Willie Page 8

  I couldn’t wait to show my mother what a beautiful, lively girl her boy had married.

  The Chorus

  MARTHA JEWEL MATHEWS

  One story everybody thinks they know about Willie and me is the one about me catching him passed-out drunk and sewing him up in a bedsheet and then beating the hell out him with a broom handle.

  For years I’ve been hearing and reading that story. People who’ve never so much as said hello to me or Willie tell that bedsheet story like they saw it with their own eyes. They just laugh and laugh, like, hey, that Martha, she was one tough cookie, wasn’t she?

  Well, it never happened.

  How dumb would I have to be to try to sew Willie into a bedsheet? You know how long that would take to sit there and take stitch after stitch?

  The truth is, I tied him up with the kids’ jump ropes before I beat the hell out of him.

  I scooted the jump ropes underneath him while he was asleep and knotted them up on top. I tied him up as tight as I could. The kids were waiting outside in our getaway car. I started whipping Willie pretty good, and he commenced yelling, and I was crying and cussing. Oh, it was quite a commotion, but nothing our neighbors at Dunn’s Trailer Park in Nashville hadn’t heard coming out of our trailer before. Hell, we were just kids trying to deal with being married and having babies but no money and no home life to speak of—just one beer joint after another, sleeping under a different roof every few months, drinking way too much whiskey. Neither me nor Willie knew what to expect from marriage. We thought being young and in love was all we needed.

  My mother didn’t want me to marry because I was so young so Willie and I just decided to run off. We went to Cleburne and had a friend sign a paper that said I was the friend’s sister and of legal age. Willie had a driver’s license that showed he was nineteen, fresh out of the air force.

  We went down to the basement of the courthouse. It was cold, but they had a big old wood stove fired up. The justice of the peace would stop and spit on the stove while giving us our vows.

  “Do you, Martha Jewel Mathews take this”—ping, he’d spit—“take Willie Hugh Nelson”—spit again, sizzle. Willie and I started laughing at this judge standing there spitting on the stove. We thought that was the greatest.

  Willie had a friend in Dallas who fixed us up with a deal to deliver a car out to Oregon, where Willie’s mother, Myrle, was living. The only problem was we had to show $100 to the company that owned the car, to prove we were substantial people.

  Of course we didn’t have anywhere near $100. But Willie knew a fellow who drove a milk truck and carried money with him every day. He met us at lunchtime and loaned Willie $100. Willie showed the cash to the company and got the car. We chased down the milk truck, gave the $100 back, and lit out for the West Coast with a total fortune of $24. When you’re young and in love, the last thing you worry about is money.

  We rented a house and were going to live happy ever after. But we weren’t making any money, and I got pregnant, and we drove back to Abbott to see what was going on in Texas. My folks said they didn’t want to have anything more to do with me for running off so we moved in with Mom Nelson, Willie’s grandmother. Willie started playing music in clubs on the weekends. He was drawing $26 a week on the GI Bill—that bought the groceries. In those days, you could eat good on $20 a week.

  When I went into labor, Willie had been real sick with the flu for three days. He climbed out of bed and cranked up the car and drove me to the hospital in Hillsboro. The minute we got to the hospital, the nurse saw how sick Willie was and started taking his temperature and fussing over him. She gave him two shots while I laid there and suffered. Willie didn’t smoke no pot back then and those shots made him high as a kite for about a day and a half while Lana was being born. That’s no joke.

  We took baby Lana back all the way out to Portland, where Mother Harvey was living. I got pregnant again. Willie found a job as a disc jockey on radio station KVAN in Vancouver, Washington. He was making a living, more or less, and playing music on weekends. Our daughter Susie was born in Vancouver.

  But it became obvious the radio job and the weekend gigs weren’t going to lead to where Willie wanted to go, so we decided to give Texas another shot. I was pregnant again by then.

  Our son Billy was born in Fort Worth on May 21, 1958. We were living in our own place when we could afford one and with Willie’s sister, Bobbie, when we couldn’t.

  It was about that time Willie and I started really getting into fights over money. Willie had never made enough money anywhere we were, and I worked hard as a waitress and didn’t bitch about money. But now we had three little children to feed and put clothes on their backs.

  I was trying to talk Willie into going to Nashville. I knew if there was any way for him to make it in music, we had to go to Nashville. I always worked as a waitress, anyway, and he stayed home to babysit during the week. On weekends when he played in a band, we usually didn’t have a dollar to spend on babysitters. I wanted to go where Willie was playing. I wanted to get out and dance, have some fun. But we couldn’t afford for me to do it and feed the kids, and we kept getting madder and madder at each other.

  I Love Lucy was big on TV then. Friends said we reminded them of Lucy and Desi Arnaz, because of the way I’d do Willie. I would raise hell with the ornery asshole. He pulled his shit on me but I threw it back at him. One day we were sitting at breakfast eating biscuits and gravy that I’d made. Willie loved sausage with his biscuits and gravy, but we couldn’t afford sausage that day. Johnny Bush, who later wrote “Whiskey River,” was there, looking red-eyed and lousy. They’d been drunk a day or two. Willie was being a real smart-mouth, real nasty. So I just dipped a biscuit in the gravy bowl and planted it right in the middle of his whiskey face. Willie kept on eating like nothing had happened, with gravy running down his nose and chin. None of us laughed. That was awful, that nobody cared to laugh. Later when I threw the goldfish down the toilet, nobody laughed. It was just another bummer. Being broke for years on the road can ruin your sense of humor.

  Willie finally took off for Nashville and left me in Waco with the kids. He moved in with Billy Walker and his wife, Boots. Willie and I kept fighting on the long-distance phone about one thing or another, but pretty soon I followed him to Nashville on a Greyhound bus with our three kids, three baby bottles, three little blankets, and all our stuff.

  The Walkers had four little girls of their own, which made quite a crowd in their little house. Willie and I rented a mobile home at Dunn’s Trailer Park out on Dickerson Road by the graveyard. There was a sign in front: TRAILERS FOR SALE OR RENT. You might recognize those words as the first line of Roger Miller’s big hit song, “King of the Road.”

  I got a job at a bar called the Hitching Post right across from the Grand Ole Opry. Faron Young kept coming in there and all the girls just fell all over him. Faron thought this was the greatest thing in the world, because he had this big ego, being a star and all. I would never mention Willie to anybody. I figured Willie would get out on his own and make it, now that we were in Nashville. But one night Faron had been sitting in the Hitching Post for hours and hours. Finally, I said, “You know, my husband has written some pretty good songs. You could take time to listen to one of them.”

  Faron said, “I don’t take time for nothing.” Then he sat a while longer before he said “What is your husband’s song about?”

  I said, “It’s called ‘Hello Walls.’ He’s over at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge right now if you want to hear it.

  “I ain’t interested,” Faron said, and he walked out.

  Later that night a girl came across the street from Tootsie’s and said, “Faron’s over there listening to some cat from Texas. Boy, you ought to hear those songs this guy is singing.”

  Faron walked back into the Hitching Post and said, “Hey, I got me a new song called ‘Hello Walls.’ ” The dumb ass still didn’t connect me with Willie. But he went to the studio and cut “Hello Walls,” a
nd we began waiting for our royalties. It took a long, long time.

  Billy Walker cut “Funny How Time Slips Away.” Patsy Cline put out her hit of Willie’s song “Crazy.” We didn’t mind at all that it was another singer, not Willie, who made a hit out of “Crazy.” People started getting interested in Willie. But Willie was playing with Ray Price’s band by then, going on the road with the Cherokee Cowboys, acting like he could play bass, and Willie’s attitude was now that he had a job with Ray Price he didn’t give a damn what anybody thought of his music. He couldn’t be bothered, now that he had some hit songs. He acted so independent you might have thought he was the king of Spain. He’d do what he damn pleased and blow his money on hotel suites and airplanes if he wanted. Willie was being so damn cool it would make you throw up.

  As Willie kept going on the road, our problems at home got worse and worse. Even if Willie hadn’t been a musician, we might have had the same problems. But Willie being on the road all the damn time didn’t make it smooth for us. At last enough money started coming in from the songs that a little seeped down to us before Willie could spend it. A little money seemed like a lot to me and the kids, and I was glad about it. I didn’t realize how fast things were changing with Willie and me.

  I got to know that anybody who has problems at home should not go to Nashville. I learned more in Nashville in our first year than I had learned in my whole life. Somebody goes to Nashville and the music people think, well, here’s just another picker with a guitar in his hands. And nine out of ten of the pickers don’t rise above that level. But you never know, do you?

  On one of our early Christmases in Nashville, little Billy wanted a stick horse real bad. We couldn’t find one and didn’t have the money to buy one anyhow. All we had was a pot of soup that I fixed for Christmas dinner. I had to work until 3 A.M. on Christmas Eve. When I came home Willie was sitting there making a stick horse for Billy.

  Willie cut off the straw of my broom. I had three pairs of underwear, and Willie took two of them and made a head for the stick horse. We couldn’t afford a new broom. You should have seen Billy’s face when he saw that stick horse, he was so happy and proud. It really was a perfect stick horse.

  A fellow named Bif Collie and his wife Shirley came to Nashville. Bif was so friendly, and he was going to plug Willie’s records. He was totally devoted to Shirley, who was a singer. I mean, you could see how in love with her Bif was. And I thought, why don’t Willie treat me as good as Bif treats Shirley?

  I’m psychic in a lot of ways. From the beginning, I felt there was something about Shirley that she was after Willie. Bif went back to California. Willie didn’t come home that night or the next day or the next night. Then somebody told me Willie and Shirley were staying at a hotel in downtown Nashville, and they wasn’t accepting calls.

  I went straight to the hotel. I did everything I could to get in that room. But the hotel people wouldn’t even let me on the same floor as Willie and Shirley, because they knew I was going to tear the place up.

  Willie was always messing around with somebody and he’d come home and tell me he hadn’t done doodly shit. He’d have lipstick smeared from one end to the other. I done everything to stop him. I hid in the trunk of the car and nearly smothered to death. I would jump on the hood of the car and ride two or three blocks before he shook me off. I did everything but threaten him with a gun.

  Willie came in off a trip on Ray Price’s bus. Somebody had already called and said, “Shirley’s with Willie on that bus. Don’t you dare meet it.”

  Ray always parked the bus at the service station on the highway. I was just home from having surgery in the hospital. Willie didn’t send so much as one flower for that. He came sailing in the house and says, “I want the keys to the car.”

  I said, “You ain’t getting no keys to no car to go nowhere with no bitch.”

  The musicians on the bus thought Willie was going to whip me to get the keys. But he knew better than to try it. In a head-to-head fight, I stood an even chance of whipping Willie, and had proved it.

  Like one night I had been working as a bartender at the Wagon Wheel, and I got mad and started throwing glasses at Willie. One of them hit the railing on the stairs and crashed and cut Hank Cochran’s face pretty bad. Ruined his acting career, I guess. That fight went on for an hour. Somebody hit poor Ben Dorsey in the back of the head and put him in the hospital. I ran into Ben on the street a few days later and said, “Why, Ben, what happened to your head?” He told me he’d been in a bad car wreck. I said, “I want you to remember what you just told me. It was a car wreck, and don’t you forget it.”

  Willie and I were in Fort Smith, Arkansas, shortly before the end. I knew the end was near. I had been feeling sad the whole trip, because I knew, well, this was it, there wasn’t going to be any more. I had driven to Fort Smith with two or three of the wives of the musicians in Ray Price’s band, feeling sad all the way. When I got to Willie’s room, the phone was ringing off the wall. I answered it.

  Some gal said, “Do you know what time Willie and I are supposed to eat?”

  I said, “I don’t know, but I sure will ask him. Leave me your number.” And she did. It made me furious.

  Willie acted like he didn’t know the girl who had called. We argued and carried on out back of the club where they were playing. I had a whiskey bottle in my hand and started swinging it. Me and Willie had a hell of a fight.

  The police came and hauled me off to jail. Not Willie. Me. Because I was whipping Willie over the head with a whiskey bottle. First damn time in my life I ever been to jail.

  Jimmy Day, who played in Ray’s band, was waltzing up and down in front of the jail cell saying, “Marsha, Marsha, sweetheart, everything’s gonna be all right.” Jimmy always called me Marsha because he said Martha was too old-fashioned a name for me. Anyhow, I was crying. There was one bed in there that I was afraid to sit on, and one old toilet I didn’t want to get anywhere near. I was scared and upset, and I heard Willie tell the jailer, “We’re with Ray Price. We’ll pay the fine. It don’t make a damn what it costs.” They charged $200, and I hadn’t done nothing but slap Willie with that whiskey bottle. Didn’t even bother him.

  On my way back to Nashville, I made my mind up. I would not put up with no more crap, no way you fix it. I wasn’t going to overlook another thing from Willie Nelson. And I didn’t.

  And that’s why, I guess, I’m sitting here in Waco listening to “She Thinks I Still Care” on the record player, and knowing Willie and me are probably better friends now than ever.

  MARGE LUNDE

  Willie Nelson was just a little bitty redheaded pissant when he first came around the Nite Owl not too long after me and my late husband, U. J. Lunde, opened the place in 1943. He was too young to drink beer legally, and I sure as hell wouldn’t sell it to him. But him and his sister Bobbie took to coming in there later and playing music with Bud Fletcher’s band the Texans.

  Many’s the night Bobbie would be onstage playing the piano in the Nite Owl and I’d be babysitting her two little babies. Before I knew it, her kids would wet in my lap. But that was okay, we were all young—I was in my twenties and Bobbie and Willie in their teens—and having a big time. You could relax and have fun in the Nite Owl and nobody would ever bother you as long as you didn’t get too drunk and show your ass. If you did that, I would throw you out the door before you could blink an eyeball. You could get as drunk as a dog in the Nite Owl as long as you didn’t bother nobody. But there is a certain stage of drunkenness that will make anybody show their ass—and out they went. In forty-four years of owning the Nite Owl—running it all by myself after U. J. died of the sugar diabetes in 1969—the law has never had to close my doors for so much as a single night over any kind of trouble. I handled it myself.

  After Willie and Bobbie moved on to the big time, we stayed friends. We didn’t check on each other all the time, but we knew where each other was and what was going on even if we was miles apart.

 
I’d go see them when I could. One night I heard they was playing at a bar a Dallas Cowboy football player named Dave Manders owned outside of Dallas, so I drove up there. Well, that night was the worst damn brawl I have ever seen in any drinking joint in my life. Some 300-pound gorilla drop-kicked a woman off the balcony and she fell right at my feet. I thought she was dead. The ignorant bartenders began grabbing whiskey bottles off the display cases behind the bar and conking people over the head. In my joint I never hit anybody with a bottle. I could do the job with a fist or a forearm. But these Dallas idiots was bashing people in the skull, glass flying everywhere. I pulled Bobbie behind a post and said, “Stay beside me, honey. We’re gonna call a cab to the Holiday Inn.”

  Willie says that is the only night in his whole career, in all the thousands of joints he’s played and fights he’s seen, that the barroom brawl was so bad he quit playing music and got his band and us together and run out the door before he could finish his music. Good thing, too. As we was running out, the law was running in.

  A good friend is somebody that’s there when you need them, like Willie was for me a few years ago when I shot and killed my brother-in-law.

  I had woke up on the couch in the middle of the night with my brother-in-law pounding on me with his fists yelling he was going to kill me.

  I twisted away from him and got my pistol out of my purse at the end of the couch and shot him twice.

  My poor sister was laying in the other room. She was an invalid, paralyzed on her right side. Somebody had hit her a blow on the head with a blunt instrument that caused a blood clot the size of a half-dollar. After surgery she was paralyzed. I took care of her.

  Now I don’t know if it was my brother-in-law who hit her. But he was a Korean War veteran who was being treated at the VA hospital in Waco for what they called paranoid schizophrenia. The doctors made him take Thorazine and other powerful tranquilizers. For three days before he attacked me, he hadn’t been taking his medication. I don’t know if that caused it, but I knew I was defending my life when I had to shoot him. I didn’t have any other chance against him, because I was weak and recovering from gallbladder surgery on my own self.