Between Wrecks (28 page)

Among Columbus Choice's closest friends in adulthood, I want to single out for special thanks Wesley Fulmer, of Fulmer's Work Clothes Supply, for information about Columbus Choice's need for a three-pocket apron; to Bentley Canfield, of Canfield's Restaurant Supply, for information concerning how Columbus preferred those flat, no-roll pencils that carpenters normally use on jobsites; to Dean Willis, of Exotic Pets of Oak Ridge, for his unofficial prognosis that Columbus Choice suffered from both arachnophobia and ophidiophobia, but that he came into the store totally obsessed with the lives and habits of most amphibians, and had a special connection with a pair of tiger salamanders (they can live to be twenty-five years old!), who finally died—one right after the other, as if they were love birds, or doves, or beavers, or ospreys, or voles, or any of those other matrimonially significant animals—which caused Columbus to become significantly depressed, which happened (was it a coincidence?) right before he went off with the Plemmons brothers on that ill-fated trip.

I have read enough biographies of famous biographers—which makes them
autobiographers
, also—to know that most writers suffer physically, mentally, financially, and matrimonially, just like I did while undergoing my long work project. I have to admit that—because not everyone in mid-central-southern Tennessee has cable access and watches
Antiques Roadshow, Treasures in the Attic, If Walls Could Talk, Junkin'!, That's Not a Bedpan, At the Auction, The Appraisal Fair, Don't Throw that Away!, Forever Tarnished and Crazed
, and/or
Flip This Knick-Knack
—I ended up being able to make ends meet after I lost that job teaching History 101 at Tennessee Valley Community College because well-meaning people threw away their so-called junk out on the edge of Highways 29, 27, 61, 62, 162, 58, 328, 299, the Oak Ridge Turnpike, and Margrave Drive over in Harriman. So I want to thank all those people who placed their Stickley furniture and Queen Anne chairs out on the roadside, which I shoved into my car, didn't restore seeing as I knew enough as to not compromise the patina (or patin
i
), and then sold to a man in Chattanooga, who knew a man in Nashville, who knew a man in Memphis, who knew a woman in Chicago, who knew a woman in New York City, who probably sold everything to a man in Atlanta—somebody like Ted Turner.

I would be remiss in not thanking Ted Turner for starting the entire cable TV industry, which enabled everyday people to start

up stations like Home and Garden Television, Style, Oxygen, Lifetime, the Learning Channel, Arts and Entertainment, the Discovery Channel, and so on, which air programs daily like
For What It's Worth
, et al.

I would also like to thank the people who developed and aired the Food Network, seeing as I learned many, many new tricks and recipes in regards to cooking on an electric eye, and then a gas stove, and then on an old-school Coleman MatchLight two-burner propane stove. Maybe one day I'll be one of your celebrity chefs, after
No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee
becomes well known, et cetera. Maybe y'all will come down here and I'll show you some of the things that kept me alive while I worked on Columbus's biography.

Here's a taste, so to speak: Kraft macaroni and cheese with a can of Campbell's oyster stew thrown in. Stir thoroughly. I call it “White Trash Calabash.” Here's another: Kraft macaroni and cheese, a can of Chicken of the Sea tuna packed in spring water, Dole pineapple chunks, and green chiles. Mix well. I call it “Elbow Chicken of the Hawaiian Sea, Amigo.” There are other recipes that involve Vienna sausages, potted meat, and a variety of food that Columbus Choice, I know, wouldn't approve of, seeing as he was such a gourmand before he got lynched by the Plemmons brothers. Anyway, I thank the people of the Food Network all the way to a boiling point.

Juanita Wilkins, ex-History 101 student and current phlebotomist, told me one time that she'd invented a hangover cure that involved day-old Kraft macaroni and cheese, day-old bread, Spam that accidentally got left out overnight, all mixed in with day-old coffee that she called Mysterious Caffeinated Wonder Pasta, but you'd have to get in touch with her if you ever wanted to try it. She'd be good on any of your programs, seeing as truckers and housewives with a curious lesbian side might like to look at her.

It would be a frightful error if I forgot to include Dr. Sammy Alexander for his free foot diagnosis over at the Oak Ridge Medical Clinic, and for telling me that I didn't A) contract diabetes; or B) have some kind of disease caused by toxic chemicals dumped into a variety of creeks and rivers where I'd washed by socks and shoes at one time or another. Who would've thought that tea tree oil could eradicate toenail fungus? What a miracle drug! Thanks for the suggestion and insights, Dr. Alexander. And I didn't have to go into one of those chain drug stores and feel like a leper, standing in line with an expensive tube of Fung-Off for everyone to see and make judgments as to my hygienic practices or lack thereof. And thank you, too, for helping out with my good friend J.W. when she couldn't afford those women's clinics in Memphis or Nashville or Chattanooga.

I am indebted to Python Dave McCarter for his fine tattoo artistry on my biceps over the years at Ink Well. At least the
heart
‘s still there with the arrow through it!

Goodwill Industries and the Salvation Army Thrift Store deserve a heap of recognition for offering down-on-their-luck hardworking biographers a place to purchase clean, like-new men's dress shirts for a dollar each. I found it terribly important to feel successful, though I had not been successful whatsoever at this point, in my writing endeavors. Furthermore, I wish to thank all of the thrift store associates for being lenient when it came to “senior citizen discounts.” I'm not too proud to say that it got to the point where it was cheaper for me to buy new used shirts and throw them away than it was to waste all those quarters at Nuclear Wash-o-Matic.

Maybe even more important for a biographer is the fine selection of books to be found at Salvation Army and Goodwill Industry thrift stores. It can be difficult to own a bookcase when living in a campground, so I advise any future biographers out there to buy one book at a time, then donate it back for tax purposes (always have hope that one day you'll make enough money to pay taxes!), or choose one of the fine cracked near-leather or stained cloth Strato-Loungers in the showroom in which to read a couple chapters at a time. If you keep a Bible handy at the Salvation Army, no employee will ask you to leave, I have found.

The Oak Ridge Oatmeal Breakfast Club, whose members served bowls of Quaker Oats each weekday morning at the Oak Ridge Mercy Center, provided Dooley and me with needed sustenance when I was in town to interview ex-employees and friends and relatives of Columbus Choice—or to read fascinating biographies of Jesse Owens, Colin Powell, and the Dalai Lama—and I offer y'all a hearty slap on the back.

I am in indebted to the Candle Corporation of America, a subsidiary of Blyth, Incorporated, for their fine, reliable product, Sterno.

I wish to thank the staff of Dermo-Laser for their expertise in Q-Switched Ruby and Neodynium YAG lasers, with three wavelengths, to break up “Abby” into smaller particles that vanished from my bicep, and then “Juanita,” which I had Python Dave tattoo prematurely. I know that y'all might exaggerate somewhat when you say that it'll only feel like a rubber band snapping on the skin, but to be honest it felt a little more like a bad rope burn. Although I'm no psychiatrist, I feel certain that that notion of the rope burn urged me onward subconsciously to tell the story of Columbus Choice's lynching.

I would like to acknowledge the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities. I
cannot
, but I would like to do so. Evidently my plan of action regarding
No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee
did not sway the voting committee, or whatever they have up there at the NEH. I completely understand. I do not bear a grudge, nor do I wish to exact vengeance on any of the highly qualified members up there in Washington, D.C. I read recently that somebody received one of the NEH grants in order to work on the
Selected Papers of Reggae Icon Bob Marley
. Selected
rolling
papers, maybe. But I understand. Up until my biography of Columbus Choice hits the shelves of every college and university library in America (and Jamaica, I suppose), no one will understand how Columbus's lynching affected our fast-paced modern-day society of men and women, the bigoted and the rational.

I would like to offer thanks to the support I received from the National Endowment for the Arts, but, again, I didn't receive one of their grants, so I cannot thank those people, either. I believe the NEA folks are up in our nation's capital, also. Maybe I didn't make it clear enough in my application that Columbus Choice was also a folk artist. He hung his primitive, naïve paintings—done with latex house paint on asbestos roofing shingles, cedar plank shingles, tin roof scrap, terra cotta shingles, and pieces of slate roofs. Unlike other folk artists of his generation, he didn't paint on plywood, one-by-twelve pine lumber, sheetrock, or refrigerator doors. Why? Because he got the
shingles
back when he was in the army, learning how to cook fine kosher meals from his friend from Brooklyn, who may or may not have been a tyrant in the kitchen. I read somewhere how a supposed scholar received both an NEH and NEA grant to write a biography about the artist Joseph Beuys, who supposedly crashed a German plane in World War II, got rescued by Tartar tribesmen who wrapped him in felt and fat, and then went on to make all these sculptures using felt and fat. I found the book and read it. Well, I read parts of it, enough to know that Beuys made up that story about getting rescued by tribesmen. So one guy gets two big-ass grants to work on a biography of a lying artist, and here I am in Tennessee, dirt poor, living in a fucking campground part of the time, and I can't get a reach-around from the NEA. Maybe I should've called my biography
No Cover Available: The Story of Lying Folk Artist Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee
.

But, again, I suppose those people in Washington, D.C., know a lot more about who deserves grant money as opposed to me. Or I. See, I don't even know grammar, so maybe that should prove to me how come someone who makes a documentary of himself counting the thorns on a rose bush deserves monies as compared to an independent scholar wishing the world to understand the complex life of a black man in central Tennessee whose mission was to teach the masses about the dietary advantages of jellyfish.

I want to thank whoever runs that reality-based television program that involves a tyrant chef. Without watching that show, I might not have understood how Columbus Choice wanted to prove everyone wrong in regards to his mastery of the kitchen.

I want to thank Mr. Walker Hitt for not pressing charges, and that other guy for believing me when I said I walked into his place with a vintage Sheaffer fountain pen.

The Southern Poverty Law Center, founded by good Morris Dees and Joe Levin in 1971, has done some extraordinary and brave work in regards to civil rights and hatemongers. I would like to thank them for their moral support. After I wrote them all about my project concerning Columbus Choice, they informed me that they didn't tender financial support, outside of their “Teaching Tolerance” grants. They couldn't give me money, though, seeing as I no longer taught History 101 at Tennessee Valley Community College after I walked off the job due to Juanita Wilkins's misdirected allegations. One day, Southern Poverty Law Center, one day!

I hate to admit it, but I contacted the neo-Confederate group League of the South in hopes that they would pay me
not
to publish
No Cover Available: The Story of Columbus Choice, African-American Sushi Chef from Tennessee
. What the hell. Here's the letter I got back from one of those people, who say that they're not racists, et cetera, but still want to secede from the union because of black people: “Dear Mr. Stet Looper. We dont' [sic] care about no books [sic] ritten [sic] about no niger [sic] juw [sic] boodist [sic]. If you ast [sic] us, a juw [sic] boodist [sic] is nothing more than a Judas.”

It went on some more. Most of it was illegible—evidently supporters of the Confederacy don't believe in typewriters, much less computers—but I'm pretty sure I made out “die, die, niger-lover [sic]” and “you cain't [sic] spell ‘triggers' without ‘grits'.”

Have you ever noticed how “sic” and “sick” are close together in spelling? There's a reason for that. I can't claim thinking that up myself, though—I'm pretty sure I read it in “Dear Abby” one time. Anyway, they didn't give me money to
not
publish the book, which makes me happy that I published it so more people will understand the hateful commitment of League of the South members.

I want to thank the Clash for their song “Police on My Back.”

I am indebted to the drug cartels of both Mexico and Colombia. When no one else would send me money to complete the biography, I had no other choice but to go find the sunken motorboat of Juanita Wilkin's cousin, Willie Wilkins, who once transported marijuana and cocaine up and down the rivers of the Tennessee Cumberland Plateau. Willie took three years of Spanish in high school, and got tabbed to be a runner, somehow. I'm serious. I figured this out sans the help of his cousin: the Hispanic population had infiltrated the entire southeast because no one else had the work ethic to pick peaches, apples, burley tobacco, and so on. One of Willie's classmates had a friend, who had a relative, who had a friend, and so on. Next thing you know, a guy named Guillermo is saying in Spanish to Willie, “Would you be interested in picking up some drugs and then trafficking them upriver to some people, who will traffic the drugs upriver to some people,” and so on, until the drugs reached Cincinnati, or Detroit, or Woodland Caribou Provincial Park up in Ontario.