Honky Tonk Angel (56 page)

Not long after, things between Patsy and Charlie imploded. “I got the hell beat out of me,” Patsy wrote Flynt, adding she had Charlie’s “a—locked up to get sober and cool off. Then I slapped him with devorice papers and he moved out for two weeks.” She relayed Charlie’s “pleading” and his promise of “no more drinking and no calling me names,” admitting she went soft and let him come home. But there was a caveat to make sure he knew she meant business. “The devorce hasn’t been dropped,” she stated. To renew the proceedings, all she had to do was “pick up the phone & say [to her attorney] ‘go ahead with it’ & it’s over in four months.”

Patsy’s cousin Herman Longley claimed that in the incident where Charlie was arrested, he’d hit Patsy so hard a scar had broken open and bled. He noted that when being charged, the judge had told Charlie, “Come before me again for laying your hands on her and you’re going to the penitentiary.” Charlie dismisses that, saying he only spent a few hours in jail and that “the judge made Patsy come to court and drop it, so I got my revenge.”

It appears that with so many threats to leave him, Charlie may have read the writing on the wall. The remainder of the letters Patsy sent Flynt are filled with career and baby talk. Somehow Patsy and Charlie managed to live more peaceably. And romantically.

On August 4, 1962, Patsy wrote Flynt that she was “p.g.” and worried she might have a miscarriage: “I’m in bed now trying to keep it. Had the Dr last night and he said he thought I’d lose it yet.... I’ve got low blood and it’s kinda early after losing all that blood from the wreck.... I sure didn’t want to get this way but . . . I might have to go to the hospital.” That stipulated, Patsy said she was busier “than a one arm man with an itch.”

Two weeks later, she was boasting to Flynt that her “Showcase [album] sold 60,000 copies.... That’s not bad, heck, at 18¢ each for me? And this new [album] they say will do better than that. Honestly Ree, I can’t believe that I’m at long last able to make a little money.... I never got a check for records for 7 years.... Now it’s like a dream. But I sure am grateful ... & thank God for all these great things.” Complaining of having to record another ballad, she wrote, “Decca says that’s what they want, that that’s my way of getting thru to the people.... But I sure would like to change the pace once in a while.”

A week before her birthday, Patsy underwent a makeover to partially cover her scars, writing her friend: “Don’t be surprised if you see a blonde living at my house. I am a blonde now with real long hair. It’s a little funny at first when you see me but now every one says they like it better than my real hair. It’s a wig.... Crazy Baby!”

On September 2, 1962, Flynt arrived for a week at the new Dick home in Goodlettsville. “When I got there, a boy was cutting the grass. Inside, Patsy was writing a check for him and crying. She said she couldn’t get Charlie to cut the grass or do anything around the house, that with the medical bills and her need for plastic surgery, he wasn’t even trying to save money. I boomed, ‘Well, what good is he?’ and she replied, ‘No damn good.’”

Minutes later Patsy was in the throes of decorating, deciding what to do for the Labor Day weekend, and mopping and polishing to get the house ready for their first party.

Monday, Patsy and Ree picked up nearly twenty demos of songs Bradley had selected from various songwriters for the scheduled September 5 and 10 sessions and spent the rest of the day in the “music room” listening to the submissions.

“When Patsy went up to feed the kids and start dinner,” said Flynt, “I threw her new LP
Sentimentally Yours
on the phono. It wasn’t long before Charlie came home. He greeted me but when he realized what I was listening to he roared, ‘Don’t you ever get tired of listening to that bitch?’ I asked what the hell was the matter with him. He didn’t answer and proceeded upstairs.”

The next day Patsy and Flynt went sightseeing and attempted to visit Cash, who wasn’t home. Loretta Lynn, pregnant with twins, her husband, and friends visited that night. “We sat around talking shop and, except for Loretta, drinking,” recollected Flynt. “Loretta whined that nobody liked her and that she’d never make it big. Patsy kept fluffing her up, telling her not to pay attention to the gals because they were just jealous.”

On September 5, Flynt accompanied Patsy to Decca’s studio, where Patsy was to lay down four tunes. “Patsy confronted Owen over how much she hated ‘Tra Le La Le La Triangle,’ which was on Monday’s schedule. It certainly was in a pop vein, but another reason for her dislike might have been how close to home the song was.” It was about a wife’s tough choice between her lover and husband. Bradley calmed Patsy down, suggesting, “Why don’t you wait until you hear the arrangement before you hit the ceiling?”

In the studio, said Flynt, “Owen dimmed the lights. Patsy’s mood totally changed. When she finished ‘Why Can’t He Be You?’ I tiptoed around the partition. Patsy was wiping her eyes. I whispered ‘What’s wrong, kid?’ and she waved me off.” Later, they gathered in the control room. Even Patsy was pleased with the playback. Bradley couldn’t resist. He quipped, “Maybe now you’ll like ‘Tra Le La Le La Triangle’!”

The next morning, Patsy reached her mother, who had been picking apples all week.

From a poor family in Opequon, outside Winchester, Mrs. Hensley had picked apples as a child with her sister and parents Goldie Lavinia [Newlinger] and James Arlington Patterson. In 1916, at age thirty-one, Patterson fell from a roof and suffered a smashed leg. Because of an infection, a decision was made to amputate. In apple season, Hilda was in the orchards to earn money to support the family. Patterson died in the 1918 influenza epidemic. In 1929, as the nation slipped into the Great Depression, Goldie married a former prison guard, Frank Allanson, with whom she had five more children.

On the phone with her mother, Patsy, incredulous, wanted to know “Why have you been out in the fields all day?” Mrs. Hensley responded it was because she needed money.

Asserts Flynt, “Patsy was having none of it. She reminded Hilda she’d just sent her five hundred dollars and asked what the hell she’d done with it. She argued, ‘Mama, if you need money, why didn’t you ask me? I don’t want you doing backbreaking work at your age.’ Hilda shot back that she was only forty-five. She knew how to manipulate Patsy. She promised to send another five hundred!’”

Patsy slammed the receiver down and was silent for a few moments. Then she went about making a deposit slip for the bank, but told Flynt she didn’t feel like going.

“I volunteered. Patsy handed me the keys to the Cadillac and a bag with cash and checks. I glanced at the deposit slip. The amount was twenty thousand dollars. I joked, ‘Well, it was nice knowing you!’ Patsy replied, ‘Ree, I ain’t worrying about you, Hoss! I’d trust you with my life.’”

By her letter of November 22, Patsy’s career was soaring. She bragged, “I got 6 awards ... more than any other female or male. I’m so proud & happy I could bust. ...
[T]he greatest of all, Ree, was [the] Star Award . . . the greatest anyone can get [She was the first female recipient] ... [and] they gave it to me.” She claimed a total of fourteen awards, nine of them Gold; and that every time she looked at them she cried. She expressed surprise that people were stopping and congratulating her. “I didn’t dream so many people would know me.”

On January 3, 1963, Patsy described a belated family Christmas gathering and an inauspicious beginning of the new year to Flynt. Referring to her husband by name, she reported that at the end of the Vegas engagement, Charlie left at 2:00 A.M., “drove 2,500 miles with only 11 hours sleep ... and arrived in Winchester at Noon on December 27.... Both eyes looked like a wild man, but he wanted to be with me and the kids,” whom she said got “a carload of stuff.”

Charlie gave Patsy a silver tea and coffee service from Henesy Jewelry of Charles Town, West Virginia, a sweater, pants suit, and gold watch. Patsy presented him with a tape system with four speakers for his car (she gave another system to Randy for his plane).

Patsy reported that Mrs. Hensley would be “getting married to a fellow” as soon as “he can keep her in fine style and buy her a nice home,” but soon she was ruminating in her letter about feeling used by her family, noting “The love and closeness we used to have will never be again.”

In blow-by-blow detail, Patsy describes a brouhaha that broke out when her mother; her mother’s “new Husband to be,” Hale (last name unkown); Patsy’s sister, Sylvia Mae, whom she referred to as Sibby; her brother, Samuel Jr.; and the siblings’ dates returned “drunk” in the wee hours New Year’s Day to Mrs. Hensley’s home.

Patsy pointed out that she and Charlie were “stone sober” and with Julie and Randy, but that Sylvia and her boyfriend “had the damest bloodiest fight you’ve ever seen.” In the scuffle, furniture and a door were damaged. Mrs. Hensley was holding Sam off, and the fiancé was kicking him. Patsy called the police, then she and Charlie hurriedly packed, grabbed the kids, and “left for good”—swearing she’d never return because “there just isn’t any home there anymore.... None of them has ever helped to care for the place and I have done and done and paid and paid and bought and bought and paid their bills.”

She decided to “live my life the best way I can, keep my troubles and mind my own business. See how they like it now without ‘The BIG STAR sister’ that can do anything she wants with all her money.”

From comments Sylvia made, Patsy felt her sister was jealous. “I was never so hurt.... I have cried and cried and done all I can when life and living is easier for them now than its ever been.”

She inferred Sylvia felt she’d been held back from a life of her own because she was the baby and, if she were to get married, there’d be no one to take care of their mother. She resented that with Mrs. Hensley planning marriage, she’d be left to work and pay household expenses.

Patsy’s sense of humor wasn’t missing: “Sibby’s boy crazy, going with one fellow & nuts over another she can’t get. [She] bought this fellow she’s flipped over a diamond ring for Christmas and she’s never went with him ... and the fellow got the girl he’s been dating an engagement ring.”

She mentioned Charlie again, saying “he sees things a little clearer and sees
how I worry and I’m beat to begin with and been sick for 6 weeks with sinus trouble and head colds and couldn’t talk half the time.... Such is life, I guess.”

In a sign that things had improved in their marriage, Patsy was hopeful that Charlie “will straighten out now. He sure was good to me in Vegas,” helping with everything.

Mrs. Hensley and Sylvia called Patsy in Goodlettsville to apologize, begging her not to keep her promise. Patsy told Flynt that if she did return to Winchester, “they can come see me anytime but I will not ever spend another night in that place I used to call home.”

Things may have been going smoother in Patsy and Charlie’s marriage, but Sylvia kept informing friends of what Mrs. Hensley had insisted—that Patsy was leaving Charlie, planning to file for divorce following her July royalty payment, when she’d have money to cover legal and living expenses.

Sylvia told a friend, “Patsy still loves Charlie. She just can’t live with him any longer.” Other intimates observed Patsy had outgrown him. Charlie counters that they remained together until the end.

In Patsy’s February 1963 letter, her last to Flynt, she doesn’t mention Charlie but announces she’d “been busyer than a one arm man in a nest of bees” selecting a babysitter and recording. Of the next LP, she stated Bradley and Decca thought it would be her best yet, “and I sure hope they are right because I had 22 musicians ... 4 nights in a row. But I believe we got a little something different this time.” She closed with a list of what she had to do before leaving to do a show. It included washing, ironing, and fixing dinner.