He probably could have been more than that, and may yet be. That is his story. Jim Cook was a good enough high school basketball player that Georgia Tech offered a scholarship. He turned it down. “I just didn’t know what I wanted to do,” is his explanation. That’s not the best reason in the world to pass up a free college education, but like the man said, ten years later it will have to do.
The band was loud, but we talked between ear-splitting choruses, and I found out what Jim Cook wants to be more than anything else is a famous professional wrestler. Granny says rassler.
He used to be skinny, he said, but he wandered into one of those health spas one day and now he could walk around with a Datsun on his back.
“Some of the wrestlers come in here,” he said. “They got me interested. You can make a lot of money.”
You can. You can also get thrown on the floor and crab-locked and full-Nelsoned until you are a walking bruise. And you can spend a great deal of your time jumping around in your underwear in front of screaming crowds packed into tank town high school gymnasiums. Wrestling has its bush leagues, too. Verne Gagne and Lou Thetz stayed at the Ritz and drank call brands. Jim Cook is doing Carrollton and Porterdale.
He was married, but that ended in divorce and one child. He was a yardman at an auto transport company in Atlanta. That ended when he was laid off. A wrestler now retired, one Rocket Monroe, helped him learn the basics, and Jim Cook took off for California and Canada to seek his wrestling fortune.
He didn’t find it. Vancouver can be rotten lonely and rainy. He worked his way back South, back through Kansas City and Oklahoma. A man in Oklahoma told him to go home and find somebody to teach him to wrestle.
“That’s the problem,” the big man said. “Most of the guys I know have to wrestle every night. They don’t have the time to train me.”
He insists wrestling isn’t fake. “You can get hurt if you don’t know what you’re doing,” he said. No matter where he wrestles, the place is packed. Watching wrestling is like eating collards. If you’re hooked, you’re hooked.
He’s gone against some of the biggies in the area: The Anderson Brothers, Stan Hansen, Dick Slater, a Korean guy whose name he can’t spell, Bill White, and a masked fellow who calls himself The Executioner. Mostly, he loses. “But I’m a good guy,” he explained. “The people always cheer me on.”
Jim Cook stayed around until the Twilite Club went dark for a few restful hours. “The only time we really have trouble,” he had said, “is when somebody comes in from another part of town and doesn’t know what kind of place this is. Usually, by the time anybody is ready to do more than talk, he’s too drunk to fight.”
When he finally went home, it was to a room at the Alamo Plaza Motel, a southside relic. There would hopefully be the chance to work out the following day. And maybe there will also be the chance someday to get off the bottom of the cards, to get out of the preliminaries and into the main events. To make a name. To make a buck. To be there in the City Auditorium on Friday nights when the masses come and the lights are shining brightly.
A country boy from Milner has a dream.
THE DEN MOTHER OF COUNTRY MUSIC
NASHVILLE—THEY PUT TOOTSIE Bess to rest on a snowy hillside in Nashville Tuesday afternoon. When she died of cancer at sixty-four the other day, they should have lowered every flag in the city to half-mast. She was somebody. She was the den mother of country music.
Without her, there might not have been the stardom and the music of people like Tom T. Hall. Or Kris Kristofferson. Or Roger Miller. Or Johnny Rodrigues. Or Hank Williams, or any number of pickers and singers who have made what otherwise would have been nothing more than Chattanooga North into a multi-million dollar recording Mecca called Music City U.S.A.
Without her, many who stayed and finally caught their dreams might have long since caught the next bus back home. Like a man said at Tootsie’s funeral Tuesday, “You can find rhinestones and applause in Nashville, but before you do, it can be the loneliest place in the world.”
Hattie Louise “Tootsie” Bess ran a beer joint in Nashville at Fifth and Broadway called Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge. There was a back door. It led to an alley that led to the stage entrance of the old Ryman Auditorium, for years the home of the Grand Ole Opry.
Grant Turner, the Opry announcer, said, “You could leave Tootsie’s at 7:58 and still be on stage at the Opry at 8 o’clock.” So many did just that.
When Tom T. Hall first came to Nashville, he nearly starved. Tootsie fed him. Tootsie encouraged him. Tootsie gave him pocket money. Today, Tom T. Hall sells millions of records and trucks on television.
Kris Kristofferson worked construction and swept floors in Nashville while trying to peddle his music. He was one of Tootsie’s pets. She kept him going until another star was born.
Roger Miller was a Nashville bellhop. He would write one of his biggest hits, “Dang Me,” in a booth at Tootsie’s.
“She ran a beer joint,” said Tom T. Hall, “but to young songwriters and musicians, she was a small finance company, a booking agent, and a counselor.”
Maybe Ernest Tubb put it even better. “Tootsie,” he said, “was the softest touch in town.”
I was in her place only once. But I remember the beer being cold and the atmosphere being warm and Tootsie saying as my party left, “Y’all come back when you can stay longer.”
Her jukebox had million sellers. It also had non-sellers. When nobody else would play a youngster’s record, Tootsie would put it next to “Hello Walls,” and give the kid the best chance she could.
She kept order with a hatpin. Get rowdy and out you went at the point of her hatpin. Come back tomorrow and apologize, and all was forgiven.
There were five inches of fresh snow on the ground in Nashville Tuesday. Still, the funeral home was packed with people and flowers.
The registry was a country music who’s who. Mel Tillis sent flowers. There was a wreath from Ben Smathers and his mountain doggers. Ernest Tubb and his son Justin sent a heart-shaped arrangement. There was a break in the middle of the heart. It was pierced with a hatpin.
Roy Acuff sat down front for the services. One of the Wilburn Brothers was close to him. Included in the grieving family was Tootsie’s son-in-law, who is an Opry drummer. Tom T. Hall was one of the pallbearers. Grant Turner got up and said a few words. And Connie Smith stood behind Tootsie’s lavender casket and sang “In the Sweet By and By,” “Amazing Grace,” and “How Great Thou Art.” She has never sounded better.
Tootsie had friends who weren’t stars. “She was just as happy to see a ditch digger walk in as the biggest name in town,” said a friend. Sitting next to a millionaire singer at the funeral was a man in a service station outfit. He hadn’t had time to wash the grease off his hands.
The preacher read a telegram from Tennessee Sen. Howard Baker. He talked about the necessity of loving one another and said Mrs. Bess, as he called her, performed that task exactly as the Good Book intended.
It could be the Good Lord likes the company of a bighearted saloonkeeper, too.
WILLIE AT THE WHITE HOUSE
WASHINGTON—PEOPLE WEARING BAGS over their heads and carrying signs that screamed about “massacres” in their native Iran paraded in front of the White House Wednesday evening.
To the north of the city at Camp David, three powerful leaders of three powerful nations struggled to find a way to bring peace to another troubled land.
The papers were filled with stories of death and destruction in Nicaragua, and half the world is on strike.
But the night was clear, and cool and the moon was full and bright in Washington Wednesday. And out on the south lawn of the White House, a million miles from everything else, a bearded man wearing a red bandana took a long pull from a wine bottle and commenced to sing.
He sang “Whiskey River” first; then he sang “Crazy” and “Amazing Grace” and “Georgia” and something called “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain.” As he sang “Blue Eyes Cr
ying in the Rain” I had a thought, probably an outrageous one, but at least worth a moment of consideration:
Jimmy Carter didn’t make his own party Wednesday night, the one he threw to honor stockcar drivers. His wife announced to the crowd that “only something the magnitude of the summit talks would have kept him away.”
He made a mistake by not coming. And he made a mistake by not bringing Egypt’s Sadat and Israel’s Begin with him.
Sit the two of them down together in front of Willie Nelson, I thought. Bring the people with the bags over their heads inside, too. Give them all a cold beer and let them listen to Willie Nelson. After “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain,” who would still want to fight?
Wednesday night was Jimmy Carter fulfilling a promise. When he was governor of Georgia, he made it an annual practice to host stockcar drivers and even sportwriters at the mansion on West Paces Ferry.
You know about the stockcar racing. Stockcar racing isn’t Watkins Glen or spiffy gentlemen in sleek Porsches and Ferraris. It is Talledega and Daytona and Atlanta International Raceway and beer and fried chicken and a punch in the nose because you said a Chevrolet can whip a Dodge or, worse, you insulted the glorious memory of Fireball Roberts.
“Jimmy told us if he ever got to be president,” explained driver David Pearson, “we would share in some of the glory. Here we are.”
And there they were. Pearson, Petty, Waldrip, Yarborough, and Bill France, the head kabolla of stockcar racing. And even some sportswriters and even Billy Carter, and especially Willie Nelson, who sang with Amy and Rosalynn and Billy’s wife, Sybil.
The night was heavy with double knit and denim.
The Washington papers the next day didn’t quite know what to make of the affair. They said it did prove we are under the reign of a populist president. They went into great detail concerning the Car ters’ love for stockcar racing and explained stockcar racing grew in the South from an earlier preoccupation with running moonshine.
“I ain’t never run moonshine,” Richard Petty told a reporter, “but I don’t know about the rest of my family.”
I go back to those parties at the governor’s mansion. The first one was a flop because Rosalynn had charge of the food and entertainment. She offered an exotic menu that included fish-like things that still had their eyes. The entertainment was an operatic trio.
I can still see A. J. Foyt shifting uncomfortably from one cowboy boot to another and Jabe Thomas driving to the front of the mansion in his mechanic’s truck. I can still hear somebody saying, “This would make Curtis Turner roll over in his grave.” Rosalynn Carter stepped onto the bandshell behind the White House Wednesday night and apologized for all that. She had learned her lesson. The fare this evening was beer and wine and roast beef and ham and corn bread. The program announced, “Selections by Willie Nelson.”
I could probably dabble around in all this for some hidden political meaning. But the heck with that.
What happened Wednesday night at the home of the president of the United States was a large group of mostly Southern people got together in the backyard for a picnic and to listen to one of their own sing his red bandana off. Andy Jackson used to give the same kind of parties here, and he wound up on the $20 bill.
In the middle of that singing, when people had squared off to clog on the lawn, a fellow I know from Georgia came to my table and whispered in my ear:
“My great-grandfather was wounded at the Battle of Sharpsburg. He was captured at Gettysburg. He had to limp all the way home to Georgia. If he could see this tonight, he’d think we won after all.”
SWEET INNOCENCE
THAT WAS HER DADDY, the girl said, playing with the country band that performed, sort of, in one corner of the room. They played the old songs—hungry songs and cheatin’ songs—and they made them sound even older.
Her mama was in and out, too. She was a stout, tight-faced woman and she gave the appearance of running things. A would-be rowdy was rendered nearly peepless after mama suggested his conduct was reaching the bouncing stage.
It doesn’t matter the name of the town or the name of the joint, because there are maybe a million towns and million joints just like them.
Picture a two-lane highway running through what seems like nowhere on a warm Georgia spring night. Suddenly, up ahead, the glare of neon is blinking and beckoning. Park some trucks around. Behold, the local fast crowd in its natural habitat.
The girl worked feverishly behind the bar while daddy played and mama patrolled. She was pretty. Dark hair and dark eyes. Plump, a little, but pleasingly so. She wore pink chiffon. Tight pants and a blouse that exposed little, but enough to gather the eyes of the gentleman customers seated around on the bar stools.
I judged her innocent somehow, and trained to perform. At her obviously tender age, could she know what her audience was thinking as she moved gracefully back and forth behind the bar? Likely not.
They ordered beer, of course, and from some unseen cache she produced it in cold, longneck bottles. They were emptied nearly as fast as she could bring more.
There was booze, too. That was surprising, this far into the hinterlands. I wondered to a man next to me how long the county had had liquor.
“Long as there’s been anybody around to drink it, I guess,” he said. Then, he corrected himself. “You mean how long’s it been legal? Four or five years, I guess.”
And the Baptists and the bootleggers are still fighting it, some body added.
I watched the girl. She had been trained well. Her performance was splendid. I waited for a slip, something that would unveil that innocence that seemed unfit for midnight in a smoky, backroads saloon. It never came.
A youngster sat alone at the end of the bar, nursing a beer.
“One more?” the girl asked.
The youngster nearly blushed from her attention. He held the bottle against a light. It was nearly empty.
“Believe I’ve had enough,” he said.
“Just one more?” the girl persisted. “For me?”
“One more,” the youngster said. He seemed pleased he had pleased her.
She even sang. Daddy played while she sang. The place was hers all over again.
“Sounds just like Linda Ronstadt, don’t she?” the man with the liquor information said to me.
I agreed. It’s smart, I figured, for a stranger to agree.
The band took a break, and the girl asked nobody in particular for money to play the jukebox. To a man, her subjects reached into their pockets for change.
The chosen one marched to the jukebox and obediently pushed the buttons as the girl called out the numbers of her favorite songs.
The crowd began to thin later. There were no more calls for drinks. The girl walked to where I was sitting and propped herself on the bar. She asked where I was from. I told her.
“I was in Atlanta once,” she said. She named the hotel. “I didn’t like it. That place is too big for me.”
There it was. Simple girl, simple tastes. Maybe one day she can leave this, I thought. Find some nice fellow with a good job and raise a family.
“Daddy gone?” the girl asked a waitress, who nodded yes.
“Mama, too?” she asked next. Mama was gone, too.
“Damn, it’s about time,” said the girl, reaching for a bottle of vodka on the shelf. She filled a glass and heaved down its contents in one hard gulp.
4.
THOSE WERE THE DAYS
The first column in this section is about my fifteenth year high school reunion that turned out to be a tremendous success. One of my ex-wives came. She looked terrific. Dudley Stamps, who was a good friend in school, also came to the reunion.
He said to me, “I see your damn picture in the newspaper some times, but I don’t read any of that garbage.” When we had some beer later, I hugged his neck anyway.
The last column in this section is about Bill Johnson, who was a classmate in college. He died. I wish I could hug his neck one more time.
> THE CLASS OF ’64
THE FELLOW WHO WAS president of my high school senior class called the other day to ask a favor. He wants me to write something witty and clever to be used as an invitation to our fifteenth year class reunion next summer.
We never had a tenth year reunion, which was just as well with me. The principal’s office statute of limitations probably doesn’t run out in ten years. They might still have had something on me.
Like there was the book I never got around to returning to the school library. The posse didn’t come back until the early seventies. Our librarian was also the principal’s wife, and she ran the library with an iron hand. Nuclear power plants are maintained with less regimentation.
I was remembering some of the library rules at my high school:
- Thou shalt not touch a book unless your hands have been scrubbed clean and thoroughly inspected by the head librarian. (“A smudge on a book is an insult to literature.”)
- Thou shalt not wear wristwatches or bracelets into the library because a wristwatch or a bracelet could make a scratch on one of the library tables, God forbid.
(I am convinced anybody caught scratching a library table at my high school would have been dragged out behind the auditorium and shot, not to mention having his or her library privileges taken away.)
- Thou shalt not talk while in the library, nor giggle nor grunt nor pull a chair from under a table so as to make the noise a chair being pulled from under a table will inevitably make.
(Once a fat girl, who was stronger than I, punched me in the belly in the library because I wouldn’t give her the sports section of the newspaper. I grunted from the punch and attempted to flee for fear of further blows.
In my haste, I pulled my chair from under the table and it made a noise. I had to stay after school every day for a week and my stomach hurt for a month. The fat girl’s nickname was “Mean Mama,” incidentally.)
Irregardless—which isn’t a word but was used a hundred times a day by one of the coaches—I still look back on my high school years with favor.
Kathy Sue Loudermilk, I Love You: A good beer joint is hard to find and other facts of life Page 5