Chapter Twelve - Jaco's Pizza is Born 1969



Bob McGawin



Bob McGowan and daddy made a deal about the store front down from Pepe's. Daddy started to decorate and set up the building. We painted the walls black half way up and strips of different colors all the way around the wall and the ceiling was black too. The floor was blue in the center, on the outside of the center there was a checkered board type design. That was painted different colors all around the rest of the room. We built a wall about twenty-five feet from the back door and that was the kitchen. There was a bathroom off to the right of the building. The front was half glass, half a wall. The next thing we needed was a name. Guy came up with take Momma Lois and make it Momma Louise's, or take Jack and drop the k and add an o and it would sound Italian. That's how Jacos came about . . .

Guy helped to do the painting, he did a good job but he decided that he wanted a beer and got a draft and didn't turn the spout off and ran out a whole keg of beer on the new floor. A man named Al did the carpentering and another customer did the plumbing and so on. We didn't have too much work ourselves. It was all being done for us. This man that was in treatment with Guy named Tex was in the sign business in Clarksville, so he made us a JACO's PIZZA neon sigh to hang at the street. Andy Allen did all the electrical work for us. The oven and the counters, we bought at the use restaurant equipment place and all the tables and chairs, booths. Lots of people helped, customers just did what needed to be done. A guy named Sizemore did sheet metal work and made us a hood to go over the ovens for exhaust, well it was a family thing. If we were to pay for all the labor alone, it would have been in the high thousands of dollars. But the people did it because most people saw momma and daddy as family . . .                           

Jaco's First
Grade
-A-

Remember that momma and daddy lived in the house behind the Pepe's. Because they closed, Pepe's they had to move and we ended up in a small three bedroom brick house on Robertson Rd. The landlord was Yes, a customer of theirs, John Fox. He was a constable and he came in Pepe's two times a week for pizza and liked daddy he would stand and shoot the crap with daddy. I will tell you now that daddy was the front man of the restaurant and momma was the back bone. She did all the accounting and ordering of supplies and prep work like hand cutting the onions, and ten pounds at a time and daddy's main job was shooting the breeze with people and going to the bank for deposits. It seemed to work out well for them . . .

   

We opened in early 1969 and we had a great opening, all the folks were so happy that momma and daddy had opened up a new place. For some it was home away from home. The product that they put out at Jaco's was even better than before from Pepe's. It was a real family place you could bring your children and have a good time. We had a juke box and a cigarette machine and a pinball machine. That was how daddy and momma paid what they had for the expense of opening. The machine men lent them money and he would take all the money from the machines as payment for the loan. When the loan was paid off, they would start splitting it half and half. I worked on week ends and Wednesday night. I got a salary of seventy-five dollars a week no matter what time I worked . . .

I can remember the night we opened. Momma had a new hair do and daddy had a smile that went crossed his whole face. They were happy that it was packed. There were seven booths and about eight tables that seated six and they were all full with people. It was a monster compared to small two table place that we came from. Before we opened the doors, the man that they leased the Pepe's from, Don Hunt, came in. Wow momma got mad, she yelled at him to get out and she turned into the kitchen. Daddy said to Don Hunt, "that he better leave now because she went into the kitchen to get a knife." Don said, "I just came to wish you luck." Daddy said back," I am not kidding man I would leave if I was you." I think momma had a few drinks to celebrate. We did way over anything anyone projected that we would sale in one night. It was a hit. Everyone liked the new place. There was one problem with the new place, the parking was bad, we only had space for five cars in front and we had permission to part at the JB Cook Auto Parts, next door. The man that owned the service station on the other side let us park there too, so it really wasn't that bad. It was nothing that a few free pizzas wouldn't fix. That was the start of a twenty-one-year love affair with Jaco's and the people of West Nashville . . .

Miss Daffney Sanders

There were kids that looked to momma and daddy as a mother and father figures and they helped many to stay out of trouble. They tried to keep me out of trouble but could not keep me straight. There was Daffany Sanders. She got hooked up with a man that ended up in prison. He escaped and she didn't know he was on the run. He ask her to take him to Georgia with a friend of his. She ended up taking him and his friend there and when they got there they both got out of the car and was standing outside and she sat in the car. She heard a (what she thought was a gun shot) gun shot and she took off and left them both there. She thought she had witnessed a murder. She came to momma and told her about it. Momma said DO NOT tell anyone anything until you hear back from me. Momma called Chester Duffield. He was mommas go to man when the law was involved. He went to see Daffeny and she told him all that happened and where. He told her don't tell anyone else what happened and I will get the guy my way. Well, old Duffield got his man as usual and Daffeny didn't have to testify at all. She brings that up every time I see her, how momma saved her life because she didn't have to go to jail for transporting a fugitive . . .

 

Kathy Walker - Scott - Jiles

There were Judy Brown and she and Cathy Walker were close friends. They were a couple years older than I but they loved momma and daddy so they didn't mind me tagging along. Cathy was getting married to this guy from school named Eddie Scott and the weekend before they got married Cathy and Judy were in Jacos and they started talking about what Cathy had not gotten for wedding gifts. She came up with that she needed lawn chairs. It wasn't too long before Judy said, "hay it night lets go to Charlotte Park and steal some from yards." We went and Eddie was gonna let us out and go around the block and come back and get us and we were to hop from yard to yard and get lawn chairs. I grabbed a chair and so did Judy, Cathy on the other hand, got a chair that you could lay down in. Judy and I took off and left Cathy in the road and Eddie was not anywhere to be seen. We finely found him and we had three chairs and a lay down lawn chair. Cathy said you damn guys left me and I had the big chair all by myself. There wasn't much we would not do . . .

We started giving away a free pizza for new babies. When they would have a baby and when they brought it to Jaco's for the first time they got the pizza whatever kind you wanted. That was a really good promotion. It was a way to get to know people and their children. We also gave away a pizza for marriages and OFF TO WAR and BACK HOME again pizza's. Yes we had many young boys that were customers that went to Vietnam. There was Larry Loftis's nephew Clay Loftis. He had gotten in some trouble with the law and they gave him an option war or jail. He chooses war. That was a good thing, when he came back, he was much more a mature man. He ended up marring a girl from Alaska that he met while he was in the service and he went to work for metro in the mechanic’s department of the fire dept. There was Roy Chunn. He went and he had some bad stuff after he came home that affected him but he made it OK. He moved to Denver Co. so I didn't see him anymore till our trip to Denver that is coming up later in the book . . .

Howard Taylor

John Jiles is another one of mommas and daddy's kids that went to war. He was dating a friend of mine Nancy Hibdon. I was with her the day that she saw him off to Vietnam. He was such a good-looking guy in his uniform. He came back and never quite made a recovery from the drugs he started in Vietnam, They only dated a short time after he came home. Nancy was a running mate of mine. She was at least ten years older than I was and she was a hell cat. She drank, messed around with lots of guys mostly cops that were married. John ended up in an old school bus in his mom and dad’s backyard. He finely got it together enough to start dating again. He dated and then married Cathy Scott. Remember she had been married to Eddie Scott. She ended up marring him and they had a son. When they divorced, he met a young girl named Molly Parker, she also was a customer of Jaco's. They had a hell of a long marriage through hail and high water. When he died, he was buried at the McCory Lane Arm Force Cemetery. I went to his funeral and it was so said. His son was no where in site, Cathy never let John see him. When it came to John, he was the only person, man or woman, that I was totally afraid of . . .

 
There were five boys that went to Vietnam I can't remember all their names but there was one of the crew that didn't pass the physical and he stayed home, his name was Howard Taylor. When they all came home, they were going to a welcome home party and they had a wreck and it killed all five and the one that didn't go to Vietnam, didn't get hurt hardly at all, WEIRD HUH! They came home to die. It was so sad . . . 

 Next chapter is about the cross country trip we took and the trips I was taking on speed . . .