Billy and George would occasionally have to go to Nashville. George would always call me and tell me what he wanted for supper. He’d tell me when he’d be home, and he’d always do exactly what he said he’d do. After we all got settled into our new places, George wanted me to get my son Dale to come live with us. He had been staying with my mother while we were gone. I’d go see him every day or two and spend a few hours with him, but this was bothering me. I needed Dale with me, and he needed me. He lived with George and me the entire time we were together but would go stay with mother if we had to be out of town.
George realized that we needed to do something special with Dale, so we took Dale and his friend, Marty Robertson, Marty’s parents, Billy and Barbara Robertson, Peanutt, Charlene, and their daughter, Theresa True, to Panama City Beach for a week. Everybody stayed straight and had a good time. It was a get together for all three families.
Once back at home, George returned to playing his show dates, I was going with him most of the time. I enjoyed going with him and watching his shows. He was hardly ever drinking a beer. He was so happy. He was enjoying doing his dates.
There was never a dull minute around George. He was full of energy and was always making plans to do something. It was either a trip to the Bahamas, Florida, camping out, or looking at houses. He was so much fun to be with.
We were out riding in a subdivision one day, and a man was standing out in front of his house and leaning up against his pickup truck. George stopped, rolled his window down, and asked the guy if the house was for sale.
’“NO!” The man said loudly. “This is where I live, but I can build you a house. I’m D.G. Lovell, and I’m a builder.”
“Do you have any lots?” George asked Mr. Lovell.
He told George that he had a really nice lot on a lake at Brooks Acres. George asked if he could see the lot and D.G. Lovell said he could take him out there right then, so we followed him out to see the property.
George loved the lot and told D.G. that he wanted to buy it and wanted him to build us an A-frame house on it. George and D.G. worked out a deal for the lot and the house. Meanwhile, we all got a good job out of the deal. The lot had to be cleared, and George told D.G. that he would clear it himself. George, Peanutt, Charlene, Billy, Rose, and I cleared that big lake lot by ourselves. We worked as hard as we could to get it ready for the builder. It was a big job. Everyone of us broke out with poison oak. Billy looked pitiful. He was fair-skinned, and he had red rashes all over him. He had to walk with his legs apart to keep them from rubbing against the blisters. George would bust out laughing every time he saw Billy. Billy had put calamine lotion all over him. Peanutt, Charlene, and I began to itch all over. We also broke out in blisters. It tickled George to death; he didn’t have one blister on him. The worse part of that ordeal was we had to go back the next day and continue working to clear the property.
The next day while we were working, George picked up a leaf of poison oak, put it in his mouth, and chewed it up. Charlene had a fit. She told George eating that stuff would kill him. He laughed at her and told her he was not allergic to it, and he wouldn’t have a single blister. And he didn’t. We all wound up having to go to the doctor but George wasn’t bothered at all.
We finally got the lot cleared and ready to build on. D.G. began building the A-frame. It was a cozy lake house, and we really enjoyed it. There was a big deck over the lake, and we’d spend a lot of time down there fishing and cooking out. All our friends would come over and fish off the deck. Peanutt and Charlene were always around, and so were Billy and Rose Wilhite.
George had a niece named Mary Nell. She was trying to get into the music business as a singer. She came to live with George and me. I really liked her, and she was so much fun to live with. A little later on, her mother, Doris, who was George’s sister, came and spent two weeks with us. She too was a sweet lady but was a little reserved. After Doris left, then Ruth, George’s other sister, came and spent time with us. Unlike Doris, Ruth was not at all reserved. She voiced her opinion on everything and was quick to do so. Ruth talked all the time. George told Charlene before Ruth ever got to our house that she was fixing to meet somebody who could out talk her. Charlene doubted that.
Ruth came and on the first night of her visit, she found out that Charlene was an Aries. Ruth was an Aries too, and that seemed important to her. Ruth stayed up after everybody except Charlene had gone to bed. Charlene hated to tell her that she needed to go to bed, so she sat up and listened to Ruth talk. Charlene hardly had a chance to say a word. Then Charlene finally went to bed at 4:00a.m. The next morning Ruth told George,
“This damn gal kept me up all night.”
George just died laughing. He knew what had happened. He looked at Charlene and asked if she had a chance to say much? Charlene only smiled at him. Ruth stayed for a week or so and then went back to Texas.
We had lived at the lake house in Brooks Acres just outside of Florence in a little town called Killen, Alabama for about a year. George began to drink a little, but not bad. He’d go into Nashville and when he’d come home, he’d be drinking, but his drinking never really got out of hand. George made Mary Nell nervous when he was drinking. Finally, Mary Nell thought George might be tired of her living there, so she moved to Texas.
George became restless. He went looking and found a big three-story house at Kendale Gardens in Florence. It was a little closer to town and to where Peanutt and Charlene lived. The people who lived in the house wanted a place on the lake. So, it worked out to where George would sell the people his lake house, and George would buy their house. This worked out really well for both families. We got the house George wanted, and the people moved into the lake house on five acres.
We moved into Kendale Gardens. We were not there long until George had found a new manager. His name was Alsey “Shug” Baggott. Billy and Rose sold their house and moved back to Toccoa, Georgia. Shug was the new man in on the scene. This decision was the beginning of the worst time of my life and almost the ending of George’s.
George and I had a wonderful life together. We never argued about anything and got along perfectly. We really loved each other and were very happy. I never had anybody be as good to me as George was. He always treated me with respect and had carried me places with him to do his show dates. We laughed, talked, planned things together and really enjoyed life. He’d give me a little money to spend, bought me beautiful jewelry, kept me in a nice car, and was very much a gentleman with me. I loved George, and I wanted him to have the freedom he needed. I never complained about him having to be gone on his trips to Nashville. I just took care of the house and cooked whatever he wanted and made sure things got done while he was away on his trips.
George planted a big garden after we moved in the house at Kendale Gardens. Peanutt, Charlene, and I helped him get it all set out. He bought a couple of horses from Melba Montgomery and her husband, Jack Solomon. We were going to ride horses and enjoy our new house and five acres. We had lived there for almost two months when Dewayne Phillips, Dale Phillips, and their dad, Buddy Phillips, moved from Texas and came to live with us. George thought that they could be a lot of help around the house and could keep the five acres mowed and maintain the pool. That worked out just fine for a while, but George was already involved with this Shug guy and instead of things getting better, they actually started falling apart.
I tried to make life a little better for George. I called Tammy Wynette and asked her to let Georgette come and spend some time with George. Tammy agreed to let her come. I also called Shirley Corley, George’s wife before Tammy, and asked for Brian and Jeff to come stay for a while with us. She agreed to let them come. They all three came to visit at the same time. I thought it would not only be good for George but would be good for the kids. Georgette had not been around her brothers, and I thought it would give them some time to get to know each other a little better. George was tickled to death when he came home and found out he had three of his four
children there. I would love for Susan to have been there too, but she was already married and was living in Ardmore, Alabama. George had been around Susan quite a bit. She had married Herman Smith and had lived in Nashville, and George and Tammy had hired Herman to do a lot of work for them. George had seen a lot of Susan recently but had not had a lot of time with Georgette and the boys since his divorce from Tammy.
After all the kids went back to their homes, the Phillips family decided to move back to Texas. They knew George was not the same as he had always been. None of us knew exactly what was happening, but we knew there was definitely something strange going on. Peanutt and Charlene had begun to wonder what was troubling George? He was not the person they had always known. Strange things started happening around him. His bus driver, Jimmy Guyton, disappeared. Nobody knew what happened to him, including his wife or kids, and is still missing to this day. Snakes started showing up on our doorstep, people were following me, I started getting strange phone calls, and then it became worse; there were threatening phone calls.
“You better get away from George, or you’re gonna die,” or “If you love your son, you’ll leave George.”
These are examples of the many calls that were coming in nearly every day. Shug offered me twenty-thousand dollars to leave George. I told him that I wasn’t with George for the money, and that I wouldn’t leave him. I knew where the calls were coming from. It had to do with someone around the people George was involved with. Peanutt and Charlene were receiving the same types of calls. They were threatened all the time. Someone would call in the early morning hours, and they’d say “stay away from George if you want to live.” Then they’d tell Peanutt and Charlene, “If you tell George about this call, you’ll be sorry.”
Peanutt and Charlene were visiting us one night, and Peanutt told me about the calls. He was upset.
“I was warned not to tell George about the calls, and I guess I better not say anything to him about it, but I’m tired of it.”
Peanutt had a couple of beers. “Charlene I’ve got to leave, and I’ve got to leave right now.”
“Okay, Peanutt, we’ll go when you’re ready,” Charlene replied.
Charlene told me she’d call me later. They left. On the way home, Peanutt picked up the four beers that were left in his sixpack and threw them out the car window.
“Charlene,” He said. “I’m quitting right now.”
Charlene called me and told me what had happened after they left. She said they had gone to our brother-in-law’s house, who was a preacher, and Peanutt wanted to talk to him. She said James Lee, the preacher, and Peanutt went for a ride. Charlene stayed with our other sister, Nell Lee (the preacher’s wife), while Peanutt was gone. When Peanutt and James came back, Charlene said she didn’t ask any questions; they just got in the car and went home.
That night Peanutt tossed and turned and couldn’t sleep. She said he was so restless, and she didn’t know what was going on with him. The next morning, she said Peanutt wanted to go see Irene Green, who was our mother. Mother was a Christian lady, and Peanutt wanted to talk to her. Charlene said when Peanutt came back to the car after his visit with Mother, he told her that he had just become a Christian, and he felt like he had just had a ton of weight lifted off of his chest. Charlene wasn’t sure about his commitment to the Lord but figured time would tell.
George was one of the first people Peanutt had to tell about his soul saving, life-changing experience. George wasn’t sure what to think about this change in his good friend. George hardly understood what was going on with Peanutt. He began to question if Peanutt was sincere or not. George soon realized Peanutt meant business about his commitment to the Lord. Peanutt would no longer drink with George. He refused to go on the road with George if he was working in a club. He would not run with George if George was drinking. Peanutt quit everything that he felt would not be pleasing to the Lord. He even quit writing country songs if they had to do with promoting sex, divorce, alcohol, clubbing, and such things that he felt would promote sin.
Things began to get rough around George. It was becoming pure hell. I think Peanutt had seen what was happening to George and saw what that kind of life leads to, and he wanted to get away from the whole thing. George became upset with Peanutt. He thought Peanutt had turned his back on him even though that wasn’t the case. George didn’t know about all the life-threatening calls we were receiving. We couldn’t tell him. Even our telephone lines were tapped. Charlene and I would make calls to certain people and say things that we knew would get around if we put out information that would upset them. We’d make plans with certain friends to say things that we knew would travel like wild fire. We wanted to make sure the lines were tapped, and they were. When the gossip started, we knew then what had happened. They had to hear the conversations on the phone to even know it was all a set up to find out about the phone lines. It wasn’t a very good plan, but it got us what we wanted to know.
“Linda, if the phone is tapped, you’ll know in no more than a couple of days,” Charlene said. “I’ve said some things that they would love to hear, and they’ll run with it. You wait and see.”
Sure enough, she was right. We did similar things to find out who was following us. We’d show up at places that we weren’t supposed to be, and we knew that we were being followed. What we didn’t know was who was following us, and who had put someone up to it. Finally, it all came to a head. We found out the answer to the whole puzzle. The culprits were the people who wanted control of George. They had already offered me money to leave him, and when I refused, they thought they’d scare me away. That didn’t work either.
The life George and I once had was gone. It was over. I knew I couldn’t handle him on cocaine. Drinking was bad enough, but cocaine was out of the question. I stayed with him, but for the last three years it was pure hell. I was not a person to put on the dog (as the old saying goes). I was Linda, and I was true to myself. I knew how to dress, and I knew how to act around people, but I didn’t exalt myself just because George was a legend. I didn’t care about the fame thing. I loved George because of the man he was, not the star he was. It was hard not to love George. He was a very good-hearted man. He was good to everybody. He was kind, sharing, loving, and compassionate. He’d help anybody if the person needed help. He was nice to our neighbors, and we had loads of good friends.
After we found out that George was on cocaine, then we knew what had happened to him. We also understood the phone calls, the tapped phone lines, the stalkers, and the threats. It was the people in the drug ring. We knew it was a serious situation. It was big money and power and control and much bigger than we needed to mess with. When you’re messing up plans for someone whose counting on six figures or more in profits, you’d better take heed to the threats. We know that people would kill for a lot less.
George was consumed. It was too late to try and do anything. They had brainwashed him. They had total control, and they had him in debt to them. They used him in every way they could to gain a dollar. Big deals were being made in George’s name. With almost every one of them falling through, and mostly after his front money had been paid, it actually got to the dangerous point.
The last three years for George and me were turbulent most of the time. Throughout 1978-1980 and parts of 1981, George was on cocaine and heavily drinking. He couldn’t stay in one place over an hour or so. He would jump in his car and drive around for hours at a time. We’d head out to Nashville, and the whole time he’d be screaming in an outrage about who he was going kill when they got there, and how he was going do it. He’d get right in my face, pulling at me while I was trying to drive and swearing that he was going to kill them all for taking advantage of him. I’d try to push him away, so I could see how to drive. I was afraid he was going to cause me to have a bad wreck, but he wouldn’t listen to me. He was mad at Shug for one, but there were others he was threatening as well. He knew Shug had messed his life up. George knew that. I actually could understan
d why George was so furious with Shug, but I knew he didn’t need to kill anybody.
I tried to get George to forget it all and to get away from Shug.
“I can’t get away. They’ll kill me if I don’t kill them first!” George would always say.
George knew a whole lot more than I knew about the situation. He had bad checks floating all over the place. He thought he had money in the bank, but checks for large sums had been written out, and George had no idea what they had been written for. His bank account was constantly on overdraft. It got so badly out of hand that George finally got into a financial bind and had to file bankruptcy, which he did not want to do. He had no choice. He had been robbed by so-called managers and drug dealers. George became so discouraged that he began missing more and more show dates which led to more stress for him because of the threats of lawsuits for not showing up for the performances.
Many times George and I would head out for Texas or Florida, wherever his show dates were with all good intentions of him making his dates, but somewhere along the way he’d become paranoid, and then would imagine someone was following us. He’d make us take a side road saying we had to lose them. I’d try to explain to him that we needed to keep going, so he’d make his date. When I refused to comply with what he wanted, he’d get mad, grab the steering wheel, and pull at it telling me to “get off of the damn road.” He’d scream at me and demand that I take a side road and lose them; so finally I’d exit somewhere and drive away from the main drag.
The Legend of George Jones: His Life and Death Page 14