceps over the years at Ink Well. At least the heart‘s still there with the arrow through it!

  Goodwill Industries and the Salvation Army Thrift Store deserve a heap of recognition for offering down-on-their-luck hardworking biographers a place to purchase clean, like-new men’s dress shirts for a dollar each. I found it terribly important to feel successful, though I had not been successful whatsoever at this point, in my writing endeavors. Furthermore, I wish to thank all of the thrift store associates for being lenient when it came to “senior citizen discounts.” I’m not too proud to say that it got to the point where it was cheaper for me to buy new used s
hirts and throw them away than it was to waste all those quarters at Nuclear Wash-o-Matic.

  Maybe even more important for a biographer is the fine selection of books to be found at Salvation Army and Goodwill Industry thrift stores. It can be difficult to own a bookcase when living in a campground, so I advise any future biographers out there to buy one book at a time, then donate it back for tax purposes (always have hope that one day you’ll make enough money to pay taxes!), or choose one of the fine cracked near-leather or stained cloth Strato-Loungers in the showroom in which to read a couple chapters at a time. If you keep a Bible handy at the Salvation Army, no employee will ask you to leave, I have found.

  The Oak Ridge Oatmeal Breakfast Club, whose members served bowls of Quaker Oats each weekday morning at the Oak Ridge Mercy Center, provided Dooley and me with needed sustenance when I was in town to interview ex-employees and friends and relatives of Columbus Choice—or to read fascinating biographies of Jesse Owens, Colin Powell, and the Dalai Lama—and I offer y’all a hearty slap on the back.

  I am in indebted to the Candle Corporation of America, a subsidiary of Blyth, Incorporated, for their fine, reliable product, Sterno.