Twenty-eight

IT’S NOT WHERE YOU’VE BEEN; IT’S WHERE YOU’RE GOIN’

FROM THE BACK OF THE AUDITORIUM IN BESSEMER CITY High School, I listened in awe to Jody Lee Hager as he stood onstage, shared his story, and performed a few original songs on a cheap, brown, dreadnought guitar—a guitar stamped with prison unit number 4515.

Jody was an incredible motivator. His performance moved an entire auditorium filled with high school students, teachers, and administrators. Adding to the uniqueness of Jody’s performance was the fact that he was a current inmate at the Dallas Correctional Facility and was participating in Think Smart, a program that allowed prisoners to leave the facility under strict supervision to share their stories with schools, churches, and civic groups. The goal was to inspire others to “think smart” and avoid criminal activity.

Despite Jody telling the students, “Guys, think smart; don’t do drugs, don’t get in trouble, and don’t be like me,” as I listened to him, I thought, I want to be just like him! Not Jody the criminal, but Jody the musician and storyteller.

Oddly enough, one of the most poignant songs Jody performed was a Christmas song, “For Days Like This,” a song he had written describing the loneliness he felt in prison at Christmastime. I couldn’t believe that he sang a Christmas song in the middle of spring, but Jody communicated the message so powerfully, it reached right into our hearts.

I had performed with Fantasyche and had even sung at a few weddings, but Jody’s performance inspired me. From that moment forward I knew exactly what I wanted to do—I wanted to write songs by putting my poems to music, perform them on an acoustic guitar, and share my story. Maybe I could inspire someone the way Jody influenced me. It was just a kernel of an idea, but it was beginning to take root.

THE FOLLOWING WEEKEND, WHILE ON MY WAY TO WORK AT the textile mill, I spotted a small brown guitar leaning against a table at a yard sale in a gas station parking lot. The traffic light turned green as I slowly drove past the guitar. I alternated between watching the road ahead and glancing back to check out the guitar, all the while slowly changing gears on my pickup truck. I hadn’t shifted past second gear before I turned the truck around and drove back to the yard sale. I got out of the truck, walked directly to the guitar, and picked it up.

It was a Harmony six-string guitar, an inexpensive instrument similar to the one I had while living with Patricia and Steven. I looked at the neck and the tuning keys, then flipped the guitar over and looked at the back. I examined it from every angle, as though I actually knew something about guitars, which of course, I didn’t. “How much is it?” I asked the woman conducting the sale.

“Forty dollars,” she replied, as though she were offering a special deal.

I pondered for a few minutes—forty dollars was a lot of money to me—before handing her two twenty-dollar bills.

I opened the driver’s side door and gently laid the guitar on the bench seat as though I were placing a sleeping baby in a crib. I slid in beside the guitar and drove on toward the Osage mill, looking over at the guitar’s reddish finish and black pick guard several times as I drove. When I arrived at the mill, I got out of the truck, looked back at the guitar one more time, and then closed and locked the truck door.

I walked through the gate and raced up the stairwell to the spinning room, where my best friend, Josh Conrad, and our boss, Posey Williams, were waiting on me.

“Where ya been?” Posey asked, looking at his watch.

I immediately shared with them the great news about the guitar and my dreams to become a country music singer.

Josh and Posey stood in the doorway of the spinning room and looked at me with a blank stare. Neither of them said much, but I could guess what they were thinking by the way they grinned.

“Okay, you’ll see,” I said with a grin to rival theirs.

For the next six hours, all I could think about was that guitar lying in the front seat of my truck. I didn’t even know enough about guitars to realize that leaving a stringed instrument in a hot vehicle all day is not a good idea. I could already hear myself singing “Chasin’ That Neon Rainbow,” a song written and recorded by Alan Jackson.

As soon as I finished my shift, I ran back to my truck. There on the front seat of the pickup lay the guitar I had been daydreaming about for the past six hours. I couldn’t wait to play it; except for the few songs I had learned at Patricia’s, I didn’t know where to start.

I drove to the Music Center in Gastonia and purchased a Mel Bay guitar chord lesson book, a well-known, simplistic instruction manual, then headed home. For several weeks I studied the chord book. I was making fairly good progress when I thought of an idea.

I APPROACHED MRS. LOVE, THE ATTRACTIVE, YOUNG GUIDANCE counselor at Bessemer City High School, and told her how much Jody Lee Hager had inspired me during his Think Smart school assembly. I asked if she could arrange for me to meet Jody. My hope was that he could teach me a few things on the guitar and share a few tips about songwriting. Mrs. Love’s father, Mr. Charles Mears, was the superintendent at the Dallas prison, where Jody was incarcerated.

Mrs. Love promised to ask her father about my request. A few weeks later correctional officers greeted Mrs. Love and me at Gate 1, patted us down, and then led us across the prison yard to a concrete picnic table between the lieutenant’s office and the music room.

Minutes later Jody Hager walked across the graveled midyard, approaching the picnic table. He was wearing green pants, a white T-shirt, and black boots—mandatory prison garb for all inmates at Jody’s honor grade level.

Jody sat down beside Mrs. Love and began making small talk at the table. She explained to him that I had come to ask him some questions about playing guitar. At the end of the visit, I told Jody that I hoped I could come to see him again. He agreed.

A second visit went much the same as the first. After that, I continued to visit Jody alone, without Mrs. Love. During the third visit, Jody actually spent time playing the guitar and discussing music with me. He taught me the guitar part to “Anymore,” a popular song by country artist Travis Tritt. We spent a few more minutes practicing the song, and just before I left, he wrote down the lyrics on a piece of paper and handed them to me to learn.

I visited Jody one more time at the prison. During the visit, superintendent Charlie Mears approached me on the midyard. At first I thought he was going to tell me that I could not visit Jody anymore, but he didn’t. Instead, Mr. Mears said, “I’ve been watching you out here on the prison yard, son. Call me when you graduate from college, and I’ll give you a job.”

That was the best news I’d heard since the Costners allowed me to move into their home. After working for more than two years in a textile mill, I was ready for another sort of employment. Of course, Mr. Mears may not have known I was still a high school student. It would be at least two more years before I could leave the textile mill.

I WAS SO EXCITED TO BE LEARNING GUITAR. I WANTED TO expand my repertoire of music and at the same time learn to sing better. As the lead singer with Fantasyche, I had basically been screaming on pitch—or close to it. But I was impressed with Jody’s smooth vocals melding perfectly with his tasteful guitar licks. I said, “I want to learn how to sing like that!”

I couldn’t find a voice teacher at school, so I sought out the best vocal coach I could find. Becky Hyde Smith was a part-time vocal teacher who had heard me on the Fantasyche demo cassette, and she was willing to help me. The first day I met with her, Becky asked me to sing along with her. She began playing the piano, and I started yelling in tune. She stopped playing and said, “Jimmy, please stop screaming at me!”

We started from scratch. We began by doing vocal warm-ups. Becky played scales over and over, and she made me match my voice to the notes up and down an octave. “La-la-la-la-la-la-la- laaaaa.” She taught me about volume control and speech-level singing, and she introduced me to great vocalists, teaching me to emulate their diction and vocal control. Becky displayed tremendous patience with me, but she was also firm in her demands for perfection when it came to practicing my vocals. I am indebted to Becky to this day for teaching me to sing, not only with passion but proper diction and intonation.

I GRADUATED FROM BESSEMER CITY HIGH SCHOOL IN JUNE 1992. The school gave me a special award for three straight years of perfect attendance. Of course, Bea attended the ceremony, and I could tell that she was proud of me.

Mama was there too. She had bought me a new pair of shoes to wear to my high school graduation, and she purchased my class ring for me. I didn’t expect her to do anything like that, and I appreciated her kindness.

Receiving my high school diploma was especially meaningful to me. It was more than a piece of parchment with some writing on it. The diploma symbolized all the achievements and positive changes that had taken place in my life since moving in with Bea and Russell three years earlier. The boy living in Uncle Austin’s trailer couldn’t have done that, nor could the kid who had been living from bed to bed, meal to meal. But thanks to Bea, I now believed I could do anything, simply because I had a place to live and some loving encouragement. And now I was even planning to go to college.

I enrolled at Gaston College, in Dallas, North Carolina, that fall. I decided to major in criminal justice—since I knew a lot about the subject.

CLASSES STARTED IN SEPTEMBER, AND I THOROUGHLY enjoyed them. I had grown up around crime, so I related to many of the lessons taught. I continued practicing my guitar and working on my vocals. In December 1992, with Bea in mind, I wrote my first song, “My Only Friend,” after a close friend’s mom passed away. I wasn’t good at expressing grief, so I gave him the song to help us both deal with his mom’s passing.

One of my most memorable experiences during my education at Gaston College was a field trip. My criminal justice instructor, Don Lawrence, told the class to wear a collared shirt on Monday morning. We were going to visit the Dallas Detention Center. “This will give you a taste of the real thing,” Professor Lawrence said, “taking criminal justice out of the textbook and letting you see it in real life.”

I didn’t need to visit the detention center to see what real life inside was like since that was the facility in which I was locked up on my fifteenth birthday. I didn’t tell my professor or any of my fellow students that I knew more than I wanted to know about the detention center.

When we arrived, we were ushered to a side room to await the officer who would guide us through the facility. I felt uneasy as I stood in the back of that room, behind all the other students, with memories pummeling my mind. A heavyset officer walked through the double doors, and I recognized him immediately. I swallowed hard. It was the same officer who had checked me in the night of my fifteenth birthday.

He looked right at me, but he didn’t recognize me. The last time he had seen me I had been wearing scruffy clothes, had filthy long hair, and was scared stiff—looking like a deer caught in the headlights. Now I looked much different, with clean clothes, a stylish haircut, and a confident look in my eyes. I stood quietly, my back against the wall, as the officer began his introduction.

“Good morning, and welcome to the Dallas Detention Center. In here we have all kinds of trash.” The officer practically spat the words from his mouth.

All kinds of trash? I couldn’t believe what I had heard!

I wanted to say something to this man, but I was reluctant to speak up. I had not shared my story with anyone, not even the people closest to me. And no one knew my story, not Bea, not my girlfriend, not my best friend, Josh—no one. I thought people would judge me if they knew where I’d been or the lifestyle I had led.

But something was welling within me. I stood there fuming as the officer continued explaining to all the college students what the detention center was and how it operated. I had zoned out of his speech by this point, and all I could think about was this man calling the youth behind these walls trash. Finally I couldn’t take it any longer; I knew I had to say something to the officer.

I was so nervous, my body was shaking. My mouth was dry, and I could hardly form a word, so I simply yelled out, “Sir!” Several of my fellow students whirled around in surprise at my outburst, but the officer was still spewing out his spiel.

I raised my hand and shouted loudly again, “Sir!” More students turned to look at me, and the officer heard me this time.

“You may not remember me,” I said, “but the last door on the right was mine. And you were the officer who checked me in that night, on my fifteenth birthday.”

I noticed the students’ expressions suddenly change, as more of them turned and stared at me in disbelief. I could imagine them thinking, How can a guy who looks like you say that you ever spent time in a place like this? They knew me as Jimmy Barber, the quiet, studious guy with an Eastpak bag and a nice haircut. They didn’t know the hurt little boy who lived deep inside me. They could not even imagine the heartache I had experienced. But I didn’t have time to address all that.

I continued talking to the officer, speaking loudly enough for everyone in the room to hear. “I’ll never forget what you said to me and the way you treated me that night, and I just want you know . . .” I could feel my voice cracking with emotion, so I took a quick breath and forced myself to keep going. “I just want you to know that some of these kids in here have been abandoned by their own families. We all make mistakes, but there’s one thing we’re not. We’re not trash!”

The officer glared at me. For a long, awkward moment, nobody made a sound as the entire class stared at me. Then someone clapped, and in another second the whole class began applauding, including Mr. Lawrence, while the officer just stood there glowering at me.

The officer hastily concluded the tour. Afterward a number of my classmates approached me and wanted more details. “Were you really in this detention center, Jimmy?” I answered their questions as honestly as I could.

This was the first time I had ever shared any part of my past with anyone, but I knew I had to speak up because that officer said the same hurtful words to me the night he checked me in, making me show him all my scars and tattoos, making me strip naked. That was his normal routine.

I knew that if I didn’t confront him, he would continue saying those hurtful words about other kids, and people who didn’t know any better would believe him.

More than that, I knew that if I didn’t raise my voice in those kids’ defense, I couldn’t live with myself.

When we returned to Gaston College, Mr. Lawrence called me into the hallway and asked more questions. He gave me an open invitation to share any relevant parts of my story during his class, at any time, depending on the topic he was teaching.

That was the day I decided that I would do whatever I could to help the youth living in various forms of government care, especially kids like me, who were bounced around through the foster care system.

Although I didn’t know how I could make it happen, I made a promise to myself that I was going to move to Nashville, get a record deal, and write songs that speak up for the kids whom some people regard as trash. And I wanted to tell those kids, and anyone else who would listen, it’s not where you’ve been, but it’s where you’re goin’; it’s not who you were in the past, but it’s who you are today—that’s what really matters.