I Lived to Tell It All Read online

  Well, we had about twenty thousand walk-ups. That meant we turned away about ten thousand people, not counting the few advance tickets we had sold. Traffic to get into the park was backed up for miles. The sheriffs department had to call off-duty deputies at home to help with traffic control. Television helicopters flew overhead for news coverage.

  After all the seats were filled, arrangements were made to put people on the ground. The crowd had anticipated that. Many had come with blankets and playpens. One or two had mattresses strapped on top of their cars. There were lawn chairs and ice coolers as far as the eye could see.

  We sold every scrap of food, and every ounce of liquid, from every outlet on the place.

  My country music theme park was a runaway hit!

  Conway Twitty joined Tammy and me for the grand opening. He had recently held the number-one slot on the country chart for four weeks with “Hello Darlin’ ” and had been a pioneer of rock ’n’ roll in the 1950s. Conway had had two glorious careers, and folks couldn’t wait to see him live at my park.

  Then Charley Pride showed up as a surprise guest. Charley was riding high with “Is Anybody Goin’ to San Antone,” a number-one song that became the biggest of his many hit records. Can you imagine how big the crowd would have been if he had been an advertised guest?

  Tammy sang her songs, I sang mine, Conway did his, and then Charley. The four of us, with the Jones Boys, wound up doing gospel songs together, and the crowd loved it. What had been planned as a two-and-a-half-hour show stretched into four and a half.

  No one left his seat.

  And best of all, I was drunk with success and pride and nothing else.

  Eventually, Merle Haggard, Charley Pride again, Johnny Cash, the Carter Family, Loretta Lynn, the Statler Brothers, Tom T. Hall, Jack Greene, and Jeannie Seely played the park, among others. Tammy and I worked it regularly.

  I opened my antique car collection to people with paid admission to the park. I had a 1929 Model A Ford, a German Steyr that had been used by Adolf Hitler, a 1936 Chevrolet, a 1940 Lincoln Zephyr, and a 1923 Cadillac that had hardly been driven.

  Webb Pierce, who had been one of country music’s biggest stars in the 1950s and 1960s, had owned a gaudy convertible that he featured on a record album cover. I forget what kind of car it was, but he paid Western fashion designer Nudie of Hollywood to cover the car’s interior with silver coins, sequins, and the like.

  I bought a Pontiac that Nudie had also converted. It was a white convertible, and there was a plastic dome to shield the interior. The dome was in the shape of a bubble top like those used by presidents seeking protection from assassins. (Mine wasn’t bullet-proof.) Nudie embedded four thousand silver dollars in the dashboard, console, doors, and a part of the floor. The console was actually a saddle.

  There was no part of the park that wasn’t a hit. And the city and county officials who had fought me while I built it suddenly became my allies. The park was listed in literature published by the Chamber of Commerce. It was touted by the Florida Department of Tourism. Everybody suddenly was in favor of my park. People who hadn’t wanted to cook the experimental meal wanted to dine at the banquet of success. But that was fine. I had felt alone while I pursued my dream, and it was refreshing to at last have supporters.

  I think that, by now, you get the point of how much I loved the estate that I worked so hard to build. It was my home and a big part of my livelihood.

  So why would I destroy it? It makes no sense to me, and I don’t think I did destroy it, not in the manner that’s been portrayed in books and motion pictures.

  Those accounts indicate that I had been sober for months when, for no reason, I got deliriously drunk.

  I don’t think so.

  I hadn’t quit drinking entirely, but when I got drunk, it was always for a reason. Perhaps a bad reason, but a reason nonetheless.

  Some accounts have it that I got up one morning in a great mood, went to town, and came back as a raging maniac. Again, I don’t think so, although I might have come home with liquor on my breath.

  In Stand By Your Man, Tammy wrote that I leaped from my bed after having passed out from drunkenness. She said that she and an employee had laid me down. She went on to say that she and the employee fled the house in fear of me but that “for an instant I froze in my tracks.” She was referring to a .30-30 rifle she said I had aimed at her back.

  “You may run out on me, baby. But you won’t run out on this,” she quoted me as saying. In the next paragraph, she said she heard the sound of a “loud click,” the gun’s safety being released.

  “Even as I was running the flesh was crawling on my back in terrified anticipation of a shotgun blast,” she continued.

  Now which was it—a rifle or a shotgun? One sentence claims I was aiming a rifle, and another claims I was aiming a shotgun.

  Tammy is from the country. She knows the difference between a rifle, which shoots one bullet at a time, and a shotgun, which shoots hundreds of pellets. Not knowing the difference is like not knowing a BB gun from a water pistol.

  Then Tammy claimed I fired a gun at her as she ran across our backyard. Nonsense.

  A 1981 TV movie adapted from her book showed me shooting up the interior of the house that I had worked so hard to remodel. The movie showed fixtures splattering in all directions from the force of a shotgun blast.

  Folks, it didn’t happen.

  Tammy also claimed that she sought the help of a two-hundred-pound man with biceps bigger than her waist. I don’t think so. If biceps were that big on a man that small, his head must have been the size of a watermelon.

  I don’t think so.

  In actual fact, men in white coats came to the house. They wouldn’t listen to a thing I had to say. They had the law on their side. I had my reputation against me.

  They put me in a straitjacket in the driveway of my dream home. Some of my employees watched. Thank God the authorities didn’t come on a concert day. No telling how many fans would have seen.

  I was placed in a padded cell, as if I were a mental patient, for ten days. For the first few days I wore that straitjacket and was fed with a spoon as if I were an infant. Someone helped me use the rest room. You can imagine the humiliation.

  Tammy went off on a tour with my band. I couldn’t reach her by telephone, and she never came to see me.

  I don’t remember much else about the time in the hospital, except that I was given a lot of literature about alcohol and intoxication and I took a few tests that made little sense to me. When they let me out, I went straight home. The place was a total disaster.

  Remember, there had been ten days for our maids to tidy up.

  I returned to broken dishes, glasses, and shattered fixtures of every kind. You’d have thought a tornado had struck the place.

  In January 1995, Cliff Hyder, who Tammy says in her book is one of her best friends, did a tape-recorded interview with Tom Carter. Cliff said he wondered if Tammy had ordered our staff to tear the place up so I would think I had made the mess.

  I don’t know.

  I know Tammy would have done almost anything to keep me from drinking, and, as I’ve admitted, I had been drinking the day she had me hauled away.

  I won’t hide the things I’ve done. I think this book’s honesty so far has indicated that. But I hate to be blamed for things I didn’t do. And I didn’t destroy our Florida mansion or shoot it full of holes. And I’ve never fired a gun at Tammy Wynette.

  Chapter 13

  The thing I remember most about my ride home from the hospital was that I traveled alone, except for a taxi driver who I’d never seen before and haven’t seen since. I paid him and walked by myself into the giant and empty house.

  Being by yourself, when you’re lonely, is hard anyplace. But it’s harder in big surroundings, especially if those surroundings hold memories of better times. My spacious home felt like a hollow mansion made for one.

  I missed Tammy and the baby. I missed Tammy’s relatives. I
missed the staff. I knew I had done wrong in getting drunk, but as I just said, I knew I hadn’t destroyed the interior like it was when I returned. I felt like the horrible mess was intentional and wondered how people I trusted could tear up something I loved so much. I had put my money, heart, and soul into the restoration of that house. Then I realized the wrecking had been done to try to teach me a lesson.

  “If you get drunk and hurt your loved ones, we’re going to hurt the house you love so much” was the unspoken implication.

  I’ll never know who actually did all of that incredible damage. But I know I didn’t, not to that degree.

  I wondered why no one was there to meet me. I’d been gone for ten days. My life had been on hold, but everyone else who lived there had lives that went on and largely at my expense. Even from inside the hospital I was the family’s principal supporter. On the day I came home, I felt like little more than a walking and talking meal ticket for some folks.

  Slowly, by myself, I began to clean the mess. For days, I swept and picked up and repaired quietly.

  I bought new lamps, fixtures, and art. I shopped for furniture. I patched the holes in the Sheetrock and painted the patches.

  By the time Tammy returned from Canada, it was as if nothing had happened to our beloved estate. The place looked new again. I thought about telling her that I suspected the place had been torn up to make me think I had destroyed it while drunk. But I knew that would only start an argument.

  So I welcomed her back to the Old Plantation and told her I was sorry I didn’t get to accompany her on her trip.

  I was sober for several weeks, and then I pitched another drunk for two or three days. My point is that although I continued to drink, I was drinking less quantity, and drinking less frequently, than I had since my first swallow as a teenager. I failed to see why Tammy didn’t encourage me when I was sober instead of pouncing on me when I slipped. Old habits die hard. I was putting mine to a hard but definite death. I really think I could have quit altogether if I’d had proper support. After all, I eventually did.

  But my gradual weaning from the bottle wasn’t good enough for Tammy. She wanted me to be instantly sober forever.

  So she left me.

  I came home one day, and she and the kids were gone. The staff acted like they didn’t know where they were. Then the Lakeland newspaper reported that Tammy Wynette had returned with her children to Nashville, where she had sued George Jones for divorce.

  If somebody hadn’t pointed out that story to me, I might have been the target of an uncontested divorce. I was never served divorce papers. Maybe Tammy could have convinced a Nashville judge that she didn’t know my whereabouts. Tammy was a persuasive person who enjoyed the good reputation in our marriage. I had the reputation of being the undependable drunk.

  I traced Tammy to the house we had in Nashville. I flew up there unannounced and knocked on her door. I thought that would prove how sincere I was about someday quitting liquor forever, if she would help me. And I thought it would show her how much I loved her, Georgette, and Tammy’s daughter, Tina, who I had adopted.

  Tammy showed me off the porch. I don’t think I even got inside the house before she told me to go away. So I did, to a bunch of Nashville bars, while Tammy went back to Lakeland.

  Many doctors and counselors would tell me during the upcoming years that I was sick with a disease called alcoholism. As I indicated earlier, I had always thought that heavy drinking was a moral failure, not a physical or mental sickness.

  To this day I’m not ready to take a stance either way. Maybe some folks are alcoholics and others are just voluntary drunks. Maybe some folks drink due to body chemistry and others due to their lazy characters. Maybe some have drinking problems, while others have problems enough to drink.

  If you have someone in your life with a drinking disorder for whatever reason, you’re not going to help that person, or yourself, by being insensitive. Or by nagging the person. Or by leaving when he or she is down.

  That’s hateful behavior.

  I’ve seen hate change many things for the worse. I’ve seen love change everything for the good.

  I didn’t need to hear that I was a drunk, not when I was trying so hard to quit and not when I was going through extended sober spells. My self-esteem was already low from the guilt I was constantly heaping on myself. I had watched my daddy damage his family by boozing, and I resented him for it. Here I was doing the same thing. But he never tried to quit like I was trying. All I needed, I know now, was a dedicated helper.

  I returned to our Nashville home, but Tammy was still in Lakeland. I followed her again.

  I walked into the Old Plantation, and before Tammy could say a word I told her I’d try harder than ever to quit drinking forever. I pleaded some more, and in a day or two she withdrew her divorce petition.

  After that, I’ll bet I was totally sober for a year.

  For George Jones to be sober for a year was incredibly significant. I’d never dreamed I’d make such a giant stride toward the end of my boozing. I actually thought I had it whipped. After a month or two, I didn’t even think in terms of getting drunk. If I got upset, I might get angry, sad, depressed, or whatever. But, thank God, I didn’t get drunk.

  I was making all of my personal appearances with Tammy, and I even gained some weight. I looked healthy. Smoking was my only bad habit.

  And I didn’t drink for the right reason—I didn’t want to. I’ve talked about the damage I had done to my career, marriage, and fatherhood. But I wanted to quit for yet another reason. My drinking had hurt virtually every friendship I’d ever had.

  I got drunk once and threatened to whip my buddy Cliff Hyder. Another time I was drunk and showed up on Ralph Emery’s radio show unable to speak without slurring my words. Ralph and I had been friends for years, during which time he had helped my career. I regretted the way I had embarrassed him and myself. I once promised Merle Haggard that I’d do a show for him if he’d do one for me. He did his show, and I missed mine because I was drunk. I could go on and on about how drinking had hurt my personal and professional relationships.

  One of the worst things I ever did was against Porter Wagoner.

  Tammy and I were playing the Grand Ole Opry. The show is run in segments, and Porter was the host of our segment. My mind became extremely altered when I mixed liquor with diet pills, and I often got very aggressive and hostile. Flat-out mean. I was drinking and taking pills when I saw Porter head for the men’s room at Ryman Auditorium.

  I had gotten it in my head that Tammy and Porter were seeing each other romantically. I followed Porter into the rest room and saw him standing at the urinal.

  I walked up behind him and shouted, “I want to see what Tammy’s so proud of!”

  Then I reached around and grabbed his dick. I twisted hard.

  Porter began to jump and wave his arms. His sequin suit made him a blur of shimmering silver. He doesn’t move much onstage. He moves a lot when you pinch his penis.

  He peed on himself and had to change clothes. Somebody said he missed his next segment and Ernest Tubb had to substitute.

  The next time I saw Porter I was sober, apologetic, and very humble.

  “Hey, man,” he said, “that behavior wasn’t you. That was a drunk man. I forgive you.”

  He was trying to be nice. He was trying to excuse behavior that was inexcusable. He said he forgave me, and maybe he did.

  But he didn’t forget.

  Almost a quarter century later, when Porter was asked to recall his interactions with George Jones, the only specific story he told was about the dick twisting. He told it to Tom Carter backstage at the Friday-night Opry and said he would call on Monday with additional recollections about our years together.

  He still hasn’t called.

  Imagine having a friend for four decades whose only pointed recollection for publication is that you twisted his dick.

  People always remember the worst. I know now that I exhibited som
e of the worst behavior imaginable during my days of heavy drinking.

  Unfortunately, the truly heavy drinking was yet to come.

  Despite our success as a touring duo, Tammy and I did not record together until 1971. Our first single was a remake of my 1965 hit “Take Me.” We had been doing the song on our show and decided to put it out as our first record.

  It was on the Billboard survey for thirteen weeks and peaked at number nine. The decision to record together was mutual between Tammy, our producer, Billy Sherrill, and me. I was still under contract to Musicor, and its executives wouldn’t let me record with Tammy on her label, Epic, unless I bought out my contract.

  I paid $300,000 to get out of one contract so I could enter another. Had I not paid the money, which I borrowed against royalties, there might never have been any duets by George Jones and Tammy Wynette. We recorded from 1971 through 1980 (five years after our divorce) and had thirteen single records. Three went to number one, including “We’re Gonna Hold On,” “Golden Ring,” and “Near You.”

  Two of the hits were largely the result of shrewd marketing.

  Rumors circulated about our pending divorce during the entire time we were married. We played into the hands of those rumors when we cut “We’re Gonna Hold On,” a song that sounded like our personal vow to hold on to our marriage no matter how difficult. The same was true of “The Ceremony,” a song that topped out at number six after fifteen weeks on the chart. That tune incorporated a spoken part that was supposed to be the voice of a minister performing a marriage ceremony. Then Tammy and I said our “vows” to each other.

  It sounds cheesy now, but it was a show-stopper for two people whose divorce was often the subject of tabloid speculation. People went crazy when we did “The Ceremony” live.

  With the records’ popularity, the fact that I was making all of my personal appearances with Tammy, and the success of the Old Plantation Music Park, Tammy and I were doing well financially. I was making more money than I ever had.

  But with success went demands—demands I could meet since I was sober. I just couldn’t be every place I was wanted at once.