Luck or Something Like It (2 page)

That night, Roy was a step ahead of him. He excused himself from the table and scooted into the closet before our dad even got up from the table. Then Roy quickly climbed up into the crawl space above and waited. Sure enough, our dad slipped into the closet and closed the door. Then he located his bottle and took a big long swig. Roy, hidden from sight above him, called out in a ghostly voice:
“Floyd . . . this is your conscience . . .”

My dad almost had a heart attack. He dropped the bottle, jumped up, and hit his head on the shelf. Roy started laughing, but he didn’t laugh long once Daddy saw what was up. Roy got such a whipping and then spent about a month being grounded. This family loved nothing more than a practical joke, even one like this, where the truth of the matter hurt.

Regardless of my dad’s troubled life, the only thing I ever really wanted growing up was his approval. Every son needs that, and I was no exception. That was true both when I was younger but also as I got older. Much later on—in the mid-1960s—I was in a jazz group, called the Bobby Doyle Three. Jazz was a music my dad neither liked nor appreciated, but our little group was hot and I wanted him to see us. We were invited to play at the Houston Petroleum Club, a private gathering place of many of the richest people in the state of Texas. I invited my dad to come see the show, assuming he’d never accept. It was not his kind of people or his kind of music. Much to my shock, he said yes. I felt great—I wasn’t going to let this father-son moment pass us by.

Keep in mind that my dad had only one suit, one tie, one pair of nice shoes, and one dress shirt, and I’m not sure if I ever saw him in them all at the same time. He arrived at the Petroleum Club looking nice. As I got ready to play, I noticed him working the room, introducing himself as Floyd Rogers, the bass player’s dad. He acted like he belonged in that club. I was proud of him that night, and I think he was proud of himself.

But as we played, I came to realize that his only interest was the open bar. He shared a drink with every person he met and as he drank, his face got redder, like the Irishman he was, and his voice got louder.
Oh God,
I thought,
what will he do next?
I was afraid he was going to do something stupid and get us both kicked out of there.

As the show ended, I heard him announce, loudly, to the mayor of Houston and some cronies, “Hi, I’m Floyd Rogers. I’m in the oil and gas business; how about you?” Later, when I finally got him out of the place and confronted him about his lie, he said, “Hell, son, I
am
in the oil and gas business. I work at a gas station eight hours a day, don’t I?”

At least for one night, and drunk as can be, he hobnobbed with the rich and felt great about it. I did, too.

What I loved most about Floyd Rogers was his constant laughing at life. He was a jokester, for sure. He always swore that the following was a true story. A policeman pulled him over to write him a ticket for speeding. “What’s the problem, Officer?” he asked innocently as he handed over his license.

The trooper looked at the license and said, “Mr. Rogers, do you realize you were doing sixty miles an hour in a thirty-mile-an-hour zone?”

My dad sighed. “Officer, that can’t be true. This car won’t run for an hour!”

The trooper laughed and tore up the ticket. My dad had joked his way out of a big fine.

Through it all, my mom stood steadfastly beside my dad, and I never saw him belittle or threaten her as some drinking men do to their wives. In the fifty years they were married, I don’t think it happened even once. My mom was a physically strong woman and she was bigger than my dad. She wasn’t fat by any means, just a big strong woman—five foot eight to my dad’s five foot six. I don’t think he’d have dared to browbeat my mom even if he’d had the inclination. Well, there was one time. I have no idea what caused their confrontation. The kids were all in the living room doing homework when my dad came around the corner yelling, “Lucille, don’t do that!” I never saw her actually hit him, but she was wielding a twelve-inch skillet. Submission and compliance were his only options.

I think I open every conversation about my dad with a remark about his alcoholism because I continue to feel a lot of sadness about him. I wish I’d known him better. I knew his funny side, his good-natured response to almost everything. And I knew his drunken side, when he just seemed to be trying to hang on. But there was a lot more to him that I never quite uncovered. He was a Mason, and it was important to him. One time after I was older, I asked him about it.

“What’s it really all about, Dad?”

“If I told you, I’d have to kill you,” he said with a quick laugh.

Drunk or sober, he never even gave me a hint about his meetings at the Masonic lodge. It wasn’t even that I wanted to know the specific details of their meetings. But something other than drinking tied those men together in friendship and camaraderie. I’d like to have known that side of my dad.

Another thing I know about him is that he never stopped trying to be a good provider, whether he failed or not. One time he hung on to a job for what seemed like quite a while. It was back when Coca-Cola bottles were delivered in those wooden crates with separate compartments. My dad got a job repairing the ones that got busted throughout the week. Every Saturday morning he would go to the plant and rebuild boxes for twenty-five cents apiece. I helped him with that job, and it was a good father-son time for us.

After my dad died, I found out that he once drove to Galveston trying to get a day’s work. He slept outside that night, waiting in the line of men applying for jobs, using his shoes as a pillow. It makes you wonder about his drinking. Was it something within him? Or was it the times? I know that back in the Depression, hard times drove a lot of men to drink, and my dad may have been one of them. But whatever the cause, he never lost his sense of humor, his sense of the absurd.

I had a very close and enduring bond with my mother, and I think my dad understood that. I remember when Terry Williams (a member of the First Edition) and I wrote the song “Momma’s Waiting” for the album
Love or Something Like It
. The song is about a guy in prison on death row dreaming of making one last trip back home to see his mom, though the listener doesn’t know that fact right away. In the song, the prisoner is driving home knowing his mother will be waiting because . . . “I’m all she’s got to love since Daddy’s gone.”

When he first heard that lyric, my dad jumped up and said, “Well, you damn sure wrote me out fast! Seems like you could have waited until at least the second verse!”

That was classic Floyd Rogers.

If I got my
sense of humor from my dad, then my sense of values came from my mom.

My mom had only a third-grade education, but she was one of the wisest people I have ever met. She understood the wisdom she found in biblical proverbs and everyday axioms, and she understood how to say a lot with very few words. Some of her sayings were those that she’d heard over the years; others were ones she made up herself. She always managed to find a succinct way of illustrating a lesson or offering a way to look at life.

They say you can reach any child in one of three ways: the written word, which some kids need to see and read; the spoken word, for kids who need to hear it; and the purely physical. My mom mastered all three. She never hurt any of us, but at one time or another we all thought we were going to die.

Some of the lessons she passed along were just plain old common sense—things like punctuality. If I have a meeting, I will always be on time. My mom believed, and so do I, that being late is disrespectful. It was her opinion that the other person’s time was at least as valuable as yours. That’s one rule I’ve tried to impart to my kids as they grow up.

Important as punctuality was, sometimes I took it too far. One of my earliest embarrassments in life came about because of my obsession with being on time. At age twelve, I was invited to my first school party ever and I was the most excited boy in the projects. The girl having the party was Shelby Graves. It was her birthday and she lived over on Taft Street, right above Bryant’s five-and-dime, where I walked on my way to elementary school every day. Taft Street wasn’t in the projects but was a far more upscale place where professionals lived. Shelby’s world involved parents who didn’t appear to have to work nonstop to put rice and beans on the table. It was a fairy-tale world to me.

Somehow my mom came up with the money to buy Shelby a little present. We wrapped it up and attached a tag that read, “To Shelby from Kenneth . . .” The party started at two
P.M.
I took my bath, combed my hair, and dressed in the clothes I usually saved for Sunday church and I was ready. To be safe, I decided I should be there at noon.

Shelby’s dad looked confused when he opened the door. I boldly announced, “Hi, I’m Kenneth Rogers and I’m here for the party.”

“Well, Kenneth,” he said, “aren’t you just a little early?”

I felt completely idiotic, but saw no way out. “Maybe,” I said. “But I’m here now.”

Mr. Graves ushered me in as he mumbled something about things not being quite ready and hoping I didn’t mind waiting a while. I didn’t mind a bit. I sat there in the living room for two full hours, staring at the wallpaper, until Mrs. Graves got everything in order. I never dared say a word, just sat there with a smile on my face, waiting for the party to start.

Clearly I had to learn the hard way that there was such a thing as being too early, but my mother was always teaching me about the importance of respect. Respect was important to her. From the time I was a kid, my mom taught me to be respectful of others and to try to be thoughtful and fair in my dealings. I live and do business that way, too. I want to play fair with people, and I want them to play fair with me. Karma can be a bitch. Because of my mother, I have been a rule follower all my life. If you aren’t supposed to be using the cell phone in a movie theater, then don’t use it.

Mom also encouraged me to understand what I was saying and why. Once when she told me I couldn’t go to the movies with my friend, I got mad. As I was leaving the room, I mumbled under my breath, “I hate you!” Instead of getting mad at me or shaming me, my mom sat me down and said, “No, son. You don’t hate me. You hate the fact that I won’t let you do something you want to do. That’s a lot different from hating
me
. You need to always understand what you are saying, and why. Use the right words.”

As I got older, I realized that she always tried to make things right before we parted. Considering how many people lose parents in accidents or a sudden heart attack after having harsh words, it was a thoughtful thing to do.

My mom believed in teaching her kids about values early. We rode a city bus to church three times a week, rain or shine. I wasn’t more than five years old when one night I dug my heels in and said I didn’t want to go. My mom said, “Son, I want you to listen to me and remember what I say. You can never be anything more as an adult than what’s put into you as a child. So get on the bus and let’s go.”

She was right. Character is formed early. That’s when our personalities and our values take shape and begin to solidify. You can’t build a solid house without a strong foundation.

Just as important as her wisdom was her outlook: my mom was the most positive person I have ever known. She had this perpetual optimism about her that got her through even the hardest times. That outlook and an ability to stay hopeful have helped me stay on an even keel throughout all these years. The lows don’t throw me into a massive depression, and the highs don’t cause me to turn cartwheels. I’ve tried to look at them with my mother’s eyes and find something meaningful—something useful—in each experience.

I believe, in many ways, that has been a key to the way my career has unfolded. I have had many different music careers and many levels of success. And I enjoyed every phase of my journey. I never allowed myself to become content or complacent. I never said to myself:
I can quit trying now. I’ve had success.
While my mother had a belief that things could always be better, she taught me that part of the trick in achieving that was understanding the difference between happiness and complacency. She would say, “Son, you’ve gotta be happy where you are. If you’re not happy where you are, you’ll never be really happy. Never be content to be there, but be happy where you are.”

This optimism was with her throughout her whole life, even in the most trying of times. After my dad died, she felt imprisoned in her own house because she had no car and had never even learned how to drive. When anyone left her house to go anywhere—the grocery store, the drugstore—they always invited her to go along. I think she felt we were either feeling sorry for her or making fun of her. “You just go ahead and make fun of me, Kenneth Ray,” she said. “I am going to have a car, a brand-new car, too.”

“Oh, you are, are you?” I asked with a smile. “You may want to learn to drive first.” And she said, “Oh, I will, don’t you worry. Just so you know: I’m going to win a car from a contest that Lee Trevino is having. I entered and I am going to win right here in Crockett. Then I’m going to learn how to drive.”

And what do you know? My mom won that car in a National Lee Trevino Good Guy Contest, right there in Crockett, Texas. She chose a fire-engine-red Dodge Charger with a white leather top. The seats were all protected by plastic when it was delivered, and she never took that plastic off. She learned to drive, too, just like she said she would. She’d drive from Crockett to Houston to see her grandkids and back again. She was a dreamer, but for Lucille Rogers, dreams did come true.

I have often smiled, knowing that something I did may have made her proud. Not every time, though. Even after her death, I have worried that she might be looking at me right now from somewhere, her eyes narrowed a bit.

“What in the world were you thinking, Kenneth Ray?”

Chapter Two

Music and Country

Our family may have
lived in Houston, but we had our roots, both musical and historical, in a little unincorporated town called Apple Springs in East Texas. Apple Springs was where our grandfather Byrd Rogers had a farm, and it was on his front porch that I heard live music for the first time.

Grandfather Rogers was steely eyed with a long white handlebar mustache. He wore khaki pants, starched shirts with rolled-up sleeves, and suspenders that he called “galluses” or something close to that. He was darkly tanned from working in his fields. For years, Byrd just barely scraped out a living on a small plot of ground outside of Apple Springs, where he had a house with a long porch in the front and a lone outhouse in the back. That land allowed him to grow a few vegetables—snap beans, watermelon, and corn—and keep a few chickens, while also hunting and fishing. That was enough to keep Byrd and his wife, Della, going, but not enough to support their kids once they grew to adulthood, married, and began having families of their own. There were eight kids in their family as well.

My dad ended up in Houston because he had dreamed of something better than sharecropping in East Texas, but though Houston promised a better life, my dad’s eyes always lit up when he’d load us kids into the back of his old pickup and head back to East Texas for a weekend of playing music with his brothers and sisters. Live music in Apple Springs meant the Rogers brothers had come back home from Houston.

My uncles all brought their instruments to these family reunions. My dad brought his fiddle, one of his brothers had an organ—I think it was a B3 or the equivalent—that he pulled out on the porch to play, and my uncle Willie and uncle Judd both played guitar. This was a band. All the kids would sit around and listen to the music and feel the closeness of the family. I would sit with my feet under the front of the house and play drums with my hands on the old wooden porch, as if I were part of the group. I doubt if I had any talent at that age, but one thing’s for sure—I had an instant love for music.

A lot of the songs were hymns, and sixty years later they would inspire my 2011 album,
The Love of God
. A number of the songs on the album were ones my dad and uncles had played on their porch in Apple Springs: “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” “Amazing Grace,” and “What a Friend We Have in Jesus,” as well as “In the Sweet By and By,” which I always remember as my mom’s favorite song. She sung it over and over ad nauseam, but when you love a song, you love a song. Others are hymns and songs that I’d loved the minute I heard various artists’ versions: “I’ll Fly Away,” with The Whites, and “Circle of Friends,” with Point of Grace.

Uncle Willie, my dad’s brother, bought me my first musical instrument, a Dobro. When I was twelve, I was sick with the measles and had to stay inside in a darkened room for two weeks. That was the routine treatment back then. Uncle Willie thought it would be a good time for me to learn to play an instrument. The trouble was, Dobro is a difficult instrument to play. It has a solid metal body, and the strings are about a quarter inch off the fingerboard. But I had two weeks in seclusion and so I learned a little riff I could drive my dad crazy with. I must have played it over and over and over again. That’s where I started getting the feel of playing an instrument and how much fun it could be.

Although we had fun on Byrd Rogers’s porch, Grandpa Rogers was a tough man. He was abrupt and succinct when he spoke. He minced no words.

“Two of the happiest days in my life,” he once told me, “are when you come and when you leave.” I’d like to think he didn’t mean that literally, but with him you could never tell.

Grandpa Rogers believed in teaching tough lessons. He had two animals that he dearly loved, an old horse named Blue, which he refused to work on Sunday, and a dog named Joe. I always felt Byrd, once his kids were gone, loved that old dog like a brother or even a son. They went everywhere together. Byrd never got into his pickup truck without whistling for Joe, who raced from wherever he was in the yard, jumped the fence, and leaped into the truck bed.

One night Byrd, for some reason, strung an extra line of wire above the fence, raising the height by about six inches. The next morning he got in his truck and whistled. Joe ran, jumped like he had for years, hit that wire, and fell back into the yard, momentarily stunned but otherwise unhurt. As he drove off, my grandfather yelled back with a smile, “Joe, don’t ever assume today is like it was yesterday.”

That was my grandfather’s lesson for the day. His sons might not listen to him, but by God his dog would. And his grandson, for the next fifty years.

I remember I had an opportunity one day to impress Grandpa Rogers, whom we called “Gran’sir.” I failed. He was a hunter, a skill that kept his family fed over the years. He decided it was time for me to learn to shoot. In his world, a man never knew when being able to bag a squirrel for dinner might be necessary for survival. So, after some slight weaponry training, into the Piney Woods we went. It didn’t take long for him to spot a squirrel in the trees.

“There you go, boy,” he whispered. “Let’s get us some dinner.”

I quickly aimed and wrapped my finger around the trigger. The squirrel looked up, froze in place—and so did I. I couldn’t do it. There was no way I could shoot an animal. It wasn’t that I had anything against hunting or that I didn’t love the taste of meat with my meals. It was just that I couldn’t do the shooting myself. My grandfather grabbed his gun, shot the squirrel, and headed back, just that quickly. He was clearly disappointed in me, and I knew it.

I’ve since wondered, at times like that, if my grandfather ever realized that, music aside, there was a huge chasm between him and his grandchildren—or at least this one. Grandfather Rogers was rural East Texas, and I was Houston. Big difference.

Even to this day, I’m not much of a hunter and I’ve never felt comfortable around guns. The only gun I ever remember owning was a .22-caliber rifle. When my first wife, Janice, and I were married, I ended up with that gun, though I have no idea where I got it. My brother Billy, who was probably fourteen or fifteen at the time, came to spend the day at our house while I went to work. While he was sitting in our living room holding this gun, it accidentally fired, glancing off the top of the coffee table and lodging itself in our neighbor’s house across the street. Billy was too young to see the danger. He was really worried about having scratched the coffee table. Later in my career, I had to do a number of gun scenes in the
Gambler
movies, and even though I knew the rounds were blanks, it still bothered me.

Because my grandparents grew their own food, our meals out there were usually homegrown vegetables and freshly killed game. Sometimes during the day I’d sneak away to my grandpa’s watermelon patch and eat a melon while it was still attached to the vine—delicious as long as I didn’t get caught. Those visits to Apple Springs were really special to me, filled with memories of great food, great music, good fun with all the cousins, and exploring in the woods. That’s an experience you can never forget, especially at night, by yourself.

Even when I wasn’t in Apple Springs, music came to me from all directions growing up, and on one occasion it actually changed my life. I was walking home from grade school one day, and like most days, I stopped by Lanzo’s Grocery, where Mr. Lanzo would sometimes give our family food that hadn’t sold or had to be thrown out. Lanzo was a good man. There was a little black gospel church just down the street from Lanzo’s. Sometimes I could hear music coming from that church, music that was far different from what I heard every week when my mom and the family took the bus downtown to First Baptist Church. I loved going to our church. It was huge, with maybe a thousand members, and it had youth and sports programs. I sang in the junior choir, and on special occasions we got to stand in front of the main choir of adults, resplendent in their immaculate robes, and sing our songs. It was a beautiful, spiritual sound.

But the music I heard coming from that little church down from Lanzo’s was something else. The power of those voices was so strong, and my curiosity became too much to resist. One day I crept up to the window of the small wooden building and peered inside, wondering if I was doing something wrong and hoping no one caught me spying. The whole congregation was standing, clapping, singing, and some of them were dancing in praise of the Lord. Some of the hymns had the same words as ours, but there was so much warmth and honesty and rhythm in this sound.

Although I didn’t realize it at the time, listening that day to that gospel choir was a defining moment for me. I could hear the same songs played in different ways and appreciate both. I could see that everything about the music was in the approach taken. I have always loved all kinds of music and love hearing them played separately or merged together into a kind of fusion. I’m no purist. I just love the music.

As I said, music was always around. Besides the fiddle playing in the country, our house seemed to always have music playing on the radio. I remember Mom ironing in the kitchen, a glass of iced tea on the end of the ironing board, and Hank Williams on the radio. My mom may well have been the worst singer I have ever heard in my life. I feel guilty about saying so, but the fact is, it’s true. She was not only bad, she was loud.

My brother Lelan got married at seventeen, and even young as I was, I recognized that his wife, Hazel, was a hot girl. Unlike other members of the family, Lelan and Hazel could dance. They would come into our living room, put on a record, and jitterbug for the whole family. The minute they left, my sisters Geraldine and Barbara would get up and pretend they were Lelan and Hazel. They weren’t very good, but it sure was entertaining.

It was a thing to behold—music and dancing, people having a great time. My sister Geraldine had a special musical influence on me, though she didn’t often sing and wasn’t thought of as a particularly musical person. It was Geraldine who taught me to sing harmony. In church both of us would move away from my mom—sometimes to the other side of the church—because she sang so poorly. I wasn’t always sure that was even far enough. One day while singing “The Old Rugged Cross,” I noticed Geraldine wasn’t singing the melody, but it sounded really good. I asked her what she was singing, and she said they called it “harmony.” It changed my musical ear forever. I started listening to and appreciating variations of the melody from then on.

I found that I loved singing this thing called harmony. I loved it so much, in fact, that I didn’t envision myself as a solo singer for years on end, just as a harmonizing member of a group.

My mom’s family lived
in nearby Crockett, Texas. There was Uncle Ocie and Aunt Dimple, Aunt Bill and Uncle Barton, Aunt Mildred and Uncle Pete, Aunt Beulah, Aunt Marie and Uncle Ted. They took great pride in never letting me get too big “for my raisin’,” as they loved to say. Uncle Ocie looked every bit the part of an East Texas farmer in his striped overalls, flowered shirt, and brown felt hat. When a film crew working on a TV special about my career came to Crockett and interviewed Uncle Ocie, he later told me: “All these people makin’ a fuss over you, sayin’ they’re glad to see you. Hell, I don’t know what makes them think you’re so special!”

It was hot in Crockett in the summer, and the homes were cooled by window fans. All the younger cousins would crowd into beds and make small talk late into the night. Our dreams were pretty cut-and-dried back then. The most anyone hoped for was a red Chevy convertible. Most of our days were spent down at the local Dairy Queen, the social center of Crockett, Texas.

My mother’s father, Wily Hester—we called him Papa—later shared a house with us on Clay Street in pretty much downtown Houston. Some of my best memories of early childhood were in that house with Papa, who was as much a character as Byrd Rogers. Papa had epilepsy and was also in what seemed to be the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Like Byrd, Papa was a man of few words. I remember him sitting in a rocking chair on the porch of the house we rented, watching us kids run and play. He’d watch as long as he could stand the commotion, then stand up and say “Can that fuss!” at the top of his voice. And believe me, we did.

My most unusual memory about Papa Hester was the time I took a late-night trip with him. Perhaps it was because of Alzheimer’s or just senility, but he had taken to walking in his sleep. The trouble was, he slept with me. I must have been three or four years old when he decided to take me on a nighttime excursion.

I remember waking up as he lifted me out of bed, stood me on the floor, and took my hand. Then we went to the screen window, which was open on that hot, humid Houston night. Papa unlatched the screen and out we climbed. My parents found us much later, blocks away, just sitting in the middle of Root Square Park. Grandpa Hester was sound asleep at a picnic table, and I was sitting there just watching him and looking around.

Other than the sleepwalking episode, he was not a problem. He was quiet, kept to himself, and was prone to staring off into space for long periods of time. Sometimes my mom would stand there looking at him, and say, “Well, I guess Papa’s crossed over again.” That’s an expression we all used affectionately when my grandfather checked out.

Papa Hester was a sweet old guy. He used to say, “Son, youth only happens to you one time, so if you should miss it when you’re young, you can still have it when you’re old.” Although Papa just sat there on the porch all day long, doing nothing, I thought his words of wisdom were so thought provoking that, years later, they inspired me to write a song about him.

There’s an old man in our town,

I guess he’s been around

For years and years,

At least it seems that way.

Wrinkled hands and rocking chair,

Growing old just sitting there.

Every year he had the same old things to say.