George was approaching forty years old. He had worked the road since he was a teenager, so he was ready to stay home for a while. Tammy was pregnant with Georgette and was expecting her to be born any day. George had just about quit drinking entirely and had thrown his heart and soul into the park. He did everything he could think of to make it successful. He had a mobile home park with electric hookups and a playground for the kids. He even provided transportation to help the handicapped and elderly to get to the show area. They had golf carts, a swimming pool, and the house had been brought up to date and was absolutely beautiful.
George had an unbelievable rule, “No alcoholic beverages allowed on the grounds of the plantation.” George and Tammy had it all. They had food stands and picnic tables and by the time it was time for the opening show, George had everything in tip-top shape.
The first show was a major success. There was space provided for eleven thousand people, and it was packed to capacity. Every event was a huge success, and George was so preoccupied that he seldom drank. He loved what he was doing, but Tammy became lethargic and bored, and that led to her becoming extremely restless.
George expanded the park and added an antique car museum that contained all sorts of expensive antique cars. George was very proud of the work he had done and achieving what he had set out to accomplish.
George called Peanutt and me. He wanted us to come down to Florida and spend a week with Tammy and him. He wanted us to bring True to play with Tina, Tammy’s daughter. My first look at the park took my breath away it was so beautiful, and much more than I ever expected.
George and Tammy took us on a VIP tour of the park. They introduced us to their best friends in Florida, Cliff and Maxine Hyder. We spent the week with George and Tammy as they’d asked us to do. We had a wonderful time. Peanutt and I were so proud of them, and what they had accomplished. Tammy and I had plenty of time to talk while George and Peanutt spent time roaming the forty acres and admiring the antique cars. Tammy confided in me that she loved that place and was so thankful George had quit drinking. She was thankful he was so happy, but she was bored stiff there. Tammy wanted to go back to Nashville.
“I know it would take an act of God to get George away from this place,” she commented.
About the fourth night we were there, I got the fire scared out of me. George and Tammy had already gone to bed. Peanutt and I were watching TV in our bedroom, and the kids had been asleep for a long time. All of a sudden, George and Tammy’s dogs were having a fit. The peacocks were all acting up and making all kinds of strange sounds. I got up and went to George and Tammy’s bedroom. I woke them up and told them something was going on outside.
“No Charlene, they all do that sometimes, it’s okay. There’s nothing wrong,” Tammy explained.
I went back to our bedroom, but the peacocks and the dogs had not settled down. Tammy finally did get up and agreed that something did not sound right. George and Tammy met Peanutt and me in the hall. We all went outside together to check things out. Just as everybody got outside, Tammy turned around to close the door. It was then she noticed something written on the back of the door. “Pig” had been written in big, bold letters with red lipstick. We had just finished reading the Charles Manson story, and both of us were terrified.
All of us went back in the house. George called several friends and had them come over and Tammy called the Sheriff ’s office and had them come out. They all ganged up together with George and Peanutt and started searching all over the 40 acres to see if they could find anybody. I realized that Tammy and I were there in the house with no one to help us if someone tried to harm us.
“Tammy, we don’t have anybody here with us,” I said.
“Oh, my God,” she said, “I never even thought about that. Let’s go and lock ourselves in my bedroom!”
We locked ourselves in Tammy’s bedroom, but that didn’t give us much comfort from the fright we were experiencing. We had been in there about ten minutes when we heard a loud noise. I began to tremble. Tammy panicked.
“What was that?” I screamed.
“I don’t know,” Tammy replied.
We crawled under her bed but soon Tammy calmed down.
“Charlene, I think I know what the noise was. I think it was the ice maker dumping a load of ice.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m almost sure that’s what it was.”
We crawled out from under the bed and continued to wait on the men to come back. It seemed like they had been gone forever. I was a nervous wreck.
George and Peanutt finally came up to the room.
“Well, we’ve looked the whole place over and didn’t see a thing or a sign of anybody being here,” George explained.
All the other people left, but I didn’t sleep a wink all night long. I was ready to go home the next day, but George and Tammy insisted that we stay. We stayed the rest of the week, but I wanted to get away from there. I never knew who wrote on that door, and I’ll never forget that night.
After we came home, we’d talk often to George and Tammy. There had been some more strange things happening around the park. I pondered about how Tammy had expressed her desire to move back to Nashville, and how she talked about being bored to tears while George was occupied with his own happiness. I became suspicious of Tammy. I wondered if somehow she was concocting the things in an attempt to scare George away from the park.
Time went on, and George began to get restless. He began drinking again. He began to get a little rough. Maybe it was because he knew Tammy was unhappy, and he felt like he was going to have to either give up his dream place or lose his wife. I’m not sure who thought what, or who did what. I just know that things had changed, and they were having big problems between them.
Tammy finally won the battle, and they moved back to Hendersonville, Tennessee. They moved to Tammy’s beautiful house on Old Hickory Lake. Shortly after getting settled in Hendersonville, Tammy insisted that Peanutt and I move to Nashville. She had found a house that she thought we’d like. We went to Nashville and spent a few days with them. We spent time looking at houses. We settled on a house in Hendersonville on Walton Ferry Road.
Peanutt and I spent a lot of time with George and Tammy. We were always going into Nashville to see Billy Sherrill or to take care of business. On the way to Nashville one day, Tammy said,
“Peanutt, George and I are going to be gone this week and while we are out of town, I’d like for you and Charlene to look around for some land with a big house on it.”
While they were gone, Peanutt and I found the perfect place. We couldn’t wait to tell them about it. It was at Spring Hill, Tennessee just south of Nashville. It was a beautiful antebellum house sitting on three hundred forty acres of land. The price was very reasonable considering what was included with the package. We took them to see it as soon as they got home. They fell in love with it. They bought it and started making plans. They redecorated the house and had it all painted and hired different contractors to make any repairs it needed. George had people out there mending the fences and trimming up around the place. Tammy couldn’t find curtains long enough for the windows and couldn’t wait to have them made, so she bought king-sized sheets and made her own curtains for that entire house. They turned out beautiful.
Eventually, George and Tammy got restless again and decided the farm was too far from Hendersonville, so they started looking for a house in Nashville. It didn’t take long to find one on Hillsboro Road. A few days later, they spotted another one they absolutely fell in love with, and so they bought it. The house was located on the top of a mountain on Tyne Boulevard in Nashville. Tammy called me.
“Charlene, George and I have found the perfect house for you and Peanutt, it’s absolutely beautiful. It sits on four acres of prime property. We want you to see it.”
Peanutt and I went to see the house, and we fell in love with it. Some of the property’s main features were a large swimming pool, a brick fence all
the way around the property, a big sunroom, and an open stairway that spanned the entire foyer. It was beautiful.
“Tammy, I’m not sure we can afford this house,” I lamented.
“Oh, yes you can,” she replied, “I’ll cut some of Peanutt’s songs and make sure you can make the payments.”
Tammy told me that George and she had already put up earnest money on the house, but they changed their minds when they found the house on Tyne Boulevard.
“Okay,” I explained, “but you’ll have to wait until our house sells before we can pay you that earnest money back.”
That was fine with Tammy, so we bought the house and put ours up for sale. Our house sold really quickly. We moved into our new home and put our daughter in school at Franklin Road Academy along with Tammy’s girls, Tina, Gwen, and Jackie. Things were going great for us.
George, Tammy, Peanutt, and I were together all the time. We were writing one song after the other. George and Tammy were cutting hit records. Tammy’s mother and stepfather, Mildred and Foy, were living at Spring Hill and taking care of the farm.
George and Tammy had spun out of control. They were shifting from place to place in an attempt to keep some excitement in their marriage, but it was coming to a halt. It was obvious they were wrestling with issues each one of them had. Peanutt and I would go over to their house a lot of times just to keep them occupied. We’d play Aggravation or Rook with them. We would suggest going on a cruise, or do whatever it took to keep George and Tammy on speaking terms. George wanted Peanutt and me to be at their house every morning by 8:00a.m. He demanded it. We’d be there because we really didn’t have anything else to do. We were signed to Tammy’s publishing company, so we could write with George and Tammy if we felt like writing, and that’s what we did most of the time.
One day, George had a recording session booked for Tammy and him to cut a duet album. There were about four other writers signed to Tammy’s publishing company, Altam Records. They had been writing some songs, too. George Richey, Narrow Wilson, and Carmel Taylor had written a song that George and Tammy cut that day. Each of them owned one-third of the writer’s rights on the one song. George and Tammy cut six of Peanutt’s songs on that one album. Peanutt and I could feel the resentment from some of the other writers, and a jealousy developed that we were aware of but kept quiet about it.
I knew sooner or later it would all come out. It wasn’t long until Tammy began to change towards Peanutt and me. We could feel the change because she wasn’t treating us the same as she did before this happened. George knew it too, and he didn’t like it at all.
George would get drunk, and Tammy would call Peanutt and me and tell us to go find him and if we found him, we were to keep him with us. One night, we were out looking for George. We found him and persuaded him to go home with us. We decided to take him to Florence, Alabama with us, so that he would not try and get away. After calling Tammy, we told her we had George with us, and that he was okay and not to worry because we’d take care of him.
While we were in Alabama, the alternator went out on our Cadillac. We had to get it fixed, and it took three days before we could get back to Nashville. During this time, we were never out of touch with Tammy. When we did get George back to Tammy, she was furious. She accused me of staying three days at the Tyne Boulevard house with George while Peanutt went to Alabama. She said that I had cooked for George and left rotten food all over the kitchen, and that there were seventeen empty whiskey bottles strewn around the house. I told her she was crazy, and that I had done no such thing, and George and Peanutt would verify I was with them the entire time.
“Somebody has started this mess to make you jealous of me. This is a conspiracy, Tammy, to break up our friendship. They are trying to destroy our relationship so that George and you won’t record any more of Peanutt’s songs. They are jealous and are trying to find a way to stop us from writing and if we don’t put a stop to them, they will succeed.”
Tammy continued talking to me, calling me, and making threats.
“I’ll never cut another Peanutt Montgomery song,” She said to me.
“That will be fine, Tammy. We will survive anyway,” I replied.
She also said she would not allow her daughters to speak to my daughter. True absolutely loved those girls. She stayed with them when we were on the road and had been with them the whole time we were in Nashville. When this happened, True came home from school crying.
“Mama, I don’t know what I’ve done but Jackie, Gwen, and Tina won’t have anything to do with me. They wouldn’t even speak to me today,” True cried.
I knew what had happened. I told True that Tammy was mad at me, and that she had told the girls not to associate with her.
I’d had enough. I was not going to let my little girl be hurt by all this mess, so I called the real estate office and had them come over and put my house up for sale. I told them to bring a big sign because I wanted it to sell fast. A Realtor came and listed the house for sale. A few days later, Tammy saw the sign. She called.
“Charlene, why are you selling your house?” She asked.
“We are going to move back to Florence; we’re going home.” I replied.
“Oh, no, you can’t sell your house, you love that place,” She answered.
“Yes, I do, but I don’t have to put up with this mess that’s been going on, and I’m not going to let all this crap involve my daughter,” I fired back at her. “She can’t help how much George drinks, and she can’t help what we do or you do, so she’s not going to be hurt just because somebody is mad at us. Yes, we’re going home.”
Tammy tried to get me to change my mind but to no avail. The next weekend, Peanutt and I went to Florence and met with a builder, Bennett Wright. He had a new house already finished, but I didn’t like it. We decided to let him custom build a house for us while ours was selling. Our Nashville house sold in two weeks. By the time our Nashville home closed escrow, Bennett had our new house built and ready for us to move. We were back home in Florence.
A short time later, George and Tammy purchased a huge house on Franklin Road in Nashville. This was truly a big house with seventeen thousand six hundred square feet of living area, sixteen bedrooms, and fifteen bathrooms.
We had not been with George and Tammy for a while. Peanutt and I tended to our own business in Florence and were getting settled into our new home on Milford Street in Sherwood Forest. Out of the clear blue, George called one day and wanted us to come to Nashville to see his new home. We were reluctant to go because we had not talked to Tammy and didn’t know how she’d feel about it. George assured us that Tammy wanted us to come, and that we were welcome.
The Franklin Road house was beautiful. Tammy was very nice to us and so friendly it was as if nothing had ever happened.
When we started to leave, George followed us to the car.
“What street do you live on?” George asked.
“Milford Street,” Peanutt replied.
“What’s the house number?” George asked.
“2713.”
“I’ll see you later, Peanutt,” George said while walking back toward the house.
Peanutt suspected George must be up to something.
“Well, I hope he doesn’t do anything that would make Tammy mad at us again, but I bet he’s planning on coming to Florence,” I commented.
About three days later there was a knock at our door. I opened the door, and it was George. I was surprised.
“I told you that nobody could keep me away from you two, so here I am,” George announced.
We were happy to see him, and he was proud to be there, but I had a feeling that he had sneaked away from Tammy, and I believed the phone would be ringing soon. Sure enough, about two hours later the phone rang. I went to the bedroom to answer because I felt for sure it was Tammy, and I knew I was not going to lie to her. I didn’t want to squeal on George, and he had already told me that if Tammy called not to tell her he was with us. When she as
ked me if we had seen George, I told her yes, and that he was with us. I told her that he asked me not to tell her he was there. She asked if he was drunk, and I told her no, but that he had been drinking.
“Don’t let him get away from you. Keep him with you and Peanutt,” She said.
I promised her we would do our best to keep him with us, and I’d let her know if he should leave.
We talked every day, and I let her know every move George made. I felt sorry for her because I knew what it was like to be worried about a drunken husband. I was completely honest with Tammy. I really loved her; even though, she hurt me before we moved back to Florence. I had forgiven her, and I didn’t hold anything against Tammy because I knew she loved George and wanted the marriage to work, but I felt it was impossible. I didn’t blame her entirely for what she had accused me. I knew someone had tried to convince her that I was having an affair with George. She knew better, and we both knew that. She knew me well enough to know that I would not have let Peanutt come to Alabama without me. She knew how I felt about Peanutt, and that I wouldn’t think about being unfaithful to him. George knew that too.
As it turned out, George continued coming to Alabama to see us. I was looking out a window in my house one afternoon, and a taxicab pulled into the driveway. George had hired a cab to drive him from Nashville to our house in Florence. Of course, he was drinking. He said he didn’t have any keys to any of his cars, so he called a cab to take him to buy a car. The car broke down just outside of Nashville, so he called another cab to bring him to our house. The next morning, we drove George to Nashville to find the car. He had no idea what kind of car he had bought until we finally discovered it was a burgundy Oldsmobile.
In 1973, George recorded, “Once You’ve Had the Best,” and in 1974, “The Door,” and both songs were big hits produced by Billy Sherrill, and then George and Tammy’s marriage was at the end. Everybody knew this was happening, but nobody wanted to accept it.
The Legend of George Jones: His Life and Death Page 9
