Honky Tonk Angel (41 page)

“That ‘music room’ was one of the nicest and most comfortable rooms I’d been in. You felt right at home at Patsy and Charlie’s, just the way she sang in ‘Come On In.’ It had a beautiful parquet floor with all different shades of wood. There was a bar padded in red Naugahyde with the words ‘Patsy and Charlie’ studded into the leather covering. A covered-wagon planter with a huge snake plant and a cowboy-boot cigarette lighter sat on the bar. Patsy displayed her collection of salt and pepper shakers and her ceramics. She had a black cougar, a Brahma bull, a toy poodle, and I don’t know what all.”

There was a couch that turned into a bed, an overstuffed recliner, and a hi-fi on a rollabout table. Patsy had record albums everywhere. On the wall she hung her two album covers alongside those of Webb Pierce, Red Foley, Burl Ives, the Wilburns, and Brenda Lee’s first.

“We loved that kitchen!” Brenda laughed. “A little too much! Patsy and I had one thing in common. We gained weight so easily and we were always on a diet I have wonderful memories of Dottie and Loretta coming over. They’d exchange recipes and cook. We’d sit in there and eat and talk about the road, which didn’t help our diets one bit.

“I felt Patsy had a trait common among show business folk. In spite of fame and her newfound wealth, she was lonely. Maybe that was another reason Julie and Randy were the light of her eyes. God, she was a terrific mother!”

Dottie so looked forward to Patsy’s return from the road that she sometimes waited for her on Nella Drive. “I’d help her clean and cook. I’d do anything just to be with her. I had her on a pedestal. She used to kid me about that, saying, ‘Sister, you know what birds do to them things!’

“That house was her mansion, the sign she’d arrived. Patsy loved to shop for
that house and was
always
surprising Charlie with some new piece of furniture or an appliance. That gave her such pleasure.”

Arriving one day as furniture was being delivered, Dottie commented, “Well, it looks like you cleaned out that store on Donaldson Pike.”

“Didn’t I!” Patsy agreed. “What do you think?”

“Honey, it’s all gorgeous.”

“And
expensive! That salesman looked at me in my gold lamé pedal pushers and said, ‘This piece may be out of your range.’ I told him, ‘I don’t care how much it costs, I want it.’ He said, ‘Mrs. Dick, you have good taste!’ I told him, ‘Yeah, it’s called money!’”

Nothing was ever out of place. “When you walked in the front door, there was a small foyer,” Dottie said. “Patsy’d wax it and wax it. I’d kid her, ‘Aren’t you afraid you’ll wear through it?’ If someone walked on it, she’d grab the dustmop and touch it up. Once Charlie was standing there and laughed, ‘Dottie, can’t you make her stop?’ Patsy snapped, ‘Not till I see my face!’ He said, ‘Honey, we have mirrors! Dottie, what are you gonna do? Patsy helps the help!’

“When she was home, you couldn’t get Patsy away from her babies. That’s what she called them. How she loved doing things for them, like buying clothes and toys and giving them birthday parties. When she’d go on the road, she’d say, ‘I feel guilty every time I go off and leave them, but I know they understand.’ I wanted success and dreamed of being a star, but I had children and I saw how the business tore her up when she left them. It made me stop and think.”

Just after Patsy and Charlie moved to Nella Drive, Dottie and Loretta were getting the grand tour. Patsy was mopping the foyer. She put the dustmop aside and said, “Y’all come outside with me.” They walked into the front yard. Patsy went up to the curb, turned, and looked at her house with tears pouring down her face.

“Patsy, what’s the matter?” asked Dottie.

“I just love this house, Hoss. I waited so damn long. I was so naive.”

“What do you mean, Patsy?”

“Y’all, I thought I wanted the future, when all along it was the past I was aching for. Tell me, what happened to yesterday?”

“Why are you down, hon?” Dottie admonished her. “Look at what you have!”

“Right. I have something that’s made the waiting worth it. This is my castle, my blood, sweat, and tears. Now that I have it, I wonder if it’ll bring me happiness. I’ll never be happy till I build Mama one just like it. When I die, tell ’em to lay me out right there in the living room!”

“Patsy, for God’s sake!” Dottie exclaimed.

“Hoss, I mean it!”

Roy Drusky found Randy his plane, a green-and-white Piper Comanche. He considered the identification number, N7000P, a good omen. “Seven’s your lucky number,” he told Randy, “and that P’s for papa.” Randy made a down payment and that May they flew to St. Louis to take delivery.

Harlan Howard reported that on those rare days Randy allowed Patsy off, usually early in the week, he helped her relax by taking her flying. Leaving the car
at Cornelia Fort Air Park, they flew off someplace warm and sunny for the afternoon. Pensacola was a mutually favored destination.

“Ain’t this a hoot,” Patsy said one day, “flyin’ to Pensacola for lobster on the beach!”

“You said you been working too much,” Randy answered, “and I need to get as much experience in this thing as possible.”

“This is the first time since Christmas I’m doing something I wanna do.”

“Great. I’m glad you’re enjoying it.”

“Hoss, I got some news for you.”

“Shoot.”

“I’m slowing down.” Randy remained silent. “Maybe you couldn’t hear me,” Patsy shouted. “I said I’m slowing down.”

“I heard you!”

“That’s it? No argument?”

“Patsy, we’ve been through this before. You’re riding high! We’re demanding big money and getting it. You’ve had four hits in a row, and Decca’s banging the drums on your third album. We got everything going! Now’s the time to work.”

“We’re raking it in, all right, but there ain’t a minute to spend it. I’m working more than I should and feeling the worse for it. And I hate going out on the road four and five days a week and leaving behind my babies.”

“Charlie’s good with the kids, and now you have that colored woman to help when you’re on the road.”

“Guess I was wrong.”

“About what?”

“I thought you were the only sane man I know. If you were, you’d know nothing’s as good as their mother! The kids’re all that’s left of what was right. I hate to think what goes on in that house as soon as I’m out the door.”

“You and Charlie. He promises to stop drinking, but can’t. You have him arrested, then go bail him out. You threaten to leave, but don’t. Seems y’all are always through forever—till tomorrow.”

“By the time I make up my mind to leave, my mind’s already gone. Charlie’s made his choices. There ain’t nothing I can do ’bout ’em. Anyway, mind your own business.”

“You are my business.”

“Dollar signs are all I mean to anyone!”

“Now wait a goddamn minute! Didn’t you tell me to keep you working so you could pay for your dream house?”

“Yeah. And I’ll keep working, but I’m just gonna put albums out.”

“Listen, it don’t work that way! You got to go out and meet your public or they soon forget you. If we play our cards right, we can make more money and sooner on public appearances than we can on record royalties. Remember, you ain’t the only woman in this business anymore.”

“Randy, did you say you gonna land this bird right on the beach?”

“Patsy, they’ve got an airport in Pensacola. And that’s right, change the subject!”

“Oops! Steady there. You’re sure you know how to fly this thing?”

“Yep—”

“Just checking. Don’t forget, I gotta be home before the stores close. Julie’ll be four Saturday, and since you got me working all weekend, I’m giving her party tomorrow.”

“No problem. I don’t have a license to fly at night anyway. Get your bib ready, we’re coming in for a landing!”

In the June 5 issue of
Billboard,
“When I Get Thru with You” ranked number 10 on the country chart. The flip side, “Imagine That,” came one notch away from the top 20. Both tunes performed respectably in pop. The A-side made it to 53; the B, to 90. Though promoters balked, Randy shot Patsy’s asking price sky high, elevating her to her own special place in the business. No longer would she play taverns, roadhouses, or high school auditoriums.

Patsy coheadlined on June 15 with Johnny Cash at the Hollywood Bowl in an event billed as the “Shower of Stars” and “the first and largest combined spectacular of folk, country and western, and bluegrass performers to be held on the West Coast.” The lineup included George Jones, Don Gibson, Mother Maybelle and the Carter Family, Leroy Van Dyke, Gordon Terry, Johnny Western, and Hank Cochran. Backup was provided by Cash’s band, the Tennessee Three.

In the vast audience was Patsy’s mother, whom she’d flown out. “Patsy never accepted the fact that she’d made it. She liked to have me with her for the big shows and, of course, it was a thrill. She was so insecure, she’d make me sit in the audience so I’d tell her what people said. I’d hear a man say she was great and then a woman say she didn’t think Patsy was so hot.

“At the end of the shows, before she’d close with ‘Lovesick Blues,’ Patsy’d say from the stage, ‘One of the best friends I have in the world is here tonight. I want you to meet her—Mrs. Hilda Hensley from Winchester, Virginia, my mother.’ I’d just sit there, but Patsy’d say, ‘Mom, if you don’t stand up and take a bow, I won’t go on with the show!’ When I’d stand, the people around me were more embarrassed than me. Nobody said another word the rest of the evening.”

Jan and Harlan Howard surprised Johnny, June, and the Carters and Patsy by coming out for the show with their family. “It was a show I’ll never forget,” Jan insisted. “What a lineup! It was memorable. We were seeing less and less of each other, so we had an extensive ‘yak’ session. I remember that night for another reason. It must have been one of the coldest nights in Los Angeles history, and in June!”

Patsy stayed with the “Shower of Stars,” playing Phoenix on the sixteenth, Tucson on the seventeenth, then Douglas and Safford, Arizona, El Paso, and Albuquerque.

When she returned home on July 8 after a rigorous five days of holiday shows, she and Charlie headed from Nashville to Florida. Randy had gotten Patsy a job that had new career potential: She joined Webb Pierce, Sonny James, and Dottie in De Land to star in a country musical film.

According to Dottie, “The plot was simple and built around the artists making personal appearances, where they’d do their big hits. It was a copy of the rock ‘n’ roll formula movies. It was fun. We had expenses paid and several days on the beach to relax. In the end, it was one of those stories you used to hear about a lot in country. The producer ran off with our money. We were never paid, and the movie, or what was made of it, never saw the light of day.”

Decca continued to push Patsy. On July 16, the label released her single of “So Wrong” backed with “You’re Stronger Than Me.”

On July 25, Patsy’s friend Jo Ann Thomas got a call from her. She would be working the Richland Fire Company Carnival, one of the oldest in the state of Pennsylvania, and wanted to stay with Jo Ann and Gus. Jo Ann picked Patsy up at the Harrisburg airport. On the way to Richland, they got tied up in a traffic snarl.

“There’d been a train wreck,” Jo Ann explained, “and traffic was moving very slowly. I counted thirteen ambulances, and we were kind of shook up.”

The scene brought back painful memories to Patsy. She said, “Whatever you do, please be careful. I’d rather be late for the show than in another accident. I still ain’t completely healed from my car wreck. I’ve seen enough of the hospital to last me a lifetime!”

For the carnival concert, for which Patsy was being paid in excess of a thousand dollars, admission was seventy-five cents for adults, and children were admitted free. Close to seven thousand fans jammed the bleachers, waiting, hoping Patsy would make it. Night came, and she still hadn’t arrived. Finally, Jo Ann’s car pulled in. When Patsy went onstage, the audience gave her a standing ovation.

The next day, Jo Ann took Patsy to her parents’ farm for Sunday dinner. Her mom prepared a huge ham and one of Patsy’s favorites, fried chicken. Jo Ann’s father couldn’t get over having Patsy Cline in his house.

“He was following Patsy around like a puppy,” Jo Ann recalled. “I was getting irritated. I told Patsy I was sorry for the way he was acting. She said, ‘Please don’t be ashamed of your daddy—at least he stayed with your family and took care of all of you. My father deserted us when I was small and I had to sing on street corners for coins people would throw me. When I had enough money, I took it home to Mom to buy food with.’”

That afternoon, on the way to the airport, Patsy saw a roadside fruit market and wanted to stop. She bought a large bag of cherries. She and Jo Ann ate them, throwing the pits out the car window.

“I’ll do one thing before I die,” Patsy exclaimed, “and plant cherry trees from Hershey to Harrisburg.”

“Oh, Patsy,” admonished Jo Ann, “don’t talk like that! It makes me feel creepy.”

At the airport, just before Patsy boarded her plane, Jo Ann stopped her and requested one last photograph.

“As I stood there looking at her through the viewfinder,” noted Jo Ann, “I felt real strong that I’d never see Patsy again.”