Hillbilly Heart Read Online Free PDF Page A

Foster, Ken Griffey, Cesar Geronimo, and Tony Perez, along with manager Sparky Anderson. Bench was my favorite, since I played catcher in Little League. One day, Pete Rose signed autographs at a car dealership in Ashland and that was the biggest event that had ever happened near us, other than the day Santa Claus jumped out of an airplane to promote Hills department store and got stuck in a tree.
    My mom took me to the car lot where Rose was signing autographs. I waited in a line that snaked around the entire place. After getting my signed picture, I got in line again, figuring it couldn’t hurt to collect a few autographs. On my third time through, Rose complained loudly about me to the car lot owner. Then, in language more suited to the locker room, he directed his irritation in my direction.
    “What the—” he said, dropping the F-bomb once or twice. “How many damn times are you going to come through here, boy?”
    My mom wasn’t about to let some hot-tempered, hotshot ballplayer talk that way to her kid. With hundreds of people watching in stunned silence, she lit into Charlie Hustle the way he was known to speak to umpires. I almost felt sorry for Pete. But I was too busy trying to wiggle out of her clutches and block her punches, because for some reason, she found it necessary to punctuate every sentence by slapping me upside the head.
    “Don’t you ever talk to my boy that way!” she said.
    Slap!
    “If anyone’s going to discipline my son, it’ll be me. Not some asshole like you!”
    Slap!
    “Hell, I don’t even know why the boy would want your autograph.”
    Slap!
    I was doing my best to get to the car. I didn’t know which was more embarrassing: getting cussed out by Pete Rose or beat up by my mom. She was a force to reckon with. Later, after we were home, we laughed about the episode. I realized my mom had had a pretty good afternoon, and a pretty serious right hook. In terms of hits, she was three for three—a perfect day at the plate.

CHAPTER 3

    A Series of Adjustments
    M Y DAD STARTED THE Crownsmen Quartet with guys just like him: riggers at Armco Steel, men who were tougher than tough and as solid as the steel they made, with good singing voices and a passion for performing gospel. Like my dad, who’d served in the air force, most had been in the service as young men before taking jobs at the mill. They all worked the late shift, and during their breaks they would sing.
    They performed on Sundays throughout the tristate area. Churches. Revivals. County Fairs. One time they appeared on The Happy Goodman Family Hour, a gospel music TV series that aired every Sunday morning. I think they were one break away from being like the Oak Ridge Boys. It just didn’t happen for them.
    But music was always a sideline for my dad, who would have been a lifer at the steel mill if not for his sense of fairness. He would get stuck on a problem until he figured it out, and one time he got stuck on a problem at work. It was the early 1970s, and he saw the steel mill cheat a guy who’d lost his legs in a work-related accident out of money they owed him. It affected him deeply and turned into a calling, similar to when my papaw Cyrus heard a voice tell him to become a preacher.
    Helping that injured coworker ignited my dad’s determinationto stand up for working men and their families. He became their voice. In a short time, he put himself through school, quit the mill, started working for the AFL-CIO, and set a goal of getting elected to political office.
    His patience was typified by the way he taught me to drive. As a little kid, I sat on his lap as he drove the last mile or so up the gravel road leading to his house in Argillite. He worked the gas and brake and let me steer, though I’m sure he kept a finger or two on the wheel. As I gained more control of the vehicle, as well as respect for what it meant to get behind the wheel, he gave me more independence.
    In the morning, as he drank his coffee, I would