Chapter Nine - Part One - Monroe Harding Years



My Home Away From Home
As It Looks Today

Monroe Harding was founded in 1893 as a home for orphans and continues today to provide vital services through a variety of programs to youth of all ages. Mrs. Fannie E. Harding opened her home in memory of her late husband Dr. James Monroe Harding to orphaned Presbyterian children. She began accepting children of all ages and religions just one year later. Monroe Harding moved to Glendale Lane in 1934 to serve children of all ages until the 1970's when it became primarily a residential facility for at-risk teens. Since its establishment, it has expanded to include children, youth and their families through residential care as well as off-campus programs in the community. It has always been the goal of Monroe Harding to help at-risk children and youth realize their full potential by providing them opportunities to learn key life lessons. Monroe Harding believes that all young people have the ability to succeed. The programs are geared toward introducing, teaching and modeling behaviors and skills that allow youth to be independent and successful. Monroe Harding seeks to create change and truly make a difference in lives of at-risk children and youth . . . 　

Follow This Link ForMore About Monroe Harding

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=R80BZtv7HGg

The summer of 1965 I was at risk and someone thought that going to Monroe Harding was a good ideal. I am not too sure what I was at risk of but I know that I did need help. By this time in my life I could not go to school and learn I was too tied up with the heart ache of alcoholic parents and no one to help me to learn. I was going to learn, not just the A B C’s but how to live day to day life. I would fight every day at school and come home at night and referee my mom and dad. So off to Monroe Harding I went. My parents took me there and while they were being introduced to the staff, they took me to where there were kids swimming at the pool on the grounds. I was in my regular outfit, cowboy boots and blue jeans and a cowboy belt with a big huge buckle for some reason I left my cowboy hat at home. As soon as the grown ups left the kids persisted in picking me up and throwing me into the pool clothes, boots and that was my first taste of Monroe. I was thirteen and a hand full. I learned really quickly that it was a dog eats dog place where you had to mark your ground and make a stand or you would be on the bottom of every fight. I never thought that I was gonna have to fight my way to the top here. I found out real fast that I was not all that . . .

The grounds had a gym and a tennis court and I have already told you about the pool. I thought that wow this might not be too bad. There were two dorms, girl's and boy's. YES Boy's. They lived down about a block from the main house where the office's and the girl's lived. We all were separated by ages. Younger kids were in a unit and older kids were in what was called big unit. I was placed in the little girl’s unit. There were five rooms with two beds in each room. My first roommate was Betty Harding (no kin to Monroe Harding). She was athletic and enjoyed sports so that was a good pick for a roommate. My first house parent was Mrs. Shea, and she was a small soft spoke, Japanese lady. We put her through hell most of the time. She left shortly after I came. The next house parent was a drill sergeant like my second grade teacher. The exception was she liked kids and treated us as good as we would let her. Her name was Mrs. Bitty. But If you got out of line and pushed her, she would give you a whipping but not too hard. That is what it took for us. We were good kids we were just full of mischief . . .

There were two girl's in my unit that had sisters and brothers there too. My roommate Betty had a sister in the big girl's, unit and her name was Linda. Then there was Diana Eubank had a sister and some brothers there. There were Gayle and Johnny and I think the older brother was Bobby. He left shortly after I got there so I don't remember if that is his name. There were three Hill's there, Donna, Sharon, they were sisters and Debbie, was the cousin, Sharon and Debbie were in the big girls unit. I will never forget Gayle, she beat the crap out of me about a week or two after I got there. There was a rule that little girls do not go to the big girl's unit for good reason. I decided that the rule didn't pertain to me. I trotted my little self up to the unit and was looking for Carolyn Picket and I walk up to the lounge area where the TV was and she was not there so I propped my but down and was gonna wait for her. Gayle said to me,"what are you doing up here?" I spouted off to her said non-ya, I should have not done that because the race was on now. She jumped up and I took off down the long hall way and all the (there was a hall way with four rooms on one side and five on the other side) doors were half cracked and everybody was watching her chase me. She grabbed me by the back of the head by my hair and jerked me down and persisted in beating the crap out of me. I was not use to getting the crap beat out of me. I was the one doing the beating at Hartsville. Now the shoe was on the other foot. Someone finally broke it up and by that time I had learned my lesson.

NO LITTLE GIRLS, IN TH BIG GIRLS UNIT!

Now the employee's of Monroe, Mr. Raney was the administer when I got there. He was a very quite guy and had nothing to do with the kids. There was Mr. Farrell, and he was the director. We called him Teddy Bear. He was a great guy and we all felt loved by him. He would play ball and other sports with us. When Mr. Farrell and Mr. Raney left, Mr Salsberry took the administers job. He was a big round man and looked just like Santa Claus. He had white hair but no beard. He liked kids and would kid around with us. I do not remember if anyone took Mr. Farrells place when he left . . .

Homework Time At
Monroe
I am Not In This Photo

There were two sets of house parents, the week and then the week end crews. There were two young couples that were the week end parents. Mr. and Mrs. John Nelson were assigned to my little girl’s unit. We called him J.C and his wife was Mrs. Birdie. There was the Ferrells, no kin to Mr. Farrell, they were the little boy’s unit house parents on week ends. Both couples were in college and had a small apartment on campus. That was a good way for them to avoid the cost of an apartment. Mrs. Birdie doubled as a study hall tutor in the evenings. They were both fun couples and played a lot with us. J.C. was a basket ball player and we played all the time with him. He also had diabetes and when he would play basket ball he would sweat and sometimes he would get wired and we knew that he needed sugar so we would always take candy to give him. One time we had to call an ambulance for him he was in a diabetes shock. He would play with the smaller kids and pretend he was a sea monster and he would chase them around the room on his hands and knees and catch then and he would fall down and roll around the floor and well he was great with kids . . .

My Window
&
The Drain We Climbed
Photo Date
A Rainy Day In 2011

There were rules that we were expected to go by. The rules were not too hard but you know me, I did not like rules. The number one rule was no boy at the girl’s unit and no girls at the boy’s unit. My first planed breaking of the rules, was myself and Betty and Dianne and Debby Hill were gonna sneak to the boy’s unit after everyone else had gone to bed. My room had a window that opened up to a roof of a small storage unit. We climbed out my window and slid down the drain gutter and we ran down the pathway and we got there all right and on the way back was cool too. But we had a hard time climbing back up the drain gutter. We did not ever do anything wrong, we just like getting away with it getting down there and not getting caught. One night there was a new girl who was rooming with me Janice Farmer, and she was the youngest person to ever be at Monroe. She was only about ten or so and she woke up and said she would scream if we did not let her go with us and so we did and that night we got caught. There was never a hard punishment, maybe extra work or no allowance. . .

There were offices on the side of the kitchen that had all the social worker's offices. We were all assigned a counselor and were expected to see them once a week. There was a man named Mr. Sullivan, he was a short small man and had a bur hair cut. He always wore a suit and I was his problem child. As I told you in one of the earlier chapters, I liked to climb trees. There were lots of trees at Monroe. There was one that if I climbed to the very top at night, I could see about twenty-five miles to the L&C tower in downtown Nashville. I did not trust many adults by this time, and I really did not trust social workers. I felt that was the reason I was at Monroe, because some social worker had the opinion that I would do better if I was taken away from my parents. Every time I had an appointment with him I would go climb that tree and hide from him. He found out that I was in the tree and he got a chair and came out and sit at the base of the tree and he would talk to me. It finally worked and down I came, I though if this guy is so loyal to me that he comes outside to talk to me he must be O.K. Now as I look back on it, they were right. Too bad I did not take the help when it was offered. I went many years before I found out that if I had chosen to I could have stayed there and gone to college, but no I was smarter than the educated people who do this sort of thing for a living and gone to school to learn how to help a person like me . . . 

 

Sweet! Sweet! What A Treat!

Yes we had chores! The girl’s would help set the tables in the main dinning room where we all ate our evening meals and lunches on weekends. The older girl’s would have to clear the tables and some would do the dish washing in an industry type dish washer. We of course had to wash our clothes and keep our rooms and the unit clean too. I already said the boys had to do the same with their unit and do all the yard work and gardening too. The perks were  we got an allowance and we could take it and buy things in the Hillsboro mall. There was a Yonnie’s restaurant on Hillsboro Rd.  by the mall, and they let Gayle and Dianna work there. They were really nice people. We were also allowed to go to the movies. In summer we would do our chores and then we could go and do most anything we wanted  as long as you did what was right they would pretty much let you do anything you wanted . . . 

There were three high schools and two middle schools. Hillsboro High, Howard High, Central High and Waverly Belmont and Burton was the middle school. We all rode in a van from Monroe to the schools so there were no bus problems. I was sent to Waverly Belmount and I had to do the seventh grade again. To my disbelief there were blacks going to school with whites in Nashville. I was so surprised of that. Lula May and I had always wanted to go to school with each other. These kids were different, they had nice clothes and were not like Lula May. I got along well with a couple of girls that were black. Sandra Davis was one she became a good friend and I think of her often. If I every had my back against the wall she’d come and help. Three or four other girls from Monroe went to Waverly. Betty Harding and a girl named Polly and Carolyn Picket. We had a blast every day at school. I had friends for the first time since I left Jamestown. We all were friends and the kids from Monroe stuck up for each other. There were kids who called us the children’s home kids, but that did not bother me it was a nice thing compared to what I had been called before in my other schools. I tried out for basketball and got on the team. I was a guard and Betty was a forward. I also tried out for track and was chosen to do the broad jump and I did very well at that. That helped me get friends at the new school. We had a study hall each day and we were expected to be there every day. That was a big change for me for I had no help with my school work at home. I hated school but when I moved there it was no too bad. I had flunked the seventh grade so they keep me in the seventh grade at this school. I am glad cause all my kids from the school were in the seventh grade too so that helped me a lot . . .



I had A Couple of Blouses
Not Dresses Made From
Madras Cloth
The Bleeding Material

Now to the boys, remember I had become interested in boys back at Hartsville and had a hard time because I was such a tomboy.  I had friends and a fresh start to here it was OK. They showed me the ropes of how to be more-lady like. They showed me how to set my hair and put makeup on and then they taught me about clothes and how to match things and well just all the girl stuff no ( which I hated ) one had ever taken the time to teach me on how to be a girl. I still had a tomboy attitude and never ever got over that till this day I am more tomboy than a lady like. The craze of 1965 was, empire waist dresses. I liked them. We had nice clothes and we shared clothes quit a bit. The other craze was bleeding color’s shirts. They were a plaid type material and were almost always blues and white and when you washed they would bleed into the white and that was cool. The loop in the back of oxford shirts were also in. When your boyfriend  wore a shirt with a loop on it, you were to pull it off and make chains we had a lot of shirts torn doing that . . . 

          

My second summer was great. We swam every day and we would go to Hillsboro Rd.to the shopping mall  there. One time Linda Harding and Carolyn Picket decided that they were gonna steal a couple of swim suits. The dummies both got the same bright yellow suit. Of course the people who were their house parents knew that they didn't get the suits from the unit so they got caught. They were made to go to the store that they stole them from and tell the store manager that they stole them. The Monroe house parents paid for them and their allowances were to pay the house parents back. Wow they didn't even get to ware the suits even after they paid the price of the suit. They were high dollar suits too . . .

I had gotten comfortable with the home so I started slacking off some. There were boys to think about. That was the summer of 1966.  That metro parks started something called the S.P.Y. dances at the local park and they would bring in local high school kids that had bands to play the music and we loved that. I didn't really dance very well, and I am glad all you had to do to dance was to stand in one place and do side to side moves and shimmy around. The Jerk the Monkey the Twist, you know what I mean. There was a boy in our class named Randy that had Muscular Dystrophy so bad he had crutches to hold him up and he had really slurred speech and he would drool. He would come and he always ask me to dance with him and I did. Lots of kids made fun of me but that was OK with me. He was a nice guy and loved the music and he had the courage to get on the floor to dance so I figured that I could go out there I was use to people making fun of me so it didn't matter if they made fun . . .

Next chapter is about growing up a little while I was at Monroe and all the hood winks that we got into . . .

Chapter Nine- Part Two - Monroe Harding

The first year I was at Monroe I grew mentally. I had a new chance to have some sort of an ideal how to live life with harmony and love. The life there was structure and the same every day. There were no surprises with steady guidance. I learned the basics of the how to live happy and with kindness and truth. As each day came I grew to love Monroe. The people there and I were all in the same boat. Most came from families with drinking problems or in trouble with the law. We understood each other so there was a lot of kids there that were mentor's there to the other kids. Once I got to understand that it was a place for me to trust I fit right in with everyone else . . .
          

I had a need for people to like me. I would follow J.C. around like a little puppy dog. I craved the attention that he showed me. All the kids went to church every Sunday. I went to Second Presbyterian on Belmont and Woodmount Blvd. I was baptized in that church and was a part of the church. There were young couples there too that helped with the youth classes. There was a guy named Richard Spieght. He and his wife taught the class I was in. We as a class, went on Christmas and gave a party at the Fannie Battle Day Home kids and we served them refreshment and wrapped presents for children. I had a picture of me in the local paper. I attached myself to Mr. Spieght and wanted him to love me like I wanted J.C. to love me . . .

There was a coach at my new school his name was Mr. Keathy I followed him all year when I first came to school there. He was my coach for track. Now days you hear all the time about teachers that take advantage of teenagers. Most are girls but there are boys that are taken advantage of too. I was walking down the hall one day and he was in front of me and I'll fell back some and he jumped around and yelled BOO, I was not behind him someone else was and he scared the poor kid almost to death. He was so embarrassed when he saw it wasn't me behind him. I would go to his office all the time and sit and talk to him about track but in my head I was conspiring for him to like me more than the other kids just like all the other males in my life. It kinda makes me wonder why. Was it because my dad didn't show me love like they did? I don't know but as I think on it now I see where I put myself in harms way all the time when I was a kid. I was always looking for someone to love me. Till this day I do the same thing to a fault, I ware people out by wanting all their attention that has become one of my worst problems in my life. Back then I was lucky that someone didn’t take advantage of the young puppy love that I had . . .

I missed my mom and dad and wished that they could get their life's in order so I could come home. Well I am not sure what was happening in their life's at this point in time and probably that was a good thing. I had enough to think and worry about on my own. I was moved to the big girl's unit about one year after I came there. They put me in a room with a crazy girl that was three times the size of me. Everybody said she was a kid that did things to hurt herself. She was a cutter, they said. She would cut her arms and watch herself bleed. For some reason she liked me and we hit it off well. She was moved to T.P.S., a school for juvenile offenders about three months after I started rooming with her. She stole one of the station wagons and took a joy ride in it and got caught by the police. She was hurt somehow in her life and she tortured herself for it. I began to see that my life was not as bad as I thought. There were kids there that had horrible things happen to them and it left scares that may never heal. I was OK compared to them . . .

Sound Of Music
First Movie I Saw
At Monroe
 Belle  Meade Theater

Now let’s take a trip to my second year at Waverly Belmont. I started there in 1966 and had a lot of support from the other girls that lived at Monroe. There were people who were preppie’s and jocks and then there were the hoods and greasers. I had learned how to made friends really easy so it wasn't to long before I made a couple of girl friends there. Paulette Pinkerton and Vickie Harris were two friends that I made the first week there. Vickie introduced me to a boy named Eddie McQuid. He was a small little guy but he was nice. We started being boy friend and girl friends. He would meet me at the movies and we would sit together. He ended up giving me a small little heart ring and I accepted it. Within one month I broke up with him to date another guy named Eddie Chewning. He was a big guy and he was much older than I was. He had been in ninth grade three times. He was cool and I like that he was older and bigger than most the boys in eight grade. We went together for about one year and he was old enough to join the army with his mother’s permission. He was sent to Vietnam and I never heard from him again till 1986, while working as a floral department manager at local grocery store and saw him, he hadn't changed at all . . .

After Eddie number two left, I started dating ( yes! another Eddie ) Eddie Shawb, he was a preppy and something I was not use to. He would bring me a rose in class. He was really romantic. We went together for the last of the eight grade and the beginning of the ninth grade. It was kind of ruff for us after that cause he got a car and Monroe would not allow me to car date yet. So it didn't last and we stopped dating midway in the ninth grade. I saw Eddie many years later, he worked as a dispatcher for Yellow Freight and my husband was a truck driver for Yellow Freight. It was kind of nice to see one of my old loves. He hadn't changed a bit and he still looked the same . . . 

I had a small rash come on my elbows and my knees about summer of 1967 and was taken to see a doctor. He said it was psoriasis. I was so embarrassed and self conscious of it. Kids of course made fun of me. They called me an alligator girl and snake girl and would say things like, don't touch me it might be catching. So now I did not fit in again, I was different from the other kids. I was put on methotrexate a very powerful drug. I had to have a white blood cell count each month. It can and does have side effects: sore throat, chills, fever, or other signs of infection; unusual bruising or bleeding; excessive tiredness; pale skin; or shortness of breath and may cause liver damage. The doctor got it under control within a month. I have the sun sensitive type, the sun in other cases helps it but 25 percent of the people that have it, are sun sensitive. So needless to say I stayed inside almost the whole summer that year. I have had to deal with it all my life . . .

Then I was on my own. I like a couple of boys at Monroe like Johnny Eubank, Diana's brother, she tried to fix us up but he didn't want anything to do with me. I already had a teenage crush on a couple of the older boys there but most of them were already taken. So my last year at Monroe I had no boy friend. That wasn't too bad I was into school sports anyway. All that changed when I left Monroe. I had passed to the ninth grade and Mrs. Birdie was so proud of me. She worked hard to help me. I was so excited. My momma and daddy gave me twenty dollars because I passed. Summer time at Monroe was so much fun. We had lots of things to keep us busy. Canning veggie’s from our garden. There was a summer camp that was at Monroe for under privileged kids and we were to help with that. Skinny dipping! Darnn, I wasn't supposed to tell you that. Yes, one year we got caught skinny dipping. It was just we girls, there were no boys. All they did to punish us was, make us clean the pool and we had lots of fun doing that to . . .

Psoriasis. It is a red patches or lesions called plaques . . .’s a chronic (long-lasting) inflammatory skin condition that is caused in part by an overactive immune system that triggers the body to grow skin cells up to ten times faster than normal. Instead of shedding, these skin cells pile up on the surface and form . . . 

Want to read more about psoriasis click on link below
http://www.psoriasis.org/

Momma and Daddy in 1967
 In New Restaurant
 Pepe's Pizza

By December 1967 my momma and daddy had bought into a Pepe's Pizza shop. They had moved to West Nashville in a small house behind the shop. I was allowed to go and spend week ends there with them. Boy, they were altogether different mom and dad than when I last saw them. They seemed happy. They were doing really well in the pizza shop. That started a whole new thing for momma and daddy . . .

My next chapter breaks into the new kid in West Nashville . . .

Chapter Ten - Pepe's Pizza West Nashville

Roger Schutt / Captain Midnight
(Born in 1931-Died Tuesday Feb. 8, 2005)

Captain Midnight in His Nero Jacket and Shades

A Quote from CMT.com

Roger Schutt, who ruled Nashville radio in the late '60s and early '70s as Captain Midnight. Born in Durand, Mich. Schutt is perhaps best known as a confidant, guru and pinball-playing partner to Waylon Jennings, Jessi Colter, Tompall Glaser, Billy Joe Shaver and Kinky Friedman during the peak of country music's Outlaws movement of the '70s."It's really hard to peg Midnight," Friedman told CMT.com. "He was like a country Rasputin, sort of. Waylon and Roger Miller and Tompall and a number of others, too, considered him valuable. He was a master of the human comedy, patron saint of sleepless nights and friend to all . . .

Ralph's Morning TV Show

The restaurant that momma and daddy opened was doing really well in spring of 1968. They had built up a clientele and people like them. So on most nights they worked till midnight. There was a group of T.V. WSM Channel Four employees, and radio channel WSM 650 A.M. employees and also WKDA and WMAK A.M. rock channels that would call and get momma and daddy to deliver a pizza to the radio show after they would close the pizza shop. They got to know all the local deejay’s well and got lots of free advertisements because the deejay’s would say things about the pizzas on the air. The two that daddy liked best were Captain Midnight was his stage name. He was a little weird guy but he really liked momma and daddy and of course there was Ralph Emery the WSM 650 A.M. midnight till six a.m. country deejay. Momma and daddy and I met lots of country and western singers at Ralph’s show, he would let me sit in his show and answer the phones for him to take requests, that was after I came home to live with momma and daddy which I will bring up soon in my story. People like Junior Samples( the comedian )Tex Ritter and there was Martie Robbins, Farron Young ( The sheriff ) just to name a few. If you notice I don't mind name dropping because it always made me feel important . . .

I met a few new kids in West Nashville. Marsha Toombs and her brother Mark and there was Steve Mayo, he was younger than we were. He asks momma and daddy for a job and they started letting him work on week ends, washing dishes and sweeping  the floors. He acted older than what he was. It was a hard thing to do when I had to go back to the children's home. It got harder and harder each week when I had to leave. Momma and daddy started buying things for me. They bought me a small four-inch T.V which I already told you about.  I would hide under coves late at night so I could watch Johnny Carson show that was after lights out time. They also bought me a transistor radio. I know now they were trying to make up for all the stuff that I had been through. It worked, my ego was bigger than I was. I had someone that cared, but most all the other kids didn't have anyone . . .

I started taking people home with me, Linda Harding, Diana Eubank for a few. We always  had a ball. We would eat pizza and play the juke box and stay up all night. My parents had come along ways from when they were bankrupt and drinking and fighting all the time. I got to spend almost all summer in 1968 at the new house in West Nashville. I got to know a lot of the customers and they got to know me. Many of the West Sector Police Prescient were customers of Pepe's. The restaurant was right across the street from the Bel-Air Drive Inn. We would sneak in at the exit and watch movies for free. Then we got caught but they didn't call the cops cause they knew me and knew that I knew almost all the policemen in West Nashville, so they settled for a free pizza that night . . .

Merle Kilgore (August 9, 1934 – February 6, 2005)

Merle had a career as a country music recording artist but had great success as a songwriter, co-writing with June Carter Cash the song Ring of Fire, first recorded by her sister Anita Carter and later by June's future husband, Johnny Cash (Kilgore was a distant cousin of the Carter sisters through their maternal grandmother, Margaret Kilgore Addington). He also wrote Claude King's big crossover hit, Wolverton Mountain. Amongst others, he also penned "Johnny Reb" for Johnny Horton and the Tommy Roe pop music hit, The Folk Singer. In the early 1960s, he toured with Cash as part of his package show. On April 7, 1986, he was named Executive Vice President and head of management of Hank Williams Jr. Enterprises. In addition to managing Hank Williams Jr's career (along with that of Hank Jr’s Bama Band), Merle managed a number of other artists from his Nashville, In office. Merle also had a number of successful business ventures and held numerous leadership positions. Merle’s prominence in the country music community had grown in recent years through his involvement as Vice President of the Country Music Association and he had served on the CMA Board of Directors since 1989. Also contributing to his success was his position as President of both the Nashville Songwriter’s Foundation and the Nashville Songwriter’s Association International . . .

Now comes the story of the very important person that came into my life that had the biggest impact on my whole life. One week end I was with momma and daddy when they closed the restaurant. They would ride around and see what was happening around town. Like I said early on in this chapter, they knew Captain Midnight. He had a couple of guest on his show by the name Guy Mitchell and Merle Kilgore and momma wanted to meet Guy. He had sales in excess of 44 million units and this included six million-selling singles and had been in many movies. Merle Kilgore was Hank Williams Jr road and business manager. He was at Captains to promote a new album that Guy was doing for Starday Records where he had a contract to do three albums. So off we went to Captains studio. When we got there, we were sitting in the studio with Captain and the Great Guy Mitchell. They were talking about the love of a puppy. How when you scold a puppy, they will put their heads down and their tail between their legs and hid and all you have to do is click your fingers and they will come running back to you with instant love ( was he talking about me )? I was kinda like a puppy if I liked you I would do almost anything to get you to like me back. I was very impressed with him. Captain told Guy and Merle that daddy was a pizza man and they begged daddy to go get them a pizza. So off we go to the shop to make a pizza for them . . .

When we returned, Merle had left and we were stuck with Guy, yes stuck. Guy was in Nashville to make a come back because he had lost everything from his drinking problem. He was broke. He had no car, knew no one and so we had to take him to the apartment that Merle had rented for him. We never did find it cause he didn't know where it was. So we finely called Captain and he told us Merle's phone number and we called him and he told us to just bring him to his house and so we did. We lost touch until later that month. August of 1968 I think it was . . .

I was having to go back to Monroe Harding to start school. I hated going back to Monroe by this time I really didn't hate Monroe but I wanted to stay home with my parents. I wanted to stay where all the action was. Momma and daddy had made major changes in their life and I felt that they could handle me OK. I think I could cope with them and their drinking. I had learned some social skills by now and what the heck I just wanted to go home. I thought I knew what was good for me. One week end after school started-back I was there at the pizza shop and momma had a phone call telling her that Guy was in a place called Samaritan Center. It ( for a lack of a better description ) was a flop house for alcoholic's. ( flop house is a place where people can hang out while they were trying to not drink) He had told someone to call Pepe's pizza in West Nashville and tell them that he was there and please come get him. So off momma went to get Guy and bring him to our house. He was drunk and he was pitiful. We called the man that brought him to Nashville and he arranged to take him to Cumberland Heights for detox and treatment. I was so on a hero trip with him, and he could do no wrong. I went to see him every weekend for the thirty-day treatment. So he kinda took a liking to me and I really liked him. He became my next person who I followed around like a puppy and he showed me the attention I need so desperately . . .

Father Ronald
Guy Mithchell 
Doc Smith
At The House Behind Pepe's
 After They Got Out Of
 Cumberland Heights

I met a couple great people there at Cumberland. Bill Bailey was the director of Cumberland, he like me and that is the only reason he let me come every week end to see Guy. There was a priest named Father Ronald, and he was from Detroit Michigan and a psychiatrist Lou Smith from Portersville, California. There was a midget name Harry from Nashville and a super star Guy Mitchell. What a crew, four drunks and a sixteen-year-old girl, well on her way to being a drunk. Later in my story I will explain why I say that about myself. Guy did a thirty-day stint at Cumberland and when he got out he came to live with momma and daddy . . .

He was a real showman he always was on stage. He was always making people laugh and he was a very generous fellow. If he had money, we all had money. He was bigger than life. He is what most people think of when they think of a movie star. He was spoiled and he took advantage of that. The first month he was with momma and daddy, he would go to Cedarwood every day and was recording at Starday, We became really acquitted with many major people in the music business. They all treated me and daddy like we were just part of the country music family just because daddy and momma were trying to help Guy to stay sober. They did a very good job for a while . . .

Guy Mitchell 
( February 27, 1927 – July 1, 1999 )

Was born Albert George Cernik, Born of Croatian immigrants, in Detroit, Michigan, at the age of eleven, he was signed by Warner Brothers Pictures, to be groomed as a child star, and he also performed on the radio on Station KFWB in Los Angeles, California. After leaving school, he worked as a saddle maker, but supplemented his income by singing whenever he could. At this point in his life, Dude Martin, who had a country music broadcast in San Francisco, noticed him and hired him to perform with his band. Guy was an American pop singer, successful in his homeland, the U.K. and Australia. As an international recording star of the 1950s he achieved record sales in excess of 44 million units and this included six million-selling singles. In the fall of 1957, Mitchell starred in his own ABC variety show, The Guy Mitchell Show. He also appeared as George Romack on the 1961 NBC western detective series Whispering Smith, with World War II hero Audie Murphy in the leading role . . .

About this time Guy had met a young girl named Jenny Farris, and she was the daughter of a prominent lawyer in Nashville. She and he fell in love. I was so jealous of her, even if Guy was 30 years my senior. I had finely found a man that showed me the attention I needed. He was, always kind to me and would do anything to make me happy if he could, OK we will go back to Jenny. She took time away from me. He was spending it with her. She was helping Guy get his drivers licence back and got him a small VW Comagiea to drive . . .

She was nice, she would let me go with her and Guy almost everywhere they went. She had a stable of horses, and they were English jumpers. She even taught me how to jump fences and how to ride with an English saddle and to what they called post the ride of the horse. That is the rhythm of you and the horses gate. She also arranged for me to give lessons at a day camp for rich kids. I was to teach them how to ride. I think she did that so I would be tied up and not under their feet. That way she and Guy could have some alone time. It was fun so I didn't mind doing it. So I guess she was OK for a while. As long as she let me go along after the camp was over . . .

The photos below are of Guy Mitchell in 1968 these are covers of the two albums, Frisco Line and Traveling Shoes, that he did while he stayed with momma and daddy. If you noticed there were only two albums, because they fired him and did just what they said the would, they tore up his contract. The photo on the end is of Guy with my niece when she was a baby at Jacos Pizza which I will tell about Jaco's later in my story. . .





Guy And My Niece Tiffany
At Jaco's Pizze

Guy At Jenny's
Back Yard







Guy With One Of Jenny's Horse's

Guy had no drivers licence so daddy had to drive him everywhere he went and when I would come home for the week end I would ride along with him. I was a constant companion of Guys. When he got out of Cumberland, he did not go to AA. I would like to say that the treatment stuck for Guy but he just couldn't stay sober. Within a month he was drunk and running wild. He sobered up again this time going to A.A. meetings that was in 1968 and there was a place in Nashville called The Friendship House (which you read about from when my momma and daddy were sent to A.A.) where they had the meetings and he was also taking Antabuse. That is a drug used to support the treatment of chronic alcoholism by producing an acute sensitivity to alcohol. He drank on top of the antabuse and I thought he was gonna die and so did he. We didn't think he was drinking. We looked for the signs of him drinking. He got knee knocking commode hugging drunk. We did not understand, there was no beer bottles no whiskey bottles what could it have been? He was going up to a little store where we had a charge account and was charging SSS Tonic and Vanilla extract. The SSS Tonic was about 24% alcohol that made it 48 proof and vanilla extract is very high in alcohol too. When we went to pay our bill, it was much higher than what we had thought. Daddy had a talk to the store manager and he explained that Guy had told him that he was getting it for you, Daddy told them that no one but him, momma or me was allowed to charge there . . .

He was in the middle of recording one of his albums Traveling Shoes, so they let him finish that one and then they released him of his obligation of the third album. I got to go with him as he finished the second one and I felt so important. Daddy and I would go over to Cedarwood Publishing and sit around and shoot the crap with Mrs. Dolly Denny. She was a grand lady of country music she was well respected by all in the music business. She was the mother of John Denny . . .

We met Mel Tillis and Kris Kristofferson before they were famous. Mel had some songs on the charts and was signed with Columbia Records. He wrote for Webb Pierce's" I Ain't Never." In 1965 but on the Kapp Records is where he was signed when "Life Turned Her That Way" was a hit. As for Chris, he lived in a small apartment behind Cedarwood Publishing across the ally and would sneak in the back door to swipe donuts and coffee from Cedarwood. They knew he was doing it but never said anything to him. He had a room mate that I had a big crush on named Bucky Wilkin, and his mother was Marijohn Wilkin. She  wrote Long Black Vail sang by Lefty Frizzell and Waterloo done by Stonewall Jackson, both for Cedarwood, she worked with John D Laudermilk and Mel Tillis and many others. She was given credit for being the one who discovered Kris Kristofferson in 1965 because it was his first signed contract.  Marijohn founded her own music publishing company, Buckhorn Music in 1964, where she published Bucky's song, "Little G.T.O" and it was their first hit.  He was the lead singer of Ronnie and The Dayton's. She was  well known for co-writing, One Day At A Time, with Kris, which was released in the early 70's. Now I will go back to Kris and Bucky, they had a wire roll, ( looks like a spool that thread comes on ) that big power lines are wrapped on, as a coffee table and had the holes in the walls covered with newspaper wet it down and let it dry so it would stick to the wall, it was a trip and  they really were great guys . . .

At one time daddy lent Jimmy Payne $100.00 so he could go on a gig ( that's job lingo in the music business) He and Jim Glaser wrote Woman, Woman in 1967 and Gary Puckett and The Union Gap was the first to make it a big hit. Knowing these people made it possible for daddy and myself to  go to a place that was called The Professional Club. It was a bar across from Cedarwood on 16th Ave (Music Row). It had a pool table and a juke box and a large long bar and a shuffle board. Minors were not allowed but they made exceptions for me. You had to be a member to come in. I was, at sixteen, hanging out with some really big stars. People like Tompall Glaser, Jim Glaser, Farron Young, Lefty Ferzell, Web Pierce. it was nothing for us to be at a recording and people like Stonewall Jackson, Bob Jennings, Don (Ox) Tweedy, backup singers like, The Jordanaires and so on and believe me I was a name dropper big time. I loved all the attention I was getting from all these guys. I was in heaven, I thought I was important and I felt important when I was with Guy. The reason I said earlier in this chapter, about meeting the very important person in my life, Guy was who I was talking about. I didn't want to go back to Monroe Harding I was having too much fun hanging around with Guy and all his music buddies. The life at Monroe just didn't mean anything to me any more . . .

The thing about people you think are important, most are just down to earth people who are cool. There are the ones who think that they're, NO I am not gonna say it.  I was always treated with nothing but respect and some was even too nice. I just seem to fit in with this crowd and later in my book you will understand why. It was not very apparent at that time, that I was well on my way to being a, well a hand full. I made lots of mistakes along the way and sometimes I think momma and daddy, letting me play out my wild side of life at a young age, is what caused lots of heartache later in my life. Well you can't cry about spilt milk, well you can but it will not help . . .

Me & N.B. & Mrs. Guinea

When I started staying almost every week end, momma bought me a small little dog and a guinea pig. I loved them so much. I was still a bit of a tom boy because I liked doing things like horse back riding and I still didn't like dresses and most of all I hated makeup. I know that momma and daddy wanted me to come home too. We had to have a formal meeting with the counselors and make arrangements I would have to go back to Monroe. I wanted to stay with them because I had bunches of fun every weekend. In real life, I was even at more risk at that time than when I came to Monroe . . .

Next chapter I tell about how it came to past that I left Monroe Harding . . .

Chapter Eleven - I Am Going Home

LBJ Asking Himself
 How'd I Get In This Mess?

Did you know that 1968 was the year when LBJ gave a state of the union speech and said that he was gonna withdraw troops from Vietnam . . .

Click Here To Read More About The War In Vietnam

http://faculty.smu.edu/dsimon/Change-Viet2.html

I told you a couple of chapters ago about me having Psoriasis. In the early part of September 1968 I went back to Monroe I had it very badly, so bad that they put me in the hospital. I was there for about eight days. I would soak in an oatmeal bath and then they would put what looked like wet oats on my skin and then wrap me in saran wraps, I now know how an oatmeal cookie feels like. There was a man named Bill Martin that came to the restaurant lots. He was an aid to Governor Clement. He liked me and came to see me at the hospital. Boy I was happy. Just to think that someone as important as he was to come see me. He brought me flowers too. I will bring him up again later in this book. Guy came to see me also. He had been sober for a while. This thing about me having drunks as hero's, goes back when I told you about Bus Thompson in the Hartsville Chapter. Bill also was a drunk, and that makes three that were alcoholic. The list goes on later in my story . . . 

I really didn't know that Bill was an alcoholic till I got to know him a little better. He kept it hid very well. He drank Vodka straight from the bottle. YUCK! After I came, home momma and daddy would let me ride around with Bill not thinking he would do anything wrong and well he really didn't. He just would be drunk and driving with me in the car, (which was bad within its self). He had a new Ford Thunder Bird and would ask me, "can I pet the kitty!" I would laugh and say, "if you get sober and stay sober I will let you." He would laugh and say, "well I guess I will never get to pet that kitty." I know that was a totally out of line conversation to have with a seventeen-year-old. I don't think he meant any harm. He never ever tried to quote "get in my pants." A lot of that happens from other people . . .

Back to Monroe I went when I got out of the hospital, I hated it. I was just another kid there but in West Nashville I had become friends with many people who were important and friends in the music business. I insisted that I was let go home to momma and daddy's. The counselor said no way. I was in the office one day, talking to my counselor trying to get them to let me go home. When a delivery came for me, it was one dozen long stem roses. WOW! I read the card out loud to the staff, "To the young love in some old fools life, love Guy." I went on to tell them that Guy needed me to help him stay sober. That should have been a sign to them that I didn't need to go home. I also told them that if they didn't let me go home that I would run away every day. The talk went on about one more week and then I had convinced them that momma and daddy had cleaned up their act and that all was well. I left Monroe the twenty-eight day of September 1968 . . .

Bobby Henderson
 &
Momma
 Dancing in
Dinning Room
Pepe's

Right after I got to go home to momma and daddy's, they started drinking heavy again. It was mostly momma started drinking heavy again. She got drunk one night and her mind went back to when she was adopted. She had found her real father. She wanted daddy to call the man and he said no. She got very mad and went across the street and kicked out a plate glass window at Bryant's Dry Cleaners. She came back across the street and was bleeding really badly. She had cut the left calf of her leg. She went back outside. We were in a strip mall of about six or seven shops and she went up the mall trying to kick all the windows out. She was bleeding really badly. She set an alarm off in one of the stores so the police came (remember we were friends with all the police) and the one cop that didn't know us came. He placed momma under arrest and put hr in cuffs. They took her to General Hospital to sew her leg up and then he took her to booking. They all knew momma at booking and would not book her and the NEWBIE cop was told that momma and daddy were their friends and that he better stay away from them or get it straight that they were friends of the police department. He was never told how much a friend they were. Momma and daddy by this time were drinking every night and momma and drinking meant fighting. She was a total bitch when she drank. When everyone else had gone home. She took it out on daddy all the time. Lee Ann and I have often ask ourselves why daddy stayed with her so long. He would just listen to her ranting and raving about whatever tangent she was on and never say anything. That was the later years he was the bad one prier to coming to Nashville . . .

Howdy Its
Cowgirl Debbie

By now I had a boyfriend. His name was Ronnie Walls. He was 75% Indian. He had two horses and would come and pick me up and we would go riding on the Cheatham County Reservation. We always had a good time. I had not gotten out of my tomboy stage. I still like to hunt, ride horses and motorcycles and shoot pool and so on but I was just a little better at getting my hair done and ware make-up . . .

One weekend there was this beautiful palomino horse there. He rared up a couple times on the man that was riding him. He started beating him with a two-by-four. I got mad and so did momma and Tony told me the horse was for sale. I ask momma to buy him for me. Yes, she bought him for me. We boarded him at the Hooper's ranch. We named him Honey Boy. Before we were through with him, he would do anything we wanted him to do. We put rubber shoes on him so I rode him in the Nashville Christmas Parade. Momma walked on the side walk beside me so if anything happened she would be there to help wow. That's a long way for anybody to walk exceptionally someone who doesn't do any exercises at all . . .

I Loved Riding
It Just Came Natural

So I am off to West Nashville, new school (Cohn High School) same ninth grade, same old me! I had turned sixteen on July twelfth that year, so I went to get my drivers licence to drive. The day I passed the test momma and daddy bought me a new blue VW convertible. YEA! I was set, I had money to buy gas and a car to go anywhere I wanted and that we did. Marsha Toombs and a girl named Betty and I was always going to school, check in at home room and then leave, back then they only checked kids in home room so we had it made. I found a new pack of people to hang with . . .

Marsha and Betty and I were having a ball. Then one day we skipped school and did some drinking and I was pulling into a store on Hwy. Seventy at McCory Lane and a man came over the hill and SMACK right into the side of my car. We were lucky nobody was hurt. I told you about all the police that we knew well I was the only person in West Nashville that had a blue VW convertible and when the call went over the radios that a blue VW convertible had been hit, Chester Duffield and Opey Sory and Bill McKerdy all came to the wreck site. They took all the beer cans out for us and cleaned it up so when the care wreck investigator came he would not get me for DUI and underage drinking. Yes, the start of a new me yea right!

You would think I was in a heap of trouble, Yea right! Momma and daddy felt so bad about me being in Monroe that they just bought me another VW convertible, a red one this time. I was a little bit more careful as much as a teenager could be. I was hanging out with older people at this time. Guy with all his entourage, and policemen and, well almost all the people that came into the restaurant. Momma and daddy when they closed up the shop would go downtown and go to a place called Linebaulls. It was a restaurant that lots of the music people would go to after they would do a show. People like Doug and Rusty Kershaw and Roger Miller, Waylon and Willie Nelson and well the lists on. I was having a great time . . .
  

My Poor Bug

The ninth grade went fast cause I was almost never there. I failed the ninth grade again and that's when I was transferred to Bellview High School. Within a month they let me quit school. They knew I wasn't gonna go to school because I was keeping up with all the other things that I had going on in my life at that time. I hardly ever went to school and they knew it. Yes! They let me quit school because they (momma and daddy ) figured out that I was gonna do what I wanted to do. They agreed to let me work on Saturdays and Sundays for lunch. At first it was not working very well, I didn't have many customers. Soon the people got the word that we were open on Saturday and Sunday at lunch then it started to pick up. That's where I had my first teenage crush on an policeman. It was Larry Loftis. He was a Sergeant for the Hit and Run division in Nashville. He would come in and get a sixteen-inch pepperoni pizza on his way home. I burned the first one that I sold him. He would not let me make another on for him. He said that he liked them well done . . . 

Welcome To
 Pepe's Kitchen

By now almost all the people that came to Pepe's was family to momma and daddy. I remember a time that there would be more people in the kitchen of Pepe's than in the two table dinning room. It was nothing to see five or six policemen or music people back there playing a guitar or even grinding cheese. It was home to many and momma and daddy loved them all. The picture on right is Chris Strother, and she had inherited Central Produce in Nashville. She lived in twenty five-room mansion in Belle Meade by herself. She felt more at home in the kitchen at Pepe's than at her mansion. The return for that was I never ever heard anyone talk badly about mommy and daddy unless the people who owed them money. It’s hard for me to talk about daddy without telling you about his funeral in 1996 cause it was such a great thing to see, I can’t tell you now about daddy death there is too much more to come in the life of momma and daddy and me that lead up to his death . . .

About this time is when Guy got drunk again and momma and daddy told him he had to find somewhere else to live. One morning he was gonna go swimming at the local pool on White Bridge Rd. It was a membership only swimming club. He had gotten a membership to keep in physical shape. One of Metro's finest policemen knew Guy lived with us and he was knocking at our door early in AM. Momma and daddy slept in day time and worked at night time. He told us that Guy was out in front of the restaurant doing ring around Rosie on the sign pole of Pepe's in a speedo ( speedo: a males bathing suit that is very skimpy). Daddy went and got him and told him to get some clothes on. Guy called someone to come get him and he went to the pool with the speedo on. The pool people ask him to either change his swimming suit or leave. It was sort of funny cause the same policeman came to the call at the swimming pool that had got daddy to get him off the street earlier on the day. If it hadn't been for momma and daddy, he would have gone to jail for indecent exposure . . .

Someone from WSM TV, Marty Vosick came and got him and he stayed with her. She had met Guy on day when he was on the Ralph Emery morning TV show. By this time Jenny Farris had just enough of Guys drinking and booted him out. Marty had a small two bed room apartment off Granny White Pk. She had a roommate name Brenda, she also a worker at WSM. What time I wasn't at the pizza shop I was hanging out with those three. They partied all the time. I would stay up till early am like six or so and then go home and go to bed for a few hours and then set out again. By this time I was drinking every day. My routine was sleep about on average five hours a night and then eat some food (whatever I could find ) and then go to pizza shop work a few hours. After that I would go to Marty's apartment and wait to see who was gonna be there and then P A R T Y!

Bottom Roll Jimmy Payne sitting on right who wrote Woman Woman in 1967 / Bill McKerdy sitting on left/  first Roll is Walter a sessions bass player next Freddie Fredricks WSM A&R  / Marty Vocik Sound Person WSM  /Brenda Is a WSM person/ Barren Binkley A&R WSM  /Back Roll Daddy/ Conade Jones Sound Man WSM to my right I am On Back Roll Standing in a Chair. I don't know who the others are . . .

You know I was really lucky that I never tried hard drugs at all. There were many times that I could have but didn't. I guess God was doing for me what I should have been doing for myself. There were times that I would take what they called Black Widows or RJS's or white crosses ( speed ) so I could stay awake more to drink longer. I fell right into that drinking problem as so did momma and daddy and Guy. I was well on my way to being a full-fledged drunk too . . .

I would spend lots of time at WSM sitting in the control room and talk to a few A and R men. There was Barren Binkley, Dick Bracken, Conrad Jones, Freddy Fredrick's and so on. They all came to Marty's parties. Barren Binkley and Dick Bracken both would take turns, being Bozo the clown on channel four, you know the kids show. I was in with a good crowd though, they always looked after me to not let anyone take advantage of me ( I think.) Which means I blacked out almost ever time I drank. I called it being tired, yea right again . . .

Larry Loftis
and
His Guitar

I started chasing Larry Loftis and am I glad that he was a straight up kind of a guy. I would have done anything to make him like me, YES that too. He had an aunt that had a small pie wagon at Fourth-Second and Charlotte Ave. It was a replica of a railroad lunch car, and her father built it in the very early nineteen hundreds. I started going down there and would wait till he would get off his shift. He worked three to eleven-shift. He would go down to Aunt Nina's and play music he played a guitar and sang. He was a great guy. He never took advantage of me and he could have. There were many people that went to Nina's to play music. They were all not professional players but they played great music. I remember one that Larry use to sing.  Its Only The Wind  and I Still Miss Someone, he also liked John Denver songs I'm a Country Boy, Country Home was also one he loved . . . 

Momma and daddy were a part of a franchise. They were suppose to get a discount on the product because they were a part of the company. We had a salesman named Charlie Goad. He left his order book at our place (swore that he did it by mistake), but we knew he did it on purpose so daddy could see it and find out he was even paying more than a non franchise. Daddy confronted the owner of the franchise Don Hunt who also owned Wholesale Pizza and he could not explain it. Momma and daddy started to look for a place to open one of their own pizza places. It wasn't long before they found out that Bob McGowen had a place just a few blocks away from there on Charlotte Ave and it was a great location. He was one of our customers. So daddy struck up a deal and Jaco's Pizza was born . . .

  

Momma Hard
at Work
Pepe's Pizza

The next chapter is how and who helped Jaco's get started. The people and the fun time we all had. I had turned seventeen by then and was allowed to act and do what a grown adult would do. As I look back on it I should have stayed at Monroe Harding I might have graduated high school and even go to college, as it was all I did was party and drink. So hang on, the ride is gonna get ruff in my life in the near future . . .