“Peanutt, don’t answer if George calls.” I said when Peanutt finally answered the phone. “He’s in bad shape and is mad at us about something. He is calling you little Jesus and said he wanted to hold you down and pluck your beard hairs out one by one so please stay away from him tonight. He’s threatening you.”
Peanutt and I were getting an excessive number of threatening phone calls, so we were staying away from home as much as possible. We were trying to avoid danger to our daughter and us. That night, we decided to stay at home, and George kept calling until Peanutt finally answered the phone.
“Peanutt, I want you to come over to my house.” George demanded.
Peanutt told him “no” that he wasn’t going to his house.
“Then meet me below Shoals Creek Bridge down by the creekside.” George instructed Peanutt.
For some reason, Peanutt agreed to meet George at the bridge. He arrived before George did. Peanutt drove across the bridge and while waiting on George to show up, he asked God to protect him from any kind of harm. George came over the bridge and then pulled his car down by the creek. Peanutt rolled down his window, turned his body so that he was facing George, and laid both arms on the top of the door.
George rolled down his window and wildly stared at Peanutt.
“See if your God can save you now!” George yelled as he pointed the.38 caliber pistol squarely at Peanutt’s head.
George pulled the trigger, but he missed his shot, and the bullet ricocheted off a metal piece exposed when the window was rolled down, and then lodged in the door between Peanutt’s hands and his face. If the bullet had not lodged in the top of the door just below the window, it would have hit Peanutt in the heart and most likely would have killed him. God spared his life.
“I ought to kill you right here, you letting your wife have an affair right under your nose, and you ain’t doing anything about it” George coldly said as he cocked the pistol’s hammer and got ready to pull the trigger again.
Peanutt had a pistol in the seat of his car and was going to fire at George but decided he would not hurt him. George began to sling his gun around and was shouting all kinds of threatening things to Peanutt.
“I’m going to the house.” George said as he put his pistol on the seat beside him and drove away.
Peanutt went straight to the police department and filed a complaint. They swore out a warrant for attempted murder against George. George was arrested three days later. He was released after posting a $2,500.00 bond. We had no intention of sending George to prison, but we wanted him to think he might have to go. We wanted to shake him up to wake him up, so he would become aware of the shape he had gotten himself into. We let the case ride until it was time to show up in Court.
Peanutt went to court with George and stood up before Judge Druska. He told the judge that he didn’t want George to go to prison, and that he wanted to drop the charges against George and not prosecute him. (The DA had told us George could get 15 years in prison) Peanutt had a restraining order filed on George that ordered him to stay away from us when he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol.
George weighed less than 100 pounds when he walked into the courtroom. He looked pitiful.
“I’m guilty, what else can I say? I’m sorry, I’m guilty.” George told the judge.
The judge told him that Peanutt had chosen to drop all charges against him, but that he would not be allowed to come back around us while under the influence of alcohol or drugs nor while carrying a weapon. George agreed to abide by the restraining order, and then court was dismissed.
We didn’t see George for a couple of weeks. Then one day, he showed up and knocked on the door.
“Well, I threw my pistol away and got rid of all my other guns, and I never intend to own another one, and I’ve quit drinking and messing around with cocaine. I’ve been missing you, and I wanted to come and see you. I hope it’s okay.”
We asked George to come in and assured him it was okay for him to be there. We were happy to see him. We thought he had been drinking and was pretty high right then, but we knew he’d be fine. He came in and asked me to put on the old 45 record of Maybelline, so I put it on the record player. It was playing pretty loud, and George jumped up and started dancing around to the music, and his pistol fell out of his boot. He had that “I got caught with my hand in the cookie jar grin” realizing he had been caught in a lie.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, “You threw it away all right, just like you’ve quit drinking. You’re half drunk right now.”
He laughed and made a joke out of it and asked me if I was going to call the law on him? I told him no, it was okay for him to be there and okay for him to have the pistol on him.
“I just don’t want any alcohol or drugs in the house, okay?” I said.
“Okay.” He replied. He stayed all day with us and when it started to get dark, he asked if he could spend the night. We told him it would be fine, and that we would love for him to stay.
I think he was just testing us to see if we would let him stay or to see if we still trusted him. He found out that we did trust him, and that we still loved him and wanted to be with him but not when he was under the influence of cocaine.
George got up the next morning before we did, and when we got up, he was gone. I went into his room to make up the bed. Sitting beside the bed was a half-empty pint of Jack Daniels whiskey. George just had to break the rules we had set for him. He wanted to let us know that he wasn’t going to abide by any court orders. I knew George well enough to believe he really didn’t mean any harm. He had too much pride to let us put a condition on our relationship. From then on, George came and went as he pleased, and we never had any more trouble with him.
From time to time, people would ask me if I was mad at George for accusing me of having an affair. I simply told them that I had probably said or done things that made George think he was telling the truth, or someone else had led him to believe that it was the truth.
I had spent a lot of time with a friend because he couldn’t read, and I’d read his mail for him and finally went into business with him. I suppose it did look suspicious to some folks. He was a person I knew I could trust, and someone I knew I could depend on in a time of need. Both of us were married; his wife was also my friend, and Peanutt was a friend with both of them. We all did a lot of things together that included George and Linda. We took trips to Florida and several other places. There were times I could tell that George didn’t want them traveling with us. He was happier when it was only Peanutt, Linda, and me with him. I always wanted another couple with us in case George decided to goof off.
George became a little jealous of the other couple. He probably wasn’t the only one who had bad thoughts about me and the other person, but frankly, I didn’t care what people thought. I didn’t care what it looked like. Peanutt knew our friend well enough to know that nothing was going on between us. In fact, the man was one of the first to witness to Peanutt about Jesus.
We stopped by his business one day and made a purchase, and he gave Peanutt a Bible. It made Peanutt stop and think. This was before Peanutt became a Christian. This man always talked to Peanutt about his drinking; he’d encourage him not to drink. This man’s wife was an alcoholic, and he knew how it was to have to tolerate a drunk, so I appreciated him trying to talk to Peanutt about his drinking. Most everybody would encourage Peanutt to drink, so I needed this person to be around Peanutt. I really pushed the issue of being friends with him. Did it work?
Regardless of all the gossip, in spite of all the false accusations concerning an affair, the end result was that Peanutt became a Christian and completely gave up drinking and had nothing to do with alcohol from that day forward. Booze no longer controlled Peanutt’s life.
We did allow George to visit us when he was drinking, but he was the only person who had that privilege. We loved George, and we knew if we were to have any kind of relationship with him, we would have to tolerate his habits. Am I
angry with George for accusing me of an affair? No, I’m not mad and have not been mad at George over what he said to Peanutt. I probably caused it myself. In any case, I still love George, and I realized the shape he was in at the time. He was all messed up and confused. Evil people influenced him into believing anything and everything they wanted him to believe. I have forgiven him a long time ago for trying to kill my husband. I placed it all in God’s hands.
I hold no grudges against anyone. George was the person who taught me that it is wrong to hold a grudge. When Peanutt and I got married, I was really young, still in my teens, and George was talking about someone he had been mad at.
“Oh, I’m not mad at him now,” George explained. “You know, it’s wrong to hold a grudge against someone.”
That really impressed me. I remember thinking, “That’s a soft-hearted man.” It made me respect him; even though, I hardly knew him at the time, but I’ll never forget it, or where he said it. We were at the Biltmore Hotel in Nashville waiting on studio time, so George could record some songs.
Time went on, and George continued to use cocaine and alcohol. He’d make frequent trips back and forth from Florence to Nashville. We never knew what kind of shape he’d be in when he arrived home, but we never expected it to be good, and it never was. George became more and more unpredictable, and everyone around him was afraid of him. He was mad at everybody, including his managers and cocaine suppliers. He was angry at the world. He didn’t believe or have confidence in anybody. He did weird things like make a list of people that he was going to kill. George first showed me this list, and I was somewhat shocked at the violence that seemed to be inside of him, and yet I knew him. I knew there was no intent to harm these people, but we had to take him serious because he did attempt to kill Peanutt. There were six names on the list; Tammy Wynette, George Richey, Paul Richey, Shug Baggot, Billy Sherrill, and Shorty Lavender. Even though we had to pay attention to George’s paranoia, we knew that cocaine was the driving force behind his anger.
George came by our store one afternoon driving a 1979 white Thunderbird Landau. He pulled up in front of the store and honked his horn. I went out to see him.
“Well, the next time you’ll see me, I’ll be in a coffin,” he said to me.
“What do you mean, George?” I asked quietly.
“Just what I said,” he replied. He shoved the gearshift in drive and sped out of the parking lot slinging gravel everywhere.
I told Peanutt what George had said and done.
“I’ve got to get George some help,” Peanutt said. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do, but I’ve got to do something before someone gets hurt, or he hurts himself. I’ve made up my mind, and I’m not gonna back up. It don’t look like anybody cares if he lives or dies, and I’m gonna get help for him; it’s for his own good.”
Peanutt was really upset. He was afraid George might try to kill himself, or maybe someone had threatened George, and he was trying to clue us in on it.
Peanutt left the store and while he was on the way out, he told me he was going to see what he could do to get George some help.
“Even you know he’s gonna get hurt if I don’t do something, and I’m not gonna sit back and let it happen.” Peanutt explained.
Peanutt went to visit Judge Duncan. He told the Judge about George’s condition. He explained to him that he’d been as close to George as his own family for years, and that George’s family lived in Texas, but they were too far away to help him. He assured the Judge that George’s family members would help him if they could, but George wouldn’t listen to them or cooperate no matter how hard they would try to help him. It would be too difficult for them to make frequent trips to Alabama. Peanutt told the Judge that he wanted to be George’s Power of Attorney, so he could have him committed. The Judge agreed on the grounds that George had become too incompetent to handle his own affairs. Peanutt signed the documents and also signed papers to have George arrested and committed to the rehab center in Florence. The Sheriff was sent to arrest George and take him to the Riverbend Hospital in Florence, Alabama. Riverbend kept him for three days, and then transferred George to the Hillcrest Hospital in Birmingham, Alabama. Dr. Knuckles was his Doctor at Hillcrest, and he gave the hospital staff strict orders that no one was to see George except Peanutt, Linda, and me.
Peanutt called Tammy Wynette and told her that he had had George committed, and where he was at the time. Peanutt had to put up $1,000.00 to get him admitted, but it was going to cost $10,000.00 for him to stay 30 days. Tammy said she’d get the money together for the rest of the bill. George was there about six days before we went to see him. When we walked into his little room, he was sitting in the corner all puffed up at us.
“Why did you do this to me?” He asked Peanutt.
“George,” Peanutt replied, “I did it because I love you. You were going to die if somebody didn’t help you.”
George was still aggravated when we left. On the third day George was in the hospital, he called.
“Peanutt, bring me a few dollars down here and a belt and some cigarettes.” George demanded.
Peanutt told him that we’d bring the stuff that day. We took the money and cigarettes to George, but they wouldn’t allow him to have the belt. George was in a much better mood when we visited him. He was rooming with an older man, who read the Bible all the time. George was fond of the little old man.
We visited George often because he was allowed no other visitors. The doctors were afraid that someone might sneak cocaine to him. Near the end of George’s stay at Hillcrest, he talked to us a lot about what he was going to do when he got out of the hospital.
“I have no place to go; I don’t have a home to go to,” he would opine.
He had been renting an apartment at the time he was committed because Linda had given up their apartment and moved in with Peanutt and me.
“Linda has left me, and I don’t have a home, and I ain’t got no furniture.” George cried.
Linda took his hand and assured him that if he’d stay off cocaine, she’d come back to him. She told him that she’d only left him because of the cocaine addiction and couldn’t tolerate the situation any longer. We told him that we had a friend who built really nice houses, and we’d convince him to sell George a house with nothing down until he could get on his feet again. George didn’t think anyone would sell him a house without a down payment.
“Oh yeah, he will, trust me,” I said. “I can call him tomorrow and find out what he has for sale.” I knew Ronald Warren had just built some really nice homes in the Creekwood Subdivision.
“What do I do about furnishing it?” George asked.
I told him that I had a friend who owned a big furniture store, and that I would cosign to get all the furniture he needed for his house on a credit account. George refused to believe it could be done, but he told us to let him know if we could work it out.
On the way home, we talked with Linda about all the plans. We assured her that George really wanted her to come back and asked her to please give him another chance. She said the only way she would consider it is if George stayed away from cocaine.
I called Ronald Warren (the builder) and told him of George’s condition and situation. I told him I wanted to see some houses, and that we wanted to buy one for George and explained to him that George had been in the hospital and couldn’t make a down payment. I told the builder that George was good for the money and would make a down payment as soon as he got back to work, and that we’d get a loan for the rest. Mr. Warren showed Linda and I a nice house, so we bought it on the spot. I called United Furniture Store in Sheffield and asked to speak to Dewey Parker. He was another good friend of mine. I told Dewey the same thing I told Ronald about George’s situation. I asked him to let me cosign a loan to buy George some furniture on credit and if he would, that we’d buy everything George needed for his house from United Furniture.
Dewey Parker was delighted to let Linda and me shop and buy whatev
er we wanted. I told him that if George didn’t like certain things we picked out, that we expected him to let George trade it for something else. He agreed to that. Linda and I spent almost the whole day in the furniture store trying to decide what George would like for the house.
We finished shopping after a long day and asked that the items be delivered in three days. The carpet and wallpaper were finished, the furniture had been delivered, Linda had moved in, and George came home. He liked the house, he liked most of the furniture, and he was very happy that Linda had come back to him. He was happy to be home. He clearly understood why Peanutt had him committed to the hospital. The Doctor explained to George that he would not have lived more than thirty days if he had not gotten some help. George very much appreciated what Peanutt had done for him.
George stayed straight. He changed managers and went back to work on the road. He finally made the down payment on the house, paid off the furniture, and was doing really well. He had gained a little weight and looked better than he had in a long time. Linda was happy with George. She knew he had straightened up and was trying hard to get a new start. George applied for a loan on his house that got approved and closed.
For several months all was going well, but one day out of the clear blue, George and his new manager had a few words. The vultures, that knew George’s weaknesses, showed up. They knew if they could catch him at the right time, he’d be conquerable. A short time after they had sunk their talons into his flesh, George was back snorting dope. It was heartbreaking to see him fall back into this old trap and routine.
George wasn’t using the substance quite as badly as he had been before. He’d do coke, but not all the time. He’d stay straight for days before he’s get messed up again.
George again resigned his former manager, and Wayne Oliver became his new manager. Wayne was good for George. This relationship led to George becoming involved with Gerald Murray of Muscle Shoals. Gerald became George’s manager for a while, and Wayne Oliver became his road manager.
The Legend of George Jones: His Life and Death Page 18