Between Wrecks (27 page)

Lang Gurley over in the seafood department of Food City deserves special recognition for teaching me the importance of foods that're high in omega-3 fats, which he considers to be “brain food.” I admit that before I partook of salmon on a daily basis I sometimes felt as if I couldn't do a crossword puzzle in the local weekly papers when the clue was something like “Hemingway's
For Whom
blank
Bell Tolls,”
or “Shakespeare's
As You Like
blank.” After a good month of salmon croquets, salmon patties, stir-fried salmon added to Kraft macaroni and cheese, et al, I could do a Sunday
NewYork Times
crossword over a week's time.

I want to thank Lang Gurley, also, for his insights as to Columbus Choice's personal views on clams and crabs.

I want to offer a backhanded acknowledgement to Coach Run-yan from back when I was in the seventh grade participating in the annual Punt, Pass, and Kick competition. I finally figured it out, and it's made me the scholarly biographer that I am today: Runyan, you let some air out of my balls so I would always lose the competition to Gray Chadwick Cade, because his daddy had all that money and donated the aluminum bleachers to the visitors' side of the football field. I always wondered how come my punts and kicks only went twenty yards on Punt, Pass, and Kick Day, when normally I could whip Chadwick's butt. So I thank you, Coach Runyan. A) Your little trick made me practice harder, to the point where I made the team at Vanderbilt and lasted almost half a season, and B) It gave me some kind of subconscious drive to always figure out the reason why some things didn't work out as they normally do—much like the Scottish philosopher David Hume did when he figured out the “blocked habit of ex-pectation”—and, in turn, that's what got me through Columbus Choice's biography. So a multitude of slaps on the butt to Coach Runyan.

I am grateful to Emmett Till.

I am indebted to my father's uncle Stan, who in 1966 got caught for manufacturing phony poker chips to look like the ones used at the Golden Nugget in Las Vegas, Nevada. On a family vacation out to the Grand Canyon one time, my father took my mom and me by the Nevada State Prison in Carson City to visit Uncle Stan, and I feel certain that my experience there inured me in such a way as to not be fearful of the Brushy Mountain State Penitentiary clientele when I needed to visit Jack Plemmons, Columbus Choice's alleged murderer. I should mention that Stan “the Man” owned a die-cutting operation, and that after he got caught for trying to replicate poker chips, he was paroled and immediately went into business mass-producing shims that could be used for breaking into cars. I'm not so sure that he got in trouble for manufacturing the shims, but he did get in trouble for
using
the things and operating some kind of chop shop on the Nevada-Arizona border. Stan taught me about irony, which is a useful “tool” in the writing trade—at the Nevada State Prison, he helped make license plates. All of the state of Nevada's license plates are made in Carson City, and if you don't believe it you can look it up on Wikipedia. (I'm sure that that's what my copyeditor is having some kind of fact-checker do right now.)

I wish to thank Neil Young for his song, with Crazyhorse, “Stupid Girl.” I can't say how many times I listened to that song after Abby left me, and how many times I played it for Dooley when he was ignored by some bitch on the streets of Oak Ridge.

Slim Pender deserves accolades for letting me visit the spot on his land where Columbus Choice got lynched. I could really feel the vibes there, even though Slim cut down the oak tree right after the Plemmons brothers' trial. I appreciate Slim letting me run my hands all over the beautiful chest-of-drawers, nightstand, armoire, picnic table, high-boy, and three crosses that he puts out in the yard on Easter to represent where Jesus and those two thieves got crucified, all made from the oak tree where good, entrepreneurial Columbus Choice was found hanging. Now, Slim, I don't want to say anything about how I think you're a xenophobic, bigoted, card-carrying member of the KKK but maybe I ought to do so. Come on, man. I saw you smiling when I ran my palms against that wood. I saw you laugh when I got teary-eyed and shook my head in disbelief.

I want to thank Monetta Jones down at the One Spot Café for teaching me that French fries can be eaten with tartar sauce instead of ketchup, and for letting my only friend, Dooley, come inside seeing as the café already had a C rating and couldn't get much lower even if an inspector came in and saw an exstray dog there beneath a tabletop, licking his balls.

I would like to thank Richard Nixon for not keeping his promise in regards to getting the troops out of Vietnam by 1971, for in doing so, most of the young men in my hometown were off in Southeast Asia, which meant that the Abracadabra Drive-In Movie wasn't filled to capacity ever on weekends, which meant the owner had to cut prices down to something like a dollar a car, which meant that my parents went there often seeing as my father's eyesight and flat feet kept him 4-F, and so I was conceived in the back seat of a Dodge while my parents attended a
Two-Lane Blacktop
and
Willard
double feature. Of course I find this symbolic, for writing my thesis—which became my book—probably came to me, I believe, in a strangely genetic way. First off, “blacktop,” contains the term “black.” The movie
Willard
had to do with rats, which might be considered “fresh meat.” In order to write about Columbus Choice, I had to drive all over the Harriman/Oak Ridge/Roane County region of Tennessee, which is made up of nothing other than two-lane asphalt. I don't want to say anything bad about Columbus Choice's restaurant, but I would imagine that he had to stay in control of vermin, viz., rats. At the Abracadabra Drive-In Movie theatre, from what research I've done, the concession stand offered popcorn, hot dogs with chili, Milk Duds, and Butterfinger candy bars. I bet there were rats inside that concession stand, too! My father once told me that the whole reason I got conceived was because he said to my mom, “You want a butter finger?” and he didn't mean the candy bar.

So I am boundlessly grateful to whoever was in charge of constructing the back seat of Dodge Darts, from welder to seamstress. I couldn't have done it without y'all. Plus Claude Freeman for having the business acumen to open the Abacadabra. Plus Gilbert Ralston for writing the novel and screenplay for
Willard
, and Will Corry and Rudy Wurlitzer for writing
Two-Lane Blacktop
. Plus all the actors involved who wouldn't ever be able to do anything worthwhile without the writers, outside of mime. I especially want to thank any of the sound effects geniuses—my parents might not have ever screwed had it not been for loud noises all over the Abracadabra speakers that masked their lovemaking sounds. I would like to thank the directors of those two movies, also—Monte Hellman and Daniel Mann—and please know that I would be honored should either of you ever want to direct a movie version of my biography.

Where I grew up in a small South Carolina town far, far away from the industrialized, modern conveniences of Tennessee, a man named Mr. Pinky Jervey ran a little juke joint roadhouse that may or may not have been built on slave burial grounds. Now, I don't know if Pinky—he got his nickname from a persistent and near-lethal case of conjunctivitis—couldn't read altogether, or quit trying due to the stress it put on his eyeballs, but not once did he ever check my ID when I rode my bicycle over there. I got beer, and I drank it in the woods alone until I heard that it was a sign of alcoholism if one drinks by himself. I was fourteen and fifteen at the time. When I heard about the “drinking alone” stuff, I started taking my dog with me, who lapped at the tops of beer cans as if they'd been smeared with canned Alpo. In a previous life I'm pretty sure that dog—politically incorrectly named Gypsy—might've been either a drunk or a porn star. Anyway, I want to thank Pinky Jervey for his indirect part in my writing life. In a bunch of the reading that I did as a lackluster and failed punter on the football team at Vanderbilt, both in history and in English classes, I came to understand that a bunch of Southern writers might've had a little problem with the booze. So I feel as though Pinky abetted me in ways that he would have never known way back when he played Ray Charles and Ronnie Milsaps inside his bar relentlessly.

A number of peripheral, seemingly random events and acquaintances helped me immeasurably while I wrote
No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee
, and I wish to acknowledge all of them heartily. For example, on many occasions I would go over to the Atomic Gas 'n' Go for coffee in the morning, and stand around talking to Mr. Beach Beacher, who drove a 1962 Studebaker Gran Turismo and parked it across three spots out front. He'd had an idea back in something like 1999 that he could use up all of his savings for such a car—what a car!—restore most of it himself, and then win money in various vintage car shows and fairs and competitions of one sort or another. Beach Beacher wore a red, short-sleeved, Studebaker shirt with two front pockets every day, advertising that he owned the car parked out front should anyone come inside the convenience store for a scratch-off card, and be all gung-ho to say something like, “Hey, does that Studebaker out front have a V-8 engine?” and whatnot. Now, Beach Beacher always seemed perturbed that people forever wanted to reminisce, argue, or use the opportunity to say something mean about foreign-made automobiles. I watched from my stool, drinking regular Folger's coffee, as Beach Beacher—and that was his given name, according to his obituary, not some kind of childhood nickname—snapped at his interrogators. I thank Mr. Beach Beacher, for it will remind me that if you make a big deal about parking sideways in a vintage vehicle and wear a shirt that might as well be made of neon, then you're asking for people to interrupt your thoughts. Just like how if I don't want to ever talk about the tragic life of Columbus Choice, then I shouldn't go and publish an entire biography of the great man. Anyway, to Beach Beacher, I offer my thanks, and I hope that you know that after you affixed the garden hose to the muffler of the 1962 Studebaker Gran Turismo and died, your son sold the car to a retired nuclear physicist from over at Oak Ridge who keeps it parked outside the One Spot Café in Harriman from about nine in the morning until after the lunch crowd. I know only that his name's Dr. Heinrich-something. I guess I'll learn his family name when I notice it in the obituaries one day, after he too understands the pressures of discussing 289 cubic inch engines and Flight-o-Matic automatic transmissions every day to strangers. I'm hopeful that when surrounded by history and civil rights buffs wanting me to sign copies of their books, I never tire from talking about fatty tuna.

For making me feel better about myself, I wish to thank the people I saw nearly daily in and around the Harriman-Oak Ridge area: the guy who always walked around on stilts wherever he went, and who tried to sue every bank under the Americans with Disabilities Act because their ATMs were too low for him to use; the guy who rode a unicycle wherever he went; the woman who rode, alone, on a bicycle built for two; the woman who stood on the street corner outside Rex Palmer's Pawn Shop, staring up at the sun, without sunglasses, tears running down her face; the last remaining “shell-shocked” soldiers from World War II who left their long-term residential facility and walked around town wearing motorcycle helmets; the guy who carried a surfboard wherever he went—the one wearing the puka shell choker, not to be confused with the guy who carried a surfboard around wherever he went yelling out the theme to
Hawai'i Five-O
, seeing as he kind of grated on my nerves, which indirectly kept me from concentrating while working on the Columbus Choice biography; the woman who wore galoshes every day, no matter what the weather, forever prepared since the Great Flood of 1971.

I must offer a zealous thumbs-up to Eric Burden's version of the Nashville Teens' classic song “Tobacco Road.”

Among Columbus Choice's closest friends in childhood who outlived Columbus Choice, I want to single out for special thanks the third leg on his high school track team's 4X110 relay team Julius “Cube Steak” Goode for information on the anchor leg's soft touch when it came to receiving, then grasping, the baton; his senior prom date Ms. (now Mrs.) Jackie Puckett (now Holloway) for information on her date's soft touch when it came to pinning a corsage on her dress; Ludie Latimer for information concerning Columbus Choice's short-lived attempt to play the cornet in junior high school, then how he changed over to bassoon so as not to have to deal with marching band and the inherent, ubiquitous, inexorable (my words) practice sessions every afternoon; Marquette “Drumstick” Carter, the first leg on the 4X110 relay team, for information on Columbus Choice's early competiveness, and the changes that Marquette noticed once Columbus came back from the military; Vanita Tolbert for information about how, in the sixth grade when she wore white pants and had her very first menstrual period during math class and went up to the teacher (Mrs. Blocker? Mrs. Baten?) so the rest of the class had a good view of what happened on the back of Vanita's pants—and when a couple of the boys in the class (Cube Steak? Drumstick? Ludie?) yelled out, “Nita's butt bleeding, Nita's butt bleeding!”—Columbus Choice got out of his desk, took off his coat, and wrapped it around her backside in a manner both brave and chivalrous; Sherry Leverette, Columbus Choice's sixth-grade girlfriend, for information on how he might've been the first “player” in the African-American community.

For invaluable advice concerning pure-tee fear, I need to tip my cap to Juanita Wilkins's father, Bernard. In writing such a sad, tragic, fate-filled biography, it ended up important for my knowing pure-tee fear, in order to slightly comprehend Columbus Choice's adrenaline levels and heart rate when a gun was pointed his way.