Between Wrecks (25 page)

I wouldn't have finished my project had it not been for Google, and I want to offer a peck on the cheek to whoever types in all those ancient articles from local newspapers. If y'all ever need a good typist, I would encourage you to contact Ms. Juanita Wilkins, phlebotomist.

It pains me to say this, but I need to offer unremitting gratitude to my ex-wife Abby, whom I met back in college. Abby urged me to get my master's degree in Southern culture studies at the University of Mississippi-Taylor, though I feel pretty sure now that she thought it would mean I'd be bringing in something like fifty thousand dollars a year, and looking back on it, all she wanted for me to do was go off to those biannual two-week residencies down at Ole Miss-Taylor so she could continue her ongoing affair with somebody I never knew.

I would be remiss to forget Ms. Billie Holcombe, who got me in touch with her prison-guard sister, Anita Reid, who got me in touch with another guard who asked that I never use his name in
No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee
. This particular guard—let's pretend that his name's Mark Sanford—took some of my money and arranged for me to talk to Jack Plemmons, one of the two men convicted of lynching Columbus Choice. Jack wanted to make sure that I thank Sid Plemmons—his brother and co-killer—but I can't thank Sid seeing as he went off and died before I took on my project. I certainly cannot thank Eugene Bobo, who sliced Sid Plemmons's neck with a shank—a homemade knife made in prisons all across America—devised of a sharpened toenail clipping taped to a tongue depressor. Who makes knives out of a sharpened toenail clipping?! Anyway, I need to thank Billie and Anita, for I would've never been able to sit face-to-face—be-tween Plexiglas—with Jack Plemmons and have him tell all his lies about how Columbus Choice had been sneaking into Jack's pastures at night in order to deplete his farm ponds of bream and crappie, in order to have enough fresh local fish available for when the less-adventurous diners from, say, the Tennessee Department of Transportation came inside at lunch break, scared of hokkigai and hamachi, and so on. Of course Jack kept eye contact the entire time he told this story, for he too had been a graduate of the Tennessee Valley Community College, and had undergone their rigorous Public Speaking requirement.

My father deserves a nod, for he always said to me, “Stet, you can be whatever you want to be in America.” I remember always thinking, Anything? I can be anything?! Back then I wanted to be a banker, or a track coach. When I took those tests on What You Should Be, it came out “banker” and “track coach.” At least that's what my guidance counselor told me. I never saw the official results. There had to be some kind of conection there. Would a person prone to stealing money become a banker
and
track coach? Why wouldn't the result simply come out “robber”? At the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary, according to Jack Plem-mons, there were running bankers inside. He said that his brother used to chase this guy down in the exercise yard all the time.

I have undying gratitude to Ms. Robin Hirsch, who told me all about how her father Simon worked as a cook in the Special Forces, and how he found ways to make up “Southeast Asian Kani,” and “Toro Vietnam,” and “Haddock Hanoi,” and “Flopping Kosher Laotian Spicy Anago,” and “Chairman Mao's Fishy Balls.” I am sorry that I never got the time to meet Chef Simon Hirsch, as he ended his life before I even thought of starting research on Columbus Choice. But I can tell you this: My mouth watered the whole time Ms. Robin Hirsch told me about her daddy's recipes. I didn't get to include it in the book, seeing as
No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee
was about Columbus Choice and not about Simon Hirsch, but Robin found her father face-down dead of an unexpected heart attack in the middle of a pot of the leanest breast of flanken, simmered and served in broth, with a matzo ball, Krelach, noodles, peas, and carrots. What a way to die! Except for the third-degree burns, I suppose. Unlike Columbus Choice, Simon Hirsch got buried within thirty-six hours and wearing his tallit, so maybe it wasn't that bad an experience for those closest to him. I would like to think that within those thirty-six hours Simon Hirsch had time to think about how he taught Columbus Choice the finer aspects of Kosher deli- and sushi-cooking, and how he changed the life of a young African-American man, and how he (Simon) grieved for the way Columbus got lynched.

I'd like to, but like I said I'm not much into the monotheistic Christian ways of thinking, and I'm pretty secure in my belief that Simon didn't think much of anything once he succumbed.

Lately I've felt like a Buddhist for some reason, so I would like to thank Siddhartha Gautama and the Dalai Lama.

For patience and intelligence, I'd like to thank Dr. Theron Crowther, my mentor, for steering me away from my original low-residency in Southern culture studies master's thesis,
The Curious Life and Difficult Times of Mexican-American Fireworks Store-Owning Jorge “Short Fuse” Villegas: Love and War, Sparklers and Hatred
. Dr. Crowther knew intuitively what a problem I might have interviewing illegal aliens. He understood the inadequacies I might have seeing as I never took Spanish seriously when I attended Vanderbilt University—Go Commodores!—on a football scholarship as a punter who got a bad case of the shanks and only remained on the team for half a season. Dr. Crowther taught me how to ask the mysterious questions needed: Who, What, How, Where, When, and Why. He taught me how to read an interviewee's facial expressions—if a person kept looking off to the left, it meant he lied. If a person kept looking off to the right, it meant he lied. If a person made eye contact in a way that made the interviewer uncomfortable, then the interviewee was lying.

It's not like I tested for being a part-time track coach for nothing: I would like to extend a high-five to my high school track coach, Junebug Pinson, who told me that I could break six-four (now called 1.9304 meters) if I quit trying to be a punter. He also said I could do something else besides being a high-jumping punter if I watched the evening news, read the morning paper, and quit making up book synopses for Mrs. Rena L. Stone.

Kudos, too, to my classmates at Ole Miss-Taylor, all of whom will have their master's theses published one day, I feel certain! I couldn't have continued with this project had I not had the moral support from everyone sitting around the campfire in Taylor, Mississippi, telling stories about what we'd uncovered over the previous six months. I want to thank Ben D. Strawhorn, especially, for teaching me how to heat rocks correctly in an open fire pit and using them to cook on. Catfish ended up being a lot easier than I thought.

And I need to apologize for stringing out my low-residency residencies for so many years, keeping other scholars from gaining admittance to the Most Highly Selective Southern Cultures Studies Program in the Nation, according to
U.S. News and World Report
.

Before things “reached the top of a Chinese rain barrel,” as Jack Plemmons said were Columbus Choice's last words—which is to say my life had gone to the bottom of a charred Tennessee barrel found frequently in Lynchburg, and then I continued downward all the way through the center of the earth, and then I punctured through the bottom of a rain barrel in Guandong province and crawled the last few feet until I knocked the top of said barrel off—I want to thank my pre-Frozen Head State Park Campground landlord, Mr. Lester “The Protester” Townes, who allowed me to paint the entire Atomic Arms apartment building instead of paying rent for a couple months. Painting a cheaply built, wooden, two-story row of twenty-four residences that sometimes truckers confused for a bad motel way off highway 62 gave me the quiet moments needed to mull over all the intricacies of an African-American GI with cooking skills taught him by a Jewish soldier from Brooklyn, and how some of the coincidences and chance encounters brought into one's life are ineffable and inexorable and inescapable and ineludible and inevitable and inexhaustible and inexplicable, not to mention beyond reason. Lester Townes's duskly ritual of splitting a twelve-pack of Old Milwaukee and a pint of Jim Beam with me only furthered my imagination and resolve, though it might've A) caused me to slow down the painting, and B) injured my vital organs.

Warm feelings to recent divorcee Wymona, who lived at the Atomic Arms, for letting me borrow her fine, New World Dictionary during lunch breaks and siestas in order to use scholarly words (see paragraph above) throughout. I wish I could remember Wymona's last name. Maybe I knew it at one time. Perhaps I suffer from periodic bouts of
dementia pugilistica
—in the diction-ary—from having cornerbacks ram into me while I was trying to punt a football, or for misjudging a high jump bar and missing the pit. Maybe I should go get a blood test from Juanita Wilkins and see if I'm missing some vital platelets or something.

I would be remiss not to offer a big drunken smooch and some dry humping to all of those writers conference and colony directors who didn't see me as worthy of their time. If I'd gone to Yaddo, Breadloaf, MacDowell, Provincetown, and the other twenty-seven “colonies” or “conferences” I applied to back when I lived in the Frozen Head State Park Campground, then I'd've succumbed to their perfect afternoon cocktails and toddies and spent all my time trying to unzip some poetess's Dickey work pants, or trying to run from men who saw something exotic in a Tennessee ex-punter's drawl, and I never would have gotten Columbus's story right. So endless doffs of a beret to y'all.

I want to thank the good people at Mid-State Nursery for providing me needed information in regards to planting tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, and jalapenos in five-gallon drywall buckets so that I had enough nourishment over a few years to complete my project. I would like to thank Columbus Choice's best friend in Harriman, and owner of Nuclear Fish Wholesale—Harold Holcombe—for giving me that recipe on how to make cucumbers into kosher dills. As for Harold, let me make it clear that I would've never completed the biography had he not told me all of the things that occurred to Columbus Choice that didn't come out in the court trial—occasions that I couldn't fully include in the text of
No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee
. For instance, Mr. Holcombe made it clear that he had no problem whatsoever with blacks and whites carrying on a heterosexual relationship, and Mr. Holcombe's sister Luanne concurred that her brother felt that way. And that she didn't have an affair with Columbus Choice, unless harmless flirtation meant adultery.

I owe a debt of gratitude to Dr. Hajar Fard, at Roane Medical Center's emergency room, for treating my stomach ulcer and kidney stones, and providing me with diet tips that exclude cucumbers, tomatoes, spinach, and peppers. Writing a 550-page biography on an African-American Tennessee sushi owner is hard enough without constant torso pain. Rest assured, Dr. Fard, that I will pay my medical bills once the royalties stream in. And I stress
stream!

Also, I need to thank Brenton Burry, attorney-at-law, for utmost representation and teaching me not to hold my hands together at a trial in such a manner that might make jury members subconsciously view me as guilty for blowing a .18 on the drive back from Yolanda Choice's juke joint back when I needed to ask some questions about her father over a three-day period. Should it ever happen again, Counselor Burry, I promise not to yell out “Drinks on me!” again, should the foreman announce “Not guilty.” Maybe I ran into some luck by choosing the breathalyzer instead of having a blood sample drawn by Juanita Wilkins, phlebotomist.

Many thanks to Mrs. Gloretta Knoblock at the Harriman Public Library—built in 1909—for her helpful advice in regards to xenophobia, prison systems, edible fish, military mess halls, rope knots, and alcoholism. Also, thank you, Ms. Knoblock, for letting me drive the bookmobile, on a trial basis, for two weeks. To this day I'll maintain that A) I didn't tell the kids to read
Animal Farm
, then offer up, later, reasons why the novel stood for how a socialistic government might be better than a capitalistic system; and B) I didn't try to “live” inside the bookmobile at night.

My publisher says I have thirty days to finish up these Acknowledgments before they have to shove them into the “back matter,” so I hope I have time to thank everyone. The last thing I want to do is be one of those writers who A) sends things in to his publisher past a deadline, and B) forgets to remember the people, places, and things that brought him into being the kind of biographer that he became.

I want to thank whoever came up with the term “deadline,” which I can't find in Wikipedia, Google, or the OED—not necessarily in that order.

Friends and family members who lent support and encouragement are too numerous to name here, but I am particularly indebted to Mr. and Mrs. Walker Hitt, plus their fine daughter Cassandra at State Line Office Supplies for pointing out how, like at a funeral home when it's time to pick out a casket, they arranged their rolling ball pens down the Pen Aisle in such a fashion that, as long as one had some time, one could get past the really expensive ones and find, there at the end of the aisle, passable writing instruments that had been remaindered or discontinued. The same goes for their knowledge of legal pads, typewriter ribbons (call me old-fashioned and stubborn, but I had no idea that this “computer phase” would actually last) that no one stocked anymore, and sticky notes so I could keep track of what went on while writing.

Furthermore, I am deeply indebted to Cassandra for listening patiently to sections of the biography, and for her comments—particularly during those trying days when I couldn't get the chapters “Skinless and Boneless,” and “That's Not the Smell of Aji!” down on paper right. Thanks beyond thanks, too, for Cassandra's keen advice concerning whether or not I should've moved out of the Atomic Arms apartment complex in Harriman and live a less expensive lifestyle at the Frozen Head State Park Campground, out closer to Oak Ridge and the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary. May State Line Office Supplies prosper, and grow into a chain across all Tennessee!