Teaching the Pig to Dance

by Fred Thompson

  “Drinkin’” had a different meaning for country folks in those days. There was no such thing as a social drinker. Either you drank or you didn’t, and drinking meant getting rip-roaring drunk. When a young girl would talk about meeting a new young man, a discussion would ensue in hushed tones as to whether or not he “drank.” A drinker was further defined as either a “mean drunk” or a “happy drunk.” I got the impression that my daddy may have been both, depending on the occasion.

  All I know is that I never saw a drop of alcohol in the house of either my parents or my grandparents. Actually, it’s all consistent with what I learned about my ancestors over the years and so many of their neighbors. They had a hard life but loved to laugh and joke and have a good time. And while the men were wild in their youth, they grew up, joined the church, and became domesticated when the time came.

  My dad was a prime example of that. As a young man, Fletcher was the oldest of four brothers, six feet tall, slender, and tough with wavy hair. His pictures reflect the fact that he looked like John Dillinger. He hired out to plow a mule for fifty cents a day and drank and fought on Saturday nights. During the Depression he wanted to leave and become a Golden Gloves boxer, but he was afraid his family couldn’t survive without him. The only legacy that came from his fighting days was a partial gold tooth he had from an encounter with a deputy sheriff.

  Dad made it through the eighth grade. In ones and twos, the Thompsons, having “enjoyed” the rustic life as much as they could stand, came to town to live. My mom, Ruth Bradley, was a country girl from a few roads over and the oldest of five children. The Bradleys were a more serious bunch. Pa Bradley’s father died when he was a child. He was sixteen when he married Ma Bradley, who was eighteen. He worked the fields, the mines, and at anything else that came along. Everyone said he was the hardest worker they had ever seen. My mother adored him. Her mom also worked the fields, raised the family, and was a pretty good carpenter. She made several pieces of the furniture in their home. Young Ruth was sent to the cotton fields at an early age. In later years, when Dad would wax nostalgic about growing up on the farm and expressed a desire to someday get back to the country, Mama would have none of it. Growing up on a farm in Tennessee during the Depression had not been her idea of fun. She’d seen enough of it for a lifetime and was determined never to go back. And she didn’t.

  Shortly after Dad married Mom, it became obvious that Fletcher had met his match. By the time I came along, Mom had laid down the law and Dad had renounced his old habits, joined the church, and was taking a very dim view of the vices that he had almost perfected during his single days. For the rest of his life he never drank a drop, and he never missed a day’s work except for illness. He walked in the door every night at 6 o’clock to sit down for a supper that was already waiting on him. I never saw my parents engage in so much as a heated argument. My mom’s influence reminded me of a story about a fellow who, after years of low-down behavior, was hit across the head by a two-by-four and then reformed. “Nobody ever explained things to me like that before,” he said.

  One thing that didn’t change about Fletch was his take on life. He seldom saw a situation that didn’t call for a humorous or sardonic comment. One of my earliest childhood memories is one night after Wednesday Bible study, when I was in the backseat of the car as we were driving home. We stopped at a red light, and a pitiful, haggard old lady walked across the street in front of us. Dad said, “You know, I believe that is the ugliest human being I have ever seen in my life.” Mama responded, “Why, Fletcher, she can’t help it.” To which Dad replied, “No, but she could stay home.” His comments were often so outrageous that Mom spent a good part of her life trying to stifle laughter in front of the children, who she knew were receiving a terrible example.

  There was a running joke in our family. When Mom would go to the beautician, she would tell Dad where she was going. Upon her return, she would walk into the room, and Dad would take one look at her and say, “Change your mind?” or “Beauty shop closed?” Mom would feign outrage as she would walk into the other room, smiling.

  Mom loved to go antique shopping. There have always been plenty of “antique” shops to choose from in Tennessee. Granted, some of them in a Southern gesture of good humor and honesty had signs out front, for “Antiques and Junkue,” but Mom would buy an old piece of furniture from time to time. She collected many pieces and more than a few sets of “Flow Blue” china from these shops. It’s fair to say that Dad wasn’t up on all of this.

  One of her antiques is a table with twisted legs. It’s called a “barley twist,” named for the twisted plugs of chewing tobacco that were common years ago. One evening, Mom and Dad went to an antique auction in Columbia, Tennessee. Along with them was Mom’s sister, Aunt Freda, and her husband, Robert.

  Anyway, Mom and Aunt Freda were seated at the auction in one row, and Dad and Robert, who was just as big a cutup as Dad was, were seated behind them. They were all talking when the auctioneer announced the next item for sale—“Now, ladies and gentlemen, we are going to sell one with twisted legs”—as the crowd quieted down. Quick as a wink, Dad jumped up and said, loud enough for all around him to hear, “Robert, I’ve got to get down there! They’re getting ready to sell my wife!” Thirty years later, Mom still laughs about it.

  Dad not only brought home the bacon, he brought home an interesting variety of other things, too. One July day in 1954, he brought home a new Ping-Pong table. At least that’s what he called it. He had a friend build it for him. It was a little high off the ground for us kids, but we painted it green, got a net and some paddles, and I became very popular in the neighborhood for a while. We kept it outside unless it was raining, at which point we would shove it into the small basement under the house.

  Unfortunately, if it was a hard rain and stormy, the basement was most likely where the Thompsons would be, too. The problem was that Mom was deathly afraid of storms. Growing up in the country, as a kid she had seen some bad ones. Her family had always had what was called a “storm cellar” for such occasions, where canned and other goods were kept, and which provided a temporary refuge while the family huddled and waited to see if the house was going to be blown away. It opened flat to the ground and was deep and wide enough to shelter the whole family. All of this made a lasting impression on Mom, who years later would walk the floor, wring her hands, seek the low ground, and insist that her two overgrown sons get under the bed. We dutifully complied until we couldn’t stuff ourselves under there anymore. If Dad was home he humored her, although he would have been just fine reading the paper until the crisis passed.

  On one particularly rough-weather day, Mom, Dad, my younger brother Ken, and I were waiting it out in the basement, with no one but Mom coming even remotely close to thinking it was necessary for us to be down there with no TV or radio for entertainment. Mom was beside herself, saying, “What are we going to do? What are we going to do?” Dad looked over in the corner of the basement and said, “Well, I have always heard that the best thing to do at a time like this is to get under a green Ping-Pong table.” I am sure that at that point, through the thunder and lightning, anyone on the street could have heard the gales of laughter coming from the male Thompsons. Dad had delivered such a perfect line that even Mom got tickled.

  There are certain turning points in every family when issues are resolved or new understandings are reached. The green Ping-Pong table provided one for us. I don’t recall Mom ever carrying on about a storm again. For years afterward, if the weather was looking bad, Dad, Ken, or I would say, “Okay, do we have a green Ping-Pong table?” And that would be the end of it. I never knew if Mom got over her fear or it just wasn’t worth the aggravation anymore.

  Dad got his irreverence honestly. His mother, Ma Thompson, was what could only be described as a “pistol.” She was outgoing, everybody’s friend, and holder of the world’s record on funeral attendances—all while dispensing large amounts of her famous red velvet cake. She once had
a “gourder,” an egg-size tumor, removed from her neck. The next day, she was around town carrying it in a cloth, unwrapping it and showing it to her friends.

  When I was a small boy, I called her “Ma Thompson” the way my cousin did. One day she looked at me and said, “Would it hurt you to call me Mrs. Thompson the way everybody else does?” Of course, I took her seriously and started calling her Mrs. Thompson. She thought it was the funniest thing ever. As I got older, I was always wanting to go over to her house on Saturdays because I knew that she would invariably slip me the twenty cents necessary to go to the movies. I never really knew whether or not it was an act of generosity or she just found me to be boring.

  Although Ma Thompson, with her outgoing personality and ready laughter, was the center of attention everywhere she went, Pa Thompson had a wit that was as dry as a Death Valley bone, though seldom used. One of the three or four cafés they owned and operated in Lawrenceburg over the years of my youth was the Colonial Café, downtown across from the city hall. In a circumstance I’ve never seen before or since, right next door was a café, the Dixie Grill, that was almost identical to the Colonial. Same store front, same size, and same sort of food.

  One day Pa Thompson was standing out in front of the Colonial smoking a cigarette. A stranger pulled up, got out of his car, looked at both restaurants, and asked Pa Thompson which of the restaurants he should go to. Pa Thompson told him, “Don’t make any difference. Whichever one you go to, you’ll wish you’d gone to the other.”

  In 1942, Mom’s folks had moved to northern Alabama, where Pa Bradley had found work on the Wilson Dam, a TVA project. Dad and Mom were there when I was born in the Helen Keller Hospital on August 19 of that year. (Over half a century later, I learned that the year before, my colleague Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky had also been born in that hospital. They probably would have shut the place down if they had known that they were producing that many senators—and in that day, even more alarming, Republican senators, to boot.)

  IN THE FALL of 1942, Dad found work “up north” in Cleveland, Ohio, driving a big trailer-truck rig. The boss asked him if he’d ever driven a truck like that. He replied that he was “born in a truck just like that.” Of course, he’d never seen one before. He got the job. When I was a few months old, Mom took me to Cleveland on a train, and we lived in a small apartment while Dad was on the road.

  When Dad would meet someone named Thompson, and the subject came up as to whether he and the stranger might be related, Dad would invariably say, “Could be—my daddy was a traveling man.” In truth, it was Dad who was the traveling man—at heart, anyway. He would often say that driving a big rig in New England was the most fun of his life. He was twenty-two, World War II had started, and he was hauling airplane parts over icy roads. He and a buddy would take turns driving and sleeping in the back of the cab. The wheels never stopped rolling. He would laugh and tell stories about the adventures of himself and other country boys who’d gone north to find work, and of his days on the road at truck stops when they were all indestructible and invisible. Once he was sitting on a stool with his back to the door, and someone came in the door and said, “I can whip any SOB that ever came out of Tennessee,” and he put down his drink, ready to fight, and was face-to-face with an old friend from Tennessee, laughing like the devil. Or the time he left his buddy asleep in the cab while he pulled in for a cup of coffee. The truck was parked close to the highway, and when the guy woke up bleary-eyed and heard the traffic, he assumed that they were still rolling. When he glanced down and saw that no one was in the driver’s seat, he almost tore up the cab trying to get behind the wheel. Of course, these were just the stories Dad could tell his kids.

  If these were the best of times for Dad (behind the wheel of an eighteen-wheeler instead of a Tennessee mule), they were the worst of times for Mom, a country girl a long way from home. She stayed scared for one reason or another for the entire two and a half years we were there in Ohio. We lived in a little apartment surrounded by people who talked funny—at least to this country girl who had never been away from home. Thoughtfully, Dad’s truck-driving buddies would tell Mom tales of Dad’s daredevil exploits behind the wheel, like the time he was flying down an icy hill and saw a jackknifed truck wrecked at the bottom of the hill, blocking the highway and making passage impossible. At least the buddy thought it was impossible. Rather than take the ditch or apply the brakes, Dad went on through with inches to spare.

  When I was a little boy and we would meet a big rig on the highway, Dad would often raise his fist up and make a pulling-down motion. Sure enough, to my delight, the driver would pull down on his horn and give a loud blast. Looking back, I can almost hear Dad thinking, “Enjoy it, son. It’s better than you think.”

  Naturally, his attitude toward such things found its way into his vast catalog of irreverent comments in later years. When I started driving and was getting ready to go on a little trip, three things would invariably be said. First, Mom would tell me to be careful and not drive too fast. Then Dad would say, “You better not let anybody pass you, son.” Then she’d say, “FLETCHER.”

  Every man needs a time of adventure in his life, no matter how brief. It gives him something to relate to—something to remind him that he hasn’t been cheated. He can relive it and mold it to fit his needs. I think that’s what trucking in a “foreign land” in dangerous times did for Dad.

  However, after almost three years, it was time to go home to Lawrenceburg. After we relocated, Dad knocked around for a while before he found his true calling. He drove a “muck truck,” hauling this delicate mixture of dirt and whatever to construction sites. He drove a bus that carried workers to a chemical plant in Mt. Pleasant, and he did a few other things before he apparently decided that wheels were his thing. He opened a little used-car lot in Lawrenceburg, and that’s the way he made his living for pretty much the remainder of his life. His getting started wasn’t that complicated. He did it without any help from his folks, an SBA loan, a “stimulus grant,” or anything else. He had all he needed—a good reputation at the bank. He was known to be a fellow who paid his debts. He’d borrow some money, take two or three boys with him to the auto sale in Nashville, buy a few cars, drive them bank to Lawrenceburg, and put them on the lot.

  He didn’t have the opportunity to travel much later on, but every once in a while he and Mom would take off on the open road—often heading “out west.” Once, when I was still in single digits, we drove to Arizona, quite a trip in those days. It was Mom, Dad, me, and two new 1949 Chevys. We towed the other one with a trailer hitch, as Dad intended to sell it somewhere along the way. As it turned out, we came back with the same two Chevys.

  I may not have been the best traveler in the world. Years later, when I heard a joke on TV about a kid on a family trip bugging his dad with “Are we there yet?,” I thought, à la Seinfeld, “Wait a minute, I invented ‘Are we there yet?’” This was long before the time when I thought the desert was beautiful. There were no places to stop, and I didn’t like the warm water we drank from a canvas canteen we had tied to the bumper to keep it “cool.” In these pre-air-conditioning days, we couldn’t really drive with the windows either up or down for more than a minute. Dad was loving it. Mom was tolerating it. I was miserable. As Dad would say, “Other than that, everything was fine.” And I’m sure I hid my discomfort well and was cheerful throughout.

  As a gentle lesson to parents who may be overly optimistic as to the educational benefits of travel for young boys, I can state that I remember two things about the trip. First, it was long. Second, I saw the grave of Pat Garrett, the sheriff who shot Billy the Kid.

  Having said that, I can’t really say that I gave the trip a fair shot. You can’t see that much scenery when you’re lying down in the backseat with a comic book. Yes, my sense of adventure along with the rest of me lay dormant, while my sense of wonder was limited to seeking frequent updates as to our exact location and how long it was to lunch. Not improving
my disposition was the fact that in my attempts to gather intelligence from the front seat, I had to take care to frame my inquiries carefully to avoid a Fletcherism designed to infuriate. If I asked, “Where are we now, Daddy?,” he would invariably reply, “Right along here, son.” It was information that was technically correct and totally useless. Like a lot of the stuff I was learning in school, I figured.

  Since time began, the trader and the merchant have had to develop the necessary skills to survive—and Dad was no different. He had to have a pretty good eye for what a car would “bring” when he bought it at auction. There wasn’t much margin for error. He could look at a car across a lot and tell whether it was previously wrecked or whether it was a “northern” car, meaning it was driven on snowy, icy roads strewn with salt and therefore more likely to rust. He also had a pretty good idea about a car’s odometer reading. If he knew the seller of a car he had bought, he would add to the list of selling points “original miles.”

  There were few impediments or requirements for getting into the car business, and it seemed that every horse-trading country boy in Lawrence County who did not want to work for “the man” opened a used-car lot—for a while, anyway. Competition was heavy, and I sometimes wondered how Dad competed with folks who sold old beat-up rattletraps with odometer readings worthy of a little old lady who drove only on Sundays. Did he fight fire with fire, so to speak? I didn’t really want to know. All I know is that he sold used cars in the same little town for forty years. More than once a young fellow would walk onto the lot and say, “Mr. Thompson, my dad bought his first car from you and he said that I should, too.” That told me all I needed to know.