RED
AND SALLY
Two
of the most colorful characters living in Purville in the 1940s were
Red and Sally.
Sally
was, in a polite way of saying it, a working girl. But around Charlie
Drake’s pool hall she was called a whore. No one in Purville really
knew where she was from and no one knew her family. Locals just said,
“She ain’t from around here.”
Sally,
without a last name, lived in a little shack down by the railroad
tracks that wandered through the western part of the town. She lived
in a little crease of the city that set between “darkie town” and
“white trash town.” For a few bucks or a big sack of groceries
from the local Kroger store she would pretty much do what you would
want her to do. For many of the young unmarried men in Purville she
was their “first.” But it was not uncommon for married men to
“dally a bit.”
Red
was a drifter and a pool shark. He drifted into Purville one October
day, driving an old black Buick with Illinois license plates. His
first stop in Purville was Charlie Drake’s pool hall where he
picked up most of the local’s loose change and garnered the
reputation of being one hell of a pool shooter.
No
one really knew where Red resided but each day he would show up in
the old Buick and park it in front of the pool hall. And that is
where Red spent each day. Purville, and the county it was located was
dry and liquor could not be purchased. A battered old tin sign in the
window of the pool hall advertised Royal Crown Cola, but those who
frequented the premises daily knew that for a buck you could get a
decent swig of Otis O’Brien’s white
lightening
that Charlie kept in the back room.
No
food was available at Charlie’s, but right next door was the Hot
Hog Barbeque and Smoke House and through one small open window
between the two establishments you could order a pork barbeque
sandwich with a side of molasses baked beans. The old pool hall
smelled of hickory-smoked barbeque most of the day, but toward the
evening the smell of digested baked beans dominated. Duane, a
mentally challenged teenage black boy, would deliver the orders to
the pool hall, and for a nickel tip he would do a little dance that
would draw applause from the pool players. Red usually tipped Duane a
dime and Duane would dance up a storm. Red would laugh his head off
and finally he would say, “That’s enough, boy. You gonna make me
bust my sides.”
After
a few weeks in Purville, Red asked Charlie Drake where the action
was. Charlie wasn’t sure what Red was asking but Bobby Sullivan,
who worked at a near-by filling station and managed to lose about
half of his weekly wages to Red, said “Charlie, I think old Red is
looking for some poontang.”
That
brought more than a few chuckles from the regulars.
“Gotta
see old Sally down by the tracks, end of Eighth Street,” Charlie
said.
“Yeah,
go see old Sally. She’s got what you’re looking for,” Bobby
added.
It
wasn’t long after that the people of Purville would see Sally
riding right up there in the front seat of Red’s Buick, just like a
proper person. He would drive her all the way to Paducah just for
dinner and buy her some fancy clothes while they were there.
Knocks on the old shack door down by the
railroad tracks weren’t being answered any more. Some adventuresome high
school boys nailed an Out
of Business
sign on the front porch. The sign served its purpose. Sally was out
of business and old Red was the reason why.
Three
months from the day Red drove the old Buick into Purville for the
first time, Roger Ellis Watson was married to Sally Jean Fulton by
the Justice of the peace on the courthouse steps in the downtown
square. Roger “Red” Watson bought a nice two bedroom home out by
the Pet Milk Company plant where Sally and Red lived happily ever
after, as far as most people knew.
Red
still hung out at Charlie Drake’s Pool Hall and made more than a
decent living shooting pool, mostly with out-of-towners and traveling
pool sharks. Sally went to work at one of the two clothing mills in
Purville.
For
a time after the wedding, patrons at the pool hall would ask Red,
“Why’d ya go marry that old gal? Ever’ guy in Purville has had
their way with her.”
Red
responded, “Yeah, I know.” Then he’d line up his next shot,
make it, collect a dollar bill from the loser, and then say, “But
Purville ain’t such a big place.”