Elvis Is Dead and I Don't Feel So Good Myself

by Lewis Grizzard

  Home. It was a broken home. That came when I was six and my mother ran for her parents and took me with her. The four of us lived in my grandparents’ home. We warmed ourselves by kerosene, we ate from a bountiful garden, and our pattern of living was based on two books — the Bible and the Sears Roebuck catalog.

  Everything came in black and white.

  * * *

  Moreland, Georgia, had perhaps three hundred inhabitants when I moved there in 1952. The population is about the same today, and Moreland still doesn’t have a red light.

  Some other things have changed, however. There are two tennis courts in Moreland. Back then, we played baseball and dammed creeks, and that was enough. Cureton and Cole’s store, where the old men sat around the stove and spit and imparted wisdom, is boarded shut. I don’t know where the old men in Moreland spit and impart wisdom nowadays.

  Perhaps spitting and wisdom-imparting around a stove have gone the way of ice cream cups with pictures of movie stars on the bottom side of the lids. I purchased hundreds of ice cream cups at Cureton and Cole’s, licking the faces of everybody from Andy Devine to Yvonne DeCarlo. I haven’t seen ice cream cups like that in years, but even if they were still around, I wouldn’t buy one; I’d be afraid I might lick away the vanilla on the bottom of my lid only to find John Travolta smiling at me. What a horrid thought.

  Those were good and honest people who raised me and taught me. They farmed, they worked in the hosiery mill that sat on the town square, and some went to the county seat six miles away where they welded and trimmed aluminum and sweated hourly-wage sweat — the kind that makes people hard and reserved and resolved there is a better world awaiting in the next life.

  We had barbecues and street square dances in Moreland. We had two truckstops that were also beer joints, and the truckers played the pinball machines and the jukeboxes. The local beer drinkers parked their cars out back, presumably out of sight.

  The religion in town was either Baptist or Methodist, and it was hardshell and certainly not tolerant of drinking. The church ladies were always gossiping about whose cars had been spotted behind the truckstops.

  There was one fellow, however, who didn’t care whether they saw his car or not. Pop Towns worked part-time at the post office, but the highlight of his day took place at the railroad yard. The train didn’t stop in Moreland, so the outgoing mail had to be attached to a hook next to the tracks to be picked off when the train sped past. It was Pop’s job to hang the mail.

  Every morning at ten, when the northbound came through, and every evening at six, when the southbound passed, Pop would push his wheelbarrow filled with a sack of mail from the post office down to the tracks. There he would hang the mail, and we’d all stand around and watch as the train roared by. Then Pop would get in his car, drive over to one of the truckstops, park contemptuously out front, and have himself several beers.

  One day the ladies of the church came to Pop’s house in an effort to save him from the demon malt. I wasn’t there when it happened, of course, but the word got around that when Pop answered the door for the ladies, he came with a beer in his hand.

  Hilda Landon began reciting various scriptures regarding drunkenness. Pop countered by sicking his dog, Norman, on the ladies, and they scattered in various directions.

  Pop, they said, laughed at the sight of his dog chasing off the ladies of the church, and once back inside his house, he had himself another beer, secure in the fact that he and Norman would never be bothered by another tolerance committee.

  They found Pop dead one morning after he failed to make his appointment with the mail train, and the ladies of the church all said the Lord was getting even with Pop for all his sinful ways.

  I sort of doubted that. Pop always had a good joke to tell and always was kind to his dog, and although I was no expert on the scriptures, I was of the belief that a good heart would get you a just reward in the afterlife as quick as anything else.

  We also had a town drunk, Curtis “Fruit Jar” Hainey, but the ladies of the church figured he was too far gone to waste their efforts on. Curtis walked funny, like his knees were made of rubber. Somebody said it was because he once drank some rubbing alcohol when the local bootlegger left town for two weeks and Curtis came up dry and desperate. I figured the Lord could have had a little something to do with this one.

  Although Moreland was a small town, not unlike so many others across the country in the early 1950s, we still had plenty of scandal, intrigue, and entertainment.

  It was whispered, for example, that Runelle Sheets, a high school girl who suddenly went to live with her cousin in Atlanta, actually was pregnant and had gone off to one of those homes.

  Nobody ever verified the rumor about Runelle, but they said her daddy refused to speak her name in his house anymore and had threatened to kill a boy who lived over near Raymond. That was enough for a summer’s full of satisfying speculation.

  For further entertainment, we had a town idiot, Crazy Melvin, who allegedly was shell-shocked in Korea. Well, sort of. The story went that when Crazy Melvin heard the first shot fired, he began to run and when next seen had taken off his uniform, save his helmet and boots, and was perched in his nakedness in a small tree, refusing to climb down until frostbite threatened his privates.

  They sent Crazy Melvin home after that, and following some months in the hospital, the Army decided that Melvin wasn’t about to stop squatting naked in trees, so they released him in the custody of his parents.

  Once back in Moreland, however, Crazy Melvin continued to do odd things, such as take off all his clothes, save his brogans and his straw hat. They finally sent Melvin to Atlanta to see a psychiatrist. When he came back, the psychiatrist had cured him of squatting naked in trees. Unfortunately, Melvin had ridden a trolley while in Atlanta and returned home thinking he was one. Every time you were walking to the store or to church and crossed paths with Crazy Melvin, you had to give him a nickel.

  “Please step to the rear of the trolley,” he would say, and then he’d make sounds like a trolley bell. The church later got up enough money to buy Melvin one of those coin-holders bus drivers wear, so it was easier for him to make change when you didn’t have a nickel.

  * * *

  Those were the days, when young boys roamed carefree and confidently around the streets of Moreland — Every-town, USA.

  We were Baby Boomers all, born of patriots, honed by the traditional work ethic. That meant you worked your tail off and never quit until the job was done, and you saved every penny you could and never spent money on anything that didn’t have at least some practical value. You kept the Word, never questioned authority, loved your country, did your duty, never forgot where you came from, bathed daily when there was plenty of water in the well, helped your neighbors, and were kind to little children, old people, and dogs. You never bought a car that was any color like red or yellow, stayed at home unless it was absolutely necessary to leave (such as going to church Sunday and for Wednesday night prayer meeting), kept your hair short and your face cleanshaven. You were suspicious of rich people, lawyers, yankee tourists, Catholics and Jehovah’s Witnesses who tried to sell subscriptions to “The Watchtower” door-to-door, anybody who had a job where he had to wear a tie to work, and Republicans.

  We were isolated in rural self-sufficiency for the most part. Television was only a rumor. We kept to ourselves unless we went to the county seat of Newnan to see a movie or to get a haircut or to see the little alligator they kept in a drink box at Mr. Lancaster’s service station.

  I never did find out how the little alligator got into a drink box at a service station in Newnan, Georgia, but rumor had it that Mr. Lancaster had brought it back from Florida to keep people from breaking into his station after he closed at night. In fact, Mr. Lancaster had a handwritten sign in front of his station that read, “This service station is guarded by my alligator three nights a week. Guess which three nights.”

  In such a closed, tightly-knit society,
it was impossible not to feel a strong sense of belonging. Even for a newcomer.

  When I first moved to Moreland at age seven, I was instantly befriended by the local boys. In those idyllic days, we molded friendships that would last for lifetimes.

  There was Danny Thompson, who lived just across the cornfield from me, next door to Little Eddie Estes. Down the road from Danny was where Mike Murphy lived. Clyde and Worm Elrod lived near the Methodist Church. Bobby Entrekin and Dudley Stamps resided in Bexton, which was no town at all but simply a scattering of houses along; a blacktop road a mile or so out of Moreland. There was Anthony Yeager, who lived over near Mr. Ralph Evans’s store, and Charles Moore was just down the road from him.

  Clyde Elrod was a couple of years older than his brother Worm, who was my age. Clyde had one ambition in his life, and that was to follow his father’s footsteps into the Navy. Clyde often wore his father’s old Navy clothes and regaled us with his father’s Navy stories. Clyde’s father apparently single-handedly won the battle for U.S. naval supremacy in World War II.

  Worm got his name at Boy Scout camp one summer. There is only one thing worse than biting into an apple and finding a worm, and that’s biting into an apple and finding half a worm, which is what happened to Worm Elrod and is how he got his nickname. Clyde and Worm did not get along that well, due to a heated sibling rivalry. Their father often had to separate them from various entanglements, and Worm invariably got the worst of it. Only when Clyde graduated from high school and left to join the Navy was it certain that Worm would live to see adulthood.

  Anthony Yeager joined the gang later. He was the first of us to obtain his driver’s license, and his popularity increased immediately. As teen-agers, we roamed in Yeager’s Ford and slipped off for beer and to smoke. Once we went all the way to Fayetteville to the Highway 85 Drive-In and saw our first movie in which women appeared naked from the waist up.

  Funny, what the memory recalls. The movie was Bachelor Tom Peeping, and it was billed as a documentary filmed at a nudist camp. At one point, Bachelor Tom was confronted by a huge-breasted woman who was covered only by a large inner tube that appeared to have come from the innards of a large tractor tire. As she lowered the tube, we watched in utter disbelief.

  “Nice tubes you have, my dear,” said Bachelor Tom.

  Yeager was the first total devotee to country music I ever met, and he is at least partially responsible for my late-blooming interest in that sort of music. Yeager owned an old guitar that he couldn’t play, but he tried anyway, and common were the nights we would find a quiet place in the woods, park his car, and serenade the surrounding critters.

  Yeager’s heroes were Hank Williams and Ernest Tubb. His favorite songs were Hank’s “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” — later butchered by B.J. Thomas — and Ernest’s classic, “I’m Walking the Floor Over You.”

  Hank was dead and long gone by then, but one day Yeager heard that Ernest Tubb, accompanied by picker-supreme Billy Byrd, was to perform at the high school auditorium in nearby Griffin. Me and Yeager and Dudley Stamps and Danny Thompson went. It was our first concert. Ernest slayed us, especially Yeager.

  “I’m walkin’ the floor over you.

  I can’t sleep a wink, that is true.

  I’m hopin’ and I’m prayin’

  That my heart won’t break in two.

  I’m walkin’ the floor over you.”

  Whenever Ernest Tubb would call in Billy Byrd for a guitar interlude, he would say, “Awwwwwww, Billy Byrd,” which Yeager thought was a nice touch. For months, Yeager would say “Awwwwwww, Billy Byrd” for no reason whatsoever. Later he began saying, “Put a feather in your butt and pick it out, Billy Byrd,” again for no reason except that it seemed to give him great joy to say it.

  Like I said, it’s funny what details the memory recalls.

  Dudley Stamps. He was the crazy one. He once drove his father’s truck into White Oak Creek to see if trucks will float. They won’t. There was not a water tower or a forest ranger tower in three counties he hadn’t climbed. When he was old enough to get a driver’s license, his parents bought him a used 1958 Thunderbird with a factory under the hood.

  I was riding one night with Dudley when the State Patrol stopped him. His T-bird had been clocked at 110 MPH, according to the patrolman. Dudley was incensed and launched into an argument with the officer. He insisted he was doing at least 125.

  Mike Murphy. He had a brother and sister and his father was called “Mr. Red.” Mr. Red Murphy was the postmaster and helped with the Boy Scouts. With the possible exception of the Methodist and Baptist preachers, he was the most respected man in town. Mike had to work more than the rest of us. Mr. Red kept all his children busy tending the family acreage.

  “You don’t see Red Murphy’s children out gallivantin’ all over town,” the old men around the stove used to say down at Cureton and Cole’s. “Red keeps ’em in the fields where there ain’t no trouble.”

  This was the late 1950s, when “gallivanting” meant doing just about anything that had no practical end to it, such as riding bicycles, roller-skating on the square, and hanging out at the store eating Zagnut candy bars and drinking NuGrapes or what was commonly referred to as “Big Orange bellywashers.” Gallivanting, like most things modern, seems to have grown somewhat sterile and electronic. Today, I suppose when children gallivant it means they hang around in shopping malls, playing video games and eating frozen yogurt.

  The day Mr. Red died was an awful day. It was the practice at the Moreland Methodist Church to return to the sanctuary after Sunday School for a quick hymn or two and for announcements by Sunday School Superintendent Fox Covin. Fox would also call on those having birthdays, and the celebrants would stand as we cheered them in song.

  That Sunday morning, Fox Covin announced it was Mr. Red’s birthday and asked his daughter to stand for him as we sang. As everyone in church knew, Mr. Red had been hospitalized the day before for what was alleged to be a minor problem.

  Soon after we sang to Mr. Red, another member of the family came into the church and whisked the Murphy children away. Something was whispered to Fox Covin, and after the children were safely out of earshot, he told the congregation that Red Murphy was dead.

  We cried and then we prayed. Mike was no more than twelve or thirteen at the time. He had to take on a great deal of the responsibility of the farm after that, so his opportunity to gallivant with the rest of us was shortened even further.

  “Mike Murphy will grow up to be a fine man,” my mother used to say.

  Bobby Entrekin. I loved his father. I had secretly wished there was some way my mother could have married Mr. Bob Entrekin, but there was his wife, Miss Willie, with whom to contend, and a quiet, soft, loving woman she was. I decided to remain content with spending my weekends at the Entrekin home.

  Mr. Bob worked nights. Miss Willie worked days at one of the grocery stores in the county seat. The Entrekins, I noticed, ate better than the rest of us. While my family’s diet consisted mostly of what we grew from our garden or raised in our chicken coops, the Entrekins always had such delights as store-bought sandwich meat and boxed doughnuts, the sort with the sweet, white powder around them.

  The standing contention was that because Miss Willie was employed at the grocery store, she was given discounts on such elaborate foodstuffs others in the community would have found terribly wasteful to purchase.

  Whatever, as much as I enjoyed the company of my friend Bobby Entrekin, it may have been the lure of the delights of his family refrigerator and his father that were the most binding seal on our friendship.

  Bobby’s father was unlike any man I had ever met before. He had a deep, forceful voice. His knowledge of sport was unparalleled in the community. He had once been an outstanding amateur baseball player, and on autumn Saturdays, Bobby and I would join him at radioside to listen to Southeastern Conference college football games — as comforting and delicious an exercise as I have ever known. My own father, having spl
it for parts unknown, had shared Mr. Bob’s affinity for sports and other such manly interests, and Mr. Bob stood in for him nicely.

  Mr. Bob also had more dimension to him than any other man I had known. He had educated himself. He had traveled a bit. He sent off for classical records, and when I spent the weekends with Bobby, his father would awaken us on Sunday mornings for church with those foreign sounds.

  As Beethoven roared through the little Entrekin house out on Bexton Road, he would say to us, “Boys, that is what you call good music.” How uncharacteristic of the time and place from which I sprung, but how pleasant the memory.

  Bobby was a con man from his earliest days. He slicked classmates out of their lunch desserts, and by schoolday’s end, he usually had increased his marble holdings considerably.

  Only once did he put an unpleasant shuck on me. Mr. Bob had driven us into Newnan, where the nearest picture show was located. The Alamo Theatre sat on Newnan’s court square, across the street from the side entrance to the county courthouse. Admission to the movie was a dime. There were soft drinks for a nickel and small bags of popcorn for the same price.

  As we walked toward the Alamo, we came upon a bus parked on the court square.

  “Boys,” said a man sitting outside the bus, “come on inside and see the world’s fattest woman.”

  “How fat is she?” Bobby asked.

  “Find out for yourself for only fifteen cents, kid,” said the man.

  Bobby started inside while I did some quick arithmetic. I had twenty cents. That was a dime for admission to the picture show and a dime for a soft drink and popcorn. If I paid fifteen cents to see the fat lady, I couldn’t get in to see the movie.

  I mentioned this bit of financial difficulty to Bobby.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll loan you enough to get into the show.”