Waylon (6 page)

Most Saturday nights we’d drive over to a jamboree in the little town of Whiteface, named after the cattle. There used to
be a theater there, and they paid me enough for gas. Maxine and I would park on the way back, trying to get out of the way
of the steering wheel, off some back road near the county line separating Lamb and Hockley, while the flatlands of Texas receded
all around us.

Or we’d go to Ed Taylor’s drive-in. It didn’t matter what was showing. We were always in the back seat, necking. You just
knew this was the night. This had to be the one. I’d try to get her to give-it-up at the drive-in, and we’d usually stop on
the way back home, where I’d give-it-another try.

For the first year, all Maxine really gave me was the stone-aches, bad. After I’d drop her off at the house, I’d be doubled
over, having to walk spraggle-legged from where I’d kissed her goodnight. I couldn’t wait to get out of sight. The only way
I could relieve myself after one of our hot dates was to jump out of the car, go around the front and grab the bumper, spread
out my legs, and strain real hard to lift it off the ground.

We were just kids. We had no idea what we were doing, both Before and After. Even though I’d had plenty of girlfriends, I
was dumber about women than anything in the world. My daddy had taught us boys to put our mother on a pedestal, and that she
could do no wrong. There was none of this smarting off or talking rough to Momma. Daddy wouldn’t put up with it. Consequently,
even though my momma may not have been perfect, we thought she was, and every girl in the world was going to be like her.

On Christmas Eve, 1955, I went with Maxine, our moms, and Tommy to the home of the Church of Christ’s pastor in Clovis, New
Mexico, and got hitched. It was a Saturday night, and it wasn’t really considered a wedding. It was more like going to get
married.

Maxine thought she was pregnant. I didn’t tell Momma, and I don’t think she told her mother, but they probably suspected.
You could get married without a blood test in New Mexico.

We didn’t know anything about birth control. Rubbers and rumors, that was about it. Even if I had a clue, I never had the
nerve to go in the drugstore and get them. In Littlefield? Are you kidding me? They kept them behind the counter, so rather
than risk embarrassing yourself, you took the chance of ruining everybody’s life, including your own. No reflection on Maxine,
but I didn’t want to get married right then.

I was so young. You can’t have a clue at that age about marriage and trying to make a go of it, especially when you’re a country
boy right off the turnip truck, uneducated and still searching for your place in the world. You start realizing you have to
make a living, and worry about raising children. I couldn’t figure out how I was going to take care of a wife and baby.

I couldn’t even figure out how late she was. I never thought about abandoning her. Hell, I’d already committed the ultimate
sin from the way I was raised. We went ahead and got married, and on our wedding night she started her period. That’s old
country boy luck for you.

Still, there we were, already married, so I was going to make the best of it. The women gathered around and gave her a shower
at the home of a Mrs. R. C. Blevins on January 5, and we moved to a small house opposite the high school on North Lake. It
was the same place I’d lived as a kid.

We had no idea how to even get along. As far as being helpmates to one another, we’d get in a fight over the stupidest things.
I’d think we were going to have Mexican food, and she’d make a hamburger casserole, and it’d hurt both our feelings. For spite,
we’d wind up throwing it out and going hungry.

As it was, we could hardly make ends meet. I was working for the Thomas Land Lumber Company, earning forty-five dollars a
week. Verle Roberts at the Roberts Lumber Company thought I was a good worker and wanted to hire me. I told him I wouldn’t
change jobs for less than $48.50 a week take-home, and after some wrangling, he finally gave it to me.

That slavedriver made me earn every bit of it. He was a taskmaster, having me come in early and stay late, picking at me with
his high voice, working me to death. One day I was driving the cement truck and I took a corner too damn fast. If you turn
quick in a cement truck, it’ll
slarsh,
all go to one side, and you’re a goner. It rolled over on me, spilling across these people’s lawns. That was the last day
I worked at the lumber company. I got out of the truck, shut the door, and went home. Once again.

Hello, this is Waylon Jennings coming over the Voice of Lamb County, KVOW, 1490 on your radio dial in Littlefield, bringing
you twenty-three reguley, uh, regularily, uh, regularlee scheduled newscasts a day.
…

I was on the radio. I might not have been able to pronounce “regularly,” but for six hours, from four in the afternoon to
ten at night, the airwaves were mine. I had a two-hour country show, and then another two hours of the classics, where I had
some more pronunciation problems, and then another two of whatever was left over: Waltz Time, Today’s Symphonies, Mantovani.

KVOW specialized in block programming, which meant they played all kinds of music. The whole station was held together with
barbed wire and spit, and I’d been working there since I was barely a teenager. By the time 1956 was underway, I was almost
an old pro. I’d play the records, announce the ads, and sing songs over the air. A man named Ed Taylor loaned me an old Martin
guitar, and I used to take requests from the listeners, even if it sometimes meant I would sing one song to the tune of another.

I couldn’t afford to buy a guitar of my own. I’d had an electric guitar, with one pickup and an Alamo amplifier. I hit a big
E chord and that thing jumped a foot off the floor. The speakers just busted immediately. I ordered a Kay out of a catalogue,
and I thought it would never arrive. I had to sell it after I got married. Keeping a guitar and a wife was way out of my range.

I knew I would be leaving Littlefield soon. It was just a matter of time. I always figured in the back of my mind that people
divide themselves in two: the ones who don’t know it’s out there and those who know there’s something somewhere else.

When you live in Littlefield, you’re at the center of the world as you’re aware of it. You might hear about things, but there’s
really no way of being sure they exist. You can catch a glimpse in the movies, or listen real hard and hear it on the radio,
or sniff it out of the air. The ones who know something’s out there and don’t go looking for it are the ones who grow old
fast. The ones who don’t care, well, they’re happy staying where they are.

I couldn’t be like that. I had to get out. From the time I was a kid, I never considered doing anything but playing music.
Everything else was a stepping-stone. I was stubborn enough not to lose sight of what I wanted, and dumb enough not to realize
just how long and hard the road was going to stretch for me, and how much I would have to fight for what I believed.

Jimmy Stewart, who still runs his tractor along Hall Avenue when he’s not pitching horseshoes, likes to tell me that I never
gave up and I never gave in. I didn’t have a choice. All I could do was dream, sitting under that big Texas sky. It was like
I saw a black cat running across my path and I pulled my handkerchief out and chewed the corner off of it to kill the bad
luck. That cat was my lifeline if I stayed in Littlefield, and the handkerchief was my guitar. My singing did the chewing.

I used to love going to the carnival when I was little, especially to see the carousel horses. It wasn’t so much riding them
around and around, grabbing at the brass ring, that got to me. Rather, it was their look. They were all wild, they were all
free, they were all running. Not controlled by anyone or anything. That was what I was drawn to. The motion of freedom.

If I’d stayed in Littlefield, I might have wound up like one of those coyotes they tie to the fence post and let rot, as a
warning. Or maybe I would’ve ended like Ol’ Pat, sick and crippled and no teeth. We kids would go to the store for him, or
visit him in his little one-room shack; he was real lonely. He let us smoke, and we’d sit and talk to him and keep him company.
Ol’ Pat didn’t want us messing up his bed, so he hammered nails through a board and put it under the bedspread. One day, when
I was about nine, I came in and found him. He was the first dead person I’d ever seen.

The empty shells of wooden windmills surround Littlefield like sentinels watching and waiting for a war that’s already passed.
There was a time they pumped water and caught the wind. Sometimes the taller they stood, the more precarious their hold on
the earth, and the more they had to battle that which they were designed to catch. The world’s highest windmill was built
on the XIT ranch in 1887. Its 132 feet was toppled by the winds in 1926. Only a replica now stands at the corner of Delano
and Phelps.

The higher I tried to rise, the more chance I might’ve had to be blown over.

My hometown hasn’t changed much since I was a little boy. Whenever I’m back, I get in the car and start driving around. I’m
searching for my youth. Looking for my past. The trees I planted with Tommy are still there; they’re grown now, and so am
I. Sometimes, if I squint a bit, I think maybe the folks I’m expecting to see are still there too. Around the bend, turning
the next corner, about to open the door.

Tater Gilbreath lives over yonder. He and his family can pull a bale and a half of cotton a day. He’s my best friend, and
in the summer our feet get so tough from running barefoot that grass spurs, goat’s heads, and devil’s claws can’t break our
stride. Not a day goes by that we aren’t fighting. Tater’s momma comes running out of the house with a belt or a switch and
starts whipping on us. She wears thick glasses and can’t see nothing but two pairs of overalls. If I’m on top and beating
Tater, I’ll get the worst of it.

Marge Veach, the war bride, she’s going to make some cakes and fudge for us after I get back from Brawley’s grocery store.
Look at Fred Harrell’s two Cadillacs, both bedstead green, a ’39 with a wheel in the running board and a ’47 convertible.
Maybe get me one like that someday.

We can stop for a bite at Two Gun’s restaurant. He’s cross-eyed; one eye goes to Dallas and the other to Fort Worth. Hey,
there’s Cleve up in the tree, singing for all the world like Roy Rogers. Let’s play cowboys and take a pretend shot at him.
I know that crazy idiot’ll fall plumb to the ground. If he gets hurt we could take him over to Doc Simmons. He’s not really
a doctor, but hell, Cleve’s head is too hard to hurt much anyway.

You hear about the murders over on Seventh? Killed the man and his wife, left the kids tied up in the bedroom. Or the wedding
party where the best man tore down the back roads after the happy couple off on their honeymoon. The newlyweds made a left
as the road swerved. The best man didn’t. They’re still picking up his pieces in the cornfield.

Maybe I’ll go see Rae, prancing like a thoroughbred racehorse, or Georgeanne. Try to get them to take a ride up to Blueberry
Hill lover’s lane. Nasty nasty nasty.

Here comes Wendell and Tommy cutting me off as I’m driving out of town, running over the field and through the alley, trying
to catch me. I can’t stop now. I’m on my way.

W
hat if,” I asked my dad one day somewhere in the early 1950s, “they mixed black music with the white music? Country music
and blues?”

“That might be something,” Daddy replied, and went back to pulling transmissions.

On a fall morning in 1954, listening to KVOW’s
Hillbilly Hit Parade,
I heard that something. I was taking my brother to school. It was about 8:20, and the reason I remember is that the program
was only on for fifteen minutes each day, from 8:15 to 8:30
A.M.

Elvis Presley was singing “That’s Alright Mama” and “Blue Moon of Kentucky.”

The sound went straight up your spine. The way he sang, the singer sounded black, but something about the songs was really
country. Maybe it was the flapping of that big doghouse bass, all wood thump, and the slapback echo of the guitars wailin’
and frailin’ away. It just climbed right through you. I had grown up hearing Bill Monroe sing “Blue Moon of Kentucky,” but
this was something entirely different.

I thought, what a wild, strange sound. Up at the station, I looked at the yellow Sun label from Memphis as if it were from
Mars. I started listening for it. They didn’t know what to call Elvis yet on the radio, though they thought of him as a country
artist. “That’s one of our boys there,” they’d say, just to let their listeners know. But nobody was sure of what he was going
to mean.

One thing was for certain. When he came to Lubbock in January of 1955, he was billed as the King of Hillbilly Bop. Dave Stone
of KDAV had first booked him for an ungodly little amount, a hundred and fifty dollars or something. Fifty dollars apiece
for the three of them.