Like That George Jones Song

Papaw and Sarah, about 1985

There hasn't been a good story from the Daugherty Farm lately, so I thought I'd share this one from a recent phone conversation with my dad. If you're into stories of abandonment, torrid love affairs, cheating, sanitariums, mommas and country and western songs, settle in.

Bath County, Kentucky 

It started because my dad said that everyone in the little hamlet where he grew up is wrong about who their "real" dad is. He thinks everyone was cheating on everyone else and that their "real" dad is actually the neighbor or milkman or whomever.

He rarely reveals anything personal, but he'll tell a lot of stories, mostly about growing up in Kentucky, if you can get him going, 

He was raised on a tobacco farm, the son and grandson of generations of sharecroppers. There is a general store 15 miles or so from where he grew up and during our annual trips to see his dad in the summer, he would buy me candy at this little store with wood floors. Every year the cashier would eye him and ask, "You Junior Daugherty?" 

Everyone knew everybody else. Even if you'd left 20 years prior. 


Four Hungry Children and a Crop in the Field

My dad’s parents, my Papaw and Mamaw (Sarah), had four kids. When the youngest, my dad, was a toddler, his mom left them for another man and moved to Tennessee. My dad didn't see his mom again for 25 years.

You know that Kenny Rogers song "Lucille" — "You picked a fine time to leave me Lucille, with four hungry children and a crop in the field" — well, that was my Papaw. A sharecropper left with four little kids who's wife ran off and left him. 

Dad and his three sisters. He is sitting on his sister Wanda's lap. Ada is on the right, Norma Jean on the left. He was born in August 1939. 

So my dad was raised by his grandmother, his sisters (my dear, beloved aunts) and his alcoholic though sweet-natured dad (my Papaw), and his alcoholic but good-natured grandfather (Sam).

Sarah and her new husband built a new life together in Tennessee and had several kids of their own. Needless to say, Papaw and Sarah didn't see each other again for 35-years, nor did my dad or his sisters see their mom again. 

Not surprisingly, I've rarely heard my dad say a nice word about her. He referred to her never as "mom" but rather by her given name, Sarah. Though more often than not, he referred to her as "that ol' battle-ax" or "your grandmother" or "your mom's mother-in-law."

Distance was the way she was referenced and the way she was thought of, and why I refer to her as Sarah instead of grandma. 


She Still Preyed Upon His Mind

Papaw and Sarah in the foreground. My dad is on the right standing sideways. I suspect he intentionally turned his back toward his mom for the photo.

But, Papaw and Sarah's relationship is legendary. The Heloise and Abelard of Bath County, Kentucky, if you will.

Because 35 years after she left him, after raising her other kids, Sarah sent Papaw a Christmas card. Her second husband had just died and so I guess she wondered, 'Hmm, I wonder what that ol' Raymond Daugherty is up to these days.'

Well, it turned out that ol’ Raymond Daugherty was still pining for Sarah 35-years later because no sooner did that Christmas card hit the stoop did papaw and Sarah strike up an old-fashioned correspondence.

Five months later — technically, five months and 35-years later — Papaw drove straight to Tennessee and married Sarah again. They were in their late 60s by that time. Papaw brought her back to Kentucky and she proceeded, as my dad tells it, to torture him personally.

"Her leaving me as a kid wasn't nearly as traumatic as her coming back when I was 40," my dad said. "I was a kid then so I didn't remember her. In the third grade, when we were filling out some forms at school and the teacher asked me what my mom's name was, I didn't know. I had no idea. Your Aunt Ada had to tell me."

"Was her coming back the first time you'd seen her since you were a kid?" I asked.

This is when my dad, for the first time, told me how he had gone to see her in Tennessee once when he was a young man, about 25 years old. I was astounded to learn this.

"They had this long, dusty ol’ dirty drive-way. I was so nervous I felt like I drove up to that house for 20 miles. I finally get up there to this old house and I don't want to get out of the car, you know what I mean? But I walk up there and I see through the screen door that she's in the kitchen, wearing this old torn house dress. And the old man she's married to is sitting in a chair on the front porch. I had thought before I got there that if that old man said anything to me, anything at all, about who I was or who my pap is or what I was doing there, that I'd punch him. I wouldn't tolerate it. But I see that he's old and crippled and in a wheelchair, and she's in this old ripped housedress... Anyway, she comes to the door and I'm shaking I'm so nervous, and I tell her who I am... and she doesn't believe me. She doesn't believe I'm her son. I had to show her my driver's license to convince her who I was. Can you believe that?"

He said this last part with a mix of disbelief and amusement.

"Well, I'm sure she was surprised to see you. It had been 25 years. Maybe she thought you'd never seek her out. But it is sad that she didn't believe you," I said.

"Sad? It wasn't sad! It was ridiculous! I mean hell, I look just like the man. Who the hell did she think was standing there?"

Right. Well, needless to say, my dad is not one for sentiment.


A 'Frosty' Summer

It has long been storied in my family that the George Jones song He Stopped Loving Her Today could have been written about Papaw. My dad and aunts used to sit around and laugh that it would take him dying before he would stop loving Sarah.

(If you don't know the song, you really need to listen to it for the sake of this story. Plus, it's the saddest, most haunting love song ever written... And that mournful, plaintive harmonica in the second verse (!!!)... it's all just too much.)




As a result, I grew up thinking Papaw had this endless sea of devotion to her. And even though it took 35 years for her to come back, she did. And without reservation, he married her again.

Perfectly neat love story, right?

Well, imagine my surprise (because I was legitimately surprised when I heard this) when my dad got on the topic of kids in Bath County, Kentucky not knowing who their “real” dads are, because this led to the revelation that Papaw had a years-long affair with Nancy, the neighbor's wife. My dad went on to speculate that Papaw could be the dad of any number of kids from Bath County.

Whaaaaat?! Papaw had an affair with a married woman?! But he loved Sarah all those years! He was waiting! You said it was like that George Jones song kind of love!

I was shaken.

"Oh yeaaaaah," he said dismissively, dragging out the yeah for effect. "Everybody knew about the affair. Hell, even Nelson knew about it, Nancy's husband. Nancy had all kinds of affairs and Nelson tolerated it for years. For years, I tell ya."

And how did Nelson know that Papaw had an affair with his wife?

Dad said that one summer night, Nelson came home after being in the tobacco fields all day to find Papaw over at his house getting cozy with Nancy. Papaw lept out of a window to escape but not in time to not be seen. In retaliation, Nelson kicked Nancy out of the house and made her sleep in the barn for a few days. Though Nelson eventually forgave his wife, my dad said Nelson's relationship with Papaw was "frosty" for a while.

At least until autumn.

"Pap said the relationship with Nelson wasn't what it used to be. That was until Nelson needed Pap to help him bring in the tobacco harvest that fall, then things got right again. Nelson had a 'change of heart,' Pap said."

Hard labor trumps betrayal, I guess.

Still, I was stunned by this story. In the narrative I was attached to, Papaw had been loyal to Sarah even though she dumped him with all them kids and ran off to Tennessee to marry someone else. In my mind, he was perfectly saintly until she came back. (Minus when he was briefly married to my step-grandmother Betsy.)

"Poor Nelson," I said, all this sinking in. "He got ran around on by his wife and the neighbor who was supposed to be his friend. Some friend."

Well, don't feel bad for ol' Nelson, my dad said. He had the last word on the affair. After years of tolerating Nancy stepping out on him, he finally had enough.

Nelson had been in a TB sanitarium where he met a nurse. When he was released after spending months in the hospital, he went home, packed up his suitcase and told Nancy he was done with her and left her for the nurse.

Even though Nancy had been a jerk to him and had all those affairs, I felt bad for her.

"Aww, that's sad. So then she was old and alone then," I said.

"God no!" my dad corrected. "Nancy never had any problems finding new men to torture. She got remarried two or three more times after that. Well, gotta go — the tea water is boiling!" 

Then he said “BYE” in his southern accent and hung up on me. 


The Inventors of Love

And that was the end of the story about how kids from Bath County, Kentucky, who are in their 70s and 80s now, don't know who their “real” dads are (cause it might be my Papaw), how Papaw came to marry Sarah again 35-years later but not before cavorting with the neighbor's wife, and how my dad is convinced that his mom tortured him personally by arriving back on the scene 35 years after she abandoned him.

It was an unexpected and amusing conversation. Just when I thought we were about to get deep into some personal feelings or emotions, my dad would hilariously reveal that his feelings on the whole matter were nothing more than detached recollections while he was waiting for the water to boil for iced tea.

These people are dead now. Papaw, Sarah, Nelson, Nancy, the TB nurse — all gone. And yet you know that 70 years ago these events were so consuming that they all thought they had invented love. 

Papaw and my dad, who is most definitely holding a glass of iced-tea. That's all we drink in our house.

Epilogue

For the sake of the record, Papaw and Sarah remained married until he died in 1999 at age 89. Sarah, true to form, didn't really see him the last ten years of his life. He was in a nursing home by my parents' house in Indiana while she remained in Kentucky. My dad moved him up from Kentucky because Sarah didn't want to help take care of him, even though Papaw was mostly fine, just old, my dad said. My dad went to the nursing home every day for 10 years to shave him.

What he ever saw in ‘that woman,’ my dad said, no one will ever know. But like George Jones said, 'This time, he's over her for good.'