It's true, and it's interesting how that happens. You get a kindred
spirit. Now, there are other people who are real standoffish. But like
you say, mine—I suspect I had two. Well, I had more than two, but two
major ones. Van Ramsey, who lived below me, was a second father. Van had
grown up into what I was doing, had been part of it. Van was an
intelligent guy, had been away, had been back. Knew the old customs.
Knew how things operated. Knew who to talk to, knew what to do. He knew.
He was a
Page 11major loss, like losing family. But Mr.
Willis, too. He and his wife were, as status in the community, were not
of the elite. They were the more common folks. Wonderful people. Knew
everything about their environment. Knew what was good, what was bad.
Knew what to do and when to do it. She was a local kind of a doctor. She
was called when the regular doctor couldn't come. Ed had been—had made
some whiskey, had done some other things that of course didn't bother
us. In fact, it was kind of interesting and exciting that he had done
that. Ed told me soon after we bought the place. He was up on the place
and we were walking around, and he was showing me the lines. We had to
walk the boundaries. That's part of the deal. You've got to walk the
boundaries. And Ed said to me, he said, "How you getting along?" "Fine,
I'm getting along fine." And he said, "I've got some advice for you."
First time he'd ever said this or anything about advice. And I said,
"What is it?" And he said, "Let me tell you something about Madison
County." "All right," I said, "What is it?" He said, "If you're a son of
a bitch, that's all you're going to run into around here." That's all he
said. But when you think about it he said a mouthful, because we found
that most of the folks in the count—if not all—were precisely that way.
If you approached them with respect, with interest, that's what you got.
If you approached them with anything else, that's what you got. And I
never had any sort of threat. Now, I've been called a son of a bitch or
two. In fact, Preach Davis, who was one of my favorite people—who owned
the service station down here, and who is now dead—Preach Davis had
worked in the service station business all his life. Had made a lot of
money doing that. Was very close with his money. Had the best grip of
anybody in the county. In fact, could put you to your knees just on
doing it, and is alleged to have the best grip in the county. In fact,
it was said that when he was a
Page 12young man he could
pick up an anvil by the horn in one hand and move it from floor to bench
or bench to floor. I don't know whether that's true or not, but he
certainly had a big grip. He stopped me one day down at the service
station. I was working for the social services at that point in time. He
said, "There was a guy in there talking about you a while ago." And I
said, "Who was he?" He told me who it was, and we had in fact taken the
man's child away from him, because he was abusive. And I said, well,
"What did he say, Preach?" And he said, "Well, Sam, he said you were a
revolving son of a bitch." And I said, "Wait a minute, Preach, what's a
revolving son of a bitch?" And he said, "It's a son of a bitch any way
you turn."
[Laughs].