17 January 2007
FARON YOUNG, THIRTY YEARS AGO: In January 1977 Faron told BBC interviewer David Allen, “I’m in the worst spot, I think, in Nashville, because I live right on a lake. My home is sitting right down on the point. Those north winds come in, and the hill is frozen, so we have to park our cars like a half a mile away, and walk every day to our cars, because we can’t get ’em out once we bring them down in here.” Faron had purchased that house from Liz and Casey Anderson after he and Hilda separated. Merle Kilgore told me in an interview in 2000, “I moved in with Faron at Harbor Island out there on Old Hickory Lake. This island had 14 homes on it. Every winter it was icy and snowy–which is unusual in Tennessee–but it would stay icy and snowy on this island. The wind kept it iced over all the time. Faron would be so upset that wreckers would charge a hundred dollars to pull you out of a ditch or something, on the main road. So Faron got him one of those Chevrolet Blazers, and he stayed out several days pulling people out, and no charge at all. He’d come in and he had icicles hanging off his nose. So that was a side that people never really saw of Faron.”
LETTERS:
Mary Giles writes, “Faron et al. were an interesting crew indeed, bound, it seems to me, by the extreme poverty of their childhoods and, in most cases, parents too distracted by the challenges of daily life to do much nurturing (Mother Presley excepted, of course). As my husband, who had much the same upbringing that Faron did, says, anything was better than milking or picking cotton.”
Bill Hyatt recalls, “I was stationed at Langley in the mid fifties when Faron was hot.”
Larry Jordan, who is writing a new biography on Jim Reeves, says, “I saw a mention of you in Doug Davis’ newsletter. I was intrigued to learn you are writing a book on Faron Young. . . . I wonder if there are any photos of Jim and Faron together? I’ll do a little digging and see if I can come up with a Faron Young/Jim Reeves story or two that I can pass along to you.”