My coaches were concerned, too. Sensitive guys as they were, they asked me if I was still going to be willing to stick my head in there. Of course I’d stick my head in there. After all, nothing of particular value was at stake—just my head. Besides, this was a chance to prove my toughness. Also, there was an upside that nobody had counted on. Due to the state of dental technology at the time—at least in Lawrenceburg—I not only got a false replacement tooth but the third of the other tooth was capped with gold! Hot dang! Gold on my front tooth, just like Dad’s from his encounter with a deputy sheriff when Dad wasn’t much older than I was. As proud as I was, it did occur to me that we Thompsons ought to learn a lesson from this legacy—we ought to learn how to fight a little better. But as far as I was concerned, the gold tooth was only adding to the legend.
Football season started and I did fine. In fact, I was named Schoolboy Star of the Week in Middle Tennessee after one game. But it was like when things were going well I always seemed to want to spice them up a little bit. I guess a young man’s heritage is bound to catch up with him every once in a while. One Friday night in Fayetteville, Tennessee, during a play a guy’s finger stuck me in the eye. I had never felt anything so painful. After the play, I was doubled over on the ground trying to decide if I was going to be blind. Although the pain was short-lived, the referees stopped the game and our managers ran out to check on my condition. Everyone was huddled around me, wondering how badly I was hurt. I couldn’t help it. I looked up, grinning, and said, “How are the fans taking it?” I think it’s fair to say the coaches were not amused. It would also be correct to say that to this day I am known more in Lawrenceburg by some of my old friends for this incident than anything else I ever did on a football field.
We lost only one or two games that year and were rewarded for our efforts by being selected for a bowl game. We were the top team in Middle Tennessee, and we got to go to the Butter Bowl in Pulaski. Some of our farm boys on the team could have probably walked there with no problem. Pulaski was eighteen miles down the road. We won the game handily. Capping off a very good year, I was selected Honorable Mention All Mid State. I could hardly wait for the next football season to begin the following year, when I would be one of the few starters to return. I knew that, with the increased weight I would pick up, glory days were right around the corner.
But first there was basketball season, which actually started before we finished playing football. The beginning of the season was not a pretty picture, because most of the basketball players were also football players. Putting a bunch of rawboned country boys on the basketball court with no practice is problematic at best. Add to that the fact that they’d been playing football for several months, and it’s all knees, elbows, and sliding on the floor. But before long, it was obvious that we were going to have a very good team.
The team was made up of mostly seniors, including Joe Plunkett, who played under the basket, where it became very dangerous for the opposition to tread—a fact to which I could personally attest. (Joe and I later became good friends before he tragically died while still in his twenties.) I was the sixth man on the team, and I played a lot once I got over my football tendencies, which was not easy. One night early in the season, Coach Staggs put me into the game, and I got fourteen points in a little over a quarter. The bad news was I also fouled out. Coach decided he needed me in smaller doses—perhaps in more ways than one.
We qualified for the state tournament. This, my friends, was a really big deal—especially for those on our team who had never seen a tall building before. This may be stretching it a little, but the word was that during the tournament you could tell country boys from the country schools. They were the ones over at Harvey’s Department Store putting their chewing gum on the escalator so they could watch it come back around again.
This was the big stage—at Vanderbilt University. The gymnasium was cavernous and unique even among college gyms, with the court extending several feet beyond the out-of-bounds line before you reached the first row of seats, which were below court level. It’s like the court was a huge stage. I remember double-checking to make sure I had put on my basketball shorts under my warm-up pants. I could hear the huge crowd from our dressing room. Other guys were checking, too. I guess it was kind of like a paratrooper checking his chute one last time before his first jump.
Of course, as I have discovered in other forums since then, it’s surprising how quick the crowd and noise all blend into the background once the work starts. Things turned out pretty well for us. We won the first game and lost in the second round, leaving us fourth in the state. In those days, there were no school classifications according to size. The smallest schools competed with the biggest, so fourth in the state was a significant achievement. Bowl game in football and fourth in the state in basketball. Not bad for country boys, and it really set the stage for next year and a scholarship offer—probably for football. I had heard that my coaches thought that would happen. Of course, I had little interest in the scholarship part. I just wanted to play, and a man’s got to make certain sacrifices.
ANOTHER HAPPY BY-PRODUCT of my growing confidence was that my own social standing seemed to be improving.
Sarah Lindsey and her girlfriends, for example, were at the top of the high school pecking order in terms of looks, grades, and musical talent. She was a senior and I was a junior. When we met at a Halloween party at school, it was clear to me that she was as sweet as she was pretty, and for some reason she liked me. Our first date was after a night football game, as a teammate buddy of mine, Tommy Morrow, had his dad’s car and we decided to double-date. We were looking for some way to impress the girls, and fortunately a solution was readily at hand. Bobby Alford was a high school sports fan and a baseball coach of mine who was not much older than we were. In those days, Bobby was a little on the heavy side, and we, being the sensitive and imaginative guys that we were, nicknamed him “Fat.”
Fat Alford had various side ventures, including a little hog-raising operation in a vacant lot just outside of town, and we would go with him to check on the hogs from time to time. Naturally, Tommy and I thought that a visit to Fat’s hog pen would be a great way to impress these city girls. We tromped around all over the place, pointing out the better features as well as the habits of the fine specimens shining before us in the moonlight. Actually, I think that was the last date that Tommy ever had with his girl, but fortunately Sarah was a little more broad-minded. From Fat’s hog pen, this unlikely couple (Sarah and me) were off to an improbable start that would change both of our lives.
That summer I was hired as a lifeguard at the city swimming pool after passing a rigorous examination.
“Do you swim?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re hired.”
I lifted weights, dated Sarah, and prepared for my “breakout” senior year in football. Sarah had received an academic scholarship to Peabody in Nashville, where she planned to embark on a teaching career. She had already graduated, but we had it all worked out, with plans to see each other on weekends while I finished high school.
Before school started, football practice was in full gear during the hot and humid Tennessee summer nights. During our first scrimmage, I went downfield and threw a block on a defensive back. I went too low and drove my shoulder into the ground. That was effectively the end of football for me. The shoulder was “separated,” they said, but all I knew was that it just never seemed to get better. I spent the rest of the summer in preseason practice with my arm in a sling. Every time I tested it out on the field, I would hurt it again. I was distraught. The one thing that I was good at had been taken away from me. My future accomplishments were tied to a football scholarship that was now very much in doubt; I thought that my life was being changed forever. I didn’t know the half of it.
Sarah and I had long since fallen very much in love. I suppose one has to smile when hearing that about seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds. “They can’t know anything about l
ove.” Turns out we did. Although we were both inexperienced in such things, we just simply couldn’t imagine not being together. It seemed that simple. But, of course, it was not that simple.
I don’t remember when Sarah first told me, but I do remember our drive down to Florence, Alabama, forty miles south of Lawrenceburg, to get a doctor’s verification. I especially remember her coming out of the doctor’s office with tears rolling down her cheeks as I waited in the reception area.
At the supper table that night, Dad asked me what I had done that day. That’s all it took. I broke down and told Mom and Dad everything. Of course, they were very upset, but their reaction was immediately one of love and support. They were calm. From that moment it was all about the future. We all realized that my boyhood was now at an end. For Dad and me, it was man-to-man. We would work it out. One thing was assumed by all of us. Sarah and I would get married. It was never really discussed. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.
After all the cards were on the table, I don’t remember ever once feeling afraid or distraught. Sarah would not be able to go to Peabody, but that just meant that we would be together. That’s what we had planned all along. We were just moving up the timetable. The only anguish I felt was years later when my children became our ages back then. It was then that I realized how very, very young we were and what our parents had gone through.
Our youth and lack of knowledge protected us in a way. Because we could not foresee all the difficulties that lay ahead, when they did rise up we just assumed they were a normal part of life. Without the foreboding, there is a lot less unhappiness, regardless of what happens. It is something I have tried to remember. Somehow, we were ready for whatever was in store for us. We were married in September 1959. I had turned seventeen the month before. We were married for twenty-five years before divorcing.
We went to Florence, Alabama, for an overnight honeymoon, and our car broke down the next day on our way back to Lawrenceburg. We hitchhiked back to town. It’s amazing the things that don’t embarrass you to death when you are seventeen years old. Yes, sir, I was quite a catch.
Part of the plan was for me to finish high school. I didn’t expect confetti and a marching band when I returned to school, but I also wasn’t expecting what I did experience upon my return. Even though my maturity had progressed somewhat, I had no reservoir of goodwill to fall back on with the coach when first I got injured and then when the world found out I was going to be a daddy.
After I hurt my shoulder and couldn’t play, I was not allowed to ride on the team bus to the away games—no use filling a seat with a spectator. I could still play basketball, but after I got married, instead of letting the team elect a captain, as was the custom, Coach appointed the only other senior on the team to fill that role. All the guys knew what was going on, and the rejection and embarrassment of the coach’s actions toward me were painful.
I had expected the coach to look past the record before him and see that I was basically a well-meaning kid who was being forced to grow up a lot faster than I might have wanted. But he clearly saw no redeeming value in me. And to be fair, I hadn’t given him much cause to see beyond his limited perceptions.
A person is judged on the basis of what they do, not on what they think about themselves, and potential can earn you only so much credit, until that potential runs out or is wasted. If you don’t go about things the proper way, you’d better be prepared when times get tough, because there probably won’t be much of a wellspring of sympathy for you to draw upon. I had not earned the coach’s trust or his goodwill. So when I was no longer productive as an athlete, he had no need for me. And, although he could have handled it better, I had no right to expect him to see what I thought was my potential. He was a good man using what skills he had at his disposal. But there is no greater motivator than the burning desire to show somebody that they were wrong about you. In a very short time, my circumstances had led me to create a pretty long list of folks to prove wrong; I added Coach to that list.
Naturally, I have sometimes wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t torn up my shoulder. Would I have gotten that scholarship? If so, which school would I have attended? Would I have made the team and had great success? I’ll never know the answers, but I do know one thing. These things that may have seemed like tragedies at the time were the best things that could have happened to me.
After Winston Churchill had led Great Britain and the free world to victory in World War II, the English people turned their back on him and he was defeated in his bid for reelection as prime minister. His wife supposedly said to him, “Winston, perhaps it is a blessing in disguise.” To which he replied, “Yes, very heavily disguised.” So it was for me. But I was doubly blessed. I really never had to face up to the fact that I probably was not good enough to be outstanding. I could always be an all-star in my imagination, but more importantly, getting married saved me from wasting at least a few years of my life. I know now that I simply wouldn’t have made it academically and I wouldn’t have developed a sense of responsibility until I absolutely had to. When my basketball coach informed me that having a married man on the team wasn’t a very good idea and it would be best if I left the team, I did not argue with him. I was ready to move on.
AS MIGHT BE EXPECTED, not all of Lawrenceburg’s denizens shared my optimism for our future. One of Sarah’s mother’s friends was heard to say, “I am afraid Sarah Elizabeth has led her ducks to a dry pond.” It became quite obvious that this assessment was shared by most of Sarah’s family. Her mother was a Southern lady, gracious and kind, and coped the best of them all. Her father, Oscar, was the quiet and steady cornerstone of a family of extroverts and achievers. He was building a grand new colonial home on the outskirts of town, with a bedroom and dressing room suite for Sarah—rooms that even years later never saw a piece of furniture. I can imagine what he thought every time he looked at me, which was not often.
Oscar and his older brother, Ed, had started making furniture in their garage as boys, and from that they built a small but thriving church-furniture operation. One night after Sarah and I had made our announcement to our parents, Oscar and I had our first discussion about my plans for the future. As one might expect, it was a short discussion. I told him I had a Sunday-morning paper route delivering the Nashville Tennessean to rural mailboxes by car, and that I had thought about being an athletics coach. We agreed that I would work at the factory after school, stacking lumber and sanding furniture. And Sarah and I would live with the Lindseys while I finished my senior year in high school.
During this time and for years after, Oscar and I spent many postdinner hours watching television or reading in the same room, seldom ever exchanging a word. I am talking hours of silence. I never knew how much of it was due to his nature and how much was because of the circumstances. In larger family gatherings, when he would speak, I was able to get a read on his thinking, and what he said sometimes had more than a little impact on me. He had an insight and a way of looking at things that sometimes differed from the thinking that I was used to.
Along with being a businessman, Oscar was also a captain in the Tennessee National Guard and in charge of several men who trained at the local armory. One night over dinner, he mentioned that an incident between some of the men had taken place at the armory and that it had had some racial overtones. He paused, as if weighing his words, then he said, “You know, if I were a black man, I would be the meanest one there ever was.”
Maybe it was because he was one of few members of his family who was not a politician. Or maybe he was not a politician because of some of the things he believed. All in all, over the years it became obvious to me that he was one of the best men I had ever known, and despite my occasional resentment, it was important to me to gain his respect. I had a lot of work to do—with him as well as the rest of the family.
Sarah’s uncle Ed was a dynamo. With only a high school education, he had become the mayor of Lawrenceburg, the Mayor of the Year i
n Tennessee, and the International President of the Lions Club. He and his wife, Virginia, traveled the world, and he was often mentioned for statewide office, although he never made the run. Never have I seen two brothers who were more different and more compatible than Oscar and Ed. Ed was gregarious, outgoing, and a great public speaker. During Ed’s travels Oscar ran the business, which had grown to thirty or forty employees. He was happy for Ed to have the limelight. Sarah’s uncle, A.D., was a lawyer and had been the county judge, which is the chief executive officer of the county. Her uncle Bid was an Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agent and had been a star athlete. He was the most friendly of “the boys.”
The head of the Lindsey clan was Sarah’s grandfather, “Pap,” who was also a lawyer. He was tall and straight, with a full head of white hair. Town folks called him “The Judge,” although he had never actually been one. He just seemed like he should have been one. He was from the old school that believed in shooting first and asking questions later—literally. There was a story that once he got up in the middle of the night, saw a stranger out in the backyard, and filled full of buckshot a perfectly innocent pair of long johns hanging on the clothesline. He walked to and from his office every day until he was well into his eighties. Often after supper the boys and their families would convene at Pap’s house and pass judgment on the politicians and settle the world’s problems. Pap was one of the relatively few Republicans in town. Ed, A.D., and Oscar had joined the Democrats in order to not foreclose political opportunities in the heavily Democratic county.
I learned when the subject of Sarah and me had first come up at a family meeting that my name had met with less-than-enthusiastic support. In fact, the board of uncles subscribed to the “ducks to the pond” analysis totally. However, after everyone had had their say, Pap rendered his verdict: “If Sarah sees something in this boy, then there must be something there.” That was the end of that. I was going to be in the family and I would have a seat at the table. Before long I was listening to the discussions and even chiming in from time to time. And I was learning about politics, current events, and old courtroom war stories. Mainly, I was learning about myself. This was interesting stuff. I thought maybe I was not as dumb as the evidence would indicate.
Teaching the Pig to Dance Page 10