I told the girls I’d hate them forever if they told Peanutt and George what had happened, and they agreed to keep the incident a secret.
“I wonder what the men have been up to,” Tammy said while we were walking to our rooms.
“It’s Valentine’s Day,” I replied.
“Oh, yeah, that’s right,” Tammy said. “George better not forget.”
“Peanutt and I don’t celebrate Valentine’s Day anymore,” I told them.
“I know Bill won’t get me anything.” Patsy exclaimed.
“There’s no danger that Cliff won’t remember, either,” Maxine said.
“Let’s all go to the staff in the restaurant and talk them into baking us a heart-shaped cake and have them deliver it to our table tonight at dinner,” I told them.
Everybody liked my idea, so we headed to the kitchen. We told the chef to be sure to write, “To the ladies” on top of the cake. The chef was happy to oblige and assured us he would make sure our plan would be carried out.
True to what we ladies knew for sure would happen, every one of the men had forgotten it was Valentine’s Day, and of course we mentioned nothing about it to them. That night at dinner, the waiter came to the table with our cake. The white cake with red letters that said, “To the ladies” was highlighted with burning candles that made it a stunningly beautiful cake.
We acted completely and pleasantly surprised.
“Which of you boys did this for us?” I asked.
Peanutt didn’t say anything because he would never have thought of the idea in the first place. Bill said it wasn’t him, and Cliff also said he didn’t do it. George took a long breath, straightened up in his chair and had a proud look on his face.
“Well, y’all thought we had forgotten about Valentine’s Day, didn’t you?” George exclaimed dripping with syrup.
George figured one of the other men had done it and didn’t want us to know who, so he went along with the program and claimed the credit.
“What do you think about us now? We’re not so bad after all are we?” George asked.
Tammy was real antsy and started squirming in her seat. She pounded the table with her fist.
“George Jones,” she yelled while beating the table. “Don’t you dare take the credit for that cake; you didn’t have it made, and you know it. I know who did, and it was none of you. Y’all forgot about us, and we knew you would, so we went to the kitchen and had a cake baked for ourselves!”
George looked like a plucked chicken. I felt a little sorry for him because I knew he was trying to make us all feel good. We all laughed about it later because we were just having fun at the expense of our husbands. What Tammy would never let me live down was losing my top and becoming a peep show for several googleeyed men.
One evening, we were all in a motel room in Nashville. We had been up late every night getting prepared for George’s recording session the next day. George, Peanutt, and several other people were lounging in the room. They were making plans for the night.
“I’m going to bed, good night,” I said.
George yelled out, “Alright!”
“If you all want me to go to bed that badly,” I said, “I’ll just stay right here and see what’s going on?”
Everybody in the room started laughing. I didn’t catch on, so I thought about what I said.
“No, I didn’t mean it that way,” I explained.
George was laughing so hard. He loved to get the best of me whenever he could find the opportunity.
Tammy called Peanutt and me one time when we were living in Florence and asked us to come up to Nashville and get George. She said George was drunk, and she wanted us to come and get him. Peanutt told Tammy we would be there. She said he was at home and couldn’t leave because she had hidden all the keys. She knew George wouldn’t go off without a car.
When we arrived at the Tyne Boulevard house, George was there. He wasn’t drunk but very close. Peanutt had asked Bob Tidwell, a friend of ours, to ride along with us. After we were there for a little while, George decided to go home with us, but he wanted me to fix his hair first.
I was combing George’s hair, Peanutt had gone to the bathroom, and Bob was sitting at the table with George and me. The comb slipped out of my hand and fell to the floor. When I bent over to pick up the comb, George pinched me on the rear. I didn’t think anything about it because George was just being ornery.
When we were ready to leave for Florence, Peanutt said to me: “Charlene, you let George ride with you, and Bob and I will ride together.”
After we arrived at our house in Florence, Peanutt was laughing and telling George and me about what Bob had said to him on the way home.
“Peanutt,” Bob said. “I don’t know how to say this to you, but you had better watch your back with that George. While you were in the bathroom, George pinched Charlene on her butt.”
Peanutt said that Bob was dead serious. Peanutt told him that it was just George cutting up, and that he didn’t mean a thing by it. Bob said that he wouldn’t want another man to pinch his wife on the butt. Peanutt assured Bob that he’d just have to know George to understand him, and that George would have done the same thing if it had been his sister combing his hair.
George loved to clown around. I was at the Brooks Acres house one day. We were all down on the deck fishing. Just as I pulled back my rod to cast, George caught my reel, grabbed the fishing line, and put the hook in the bottom of my swimsuit. I couldn’t get it loose, and he was laughing so hard tears were rolling down his cheeks. He loved to pull mischievous pranks.
Another time, we were visiting George and Tammy when they lived in Hendersonville. Tammy saw a mouse run across the floor, and she was so frightened. She went on and on about how badly it scared her. About four days later, I decided to pull a prank on her. I went to the novelty store and bought a toy rat. It was a wind up model and had real gray fur that made it look real. I found the opportunity to sneak into her bedroom. I placed the mouse about half way down in the bed on the side where Tammy slept. I positioned it, so it wouldn’t unwind until she lifted the cover off of the rat’s winding stem.
Tammy went to bed. She straightened out her legs and released the blankets that were holding the rat and keeping it from activating. Suddenly, the little rat started running all over her bed. She kicked off the covers, jumped out of the bed, got up in a chair, screamed at the top of her lungs, and then started throwing her wigs at the mouse. She was yelling at George to kill it.
George knew about it, and he played along. When the rat finally wound down, it laid there like it was dead. Tammy thought George had killed it. When she finally discovered it was a prank, Tammy got madder than the devil at me. She phoned me after she calmed down a little and told me she was going to get even. George told me how hard it was for him not to laugh at her, but he knew he couldn’t. It would have made her furious if she knew that George was in on the prank because it scared her so badly. We all laughed about it later, and I couldn’t help but chuckle when I thought about her warning me that she’d catch up to me.
Tammy was not innocent when it came to pulling her own pranks on people. She loved to get a laugh at somebody else’s expense. She was a lot of fun when everything was going smoothly in her life. I wouldn’t take anything for the good times we had with her. I loved to hear her laugh and tell funny stories about different entertainers. She’d tell funny stories about Jan Howard, Loretta Lynn, Dottie West, and Tanya Tucker. She loved those ladies and talked about them all the time as her favorite female artists. Tammy’s favorite male artists were Don Gibson and Charlie McCoy. She absolutely loved Charlie. She was loyal to the people she liked but if she didn’t care for you, you better keep your distance.
I’ll never forget the day we went shopping at Kmart to buy George a pair of jeans. Tammy found a pair she really liked. The jeans featured one purple and one orange back pockets. I thought to myself, “Surely you’re not going to buy those for George.” I knew George wo
uld not wear those pants, but I didn’t make a comment because she thought they were really cool.
“What the hell is this?” George said when she handed him the jeans. “Do you really think I’m going to wear those things?”
“You go buy your own jeans from now on because I can’t ever please you,” Tammy said with an aggravation in her tone.
“Believe me, I will,” George replied.
It was little things like this that irritated George and Tammy and turned into bigger matters that kept them from getting along.
I always knew when George was deep in thought about something he was wanting to do, thinking about something he didn’t like, or how to do something that was on his mind he didn’t want to talk about. He had a quirky habit that always tipped me off when he had something up his sleeve. He’d suck air through the sides of his teeth. He never knew I had him figured out.
“George is up to something,” I’d tell Peanutt and then told him how I knew it. Peanutt started paying attention to George’s habit and just like clockwork, every time we’d hear George swish air through the sides of his mouth, he’d wind up pulling something off before the day was through. He would do it a lot of times when we were out riding around or doing something just to be passing time. George was pretty easy to figure out if you knew him well.
Tammy could read him like a book. She’d sometimes say to me, “I want you and Peanutt to spend the night; I think George is restless.”
Peanutt and I would spend the night and play cards or Aggravation in order to keep his mind off whatever he was thinking. Peanutt would sometimes come up with a song idea and we’d get to work on that. Peanutt was good with George. He never wanted George and Tammy upset at each other. He really liked Tammy and highly respected her. He thought they were perfect for each other. They really were but didn’t realize it.
Sue Richards was my best friend, and we spent a lot of time together. One night she called me,
“Charlene, I’m coming to get you. George and Jimmy are off together, and I found out that they’re at the Tourway Inn.”
“Okay, come on and pick me up, and I’ll go with you,” I answered.
A few minutes later, Sue pulled in my driveway, and we went to the Tourway Inn. We found that they had indeed checked in. Sue went to the room, and there were some women inside. Sue was furious with Jimmy. George and Jimmy were drinking. Jimmy tried to reason with Sue, but she was too angry to hear anything he had to say.
“Sue, George is the one with the women; I just brought him out here. I didn’t know anything about any women being here.” Jimmy cried.
Sue pulled off her shoe and started slapping the fire out of Jimmy with it. She threatened a couple of the women as well. All the while, Jimmy was trying to explain that he only took George where he wanted to go, and this is what happened.
Jimmy dumped George at the Tourway Inn and went home. I had never seen Sue that upset. George was probably pulling one of his pranks on Jimmy to get him in hot water. I told Sue that George would do things like that just to make Jimmy squirm. I helped to get her cooled down and off Jimmy’s back. There was always something George was pulling on one of us.
Peanutt was not a person who pulled pranks very often. He was always afraid he’d make somebody really mad at him, so for the most part he stayed away from that kind of trouble.
Linda, my sister, who George later married, would mispronounce words that would make George correct her. She’d say things like “reality company” instead of realtors. She’d say, “George, do you need an alka-sucker?” George really got a kick out of it. He actually thought she didn’t know any better.
One time, George bought a Nudie suit. He dressed up wearing it and his new Nudie boots. He walked out of the bedroom and asked Linda how he looked?
“Oh, George, you look sharper than a tick,” she replied.
“Sharper than a what?” he asked.
“Sharper than a tick.” she said again.
I think that one actually upset George. Linda knew that the word was “tack,” but she wanted to see George get flustered with her. It was these little things that made friendship with George a lot of fun. Some folks thought we were all as wild as a herd of buffalos, but we did it all in fun. It made memories that will never be forgotten. That was the good part of it all.
One of Peanutt’s favorite stories is about a fishing trip we took with George and Linda.
One day, George decided we would all go fishing. We grabbed rods, reels, and tackle, and took off down to McFarland Park on the Tennessee River. The fish were not biting too well that day, but George caught a small bass. He got excited and told Peanutt that if we wanted to catch fish, we needed to get into the middle of the river. George had a brainstorm.
“Peanutt, let’s go to Russell Sporting Goods and buy us a boat, so we can get out there where the fish are.”
George wasted no time. We all four piled in the car and went looking for a boat. Before the day was gone, George had a boat and then realized he had no way to pull it. We drove to Bobby Mitchell Chevrolet on Florence Blvd. and bought a new truck. We pulled the boat back to the river but by the time we made it there, it was nearly dark. We had no place to stay the night, so George decided what he needed was a camper.
“I tell you what, Peanutt, let’s just go home tonight, and tomorrow we’ll go get us a camper.”
We went home. The next day Peanutt and George went shopping for a camper and ended up with a super nice motor home.
“Peanutt and I are on the way down to the river with the motor home.” George said when he called Linda and me. “Go tell Wild Bill to come get the boat and trailer and pull it down to McFarland Park. I want you and Charlene to run to town and get exactly what I tell you on this list.”
He gave us a list a mile long. It consisted of a grill, charcoal, food, etc. When we had finished shopping, we tallied up over three hundred dollars for supplies. We were all set up to camp and very well prepared for a fishing spree, a cook out, and a good time. George was right. The fish were further out in the river. We caught a stringer full of fish, had a good meal, and played cards that night inside George’s new motor home.
“Go down there and tie the boat up to a tree,” George told Peanutt when we were done fishing for the day.
Peanutt secured the boat just as he was commanded, and we went to bed after playing cards. During the night, it began to rain heavily. The sudden downpour caused the river to rise very rapidly. Because the boat had been tied to a tree, it couldn’t rise with the water.
The next morning, George, Peanutt, and Wild Bill found the boat completely under water but still tied to the tree. After the men got the water out of the boat and cleaned it up, George was done with it all and announced he was going home.
As soon as we got in the house, George called a friend, Ralph May, and offered to sell him the boat, trailer, and the truck for about two-thirds of what he had paid for it. Ralph bought it.
That’s the way George was. He was impulsive and would settle for nothing less than what he wanted at the moment. By the next day, he wouldn’t want it at all. Peanutt reminded George that the fishing trip was awful, expensive, and ended in disaster.
George replied, “It’s just money, Peanutt. We had a good time, and it was worth it to me.” It never bothered George if he spent money and made deals other people thought were wasteful and stupid.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Linda (Welborn) (Jones) Dodson
Wife Number Four
* * *
(Written by Linda Jones)
“I personally want to tell you about myself, Linda Carolyn (Green) (Welborn) (Jones) Dodson. Some of the books that have been written about George Jones and Tammy Wynette have all but chewed me up and spit me out. Even though I will have to pay thanks to George, he never put me down in any of the books. Of course, George knew me, and he knew that a lot of what has been said is not the truth. I realize that some people will do or say anything to gain a few brownie p
oints with someone they’re trying to get close to or impress.
I will tell the truth in this chapter, and I hope I don’t hurt anybody. I’m not writing this portion of the book to get back at anybody. I don’t have anything to gain or anything to lose, and I’m not being paid any money. I simply want the truth to be known. I was born in Marion County, Alabama on August 8, 1948. My parents are James Alvin and Irene Green. I was the fifth child of their nine children. There were four before me and four after me. I guess I have always been stuck in the middle. My dad went to work at Reynolds Metal Company in 1947. When I was six years old, we moved to Muscle Shoals, Alabama and that’s where I spent my younger years.
I started school at Howell Graves School in Muscle Shoals. I wasn’t what you’d call a real country girl. I have always lived in the city limits. I have never lived on a farm, but we did have animals to take care of. I had chores just like people that did live in the country. My mother never had a job outside of the home. She was too busy sewing, cooking, and cleaning. My dad believed in working hard and each child was expected to do chores around the home.
Every cotton crop owner in the county would come to our house and ask daddy to let us children pick or chop cotton for them. They knew how hard daddy worked and made us work. They knew we were healthy kids and were able to do a good job for them. We were not too happy that they thought that much of us, but daddy took it as a real compliment. He was big on wanting his children to always be ready and willing to help anybody out that needed help.
Our family was not what you would consider poor people. We just lived like we were poor kids. Daddy saved half of his weekly paychecks and put it in savings. We lived off of the other half, and the extra money he’d pick up from odd jobs. My mother was a Christian lady. We went to church every time the doors were open. She would not let us miss a service, come rain, hail, sleet, or snow, we went to church.
I enrolled in high school at Colbert County High School in Leighton, Alabama. It was there that I met Douglas Howard Welborn. Doug and I dated while we were in school together, and then married when I was seventeen years old. Doug was only eighteen. We got married on November 25, 1965. Soon after Doug and I married, we moved to Chicago, Illinois. It was kind of hard on me for I had never been away from home. My dad was really strict on us kids and would hardly let us spend the night away from home even with relatives.
The Legend of George Jones: His Life and Death Page 12