Teaching the Pig to Dance: A Memoir (15 page)

A
NOTHER HAPPY BY-PRODUCT
of my growing confidence was that my own social standing seemed to be improving.

Sarah Lindsey and her girlfriends, for example, were at the top of the high school pecking order in terms of looks, grades, and musical talent. She was a senior and I was a junior. When we met at a Halloween party at school, it was clear to me that she was as sweet as she was pretty, and for some reason she liked me. Our first date was after a night football game, as a teammate buddy of mine, Tommy Morrow, had his dad’s car and we decided to double-date. We were looking for some way to impress the girls, and fortunately a solution was readily at hand. Bobby Alford was a high school sports fan and a baseball coach of mine who was not much older than we were. In those days, Bobby was a little on the heavy side, and we, being the sensitive and imaginative guys that we were, nicknamed him “Fat.”

Fat Alford had various side ventures, including a little hog-raising operation in a vacant lot just outside of town, and we would go with him to check on the hogs from time to time. Naturally, Tommy and I thought that a visit to Fat’s hog pen would be a great way to impress these city girls. We tromped around all over the place, pointing out the better features as well as the habits of the fine specimens shining before us in the moonlight. Actually, I think that was the last date that Tommy ever had with his girl, but fortunately Sarah was a little more broad-minded. From Fat’s hog pen, this unlikely couple (Sarah and me) were off to an improbable start that would change both of our lives.

That summer I was hired as a lifeguard at the city swimming pool after passing a rigorous examination.

“Do you swim?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re hired.”

I lifted weights, dated Sarah, and prepared for my “breakout” senior year in football. Sarah had received an academic scholarship to Peabody in Nashville, where she planned to embark on a teaching career. She had already graduated, but we had it all worked out, with plans to see each other on weekends while I finished high school.

Before school started, football practice was in full gear during the hot and humid Tennessee summer nights. During our first scrimmage, I went downfield and threw a block on a defensive back. I went too low and drove my shoulder into
the ground. That was effectively the end of football for me. The shoulder was “separated,” they said, but all I knew was that it just never seemed to get better. I spent the rest of the summer in preseason practice with my arm in a sling. Every time I tested it out on the field, I would hurt it again. I was distraught. The one thing that I was good at had been taken away from me. My future accomplishments were tied to a football scholarship that was now very much in doubt; I thought that my life was being changed forever. I didn’t know the half of it.

Sarah and I had long since fallen very much in love. I suppose one has to smile when hearing that about seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds. “They can’t know anything about love.” Turns out we did. Although we were both inexperienced in such things, we just simply couldn’t imagine not being together. It seemed that simple. But, of course, it was not that simple.

I don’t remember when Sarah first told me, but I do remember our drive down to Florence, Alabama, forty miles south of Lawrenceburg, to get a doctor’s verification. I especially remember her coming out of the doctor’s office with tears rolling down her cheeks as I waited in the reception area.

At the supper table that night, Dad asked me what I had done that day. That’s all it took. I broke down and told Mom and Dad everything. Of course, they were very upset, but their reaction was immediately one of love and support.
They were calm. From that moment it was all about the future. We all realized that my boyhood was now at an end. For Dad and me, it was man-to-man. We would work it out. One thing was assumed by all of us. Sarah and I would get married. It was never really discussed. It wasn’t a matter of if, but when.

After all the cards were on the table, I don’t remember ever once feeling afraid or distraught. Sarah would not be able to go to Peabody, but that just meant that we would be together. That’s what we had planned all along. We were just moving up the timetable. The only anguish I felt was years later when my children became our ages back then. It was then that I realized how very, very young we were and what our parents had gone through.

Our youth and lack of knowledge protected us in a way. Because we could not foresee all the difficulties that lay ahead, when they did rise up we just assumed they were a normal part of life. Without the foreboding, there is a lot less unhappiness, regardless of what happens. It is something I have tried to remember. Somehow, we were ready for whatever was in store for us. We were married in September 1959. I had turned seventeen the month before. We were married for twenty-five years before divorcing.

We went to Florence, Alabama, for an overnight honeymoon, and our car broke down the next day on our way back to Lawrenceburg. We hitchhiked back to town. It’s
amazing the things that don’t embarrass you to death when you are seventeen years old. Yes, sir, I was quite a catch.

Part of the plan was for me to finish high school. I didn’t expect confetti and a marching band when I returned to school, but I also wasn’t expecting what I did experience upon my return. Even though my maturity had progressed somewhat, I had no reservoir of goodwill to fall back on with the coach when first I got injured and then when the world found out I was going to be a daddy.

After I hurt my shoulder and couldn’t play, I was not allowed to ride on the team bus to the away games—no use filling a seat with a spectator. I could still play basketball, but after I got married, instead of letting the team elect a captain, as was the custom, Coach appointed the only other senior on the team to fill that role. All the guys knew what was going on, and the rejection and embarrassment of the coach’s actions toward me were painful.

I had expected the coach to look past the record before him and see that I was basically a well-meaning kid who was being forced to grow up a lot faster than I might have wanted. But he clearly saw no redeeming value in me. And to be fair, I hadn’t given him much cause to see beyond his limited perceptions.

A person is judged on the basis of what they do, not on what they think about themselves, and potential can earn you only so much credit, until that potential runs out or is
wasted. If you don’t go about things the proper way, you’d better be prepared when times get tough, because there probably won’t be much of a wellspring of sympathy for you to draw upon. I had not earned the coach’s trust or his goodwill. So when I was no longer productive as an athlete, he had no need for me. And, although he could have handled it better, I had no right to expect him to see what I thought was my potential. He was a good man using what skills he had at his disposal. But there is no greater motivator than the burning desire to show somebody that they were wrong about you. In a very short time, my circumstances had led me to create a pretty long list of folks to prove wrong; I added Coach to that list.

Naturally, I have sometimes wondered what would have happened if I hadn’t torn up my shoulder. Would I have gotten that scholarship? If so, which school would I have attended? Would I have made the team and had great success? I’ll never know the answers, but I do know one thing. These things that may have seemed like tragedies at the time were the best things that could have happened to me.

After Winston Churchill had led Great Britain and the free world to victory in World War II, the English people turned their back on him and he was defeated in his bid for reelection as prime minister. His wife supposedly said to him, “Winston, perhaps it is a blessing in disguise.” To which he replied, “Yes, very heavily disguised.” So it was for me. But I was doubly blessed. I really never had to face up to the
fact that I probably was not good enough to be outstanding. I could always be an all-star in my imagination, but more importantly, getting married saved me from wasting at least a few years of my life. I know now that I simply wouldn’t have made it academically and I wouldn’t have developed a sense of responsibility until I absolutely had to. When my basketball coach informed me that having a married man on the team wasn’t a very good idea and it would be best if I left the team, I did not argue with him. I was ready to move on.

A
S MIGHT BE EXPECTED
, not all of Lawrenceburg’s denizens shared my optimism for our future. One of Sarah’s mother’s friends was heard to say, “I am afraid Sarah Elizabeth has led her ducks to a dry pond.” It became quite obvious that this assessment was shared by most of Sarah’s family. Her mother was a Southern lady, gracious and kind, and coped the best of them all. Her father, Oscar, was the quiet and steady cornerstone of a family of extroverts and achievers. He was building a grand new colonial home on the outskirts of town, with a bedroom and dressing room suite for Sarah—rooms that even years later never saw a piece of furniture. I can imagine what he thought every time he looked at me, which was not often.

Oscar and his older brother, Ed, had started making furniture in their garage as boys, and from that they built a small but thriving church-furniture operation. One night after Sarah and I had made our announcement to our parents,
Oscar and I had our first discussion about my plans for the future. As one might expect, it was a short discussion. I told him I had a Sunday-morning paper route delivering the
Nashville Tennessean
to rural mailboxes by car, and that I had thought about being an athletics coach. We agreed that I would work at the factory after school, stacking lumber and sanding furniture. And Sarah and I would live with the Lindseys while I finished my senior year in high school.

During this time and for years after, Oscar and I spent many postdinner hours watching television or reading in the same room, seldom ever exchanging a word. I am talking hours of silence. I never knew how much of it was due to his nature and how much was because of the circumstances. In larger family gatherings, when he would speak, I was able to get a read on his thinking, and what he said sometimes had more than a little impact on me. He had an insight and a way of looking at things that sometimes differed from the thinking that I was used to.

Along with being a businessman, Oscar was also a captain in the Tennessee National Guard and in charge of several men who trained at the local armory. One night over dinner, he mentioned that an incident between some of the men had taken place at the armory and that it had had some racial overtones. He paused, as if weighing his words, then he said, “You know, if I were a black man, I would be the meanest one there ever was.”

Maybe it was because he was one of few members of his
family who was not a politician. Or maybe he was not a politician because of some of the things he believed. All in all, over the years it became obvious to me that he was one of the best men I had ever known, and despite my occasional resentment, it was important to me to gain his respect. I had a lot of work to do—with him as well as the rest of the family.

Sarah’s uncle Ed was a dynamo. With only a high school education, he had become the mayor of Lawrenceburg, the Mayor of the Year in Tennessee, and the International President of the Lions Club. He and his wife, Virginia, traveled the world, and he was often mentioned for statewide office, although he never made the run. Never have I seen two brothers who were more different and more compatible than Oscar and Ed. Ed was gregarious, outgoing, and a great public speaker. During Ed’s travels Oscar ran the business, which had grown to thirty or forty employees. He was happy for Ed to have the limelight. Sarah’s uncle, A.D., was a lawyer and had been the county judge, which is the chief executive officer of the county. Her uncle Bid was an Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms agent and had been a star athlete. He was the most friendly of “the boys.”

The head of the Lindsey clan was Sarah’s grandfather, “Pap,” who was also a lawyer. He was tall and straight, with a full head of white hair. Town folks called him “The Judge,” although he had never actually been one. He just seemed like he should have been one. He was from the old school that
believed in shooting first and asking questions later—literally. There was a story that once he got up in the middle of the night, saw a stranger out in the backyard, and filled full of buckshot a perfectly innocent pair of long johns hanging on the clothesline. He walked to and from his office every day until he was well into his eighties. Often after supper the boys and their families would convene at Pap’s house and pass judgment on the politicians and settle the world’s problems. Pap was one of the relatively few Republicans in town. Ed, A.D., and Oscar had joined the Democrats in order to not foreclose political opportunities in the heavily Democratic county.