Between Wrecks

by George Singleton

  Furthermore, thank you so much for letting Juanita Wilkins use some of your space to sell her hair-care products left over from the cosmetologist/beautician phase of her life. If she’d not made that extra money selling Pantene, Clairol, et cetera, she would’ve never been able to continue her education in the realm of phlebotomy. And if Roane and Anderson counties didn’t have a phlebotomist on the payroll, where would we be now?

  I would like to thank National Public Radio for their Morning Edition segment what seems like a decade ago about the sudden boom of flea markets and jockey lots, and how everyone selling at these places now possesses encyclopedic knowledge of, say, yellow ware and toasters, which caused me to visit Mid-State Jockey Lot in Wartburg, which allowed me to meet Renee Sands (too late) after I’d gotten rooked on a Sanford and Son replica lunchbox for fifty-five dollars. And then I would like to thank National Public Radio for showing up only a couple years ago, and interviewing me as I stood there like an idiot trying to sell that Sanford and Son replica lunchbox for a dollar—which I couldn’t do, seeing as everyone there knew that it wasn’t an original—and the woman asking me, “Are you here because of the economy?” and my saying, “I’m here because I’m finishing up No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee and I can’t get any support from Yaddo, Provincetown, the NEA, the NEH,” et cetera, and how, when the program finally aired after necessary editing, it came out, “Are you here because of the economy?” and my answer came out, “No cover. Choice. Sushi,” which—I feel pretty sure—will remain in all listeners’ psyches and/or memories once the biography hits the shelves. I guess we’ll find out!

  While I’m dealing with mass media, I would like to thank Fox News for being so blatantly right-wing that they’ll probably find a way to support the Plemmons brothers should ever a Fox “reporter” or “anchorperson” find a need to do a “book review.” I don’t care. Someone once said, “I don’t care if people are talking good or bad about me, as long as they’re talking about me.” Actually, I think my fourth-favorite history professor said that, right before he got denied tenure and was fired for fucking one of the cheerleaders, a young woman from Sevierville who always went around saying she knew Dolly Parton personally, and whom I could hear yell out “No, no, no, are you crazy?!” to the coach when he decided to punt instead of going for fourth and twenty to go from our own, say, five yard line. Screw her. I don’t want to thank her for anything.

  The local-news cameramen who had to go out and film the place where Columbus Choice got lynched deserve a nod, seeing as they’ll be, I believe, scarred for life, like I have been. Particularly I would like to thank Buddy Kirby, who shared with me some footage that didn’t get aired on TV or in the Roane County courtroom proceedings. He had walked into Columbus Choice’s restaurant with his camera down low, like in one of those undercover operations. I think that he and his reporter were supposed to be just looking around scouting for a place to stand in order to do one of those human interest on-air moments. Anyway, Buddy had his camera on, maybe down around the height of his knee, and for some lucky, serendipitous moment the thing caught the underneath side of Table B8—left side of the room, eight four-tops back. Actually the camera caught Tables B 1 through 7, also, which mostly showed chewing gum stuck beneath the tables. But at #8 it was evident that someone had scrawled “6-6-76,” which is the exact date that Columbus got lynched, and which, too, includes the sign of the devil according to the King James Version of the Bible.

  Here are some questions: Why did it take the Plemmons brothers so long to get upset about the sushi restaurant? Were they that slow? How had Columbus lived for so long in the Harriman/ Oak Ridge? If the Plemmons brothers, or at least one of them, showed up to sketch that date in the bottom of the table, what had they/he ordered? Did the date have something to do with Jimmy Carter coming through the area on a campaign stop?

  I never thought to look on the underside of any of Renee Sands’s flea market tables or have a real-life cameraman undertake some undercover operation to conquer the scrawled or sketched or carved lettering that may or may not expose her as some kind of anti-capitalistic vendor. I had other things to think about, viz, No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee. Which is why I’m writing these Acknowledgments. In my editor’s final publication.

  Thank you, again, to Mr. Davey Hough, copywriter, for pointing out in my manuscript that it should be “The media are involved,” instead of “is.” I still say it sounds stupid, and some rules need changing.

  I would like to thank the hapless linksters who paid six dollars each to walk nine holes at the Emory Golf and Country Club. At times, early in the morning, I found it necessary and beneficial to walk the outskirts of this particular course—it’s only 2,880 yards, which comes to 8,640 feet, which comes to 1.636363 miles. No one ever asked me any questions about my trespassing, really, over all those years I walked the course, watching the wealthiest residents of the Harriman area tee up, slice, and curse. Well, actually, the wealthiest men and women probably drove over to the Centennial Course in Oak Ridge and played on a regulation eighteen-hole course. I watched men and women who either A) wished to be appear wealthy; or B) had been convicted of DUIs and couldn’t ride a moped all the way to the better course while balancing a bag of clubs on their laps.

  No one asked questions, but plenty of them mistook me for an employee. They said things like, “Do you people know that if you water grass it’ll actually grow?” or “Hey, did you see a Titleist hit over there in the woods?” or “Hey, will you tell this fool I’m playing with that it’s not cheating to move a ball within one standing long jump?” and so on. They said, “Are you the concession guy? Where’s your cart?” They said, “You look like a ball washer. Are you a ball washer?” and laughed the way men in plaid pants are prone to laugh if and only if they’re in a group, feeling all strong and lucky and impenetrable.

  I wish to thank these people for a couple reasons. First off, they indirectly caused me to write Columbus Choice’s biography harder. It made me realize that Columbus would never want to be like these cheap half-course golfers, and therefore neither would I. On the other hand—and this will be difficult for me to admit—I kind of wished to join them in a camaraderie-filled amble across fairways forever radioactive, and the sole means of my pulling my three-wood out on the first tee box would be through finishing up, then selling No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee.

  The part of the brain that contains all wishes must be a complex place. I wouldn’t want to be in charge of it.

  I would be remiss to omit the influence of Schopenhauer, Hume, Diogenes, and Bobo.

  Arthur Schopenhauer once said, “Almost all of our sorrows spring out of our relations with other people,” and “Religion is the masterpiece of the art of animal training, for it trains people as to how they shall think.” Schopenhauer said a lot of good things, some of which, though, are misogynistic. I won’t say that I’ve nodded my head to this one, but it has come to mind on three occasions: “In our monogamous part of the world, to marry means to halve one’s rights and double one’s duties.”

  David Hume’s statement, “Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous,” ran through my head every time I heard someone try to justify why the Plemmons brothers murdered Columbus Choice. It runs through my head every time I hear a church bell ring, too. At times, in the Oak Ridge-Harriman area, it’s hard to delineate whether church bells ring simultaneously or the disaster sirens have been set off.

  “The mob is the mother of tyrants,” said Diogenes.

  Jimmy Rex “Sexy Rexy” Bobo, who brings his own chair to the VFW Club because he swears he sat on a booby-trapped barstool in Saigon that blew its own legs off and only left him with enough shrapnel in his ass to receive the Purple Heart, once said to me, “God created Racism when He realized He
couldn’t handle a population explosion. None of us would agree, I doubt, but God’s biggest mistake was fucking. You can’t expect one lifeguard to handle every beachgoer in the world.” Then he said, of course, “They been calling me Sexy Rexy before I even owned a map to find Vietnam,” which is what he said, on average, twice per Budweiser.

  I am grateful to a woman named Penny Cuthbert at Plutonium Lanes ’n’ Games for allowing me to drink beer (cheapest and coldest in the tri-county area!) and never bowl a game or play Ms. Pac-man, pinball, that bowling game that involves a puck and sawdust, or Skee-ball. Thanks for letting me trade in my boots for those size 11 rental shoes, too, just so I could feel like I wasn’t a total outsider, and for letting me go through the Lost and Found box. I will always cherish my Plutonium Lanes ’n’ Games shirt with those tiny pockets. Whoever drew up the logo—the ball crashing through ten pins for a strike, the mushroom cloud lifting up above the pinsetter—needs to receive the Graphics Arts Award/Local Business/Attire category from the Tennessee Valley Association of Advertising Firms during their annual ceremony over at the Holiday Inn Knoxville-Downtown Convention Center. I wore that bowling league shirt with pride, and it seemed to have worked, especially when I was in the middle of the “Columbus Had No Other Hobbies” chapter toward the end of the biography. Thank you, Penny, for also allowing me to plug in my laptop right there at a table behind Lane 12, and for telling people that I was from Modern Bowler magazine writing a feature piece on Mid-South keglers so they wouldn’t bother me any.

  I need to show my appreciation to Juanita Wilkins again, too, for not ratting me out those times I was at Plutonium Lanes ’n’ Games when she pretended not to see me while she participated in women’s league play for her team, the Blood Suckers. Listen, Juanita—and I know you won’t ever listen to me again—but a 132 average is great. I read somewhere that anyone who can bowl above his or her weight is doing a fine job. Marlon Brando was never worshipped at Hollywood Star Lanes, which served as the set for The Big Lebowski, but then got razed in order to make room for a school. President William Howard Taft could have never bowled his weight when he went back to his hometown of Cincinnati and played at Glenmore Bowl, or if he traveled up to Baltimore and played duckpins. In Japan, by the way, sumo wrestlers are revered until they walk into a bowling alley. There are some other stories, I’m sure, but I can’t think of them off the top of my head while I’m supposed to be finishing up these Acknowledgments. Anyone on that reality TV show, for example, about obese people trying to lose weight with the help of a personal trainer that aired on a network that should be thankful to Ted Turner.

  There are a few images that one can never erase from memory, and my primary one—besides that of Columbus Choice’s body hanging from an oak tree—is that of Chester Clabo’s butt pointed in my direction. I’ve never thought about how both of them had the initials C.C. How odd. Anyway, Chester Clabo was my long snapper at Vanderbilt University, and I would like to thank him for the indirect way in which he aided me when it came to thinking up, then finishing, No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee. Just in case any scholars who read my book and are now going through these Acknowledgments don’t know the term “long snapper,” it’s the guy who hikes the ball to the punter on fourth downs. He’s the center, but with the strength and accuracy to spiral a football twelve yards back at waist level.

  So after I shanked my last punt and got asked to leave the team, the new punter came in and did the exact same thing. The chances of that happening might be on par with a guy who has indelible images of a man hanging from a tree and a guy’s rear end pointed his way, both of whom have the same initials. When the new punter shanked the ball nonstop, the coach not only cut him from the team, but also Chester Clabo. The special teams coach figured that, somehow, Chester’s delivery—maybe too tight a spiral, maybe too hard, maybe it came in at an awkward angle invisible to the naked eye—caused all of the bad punts. Me, I stayed on at the university and studied up on my history. Chester left school, embarrassed and ashamed. He secured a number of odd go-nowhere jobs for a while until he finally landed a job at the Tennessee Aquarium at One Broad Street in downtown Chattanooga.

  Listen, anyone writing a biography the scope and intensity of mine knows that he or she must, at times, “get away” from the subject matter, and when I needed to do so, I found a way to get to the Tennessee Aquarium, which isn’t but about 79.38 miles from here, according to MapQuest, which I just had to look up in order to keep the goddamn fact checker off my back. There’s a town in between called Soddy-Daisy. Get on that MapQuest thing and look it up yourself to see if I’m lying.

  Anyway, Chester Clabo and I had stayed in touch over the years—he says he has an image burned into his brain of my staring at his ass—and when I had to go over to the aquarium where he worked as a ticket taker/bouncer, he let me in for free. I’d go in there and stare at the bonnethead, epaulette, brown banded bamboo, and sand tiger sharks. I don’t want to get all metaphysical or mystical about it, but their utter menacing beauty gave me a certain strength to forge on with No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee, I feel sure.

  Anyway, thanks, again, to Chester Clabo, for hiking me awkward balls, which made me shank them, which sent me directly to the Vanderbilt library, which got me interested in the history of the area, which led me to Columbus Choice. I am forever grateful, and look forward to more visits to the Tennessee Aquarium, then later to those questionable bars you frequent like Lamar’s, or My Uncle’s Place, or Lupi’s, or even that strip joint that made me sad to enter because I knew I’d run into Juanita Wilkins, part-time phlebotomist.

  I would be remiss to forget whoever it is in Oak Ridge that runs the free summer concert series downtown so that everyone in Roane and Anderson counties can experience some culture. Listen, the first time I encountered the Amazing Hundred Member Marching Jew’s Harp Twangers, I worked on No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee over at the library. I struggled, and couldn’t find anything in the stacks that might offer to me what I deemed necessary knowledge as a biographer, at that point. I still have no clue what “Squid in the pot without the squid” means, which is what Columbus Choice had typed out under the Homemade Soups part of his menu.

  As I sat there at the study carrel holding my head in my hands, I thought I heard a thousand old-fashioned twin-propeller fighter jets buzzing overhead. I thought I heard a thousand small school children all yelling into a window fan. I thought I heard a thousand bee hives stacked together at dusk when the workers come home. I thought I heard the emergency broadcast system playing a low-pitched siren so as to not alarm local dogs. Maybe one of the nuclear reactors is about to blow a la Chernobyl, or Three Mile Island, or the others one that have probably been kept secret by various governments around the world. Perhaps some kind of aboriginal tribe passed through armed with their melodic and sacred didgeridoos.

  I heard what I thought had to be a thousand Buddhist monks Oming their lungs out.

  But like I said, it was only the Amazing Hundred Member Marching Jew’s Harp Twangers out of western North Carolina performing their spectacular tribute to Led Zeppelin. What brought me onto the library’s steps was the opening to “Whole Lotta Love.” Walking down to Historic Jackson Square, I fell into step with “Heartbreaker,” and by the time I took a seat on the ground amidst forward-thinking members of the community who’d brought along folding lawn chairs with them, the band—made up mostly of ex-hippies who now worked as bankers and architects and lawyers in Asheville—went straight into “Living Lovin’ Maid.”

  Sitting cross-legged, Native-American-style, on the grass, the sounds that the Amazing Hundred Member Marching Jew’s Harp Twangers helped me realize that A) anything’s possible; and B) Columbus Choice would’ve dug them playing these Om sounds over and over at his restaurant.

  After what I imagine will be
an extensive and demanding book tour, I might write a scholarly treatise comparing Buddhist monks to Appalachian musicians adept at producing the soulful, resonating backbeat hums of the Jew’s harp. I won’t make any promises. There’s no telling how many innocent victims will be lynched by that time, good people whose stories need to be known by all.

  You would think that a biographer consumed and obsessed with the story of Columbus Choice would not have time for trivialities. It is true that during the decade that I worked on No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee, I did not join the Oak Ridge Fitness Center and work out daily. I didn’t go for long treks on a mountain bike, though there are some wonderful trails in and around Frozen Head State Park. I didn’t get involved with those TV reality shows, or many of the situation comedies. Who thinks anything’s funny whatsoever after thinking about Columbus Choice’s life every waking moment for approximately 3,650 days, when he wasn’t thinking about Abby’s grievances in the marriage?

  I didn’t become absorbed with learning Spanish, though I should’ve. I didn’t watch major league baseball, attend the Chattanooga Lookouts minor league games like my old long-snapper buddy Chester Clabo did only because he had a crush on a woman who worked the Cajun boiled peanuts stand, or collect baseball cards. I didn’t play video games, online poker, regular poker with ex-colleagues from Tennessee Valley Community College, drive up yearly to Lexington to watch the Kentucky Derby, or squirrel away money for scratch card tickets and daily lottery drawings.

  I never ran, unless I felt that someone chased me—and that happened more times than I could count, probably because there are people out there who don’t want me to tell Columbus Choice’s story. I didn’t take up painting or sculpting or whittling. Not once did I think it necessary to learn how to play a guitar or trombone in order to become a well-rounded person, though I might’ve started playing a Jew’s harp if I’d’ve ever run across one. But I didn’t. When I had a car, I didn’t spend every weekend washing, waxing, and detailing the thing.