Hillbilly Heart (4 page)

The poor guy grabbed his coat, kissed Ruthie good-bye, and bolted for the front door. We never saw him again.

I know my mom deserved a life, but it didn’t feel right for another man to come into the house where my dad had lived. Now, I like to say that if I hadn’t run all of them off, Ruthie never would have meet Cletis Lee Adkins, a former railroad man turned truck driver for Ashland’s Wolohan Lumber. Cletis—or Red, as I and everyone else called him—spent his last nickel to make sure Kebo and I had milk to drink, clothes on our back, and other comforts most kids took for granted. He was one of the best men I have ever met. But before I let him know I felt that way, before I admitted it to myself, I put him through hell.

On the day he and Ruthie got married in the church, we observed the occasion by actually getting into a fistfight in our front yard. It rained hard that day, which seemed appropriate to Kebo and me. After the ceremony, we drove home. It was still pouring, and the yard was a wet, muddy mess. When Kebo announced that he was going out to play, Cletis went into full stepfather mode and ordered him to think again.

“You’re not my father,” Kebo protested. “You can’t tell us what to do.”

Us?
I hadn’t planned to go outside. But now that Kebo had drawn a line in the mud, I wanted no doubt about whose side I was on.

“Yeah, you can’t tell my brother what to do,” I chimed in.

Cletis begged to differ, and the argument quickly escalated from raised voices into a shoving match and then into a full-scale war. There I was, trading punches with a man more than three times my age and twice my size, as the rain drummed down on us in the yard. And Kebo? He cheered me on from the safety of the porch, while Ruthie stood with her hands covering her face, horrified, screaming for us to stop.

Gradually, all of us acclimated to our new extended families. Ruthie and Cletis also had a son, Michael Joseph Adkins, my little brother, who we called Mick. If Cletis and Ruthie’s wedding day was a disaster, I look back on Mick’s arrival as a blessed event. Today, he is one of the few people I trust whole-heartedly. Our house on Long Street continued to be where all of Kebo’s and my friends came after school to hang out or play ball.

By contrast, my dad and Joan’s home in Argillite was way out in the country. They had a full house, too, with Angie and also Joan’s mother, who we called Mammie. Being situated in the middle of nowhere, on fifteen acres, gave their home its sense of place. Kebo and I would spend hours exploring the land, looking for arrowheads and artifacts. One day we came upon a family living in a shack way out on the back edge. We were shocked by the decrepitude of their place, which made our home at 2317 Long Street look like a palace.

These folks defined Appalachian poor. The dad was an alcoholic, and the mom was haggard-looking from taking care of at least eight kids. The oldest two, Calvin and Jimmy, were the same age as Kebo and me. They were friendly, but they were so dirty and smelled so bad that we would run away from them.

This turned into a game. Kebo and I and our dog, Hank, a collie that was a dead ringer for Lassie but smarter, would spend the
whole weekend hiding from those boys. We were like Daniel Boone and the Indians.

One day Kebo and I hid in a cave. We could hear Calvin and Jimmy rustling through the trees nearby. Hank had stayed sitting outside the cave, so they knew we were inside. After they found us, we all went back to my dad’s house and Kebo and I washed off with the hose. Then we told Calvin and Jimmy to do the same.

As we cleaned up, I realized that we were all just boys having fun. It was a revelation. I had grown up worrying about what people thought of me for not having a phone or spiffy clothes, and lo and behold if God didn’t bring two boys into my life who were worse off than me.

Calvin and Jimmy became our close friends. Kebo and I brought them to our Long Street home a few times and they flipped out. They’d never been out of their neck of the woods. Flatwoods was like a big city to them.

They were impressed that Kebo and I had our own bedrooms. In reality, we had shared a room until I threw my bed in what had been an oversize storage closet and hung a couple of black-light posters: one of Jimi Hendrix and another of a Bengal tiger. A few years later, I added the famous poster of Farrah Fawcett in a red skintight swimsuit.

Before
Charlie’s Angels,
my favorite TV shows were
Batman, The Green Hornet,
and
Daniel Boone.
Then,
Get Smart, Sanford and Son,
and
Chico and the Man.
On Saturday mornings, my brother and I never missed
The Pink Panther;
I also loved
The Bullwinkle Show, Bugs Bunny,
and
Tom and Jerry.
Thinking about it now, those cartoons were pretty violent. I bet it’s against the law to make them like that today. But that’s beside the point.

I loved movies, too. When I was five, my three girl cousins took me to see
Bambi
at the Paramount Arts Center, a place that would later change my life. Back then, I was a squirmy little thing who wouldn’t stay in his seat. As my cousins tell it, one of them said,
“Billy Ray, if you don’t stop jumping and sit still, we’re taking you home,” and I just looked at them and said, “Don’t make no difference to me.” And kept jumping.

My dad also took me to a couple of drive-ins, where we saw
Planet of the Apes
and
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly,
starring Clint Eastwood. Those movies made an impression on me. To this day, Clint is still my number one box office badass. I also was a fan of
Billy Jack,
and my favorite of all time is the made-for-TV classic
Brian’s Song.

In my house, though, neither TV nor the movies could compete with music. We were a music-loving, music-playing family. A radio or a record player was usually on in some room. My boyhood soundtrack was a mix of Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Merle Haggard, Glen Campbell, and Johnny Cash. I also listened to my share of Grand Ole Opry and Roy Clark and Buck Owens on
Hee Haw.
You weren’t truly country without your music.

When I was eight, I started a collection of 45s. I’ll never forget that day, because it was a tragic one. My mom, my brother, and I had saved three flying squirrels that had been deserted in their nest. We fed them with a medicine dropper for about three days. Then, for some reason, they died. To cheer me up, my mom took me to Hills department store and I got to pick out a record. I bought “Hitchin’ a Ride” by Vanity Fare.

The first album I bought was Ike and Tina Turner’s
What You Hear Is What You Get: Live at Carnegie Hall,
featuring their version of “Proud Mary.” But I mostly bought 45s and eight-track tapes, including classics by Lynyrd Skynyrd, Charlie Daniels, the Ozark Mountain Daredevils, Earl Scruggs and Bill Monroe (bluegrass made me feel good), and Pink Floyd (that was my late-night go-to, and
loud
).

Then there were sports. I was a fan of the Cincinnati Bengals football team and an even bigger fan of the Cincinnati Reds baseball team. In those days, their stadiums were about a three-hour drive
from Flatwoods up US 52 in Ohio, and though we couldn’t afford to go to many games, those were my home teams, especially the Reds.

In the early ’70s, they were known as the Big Red Machine. Their team consisted of all-stars and future hall of famers Johnny Bench, Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Dave Concepcion, George Foster, Ken Griffey, Cesar Geronimo, and Tony Perez, along with manager Sparky Anderson. Bench was my favorite, since I played catcher in Little League. One day, Pete Rose signed autographs at a car dealership in Ashland and that was the biggest event that had ever happened near us, other than the day Santa Claus jumped out of an airplane to promote Hills department store and got stuck in a tree.

My mom took me to the car lot where Rose was signing autographs. I waited in a line that snaked around the entire place. After getting my signed picture, I got in line again, figuring it couldn’t hurt to collect a few autographs. On my third time through, Rose complained loudly about me to the car lot owner. Then, in language more suited to the locker room, he directed his irritation in my direction.

“What the—” he said, dropping the F-bomb once or twice. “How many damn times are you going to come through here, boy?”

My mom wasn’t about to let some hot-tempered, hotshot ballplayer talk that way to her kid. With hundreds of people watching in stunned silence, she lit into Charlie Hustle the way he was known to speak to umpires. I almost felt sorry for Pete. But I was too busy trying to wiggle out of her clutches and block her punches, because for some reason, she found it necessary to punctuate every sentence by slapping me upside the head.

“Don’t you ever talk to my boy that way!” she said.

Slap!

“If anyone’s going to discipline my son, it’ll be me. Not some asshole like you!”

Slap!

“Hell, I don’t even know why the boy would want your autograph.”

Slap!

I was doing my best to get to the car. I didn’t know which was more embarrassing: getting cussed out by Pete Rose or beat up by my mom. She was a force to reckon with. Later, after we were home, we laughed about the episode. I realized my mom had had a pretty good afternoon, and a pretty serious right hook. In terms of hits, she was three for three—a perfect day at the plate.

CHAPTER 3

A Series of Adjustments

M
Y DAD STARTED THE
Crownsmen Quartet with guys just like him: riggers at Armco Steel, men who were tougher than tough and as solid as the steel they made, with good singing voices and a passion for performing gospel. Like my dad, who’d served in the air force, most had been in the service as young men before taking jobs at the mill. They all worked the late shift, and during their breaks they would sing.

They performed on Sundays throughout the tristate area. Churches. Revivals. County Fairs. One time they appeared on
The Happy Goodman Family Hour,
a gospel music TV series that aired every Sunday morning. I think they were one break away from being like the Oak Ridge Boys. It just didn’t happen for them.

But music was always a sideline for my dad, who would have been a lifer at the steel mill if not for his sense of fairness. He would get stuck on a problem until he figured it out, and one time he got stuck on a problem at work. It was the early 1970s, and he saw the steel mill cheat a guy who’d lost his legs in a work-related accident out of money they owed him. It affected him deeply and turned into a calling, similar to when my papaw Cyrus heard a voice tell him to become a preacher.

Helping that injured coworker ignited my dad’s determination
to stand up for working men and their families. He became their voice. In a short time, he put himself through school, quit the mill, started working for the AFL-CIO, and set a goal of getting elected to political office.

His patience was typified by the way he taught me to drive. As a little kid, I sat on his lap as he drove the last mile or so up the gravel road leading to his house in Argillite. He worked the gas and brake and let me steer, though I’m sure he kept a finger or two on the wheel. As I gained more control of the vehicle, as well as respect for what it meant to get behind the wheel, he gave me more independence.

In the morning, as he drank his coffee, I would ask if I could take the truck to get the newspaper. The first time he said yes was one of the greatest days of my life. I ran outside, started up his truck, and drove down that gravel road to where the paper sat. From then on, it became a routine.

The truck had an eight-track cassette player, and my dad had three eight-tracks—Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash, and Glen Campbell. Every time I drove, I played one of those cassettes. Around the time I was twelve, he had switched to a Buick and my morning excursion began to include a few daring zigzags across the dry creek, just enough to excite me and not damage the car. I’d be listening to Haggard’s “Workin’ Man Blues,” and I couldn’t help it. I had to do something a little crazy. It just made me feel good—the song, that is.

Once I got a hold of some Led Zeppelin, like the song “Black Dog,” I got a little crazier, pressed harder on the gas pedal, and did what I call loop-de-loos—360s—while laughing as the back tires spit out clods of dirt and grass. It was simple fun, but also, looking back, it was the beginning of my foolishness.

I was not much of a student. This became abundantly clear the year my aunt Sue—my father’s sister—was my sixth-grade math teacher. (An interesting side note: She had married Clifford Hatfield—yes, those Hatfields of Hatfield and McCoy fame; and,
somewhere down the family tree, I’m a blood relative of the McCoys.) Anyway, one day in class, Aunt Sue politely said, “You may want to avoid being a mathematician when you grow up,” and I didn’t argue with her.

My academic career may have peaked the following year, when I gave a speech in history class on Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce. It included a recitation of his famous surrender speech, ending with “From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever.” I got an A, and at the end of the year when the teacher assigned us to rewrite any speech as a satire, I picked that one and rewrote it as a declaration of what I wanted to do that summer.