Doug and I both got good jobs in Chicago. We were both making good money and were doing just fine. I worked for Motorola, and Doug worked for Bradfoot Gear. After almost five years had passed, I finally got pregnant with my first child. Howard Dale Welborn was born on October 15, 1970. I quit my job with Motorola to take care of Dale. I waited until Dale was old enough to be put in daycare before I went back to work. Then I went to work for Western Electric as a punch press operator. Doug and I started going to church. We became very involved in church work; we had both become Christians. We decided we wanted to attend a Seminary to learn more about the Bible and the ministry. We enrolled in the Moody Bible College and were as happy as any two people could be.
Later on Doug got involved with a group of young believers. They didn’t go to our church, but they held their meetings in their homes. They were a nondenominational group. They called any place they decided to meet their church. Sometimes their meetings would last until two or three o’clock in the morning. I had never heard of such a group before. I had always been a Baptist and had always attended church in a church house. Doug totally believed in the young believers, but I refused to get involved with them. I never felt that they were religious at all, in fact, I felt like their group was a cult. I tried desperately to convince Doug to get away from them and start back to our church, but he flat refused. I had gone as far as I could go with the situation.
I could no longer deal with Doug and the group of people he was involved with. I realized I had to do something about it. The more I complained to Doug, the more he resented me. We started having serious problems over the situation. It had gotten to where we hardly even spoke to each other. I finally decided I couldn’t live with it any longer. Doug went to work one morning, and I packed some clothes for Dale and me and took a few toys for Dale, a blanket and a pillow, and left the rest of our possessions behind. I left Doug a note and told him that I hated that our marriage had come to this point, but I was leaving him. I had worked just as hard as Doug, made just as much money as Doug, paid as much for our possessions, but I left it all behind.
I went to Liberty, South Carolina, a little town west of Greenville to live with my sister Paulene Thomas and her husband Jamie. A little while after I got there, I got a job at Libco Mills, a carpet plant, where Paulene and Jamie worked. I was doing just fine and getting ready to get my own place. Then one day the doorbell rang. It was Doug.
“I’ve come to get Dale,” he said.
I told him no way I was going to let Dale go back to Chicago.
“Well, I’ll just wait until you go back to work, and I’ll get him while you’re gone to work,” he commented.
“No you won’t because I’ll not go back to work.” I replied.
I stayed at home until I knew Doug had left town. When I did go back to my job, I didn’t have a job. After I realized I was without a job, I decided to move back home to Muscle Shoals, Alabama. My dad had just passed away at fifty-four years old with a massive heart attack, and my mother was forty-nine years old, and she needed me with her. Dale and I moved in with mother. I filed for a divorce from Doug as soon as I got to Muscle Shoals. I didn’t ask for anything, no alimony, no child support, and not any of the possessions we had accumulated during our marriage. All I wanted was the divorce papers signed.
Doug had asked me to come back to him, and I asked him in return if he would get away from that bunch of so-called Christians and he said, “I can’t promise you that.”
“Okay, then it’s forever over for me and you,” I told him.
That’s when I made up my mind that I wanted the divorce. Our divorce became final in 1974. All I got was custody of Dale, and that’s all I wanted. Doug had visiting rights. I had only been at my mother’s for a couple of weeks when one day the phone rang. It was my sister Charlene Montgomery calling me.
“Hey Linda,” she said. “I want you to come over to my house. Peanutt’s brother Aaron is here from Peoria, Illinois, and he has just gotten a divorce and is having a hard time with it, and I’d like to introduce you to him. He’s real nice, and I think he’d feel better if he just had someone to talk to.”
“Well, I’ll come by in a little while,” I replied.
I think Charlene was also thinking that I needed to get out of the house as well. I had not done anything since I’d been at mother’s house. I went to Charlene’s, and she introduced me to Aaron Montgomery. He was a nice looking man, very neat and well dressed. Aaron was very polite and well mannered, and I really liked him. Peanutt and some other guy were sitting in the den playing the guitar and singing. They didn’t seem to be interested in anything except what they were doing.
Charlene finally asked me to come to the den and wanted to introduce me to the other man. Peanutt looked up at me and said,
“Linda, this is my friend, George Jones, the country singer,” Peanutt volunteered. “I’m Linda, Charlene’s younger sister, and it’s nice to meet you,” I said to Mr. Jones.
I then went back into the kitchen and sat down at the table with Aaron and Charlene. Peanutt and George resumed picking and singing as if they had their own little world they were playing in.
“Linda, I’d like to take you out to dinner tonight,” Aaron said to me.
I told him I’d go. We stayed around the table talking to Charlene until time for dinner.
Aaron and I went to the River Bluff Restaurant to eat. We had a really good meal and a nice night out. I took a real liking to him; he was so kind and polite. After sitting and talking for a while, we decided to go back to Peanutt and Charlene’s. When we got there, Peanutt and George were still picking and singing songs. They must have been writing a song too because they would sing a line, and the other one would change it. Whatever the case, they were preoccupied with what they were doing.
I was feeling a little out of place. I had never been around drinking, and I noticed that George and Peanutt both were drinking beer. Aaron had fixed himself a mixed drink and offered me one, but I told him I didn’t drink. I was surprised that Charlene was letting them drink in her home. That was not like her at all. I knew she hated drinking and didn’t want Peanutt to drink. I just figured it was because George was there, and she felt obligated to let them drink. Nobody was out of line, but it made me a little nervous. Charlene called me off to the side,
“Now Linda, don’t worry about those men drinking, they all know how I feel about drinking, and they know I’ll make them leave if they get out of line.”
After that, I felt a little more at ease for I knew Charlene wasn’t afraid to speak her piece if she needed to. Aaron and I were sitting on the couch beside each other. Peanutt and George finally laid the guitars down and talked to us for a while. George started out by picking on Aaron.
“Aaron, you took Linda out to dinner tonight, but you’ve got to leave and go back to Peoria tomorrow, and I’m gonna take her away from you as soon as you leave. I’m gonna take Linda to dinner tomorrow night.”
“Oh, no Jones,” Aaron replied, “I’m taking Linda with me to Peoria.”
“No, you’re not,” George cried, “She’s staying here, and you’re leaving tomorrow and I ain’t got nowhere to go.”
George was just dying laughing and picking at Aaron. I walked off and went back to the kitchen. Aaron came in and sat down with me. Charlene and Peanutt had a really big house. It had a fully finished basement with a recreation room and a pool table. The rec room had a bar, bedroom, and a bath. Aaron asked me to go down and play a game of pool with him, and so I went. When we got to the basement, he invited me to the bedroom. I told him to forget the game of pool, and that I was going back upstairs. I went back to the kitchen.
“I thought you were going to play pool?” Charlene asked.
I told her that we decided not to. I knew I couldn’t tell her what Aaron did for I knew she’d chew his rear end out, so I just kept it to myself. Aaron came back upstairs. He apologized to me over and over. I told him that if he thought I was that kind
of person that he needed to forget about me. His asking me to sleep with him really offended me. Aaron asked me not to tell Charlene and Peanutt what he did, and I didn’t.
I waited for a short while and told Charlene that I had to go back to our mother’s. As I left, Aaron followed me to the car. He again apologized to me.
“Linda, I really do want to take you to Peoria with me,” he said, “I want to marry you.”
“Aaron, you don’t even know me, and I don’t know you any better, and there’s no way I would marry you.”
“Linda, I promise you that you’ll never want anything the rest of your life, and I’ll treat your little son as if he was my own.”
“Aaron, I have just left Illinois after being there for 10 years, and I’m not about to go back there.”
“Well, I own a big business in Peoria, and it’s worth a whole lot of money and if you’ll just wait on me, I’ll sell it all and move to Alabama.”
“Aaron, I can’t promise you anything. I have just met you.”
I told him that I really liked him, and I thought he was very nice, with the exception of the one episode, but I just didn’t know him. He told me to go on to my mother’s and think about it. I left and went home. I knew Aaron had to leave the next day, and I was not going back to Charlene’s until he was gone. The next morning Charlene called. It was around noon.
“Linda, I want you to come over here and come now!” She yelled.
“Charlene, I’m not coming over there until Aaron leaves,” I answered.
“Oh, he’s already gone. I want you to take a trip with me.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“We’re going to the Bahamas, and I want you to come with us.”
“Charlene, I have a child to take care of, and I can’t be spending money on trips. You know I haven’t got a job yet, and I just can’t afford to go.”
Then she told me, “George wants you to go, and he said he’d pay your way.”
I told Charlene, “I don’t even know George, and he doesn’t need to be paying my way to the Bahamas. It all sounds good, I really would love to go, but to let George pay my way is out of the question.”
“Linda, if George didn’t want you to go, he wouldn’t have offered to pay your way, so come on and go, you’ll have a good time. Peanutt and George both have promised not to drink on the whole trip so come on and go with us.”
I could tell Charlene really did want me to go, so I asked mother to take care of Dale for me, so I could take the trip, and she agreed to watch him while I was gone. I told Charlene that I’d go, but I was not going to be obligated to anybody by going. She assured me that she had made that perfectly clear to everyone. By the time I got to Charlene’s, they had already made all the arrangements. Wild Bill and Jody Emerson, a songwriting husband and wife team who were friends of Charlene, Peanutt, and George were also invited by George to go, and they accepted. It made me feel a little better because I felt like George just wanted to get a bunch of whoever to go on the trip. George had rented a motor home for us to ride in to Miami.
When we all got in the motor home to leave, Charlene, Jody, and I went to the back of the motor home to talk. Peanutt was driving, and Wild Bill and George were picking and singing. After a little while, George yelled,
“You girls come back up here!”
We all three went to the front of the motor home, and George started teasing me. “I told Aaron I was going to take his girl away and I am,” George blurted out.
I thought, “Oh Lord, what does he mean?” Charlene just laughed it off, but I could tell George was serious about me.
George didn’t drink a drop of alcohol. We all laughed, talked, picked, and sang songs the whole trip. We got nearly halfway to Miami, and the air conditioner went out on the motor home. It began to get very very hot. We all thought we’d smother to death in that thing. To make things worse, Wild Bill and Jody decided to go to bed, so they’d feel good the next day. George, Charlene, and I continued to sit up front and talk to Peanutt while he drove. About five minutes after Jody and Wild Bill had gone to bed, we smelled this terrible odor in the motor home.
We all three looked at each other and George said, “What in the world is that?” Of course Charlene didn’t know and neither did I.
“Maybe Peanutt ran over a dead dog,” Charlene commented.
“No, I haven’t,” Peanutt exclaimed.
George yelled out to Wild Bill, “What’s that odor I smell?”
Jody yelled back. “George, it’s Wild Bill’s feet. They always smell like that if he wears tennis shoes.”
“Good Lord!” George yelled again. “Tell him to wash his feet!”
“George, it won’t do any good, they just smell that way,” Jody yelled back.
“Well, tell him to put his shoes back on and sleep in them if he has to. We can’t stand that odor!”
There was no circulating air in the motor home at all, only the smell of rotten feet. I thought I’d die. Finally, Peanutt pulled into a place for us to sleep. We all went to bed on couches, and anywhere we could make a bed and sleep the rest of the night. We drove on in to Miami the next day and boarded the Flavia. We were on our way to Freeport, Bahamas. It was so exciting, but we knew when the trip was over it would be rough going home with no air in the motor home. The cruise was great. Nobody drank at all. We just had a very good time playing some games on the ship, shopping during the day, and finding different places to eat during the evening. I think I gained five pounds in that one week.
George bought all three of us girls a white cap with ribbons and golf tees. I still have mine. When we first got back to the ship, Peanutt, George, and Wild Bill decided to go to the casino. Charlene, Jody, and I wanted to get some sun, so we put on our bikinis and went out to sun bathe. We climbed to the very top of the ship to lie in the sun. It was the Captain’s deck. Charlene had been there before and told us it was a private deck, and we were not supposed to be up there. It didn’t turn out to be too private after all. One of the Captains walked up to the deck and started talking to us. He was a tall, dark, and handsome young man. He thought he’d flirt with us a little bit. I kept watching the area where the steps were to the top of the deck. I was afraid Peanutt, George, and Wild Bill might come up there and find that guy there, and I knew George would not like it. Neither would Peanutt, but the guy just kept laughing and talking to us. I hadn’t paid much attention to him until he reached down and pinched me on the cheek and said,
“I can tell you are Italian.”
I pushed back from him and my lounge chair turned over. About that time the ship whistle blew, and it sounded like it was right in our ears. The unexpected loud noise scared me half to death, so I screamed. The Captain started laughing and went over to help me up.
“I’m sorry I didn’t mean to scare you,” he said. I thanked him for his help.
“I think we need to go back down to our rooms and get dressed up and go find the guys,” I told Charlene and Jody, and they both agreed.
“Don’t let me run you off!” The Captain yelled as we fled the scene.
“Linda, George would have had a fit if he’d seen that guy talking to you,” Jody said while we were walking to our rooms.
“I know, that’s why I wanted to get out of there,” I answered.
“Peanutt wouldn’t have liked it any more than George,” Charlene added. “I was hoping he’d get out from up there and leave us alone.”
Jody, Charlene, and I laughed about it later. We went to our rooms, dressed, and went looking for Peanutt, George, and Wild Bill. We found them playing the slot machines in the casino. George looked at me and asked, “Did you get enough sun?”
“Yeah, we got a little, but we didn’t stay out too long,” I answered.
About that time, crazy Charlene spoke up, “Yeah, she got quite a bit, even the Captain said he could tell she was Italian because she was so dark and he pinched her on the cheek.”
“What the hell was he doing
pinching you on the cheek?” George asked.
“Oh, George, he was just trying to make us feel good,” I replied.
“If I’d seen that little wimp touching you, he’d think feel good, he’d feel good alright, real good when I got through with him,” George said.
Wild Bill changed the subject. “Hey, let’s go get something to eat, I’m starving.”
Everybody must have been starving because they all agreed to go eat. At least, it got George’s mind off of the Captain. Everyone stayed straight on the whole trip until the night of the Captain’s dinner. That night, George decided to have a drink. I think he thought we might run into the Captain who pinched me on the cheek and maybe if he got high, he’d wiggle his way out of going. It was to be the big night for partying on the ship, but we missed it. It was on this trip that I realized that George was a good man. I really liked him, and I knew that he liked me as well.
When George and I got back to Peanutt and Charlene’s house in Florence, we decided we would call it a relationship. The relationship never ended. We stayed with Peanutt and Charlene until we could get a place of our own. The breakup between George and Tammy didn’t look promising on them ever getting back together, so George was beginning to feel it was time for us to go forward with our lives. He finally bought us a little house on Wright Drive about two blocks from where Peanutt and Charlene lived. George called Billy Wilhite, his booker and road manager, and asked him to move to Florence. George told Billy that there was a brand new house for sale next door to us, and George wanted Billy and his wife Rose to buy it.
Billy and Rose came to Florence and looked at the house. They really liked it and bought it. Billy and Rose moved in almost a month later. We all pitched in and helped them get situated. Rose became a close friend to all of us. We had lots of fun doing things together. We’d take trips to Florida for a week at a time. We’d go camping out with Billy, Rose, Charlene, Peanutt, Wild Bill, and his wife Jody. We just simply had fun. George wasn’t drinking hardly at all. Peanutt wasn’t drinking at this time. Of course, Billy didn’t drink, and neither did any of us women. We would travel with George when he had a show to do. George wanted Peanutt, Charlene, and me to go everywhere he went. It was a happy time for all of us.
The Legend of George Jones: His Life and Death Page 13