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1550 on the Radio Dial

The Hank Williams Sunday Morning Gospel Hour

IN FRONT OF THE BATHROOM MIRROR, WINSTON ran an electric razor over his craggy cheeks. From a small black portable radio on the nearby glass shelf came his own voice.

“Good mornin’, folks, and welcome to the Hank Williams Sunday Mornin’ Gospel Hour.”

He mouthed along with the words. He thought he sounded mighty fine.

“And, yes, Hank Williams, Sr., is still dead, but we’re resurrectin’ some of his gospel tunes for this special show. This program is recorded, meanin’ when you hear this, we’re all doin’ something else, but right this minute our own Felton Ballard is here in the studio to sing for you. Many of you know Felton from the Saturday evenin’ singings over at the First Baptist. He plays these tunes in the original style, just like ol’ Hank sang ’em. We’re mighty proud of Felt. He starts off here with ‘I Saw the Light….’”

Winston hummed along with the tune. Felt sang it well. They had recorded the show back last winter. Miracle of modern life, the way music and voices could be recorded, and then all manner of changes made. Had not been like that back in his day, no, sir. Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, Loretta Lynn—they all went to the station and sang into the microphone before getting recorded.

Winston was not a fan of recording. It hindered him from adding in the clever things that came to his mind when he was listening on a Sunday morning in the bathroom.

“Well, folks, I want to tell you that our Sunday gospel hour today is brought to you thanks to Tinsley’s IGA, the All Church Pastors Association of Valentine and the Burger Barn. And you can hear Felton Ballard playing Hank Williams’s gospel live at the First Methodist Church this Sunday, where a special nine-thirty service is an entire singing service. Everyone’s invited.

“Up next we got ‘Are You Walking and a-Talking with the Lord?’ What a lot of people don’t know is that in his short career the original Hank Williams wrote some fifty gospel songs. Isn’t that right, Felt? You’re somethin’ of an expert on this, I understand.”

Felton answered, “Yes, sir. My wife sometimes sings with me, like Audrey sang with Hank…and Hank recorded a series of gospel albums as Luke the Drifter. I guess they thought it wouldn’t fly with his real name, with all his drinkin’ and carryin’ on.”

“Well, I can recall that he always sang one or more gospel tunes with Little Jimmy Dickens in his Grand Ole Opry appearances. This one is for all of my friends out there who remember the Grand Ole Opry in the old days. Go ahead, Felt.”

The music started, and Winston could sing along with this song, too. He remembered that this one had been a favorite of Coweta’s.

Suddenly he looked around and saw Coweta racing toward him in the garage, where he was tuning up the Ford. Her little black shoes flew over the ground. “Oh, Win! Look at this. Birdy sent it. Can we go? Oh, let’s! Won’t cost us nothin’ to stay with Birdy. Just you and me. Mama can take care of Freddie.”

The yellow playbill floated up before his eyes. Blurry. He had to squint, and then it came in plain: April 1,1951, Robinson Memorial Auditorium, Little Rock…Star! Hank Williams! and His Drifting Cowboys…also Lefty Frizzell…

Coweta’s dark eyes shone like they could, pulling him in. He and she had just come out of a big fight, and he was in that place where he would lasso the moon for her. She knew it, too. That’s how it played out for them again and again. Took them thirty years to see it, and some more to start doing anything to break the cycle.

Somehow, just as she could always work a miracle, she had made the phone call and gotten them tickets. “Yes, I did. Row five. Don’t ask what they cost.” She laughed, and the skirt of her dress swirled as she raced up the stairs to pack.

He shook his head. He never had been one to worry over money. It was her who worried over it.

“Not that time,” she said now, grinning at him right there in their bedroom. “I loved that Hank Williams.”

He never could understand it. “That Hank was so scrawny, he’d blow away in a good wind.”

Coweta smiled. There was a pink glow around her, pretty as could be. She said, “We had us a good time. Remember?”

“Yeah. I remember…we had to drive through five hours of sleet and rain and the windshield wipers actin’ up.”

“Oh, Winston. You never remember the important things. Like you held my hand, and we danced after, all alone. Why don’t you remember that?”

“That was near fifty years ago,” he defended. “I was born before ol’ Hank, and have lived far after him, and I got a lot clutterin’ my brain.” He pointed at the playbill in her hand. “I’ve outlived ever’body on that poster.”

“No, honey, you haven’t.”

“No kiddin’—really?”

“Now, why would I kid about such a thing? Don Helms was in the Drifting Cowboys then, and he is still alive—and playin’, even. He’s younger than you.”

“Isn’t ever’body?” Winston said, a little sadly. Then, “I’ve outlived so many, Coweta. Just so much has happened in my life. I can’t piece it all together half the time.”

“I know, honey.” Her hand came over his, so pale and soft against his leathery skin.

Then he heard her humming. It took him a second to recognize the tune—Hank’s “I’m Going Home.”

“Mis-ter Wins-ton…Mis-ter Wins-ton.”

It was Willie Lee, standing right in front of him.

Why, he was now sitting on his bed. He didn’t remember sitting on the bed.

Willie Lee’s eyes blinked behind his thick glasses. Looking downward, Winston saw Willie Lee’s smaller hand, soft and white, lying on his own.

“I’m okay, buddy. Just caught in some memories.”

“Yes. You are o-kay,” the boy said confidently.

Willie Lee knew these things, so Winston felt reassured.

“Moth-er says we need to go to church ear-ly. It is rain-ning. I will get you-r coat.”

The boy fetched Winston’s blue sport coat from the butler chair and held it up for Winston to slip into. Winston checked himself in the dressing mirror before following the boy from the room. As he went out the door, he paused and glanced around, looking for signs of Coweta.

There were none. She had been gone a long, long time now. As were so many who had made up his life.

Over at her small house, Paris Miller peered out her bedroom window through hard rain pouring from the roof and washing over the glass. It ran in the ditch that divided the yards. Behind her on her boom box, a voice sang out an old country tune. “Please make up your miinnd…”

She was actually contemplating going to the Methodist Church. That was the only church she had ever been able to go into alone. She had gone to the Good Shepherd with a friend, and she liked that they were real friendly, but the thought of being there on her own with them jumping up and running around made her nervous. The Methodists were a quiet bunch. She could slip in, sit in the back and hardly be noticed. She had done that before, enough so that the usher—Leon Purvis, who slicked back his gray hair—no longer tried to get her to fill out a visitation form. When the final closing hymn was sung, she would slip out again.

She wondered what she hoped to get out of it. She usually did feel a lot better afterward, but then she would come home, and her whole life started all over again, not a thing changed, no matter how hard she prayed.

She heard a plunk and looked up. A wet stain was spreading on her ceiling, where many had been before. She needed to get a pan to catch the leak.

“What in the hell are you listenin’ to?” Her granddaddy had come in his wheelchair to her door.

“It’s a special Hank Williams gospel show today.” She did not know that she hunched her shoulders and sort of winced.

“Hank Williams? What in the hell you want to listen to that old stuff for? Turn that mess off….” He rolled himself away, mumbling.

She turned off the radio, stood there a moment, then hurried to get boots, purse and coat. No one had to dress up to go to the First Methodist, especially this special singing, as they called it. Lots of women came in jeans. There were farmers who came from the field in their overalls.

Pausing to glance around, she saw everything in a blur of drab brown-gray. She had a sense of desperation, and felt that if she did not get out and around color and sound and people, she was going to choke to death.

“Where you goin’?” her granddaddy asked.

She hesitated, her eyes moving to the bottle on the table. “I’m runnin’ over to a girl’s house for a few minutes.” And she was out the door, ducking in case the bottle came flying after her.

What flew after her was him hollering, “Bring me back a six-pack of—”

The back door closed, and she raced away to her car, hopping over the puddles.

As she backed out, a car pulled up in front. One of her granddaddy’s drinking buddies. The tightness in her throat grew so great she had to gasp for breath.

She pulled into the Quick Stop for five dollars’ worth of gas and ended up helping LuAnn wait on a flood of customers driven in there by the rain. Everyone was talking about it, and depending on circumstances and temperaments, people moaned about the dreariness and inconvenience, or gave happy praise for coming green lawns and May flowers.

Over at the First Methodist Church, a few of the smokers, who usually had a quick cigarette on the front lawn before service, snatched a couple of puffs in the shelter of a large cedar tree. From here they watched the men with umbrellas, who ran to meet those arriving and hold cover over the women and girls.

Jaydee Mayhall, feeling guilty, stamped out his butt, and hurried to get the umbrella out of his own car and help. He began right then planning to put up an awning over the church walkway.

Parking was directed by men in slickers and ball caps. There was an unusually large crowd—many who only came on Easter and Christmas, as well as Baptists and Assemblies of God and the Good Shepherds from out on the highway who loved to sing, and a couple of brave Episcopalians. Vehicles filled the church parking lot, the grassy yard where the church played baseball and up and down both sides of the street.

Bobby Goode, who lived just south of the church, had the idea to make some money by charging three bucks a car to park in his circle driveway and spacious front yard. His wife’s response to this idea was to have a fit and tell him that if she saw one rut on her front lawn, his funeral would be the next event at the Methodist Church. She said that he could let people park in the driveway—for free.

She said nothing about not taking what people offered, though, so when Rick Garcia parked his big-wheel mud truck in Bobby’s driveway and waved a five at him, Bobby took it quick, and directly after the truck, Bobby waved in two little foreign jobs that he got parked bumper to bumper. He held out his hand and received eight more dollars.

Across the street, Inez Cooper punched off her radio right in the middle of “Wait for the Light to Shine.”

“If we wait for the light, we’ll miss the singin’,” she said to the radio. The cloud cover had kept it so dark that at nine-thirty in the morning the streetlights still glowed.

She called for her husband, Norman, to hurry up. Unfortunately, she immediately caught the scent of cigarette smoke on him. “I cannot believe you. Go wash your hands, at least, so’s maybe not everybody will smell it. And hurry up. You’re gonna make us late.”

Norman did as he was told, while Inez put on rain boots and carefully color-matched a green umbrella to her suit. When he reappeared, she stepped onto the porch, opened the umbrella and was halfway down the walkway when she realized that Norman was lagging behind, like he always did. She hated that, and of course it was because smoking cigarettes was cutting down his wind, which she told him. He did not answer, nor did he speed his steps. She had to pause again at the curb and wait for him. “Would you get under this umbrella? You are gettin’ all wet…you’re gonna catch your death.”

At that moment, Juice Tinsley’s car stopped. The car window on the passenger side came down, and Julia called out, “Can we park in your driveway, Inez?”

“Well, no…no, that’s not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

“It’s just not. I don’t want people parkin’ up and down my drive—we may need to get out later. Come on, Norman.”

Bobby Goode popped out into the street and directed Juice into his driveway. He said, “I’m takin’ donations for parkin’.”

Juice pulled a couple of dollars out of his pants pocket, then hurried after Julia, who had removed her shoes and was already halfway across the churchyard, running barefoot with her Bible held over her head. Juice idly wondered if maybe rain would not hit the Bible, a holy book. His gaze slid over to Norman Cooper.

The men’s eyes met for a second of understanding neither could ever put into words, and then each looked straight ahead, heading for the church steps. Iris MacCoy was just going up, and Norman hurried to walk beside her.

Woody Beauchamp’s old black Plymouth came slowly down the street. It was so old that it had the great rear fender fins, and so well cared-for that the rain made tiny beads on the shiny finish. Seeing two cars pulling into a curved driveway, Woody followed. At first he wondered if he had made a mistake, but he recognized a couple of his customers from the café getting out of the cars ahead. Then Bobby Goode was there, waving him up a couple more inches. “Bring her on out of the street.”

As Woody got himself out from behind the wheel, Bobby had his hand out. Woody shook it and said, “Thank you, brother.”

Andy Smith got out of the passenger side and, in his lanky walk, came around the front of the Plymouth. Woody wore a good felt hat, but Andy’s head was bare.

“You got to get you a hat, boy,” said Woody.