Country Darkness

Day I. (continued)

"Southerners have a genius for psychological alchemy...If something intolerable simply cannot be changed, driven away or shot they will not only tolerate it but take pride in it as well."

-- Florence King

As I leave that embrace of the Carter Family Fold, and all of its warm hospitality, I make a bee-line for Bristol. I'm hungry and tired...in need of food, drink, and a bed. Been driving all day, and now I'm satisfied after walking into those hallowed halls the Carter's built.
I pass the Country Music Museum to my left...and a little further down, in the downtown part of Bristol, the sign welcomes me to Tennessee. Bristol is a rare city that is cut down the middle. It sits on the border between VA and TN, straddling one of those imaginary fences arbitrarily drawn by land-owners and state founders in the years after the conquest and removal of the indigenous Indians. (In this area it was the Northern band of Cherokee who's literacy rates were higher than our own U.S. national percentages currently.) I find a motel. Check in, and head to the gas station. I'm gonna buy some beef jerky, a pack of American Spirits, and ask someone where to go to buy a burger and a beer. The fella behind the counter tells me to go to O' Mannion's. "Its a family owned pub he assures me", and he thinks I'll like it. "Sounds right!" I reply and thank him for his advice.
Anyone who knows me, knows that I have no sense of direction. When God was handing out directional skills, I didn't get the memo. I was waiting in line for the 'overactive imagination' and 'bad temper' goods, instead. Suffice to say, I am lost in Bristol looking for O'Mannion's. Okay, I'll stop at another gas station and ask for a second opinion as to how to get to this joint. Its another BP, a few miles away from the last one. The man in line buying chewing tobacco is wearing a hat with the word "Rebel" and a tattered Confederate Flag on the front. Sleeveless shirt and real greasy hands, like he's been working on an engine. He looks like guys I grew up with. (Just cause I live in Philadelphia doesn't take the country out of me.) I ask him where to find this O'Mannion's. He looks me in the eye with a look as serious as a wake. 'You mean, O'Malley's', he gruffs. "Hmmmm, maybe I do mean O'Malley's" All this driving, and I'm tired, and the accents different down here. He gives me crystal clear directions. I'm making my way to O'Malley's.


Pulling up to the bar in the parking lot, I notice three things. 1. The giant American flag painted on the outside of the cinder block rectangular buidling.
2. The name of the bar hand-written in blood-red spray paint above the door. "O'Malley's" 3. The 'stars and bars' Confederate flags on every truck in the parking lot. Why would the first guy at the first gas station think that I'd like this place? Is this a joke, or worse...was he trying to lure the unsuspecting Yankee into a macabre modern day reenactment of the battle of Bristol. Okay, enough, I am not afraid of dives like this one...and I don't have trepidation at the site of the rebel flag. I get it, I think. And, the part I don't get, I don't pass judgment on.
Good or bad experience, this will certainly be an experience. I walk in, walk up to the bar, pull up a stool and sit down. NEXT TO A ROTTWEILER who is laying on top of the bar! I like dogs. The bartender comes up to me with a half-grin and asks me for ID. I produce it. "Pennsylvania?! We got a Yankee here boys!" The whole bar, which is lit by bare light bulbs in the ceiling fixtures and those long luminescent bulbs often used in drop ceilings, turns to look. I make eye contact with a few, and give a nod. Cinder block walls with one coat of hurriedly applied white primer paint. A Confederate battle flag occupies one entire wall at the far end of the room, at the other end - pool tables. Pool balls are being whacked in a game between two guys in t-shirts, jeans, mullets, and calloused looking working hands, dirtied from the day at the garage, I imagine. The jukebox switches to its next song,
It's Waylon, his barreling voice intimates,
"There only two things in life that make it worth livin'
That's guitars that tune good and firm feelin' women
I don't need my name in the marquis lights
I got my song and I got you with me tonight
Maybe it's time we got back to the basics of love"
If I had put the dollar in the jukebox, I would have picked this song myself, one of my favorite from Waylon Jennings. This place just got twelve times more welcoming.


Looking around the room, I see that, without exception, everyone in this bar is missing teeth in the front. I loathe stereotypes about toothless hick towns where people are racist and illiterate, etc...fill in the blank. I grew up in the sticks, with country people. We had horses and goats, and I often worked as a farm-hand for nearby farmers. I have and will defend country people til the day I die. But, I'm not exaggerating...everyone in this bar was missing a few teeth. The regulars were all VERY drunk, and flashing suspicious glances my direction at the "yankee alert" the bartender just trumpeted. He tells me, "If you can tell me where Daniel Boone and moonshine were from, I'll buy you a beer. I like these kinds of games, and the 'free beer' incentive is an added bonus. Especially cause I know the answer. "Boone and moonshine are both from Pennsylvania, my home state", I smile wide. The dog on the bar lifts his left ear. Mr.Bartender's eyes get real bright, he puts out his hand, I shake it. "Damn right, Yankee!, both from Pennsylvania, most people don't know that!" He laughs and shakes his head at the profound realization that someone else in his bar tonight is a student of history. I've won his friendship, or at least I've won the right to sit at his bar, next to his dog.


I'm drowsy with hunger. I ask if there is a bar menu. He points to a hole in the cinder block wall adjacent to the bar. "Go up to the hole and ask Cindy what she's got." I've never done this kind of thing before, that is, ask for dinner through a hole in a brick wall, so I'm kind of enthused at the prospect. I walk up to the hole, only to be obstructed by a very large woman who falls into me. She has kind tiny eyes squinting through her tiny crooked glasses lenses. Very short cropped hair, and a wide grin exposes a missing front tooth and two missing eye teeth. "Let me ask you something, see that woman over there across the bar, is that a man or a woman?" I stare across the barroom to a woman sitting at a table drinking Bud. She has a mullet, cut-off jean shorts, a tie-dye sleeveless shirt, sneakers with no socks at the bottoms of her long skeletal legs. Clearly, a woman. My new 'friend' blocking the 'food-hole' tells me that her brother, who then materializes near the bar and must have been hidden behind her girth, wants to "f*%#& that woman who is really a man".
"She's not a man! He slurs, and lurches forward at me, as if to threaten me not to take his sister's side. His breathe is heavy with whiskey, hard as kerosene (as Townes Van Zandt put it). His body language is announcing that he's ready and willing for a fight, and may even crave one, like a billy-goat warns before he gets on hind-legs and bucks. I disarm him by putting out my hand and saying, "Hi, I'm John, what's your name?" "Randy!", he bellows. He's a slight man with a huge beer gut, caked-in dirt and grease from his fingernails to elbows, bald, unshaven, and also missing a few chompers. "I'm her twin brother!" He announces to me, in a tone meant to be interpreted, "What do you say to that?". I try to lighten up the situation with, "Funny, You don't look anything alike." They both go totally straight-faced and say simultaneously, "We're not identical." At this point, I want to either get to that food-hole or go to my car and find a different establishment. His sister tells Randy to get out of my way so I can get to the food-hole.


A young blonde with very stringy hair, missing her two front teeth, asks me if I'm hungry. "Sure am" I say. "I'd like a cheeseburger." "No problem, sweetie. Comin' up". I like the custom of giving and receiving terms of endearment like 'sweetie' or 'darlin' from anyone, especially a lady, no matter how young or old. Its a dieing art. And this woman in the food-hole has mastered it. I head for the bathroom to wash up. Huh, no running water! The toilet is a hole in the floor...and the spigot at the sink turns, but not a drop comes. I take inventory of my situation. I'm enjoying this experience, albeit it's a bit more than I bargained for when I asked the locals for the best watering hole. I have a bottle of water and soap in the car. Perfect. I run to the trunk of my car, dig out the soap, wash up, and by the time I'm back in the door, my burger is waiting for me in the food-hole. "Enjoy it sweetie!" As she turns toward the kitchen light, through the food-hole, I notice the bruise on her cheekbone. "I will, thank you.". Pulling up my stool, and sipping on my Budweiser, the sound of kamikazi flies dieing on the bug-light in the corner breaks the silence between songs. The bartender saunters over to me wanting to introduce me to his dog, who is now eyeballing my burger, panting. "His name is trigger! Know why I named him Trigger?" He asks expectantly. I don't respond. He continues, "Cause it rhymes with nigger and I taught him how to bite niggers!!" He laughs hysterically. "And he don't even like how they taste!" I decide to pay my bill. I'm not leaving because of his comment or his dog's affinity for biting black people, I'm leaving cause my stomach is turning with a cocktail of suppressed anger and sorrow, pity for this man and his dillusional little life. I shake his hand on the way out, and he says, "Come back and see us again,now!" I answer with silence.


I'm driving back to town. This burger is getting tossed out the window. I'm not hungry anymore. I find my Waylon Jennings cd with the song on it, "Let's go to Luckenbach Texas with Waylon and Willie and the boys
This successful life we're livin' got us feuding
like the Hatfield and McCoys
Between Hank Williams pain songs, Newberry's train songs
and blue eyes cryin' in the rain out in Luckenbach Texas
ain't nobody feelin' no pain..."
I breathe deep lung-fulls of the country air outside my open window. Passing back into town via State Street, I see a shamrock above a pub door with a sign hanging out in front of a crowded bar. The sign reads, "O'Mannion's".