Happy, Happy, Happy (11 page)

The old cypress tree was one of the Almighty’s great creations, and it’s where we spent many glorious mornings together as a family. But during my rompin’ and stompin’ days, I never embraced its beauty and rarely cherished the time I spent with my father and brothers.

The old cypress tree was one of the Almighty’s great creations, and it’s where we spent many glorious mornings together.

The only things I seemed to be worried about were how many ducks I could kill and when my next drink was coming.

By then, I had a growing family at home. Our sons Jase and Willie had been born, and Kay was at the end of her rope with me. I was always out, partying with my buddies, leaving her alone to raise our three sons. I was growing more distant from everything I had known and been taught and was pulling even farther away from the people who loved me the most. Kay felt her entire life was in ruins and that she had failed as a wife. After a while, the school where I was teaching could
no longer ignore my public conduct. Students and their parents were beginning to notice my boorish behavior, and my days as a teacher and coach were numbered.

Sadly, even as my life continued to spiral out of control, like a downed duck falling from the sky, I failed to realize that “callous” also described me as a man.

Rule No. 6 for Living Happy, Happy, Happy

Put the Bottle Down (You’ll Thank Me in the Morning)

A
fter I resigned from my teaching position (before the school board could fire me), I made one of the biggest mistakes of my life: I leased a honky-tonk in the middle of nowhere. I managed the place, worked the bar, cooked for the customers, and broke up occasional fights. One of my specialties was something I called squirrel mulligan: ten pounds of freshly killed squirrels, ten pounds of onions, ten pounds of potatoes, and enough crumbled crackers to give it the proper thickness. It didn’t taste too bad, and its aroma smelled better than the overwhelming scent of urine and stale beer that permeated the place. I also served fried chicken, pickled pig’s feet, and boiled eggs, though most of the regulars, including me, were only there to drink as much beer and whiskey as we could.

It was a rough, rough place. I managed the place before
integration was firmly established in the South, so my honky-tonk was somewhat unusual. It was really a segregated beer joint, which you didn’t see very often. The blacks drove up in the back, and we had their jive going on back there, and the rednecks came through the front. I was in the middle, serving and cooking for everyone, while trying to keep the peace.

Kay and our three sons moved out in the middle of nowhere with me. The bar was a long, low, one-story wood building, unpainted and yellowed. Our trailer home and another building were roughly attached to it, making the whole complex an irregular U-shape. It wasn’t very pretty, and it certainly wasn’t the proper place to be raising my boys. Kay, of course, worried about me constantly, so she worked as a barmaid most nights to make sure I stayed out of trouble. She never was much of a drinker—probably because she saw what alcohol did to her mother—but she was right beside me on most nights, watching me slowly drink away our lives.

After a while, my parents, brothers, and sisters started to hear what was happening with me. One night, my younger sister, Jan, drove out to the bar with William “Bill” Smith, one of the preachers at White’s Ferry Road Church in West Monroe, Louisiana. Jan lived close by in the area, so she knew more than the rest of my family how far I had strayed from my former ways. She was determined to save me and enlisted Bill Smith to help her.

When they walked into the bar, Smith found me sitting at a desk in the connecting structure. I had a quart bottle of beer in my hand.

“You some kind of preacher?” I immediately asked him. When Smith told me he was, I added, “You ever been drunk?”

“Yes, I used to drink a few beers,” he told me.

“Well, what’s the difference between you and me?” I asked him. “You’ve been drunk, and I’m getting drunk right now. There ain’t a dime’s worth of difference between you and me, Jack. You ain’t putting any Bible on me. That’s the way I was born.”

“You some kind of preacher?” I immediately asked him.

At that moment, one of my patrons stuck his head in the door and said, “Phil, your sister’s running into some problems out there in the bar.”

Jan was in the barroom handing out religious tracts. The patrons were cussing and carrying on as usual—getting drunk. One guy was arguing with her. “Hey! Hey!” I said as I stepped in.

They all turned around, looking at me. “This is my little sister. She’s handing out religious tracts. Let her hand them out. But don’t be messing with her, or you’re going to deal with me.”

“This is your sister?” one of them asked.

“Yes. She’s going to do whatever she does here,” I told him. “Leave her alone!”

Jan, now in a little bit of a dither, went on handing out tracts—in a dead quiet—until she had given everyone one. I turned around, went back to Smith, and ordered him out of my bar.

As Jan and Smith walked back to their car in the drizzling rain, with the country music wailing behind them in the front of the building and rhythm and blues blaring in the back, he exclaimed, “Whew! I don’t think he’s ready! Let’s give him a little time. I’m glad I got out of there without getting beaten up!”

Although Smith’s visit left me unmoved, Kay later began to study the Bible with him. She knew our marriage and lives were rapidly deteriorating.

A few months later, I hit what I thought was rock bottom. One night the couple that owned the bar came in and informed me they were going to raise my rent. So I decided I’d hightail it out of the place after fulfilling the last two months on my lease. An argument ensued, and I ended up throwing the man and woman across the bar, injuring both of them pretty badly. By the time the fight was over, there were four police cars out front. Ambulances were also on the way to take the bar owners to the hospital; I’d whipped both of them pretty good. I went out the back door and jumped in my truck before the police could arrest me. Before I left, I told Kay, “I’m going to the swamps or somewhere. You’re not going to see me for a few months.”

Of course I left Kay behind to clean up my mess. The police issued a warrant for my arrest, but Kay persuaded the bar owners to drop criminal charges against me. The plea bargain came with a hefty price: the bar owners took nearly all the money we’d saved while operating the honky-tonk. They wouldn’t even let Kay get our personal belongings—a washer and dryer and photographs and keepsakes of our boys—out of a storage shed in back. Fortunately, Kay had hidden about two thousand dollars in a lockbox and used that money to move our trailer—which we were still paying for—back to Louisiana.

After the fight, I got out of Arkansas. Even though Kay paid off the bar owners, I didn’t know whether there were still arrest warrants out for me—assault and all that stuff. The bar owners had a restraining order against me, so I couldn’t go anywhere near them. I stayed out of Arkansas for about a decade because I didn’t know whether they were going to try to get me, put me in jail, or what.

Kay moved our trailer to a spot beside Lake D’Arbonne at Farmerville, Louisiana, as she and I had discussed during a phone conversation. I eventually got a job working in the oil fields offshore in the Gulf of Mexico. In the meantime, Kay had to handle everything concerning the move back to Louisiana. For about the next year, she and I somehow endured, though our marriage was under tremendous strain.

While I was a fugitive, I kept hunting and fishing as much as I could—sandwiching the activities I loved around my offshore job. The incident at the bar didn’t stop me from romping, stomping, and ripping with my drinking buddies. Kay later said I wasn’t an alcoholic, only a problem drunk. But it was pretty clear I had a problem. She always held out hope that I would change my ways, and she believed that if we moved to a new location and met new people, things would get better. But they never did; things only got worse.

Kay said I wasn’t an alcoholic, only a problem drunk. But it was pretty clear I had a problem.