Under The Influence: George Jones
One of my favorite things about country music has always been the wild stories from behind the scenes, tall tales about taking a life of excess to sometimes ridiculous degrees. From early songs about moonshine to the music that was formed in the old honky tonks, booze and country have always gone hand in hand. I’m going to try to regularly post some of the more infamous moments in country’s long, sordid history, and what better way to start than with The Possum himself, George Jones?
It’s almost hard to even know where to start with Jones, there are plenty of stories and they’re all plenty entertaining, but there’s definitely one that stands out, the ever-popular lawn mower incident. Here’s the story, in George’s words:
“Once, when I had been drunk for several days, Shirley (Corley, his second wife) decided she would make it physically impossible for me to buy liquor. I lived about eight miles from Beaumont and the nearest liquor store. She knew I wouldn’t walk that far to get booze, so she hid the keys to every car we owned and left. But she forgot about the lawn mower.
“I can vaguely remember my anger at not being able to find keys to anything that moved and looking longingly out a window at a light that shone over our property. There, gleaming in the glow, was that ten-horsepower rotary engine under a seat. A key glistening in the ignition.
“I imagine the top speed for that old mower was five miles per hour. It might have taken an hour and a half or more for me to get to the liquor store, but get there I did.”
Jones’ third wife, Tammy Wynette, wrote about another riding mower-related incident in her 1979 autobiography:
“About 1 am I would wake up and look over to find he was gone. I got into the car and drove to the nearest bar 10 miles away.
“When I pulled into the parking lot there sat our rider-mower right by the entrance. He’d driven that mower right down a main highway. He looked up and saw me and said, `Well, fellas, here she is now. My little wife, I told you she’d come after me.’”
Jones has never been one to shy away from his past. After receiving the nick name “No Show” Jones (for his ironically predictable habit of being too drunk to get on stage and play) he embraced the title, going as far as getting “NO SHOW” vanity plates for his tour bus. In that same spirit, Jones later paid tribute to the mower incident(s) on his 1996 single, “The Honky Tonk Song,” hilarity ensues:
I feel I should also point out that George “No Show” Jones will turn 78 years old next month. If that’s not inspirational, I don’t know what is.
