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.”