Chapter Three - Hartsville, Tennessee

Town Square
Hartsville, Tn.

In 1956 daddy got a job at Columbia Gulf Transmission Co. in Harstville, Tennessee. Momma and daddy decided that it was time to land and make a home for us so we didn’t have to move every three to six months. They knew a few of the employees at Columbia Gulf. They had worked with them, George James, Hot Rock Hail, Booger Hodges ( yes Booger his nick name ). My favorite was Hooper. He use to let me stand on his shoes and he would dance with me. They helped get daddy his job. Daddy was a jack of all trades and an owner of none, no pun intended (his name was Jack). He didn’t have a job description he did whatever they needed him to do. He painted flag poles, drove trucks, he could operate a dozier and because he could do anything he became a valued employee. Momma was a stay at home mother and wife ( what time she stayed at home.) She would buy her a six pack of beer and a coke or two and some cheese, bologna and crackers and ride the roads. I went with her most all the time. I was only five so that’s how we began our lifelong friendship and that was because for some reason I understood momma's lack of control and why she was what she was. I never question her motives or her actions. I just loved her no matter what. Sometimes when I should have asked questions I still didn't and that’s why we were still best friends when she passed away on July 27, 2010 . . .

We lived in a small apartment owned by a Mr. Hagen and it was on the same land he lived on too. He was a nice old man but he didn’t like dogs. Momma became friends with the lady across the way Mrs. Harrod was her name. I think she was a bit older than momma. She drank all day and played records. The Great Pretender was her favorite. She had a son Frederick, he was older than I was, he was more Lee Ann's age. I was into marbles at that time and I had  two one gallon jars full and a couple of aggie's. He and I got into a marble game and he said lets play keeps for all the marbles, I didn’t know what keeps was. He won the game and he said ha-ha! you have to give me all your marbles and I started whipping up on him. We rolled around and was trying to kill each other when momma and Mrs. Harrod came and broke it up. Within two days he and I both ended up in the hospital with poison oak so bad we could not put our fingers together. It was so bad that he had to stay in the hospital a couple of days. We did not realize that the place we were rolling around was full of poison oak. That was the end of my marble playing for a while . . .

There also was a lady  named Mamie and she lived across the road from us. She was a very flamboyant platinum  blonde and a very unusual person, a real character. She was a great friend to momma and daddy. She was the towns local beautician. Her and momma struck up a friendship that lasted fifty plus years. I can remember one time she came to our house and they all were drinking heavy ( I was the bartender and I made sure that the beer was shook up so I could drink the foam ). She and daddy started dancing and it became a strip dance. They didn't get all the way undressed but close to it. Daddy and Mamie started rubbing bellies. That's just some of what Lee Ann and I was to see most all our life's. Things that a kid shouldn't see. I loved Mamie she was a friend for along time. She moved to Nashville and opening up a shop and in the later years when momma and daddy moved to Nashville we (momma and I) would get our hair done by her. Later I will tell about sleeping in a car at Mamie's beauty shop in Nashville . . .

Momma fit in well with Mrs. Harrod. They spent a lot of time together. We only lived there a short time. I remember we went to Michigan to visit grandpa and grandma and when we got back the dog I owned had been shot and put in a gunny sack. I cried and cried. I think momma thought that Mr. Hagen did it that was the reason we left there. Momma looked and looked and she came up with an old farm house with five rooms and a fire place for heat and it sat on a three hundred ache farm. Momma’s friends told her not to move there because the man who owned it was a mean drunk and didn’t get along with anyone. He was the owner of the tobacco warehouse and very rich. He had a nice brick home on the same farm. His wife was a well-respected school teacher in the high school. They had a son that was a year or so older than Lee Ann. Mr. Lankford had a drinking problem but that made no difference to momma. She didn’t heed the warnings of her friends and we moved in . . .
 

Not Mr. Sullivan
Stock Photo

The farm also had a share cropper who worked the land. His name was Mr. Albert Sullivan, his wife was Antilee Sullivan but to me they were Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan just because I respected them a lot. Mr. Sullivan could take a pair of mules and work them perfectly. He would say GHEE and HAW to make them go left and right. I was so fascinated by that I would sit on a fence and watch him, seemed like for hours. He was a great man in my eyes. He came over to me one day with a stock from a plant that looked like a corn stock. He took out his pocket knife and started peeling the stock and he said,' here chew on this," I ask," why?" He said, "just give it a try." It was sugar cane and boy it was a treat. It was sweet and you would chew it and then spit out the pulp. That was just one of the small simple good things that he taught me. Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan had ten children, one of which was Lula May. She was my age and then there was James Ray he was younger than we were. That is who my play mates were. I spent all my spare time at their house or playing with them on any given site on the farm. I was out of my house from dawn to dusk because my parents were so caught up in life’s worries that I thought that I really didn’t matter. That is why I would go be in Mr. Sullivan’s house to lose that feeling that nobody cared where I was cause they treated my like family. If I acted out or did anything wrong she would pop my but or worse tell momma or daddy and they would ground me for a week or so from going to their house and that was awful cause I felt loved by Mr. and Mrs. Sullivan. I felt the care that I didn’t get at home . . .

Don’t get me wrong, we might have had it better financially than Mr. Sullivan’s family but I learned at a very young age that money was not always what made a house a home. I would rather be at their house than mine. I felt safe there, by this time momma and daddy were fighting and it could be very violent. I also found the love that the Sullivan family shared a thing that I would never forget. Oh yeah did I mention that Mr. Sullivan’s family was black? That was in the 1956 when blacks were treated like they were second class citizens. That made no sense to me for they were a very loving and God like family. Back then they had their own drinking fountains and rest rooms and went to their own school. My momma would go get books out of the library in town for Mr. Sullivan because they didn’t let blacks check out books at that time. My momma would go get books out of the library in town for Mr. Sullivan because they didn't let blacks check out books at that time. He was a well-respected man in the black community as well as the white . His nick name was Preacher because he was a deacon in his church, so that what momma called him . . .

Lula May and I would play Tarzan ( me being Tarzan of course because I could do the yodel that he does) and Lula May was Jane. We would swing from a grape vine that was in our favorite place to play, the hollow. It had a corn crib down by the creek and a well house at the base of the hill and from that house a pipe ran to where water would come to a troff that the cows would drink from and so would we, I often wonder why we didn’t get mad cow disease or hoof and mouth disease. The water tasted so good and was so cold and we didn’t care that we had to share it with the cows. There were many times that we would be in the hollow that all three of us would be bare footed. It’s a wonder that we didn't get hurt more then what we did . . .

About one year later momma got mad at daddy for something and she decided she was gonna burn the house down. She came and got me at school ( I was in the second grade ) and went and to sit our house on fire and raced to Gallatin to get an excuse so they could not say anything to her about being the reason the house burned down. I remember this because I was scared to death she was driving so fast. The drinking was very bad by now and of course they fought all the time. It was hard for me and Lee Ann. We didn’t know why our home had become so tormented . . .

When momma burned our house, we moved to down town Hartsville. It was a huge apartment building. I think it was a one room apartment. It was big enough to put three beds and a kitchen table and a couple of chairs. It was beside the hospital and Dr. Bratton had a house on top of the hill behind the hospital. I quickly become friends with his two younger kids. They had a small pony and would let me ride it, boy was I in heaven. One day there was no one at home, I made a some rains with bailing twine and jumped right up on the pony. When they got home, they were really mad that I was riding their pony with them not home. Needless to say, there was no more pony riding for me. When it came to school, it was entirely different. Momma would take me to school and I would beat her home, running all the way. I hated school because  I did not have the ability to get along with people my own age or as far as that goes any age. I got many whippings about running home and getting there before momma would. I think we stayed there for a couple of months so they could clear the land for us to move the trailer there. Uncle Leon co-singed for us to get a house trailer because momma and daddy's credit was so bad due to hospital stays and too much credit at one time they charged themselves almost into bankruptcy but not quite yet . . .

Lee Ann & New Trailer

Lula May was three days younger that I was. I would save up pop bottles, and then trade them in for cash, back when you got a nickle for each one and we would have our birthday party. It consisted of, pop and chips and candy all the sixty or seventy cents would buy. We would go to the hollow and set a table on some big rocks with towels and put summer flowers (more like weeds) on the table and we would sing happy birthday to each other. We started letting James Ray be a part of the banquet. He became our constant companion then. He was about three years younger then we were . . .

There was a garden down by the lake that Mrs. Lankford our landlady would plant each year with melons, sweet tatters and cucumbers and of course tomatoes all things we like to eat and there was other stuff she would plant too. I swipe a steak knife and a salt shaker so we would have it when we would get hungry and we hid it in the hollow. Today I am sure she planted that garden just for us. We would go down there and swipe melons and when melons were all gone we would dig up sweet tatters and eat them and she never said anything to us. Have you ever eaten a raw sweet tater? They are so sweet when they come fresh from the ground. When it was time for dinner at my house I would tell momma that I wasn’t hungry and she would make me eat anyway and I would go to bed stuffed . . .

Mr. Lankford didn’t want momma to go any where so he let them park the trailer where the old house was, he even cleared it and made a concrete porch and they placed the trailer there. We had a brick-o-block walk way, they were spread out about ever 3 ft and Mr. Lankford hated them. One day momma took me to school and when she got back he had Mr. Sullivan and two of his sons digging a trench and they filled it up with rock and concrete so we would have a nice walkway. I remember Mr. Lankford doing a lot for our family. I know we didn’t pay any rent after the house burnt down . . .

 

Mr. Lankford was an old Southern Gentleman. He always wore his Sunday best clothes and his hat off to one side. He took a liking to momma as well she did him. He started bringing her the mail and that’s how they started talking and becoming friends. He began to trust her with secrets and that’s when she really became aware that he had a drinking problem and if there was one think momma understood it was drinking. He would go to his daddy's old home place which he still owned and get drunk about twice a month. Momma would go over there if she didn’t see him for a while and help him get sober. They became soul mates momma said . . .

Toby In His Sunday Best
 And The Brick-O-Block
Stepping Stones He Hated

There was a gas pump on the farm and one day he was putting gas in his truck, he was lighting up a cigarette and BOOM it blew up. The pump was near our house and so momma heard the blast and went running. She found Mr. Lankfords truck on fire and him unconscious on the ground. Momma ran to Mr. Sullivan’s house, about a half mile from where she was. She had no shoes on and in shorts and didn’t even think about Mr. Sullivan was a preacher and that he would not approve of the shorts. Momma and Mr, Sullivan took him to the hospital. He was in bad shape. He stayed in the hospital for weeks and he was on so much pain medicine that he became addicted to morphine. In later years he would house up in a motel in Lebanon and excape into the morphine. The motel owner knew him and momma were friends ( don't ask how he knew ) so he would call her if he didn’t see him for a couple days and she would go and help him get off the stuff. She would take small pieces of hamburger and feed it to him and she took some whisky, Wild Turkey was his brand. ( How do I know what he drank? I will tell you later in this book ).She would give him some to help with the withdrawing off the drugs. She would help him regain his strength enough till he could feed himself and then he would come out of it. Sometimes it might be a week before momma would come home. Daddy never said anything to her about where have you been. He just accepted that she was gonna do what she wanted. That happened several times while we lived there . . .



They Look Happy Right

There were other times momma would come up missing. Once they were at a Christmas party in Nashville at the old night club in Nashville called the Plantation Club. Momma got mad at daddy because he would not dance with her so she was dancing with a friend of theirs and daddy went up to momma and embarrassed her in front of all their friends. She went outside on Murfreesboro Road and hitched a ride with a truck driver. Back then Murfreesboro Rd. was a major highway because the interstate had not been built yet. We didn’t hear from her for three or four days and she called for money to catch a bus home. Talking about clubs there was a beer joint called the Golden Bubble outside of Hartsville. My momma and daddy both went there a lot. I can remember me sitting on a bar stool and playing the pin ball machine and them handing out nickels each time I would run out. They were friends with a guy named W.K. Rush, he was the local mechanic. They did a lot of drinking together over the next six years . . .

Momma & Daddy
 In Yard In Hartsville

Mr. Lankford had a brother-in-law, Mr. Leon. He was an old bachelor who raised his two sisters because their parents both die when they were young. All he did was fish and hunt and one day Mr. Lankford bet momma that she couldn't get Mr. Leon to be friends with her. Mr. Lankford said he was too bashful to even talk to women. The bet was fifty dollars and within a week or so Mr. Leon and momma became friends. So momma made a new friend and Mr. Lankford had to pay momma fifty bucks. He didn’t like it much either. When my momma would get drunk, she would go over to Mr. Leon’s and he would take care of her. Kinda like what she did for Mr. Lankford. Daddy didn’t seem to care where she was, he thought, she is out of my hair. Mr. Leon would ask momma over for dinner and she didn’t even blink before she would say yes. He would fix her steak and have good whiskey for her. Mr. Leon and Mr. Lankford seem to understand each other and never fought about momma being a friend to off them both. Mr. Lankford also bet momma that she could not apostasy a chair that we had, and the bet was on. She bet him another fifty bucks that she could. Momma could do anything she wanted to do so off she went to get tacks and cushion stuffing and material to do the chairs. Yes! He ended up paying her another fifty. It looked as good as a new chair . . .

 W.K. had an man named Buss Thompson who hung around his shop. He was the town drunk meaning that everyone knew that he was drunk all the time and I became his friend. He had a spider monkey that would sit on his shoulder and I loved that. He would let me hold the monkey and boy was that great. You can bet I liked the monkey better than Buss. He was my first hero that by some coincidence was a drunk . . .

The next chapter is my family history . . .