Teddy Shapou and the three day pack of cigarettes

I first told this story to Mary Anne on June 26th, 1980, the night we met. She had been showing me around the Navy base on our first day in Charleston and we ended up sitting on her front porch with me telling funny stories trying to impress her.

This is my favorite piece of family lore, and one of the reasons I started this blog. Kent wrote this rendition of the story to his son Val in 1994. Vertrees is, of course, TGP. Ken is good old Dr Brown. The two of them later became partners in a medical practice at St. Lukes in Georgetown (see TGP's autobiography)

The closest picture to 1955 that I have is from 1959 below. Left to right are: Hall, Denzil (Grandfather), Vert, Donn, Kent

KENT HOLLINGSWORTH
ATTORNEY AT LAW

May 15, 1994

Dear Val:

School is out. I finished grading final exams on Tuesday. Now I am vacationing for three months and am free to do all the little things I have postponed, odd projects set aside until I had more time, like checking the spelling of the name of a predecessor in title to our property. This was a 15-minute job, and I stepped off briskly toward the court house. Got to flipping through old deed books, reading wills, drawing plats of parcels beginning at a point in the centerline of the Crawfish Pike and running thence South 13 1/2 degrees East for 31.6 poles and 16 links... until the county clerk came into the vault and advised it was closing time. Good grief, I had spent the whole day in there! I scooted right home. Missy wanted to know where in the in the world I had been. Oh, I had to pick up some pipe. What?! Casing, actually..

Family tradition of the 15-minute job began about 40 years ago. (Ed note: 1954) Your Uncle Donn was setting tobacco at The Hollys

and we were all standing around talking about how dry it was. Without irrigation, the plants would surely die. Your Grandfather posed a rhetorical question: Whatinhell are you standing around for? There's plenty of water in Elkhorn Creek, and a culvert down there near the mailbox, so you can run a line under the road right into this field.

Right. But it'll cost a couple of thou to buy the pipe. Tell ya what, Grandfather offered: Hall pulled that No. 9 well last year, and there's about 2,000 feet of casing just lying there on the Albany lease. You can have it for nothing. Just drive down there and pick it up.

The quick response to this was that we did not have a truck with a bed long enough to haul pipe; we had a Jeep. Upon reflection, Donn called his friend Bob Green, manager of Maxwell Gluck's Elmendorf Farm. Bob said sure, we could borrow a deuce-and-a-half from Elmendorf.

About that time, up drove Teddy Shapou, grinning, cheery as always. Teddy was a fighter pilot in World War II. Late one afternoon, he landed a P-47 some 25 feet short of the runway and jammed a gunsight into his forehead. This more or less amounted to a frontal lobotomy which freed Teddy of social inhibitions he may have had previously. When we would go to Jerry's Drive-in and the girl would bring out a tray of hamburgers and shakes, Teddy would flash that great smile and casually inquire if she were ready to hop into bed with him; as the girl's jaw went slack, Teddy seemed to continue along with the same line, but he really was asking about mustard.

We had known Teddy since 1939, when he was a lifeguard at Johnson's Mill. This was a commercial enterprise Willet Groover had built around the Elkhorn Creek dam across the Newtown Pike from us. It comprised a swimming hole with high and low diving boards, two floats, picnic grounds, horseshoe pits, snack bar, dance floor, and a Nickelodeon. Mr. Groover closed the place every night promptly at 10 o'clock, by simply throwing the master light switch.
I spent seven afternoons a week with Teddy, working leaves and branches out of the net stretched across the creek above the floats, raking the horseshoe pits, and listening to his fascinating stories. I worshiped him before he was a war hero. He inherited his charm, ready smile, and dark complexion from a Lebanese rug dealer; he made his body himself, doing one-handed push ups and 40-yard wind sprints between stories. He played football at Georgetown College. He was small at 5-7, but solid at 185 pounds, with thighs bigger than his waist; he had Sylvester Stallone's chest, arms, neck, teeth, and wavy black hair. He was a running back, what was then known as a scatback. We raced a lot, and he always beat me, narrowly, no matter how far my head start; he did it running backwards, smoking a cigar.

He did not own a car then. He jogged the five miles from Georgetown to Johnson's Mill every morning at 10, and ran back in the dark at 10 that night. Mr. Groover shut down Johnson's Mill on Labor Day, when everybody returned to school. After football practice, Teddy had a job in the Sweet Shop on Main Street in Georgetown, jerking sodas for $20 a week.

One afternoon, he slipped away to Keeneland and happened upon a $900 Daily Double payoff. The next morning he jogged over to the Logan-Haggin-Cooper dealership on North Broadway to inspect, again, the elegant Ford Deluxe convertible in the front display room. Old Mr. Cooper, knowing Teddy was a scholarship kid at the college, asked him what he thought he was doing, opening and closing the door on that model. Teddy kicked a tire: How much? $650. Well, Teddy said nonchalantly, I just suppose I'll take it.

He drove it right off the floor, around the block, and parked it in front of the Sweet Shop, top down. When The Gorgeous Mary Jones finally came in, Teddy fixed her a fountain Coke, gave her the usual paper napkin, wrapped straw, and great smile, then casually inquired if she would be interested in going for a ride. Teddy, have you borrowed somebody's car?

Without a word, Teddy took off his apron and grandly escorted the most beautiful girl in Georgetown out the door. With a sweeping gesture, Teddy asked which one these numbers she would like to take a ride in. Oh... Without waiting for a more definite answer, Teddy stepped forward and opened the passenger door of the convertible. Let's try this one. They became engaged before Teddy had driven halfway down the block.

I do not recall what happened to that car, but after the spring semester, Teddy called Donn and asked if he could catch a ride to Lexington. We drove over to Georgetown in what may have been the last wooden-bodied station wagon, and picked him up at the PiKA fraternity house. Teddy waved to us from a second-story window, grinned, threw down a cardboard suitcase--what we used to call a grip--then bounded down the steps after it, and jumped into the wagon singing, "Off we go, into the wild blue yonder..." We took him to the post office in Lexington where he enlisted in the Army Air Corps.

Not long after that, Teddy was flying P-40s in China for Gen. Chenault's Flying Tigers. Between missions, the pilots and ground crews would choose up sides and play touch football. For the Georgetown Tigers, Teddy had done most of the running in the old single-wing offense; for the Flying Tigers he did most of the passing. New replacement pilots always were the, last to be picked when choosing sides. Teddy got stuck with a new last-pick and tried him on the first play from scrimmage; he fired off a short zinger on the flat. Well, the new pilot gathered that in easy enough, cut to his left, then to his right, ran through everybody, and scored with a sudden burst of speed that left startled defenders breathless. Teddy said Hey, you look like you can play this game all right--whatcher name? Tom Harmon. There he was, Michigan's No. 98, the Heisman Trophy winner of 1940, probably better known today as the father of a pretty good UCLA quarterback, Mark Harmon, recently voted the sexiest man in Hollywood, over Robert Redford, Sean Connery, Tom Cruise, Mel Gibson--those kinds of guys.

Anyway, we were standing there trying to figure who we could spare from setting tobacco to go over to Elmendorf and get the truck when here came Teddy, whom we had not seen since the previous summer. He volunteered. I'll get the truck. I've got nothing to do since I've joined the idle rich--100% disability, gotta silver plate up here, none of that cheap, dish-barn pottery for me. He grinned.

I'm tired of hanging around my in-laws' house, anyway. I told my wife I'd get some cigarettes for the father-in-law. (Mr. Jones is very high up in the judicial branch, Teddy confided, bailiff in Judge Church Ford's federal courtroom over in Lexington, so I figure it's wise I cater to him when we visit here, just the one week: out of the year, what the hell.) Told Mary I'd only be gone about 15 minutes; that's about all it should take to drive over to Elmendorf and get that truck.

And he got the truck. Took him a little longer than 15 minutes, though, because Elmendorf was a big farm, and Teddy drove around for a half-hour before he found Bob Green, then spent another half-hour looking for a truck nobody was using, and another half-hour to drive it to The Hollys because he could not shift into fourth gear and go any faster than 35 mph. Still, he returned with a truck, and a smile. Good ol' Teddy, thanks, pal. S'all right, glad to do it.

Now I need somebody to drive me back to Elmendorf to get my car. Right. But we can't do that just now, Teddy, we have to pick up the pipe. Where? Down in the oil field. Where's the oil field? Albany. New York? Naw, naw, just down the road a piece. But what about my car? Don't worry about it; we'll get it when we return the truck. Am I supposed to stand here in this field all by myself until you get back? Of course not, you can come with us. Just stay right there in the truck, drive it by the house and pick up the boys — Vertrees and Ken Brown are still asleep up there--then follow along behind us in the Jeep.

Teddy hesitated just for a moment. He cocked his head, thinking: Well, I guess I can buy cigarettes in Albany--I never told her where I was going to get a pack. So he roused the boys and headed south through Lexington, to Nicholasville, where both Vertrees and Ken cried halt, pointing out that noon is lunch time. Teddy bought. The quest then was resumed, south through Stanford to Somerset, then west at Burnside, and south again through Monticello to...Where the hell is this Albany? We really don't have to go all the way to Albany, because the lease is just below the post office at Aaron. That's fine, because I'd like to call my wife from that post office. She's probably been worrying about my wristwatch. I told her I'd only be gone 15 minutes, and that was about eight hours ago.

The post office was the only structural evidence of Aaron, Kentucky, other than a huge crude-oil collector tank standing right next to it. The post office occupied a portion of a multi-purpose building whose front screen door advertised Nehi. Next to a Wanted poster was a wall telephone with a crank. The party line was in use, and while waiting for someone to hang up, Teddy chatted amiably with the taciturn post mistress. He told her he had driven that truck 120 miles in third gear to buy a pack of cigarettes, and wondered if she had any in stock? No, just stamps, crackers, bologna, and warm pop. Teddy smiled and shook his head.

Hall began to fidget. It was getting late in the afternoon and sunlight might not reach down to the wells by the time that party line was free. Down to where? Just out back of the post office here, down that draw cut by a wet-weather stream about a mile and a half, into the hollow down there; these hills can shut off sunlight quicker than you might want. We really ought to get going. Teddy nodded, said he would stick with the truck and follow Hall in the Jeep. The Jeep was small and could bounce down the dry streambed without too much difficulty, but the truck was wider and taller; thick tree limbs barred its path. The transmission growled when Teddy shifted into first gear and lurched forward. Small branches snapped, but larger ones dented the truck's fenders and cracked the windshield as Teddy cascaded off six-inch ledges. Jesus! This is worse than trying to land on a field while it's being straffed and bombed! By the time everybody made it to the bottom, darkness enveloped old well No. 9. We could not see to cut the casing into smaller sections for loading on the truck. We had to wait for morning's light. We spent the night in Albany's Smith Hotel, took all four rooms.

Teddy finally got a call through to his wife. What have you been doing all day? Trying to buy a pack of cigarettes for your daddy. Where are you? I dunno, maybe in South America, in the Andes. Teddy, you come right home; you know you're supposed to be the honor guest at a fishfry at Harrington Lake tomorrow at 6 p.m. Oh, I'll be home long before that; we're gonna get up early—the Hollingsworths and the Shapous have pretty much taken over the the whole second floor of the Smith Hotel here—and we figure to load some pieces of pipe onto my truck and be outta here by noon. Just a 15-minute job, so I'm told.

Actually, it took longer than that. The pipe was rusty and hard to cut. The load was heavy. We had to winch it back up the series of stone steps in the streambed 10 yards at a time. Okay, now wrap that cable around the next higher tree—no not that little one, the big one over there. It was very hot. Everyone was filthy with rust, sweat, and cable grease. About 3 p.m. Teddy, in an aside, noted that he probably should be getting back to Georgetown so he could scrub-up for a fishfry. Vertrees and Ken jumped right on that idea, reminding Donn and Hall that they also had to get home, so they could find out if their Tuxedos fit for the Junior Prom that night. Teddy proposed that he take the boys home in the Jeep. Oh, all right.

Teddy was arrested in Stanford for having no tailight; he lost some time trying to find a Justice of the Peace who would accept payment of a fine and let him go. After dropping off the boys, taking a shower in Georgetown and changing into clean party clothes, Teddy drove 42 miles back to Harrington Lake, arriving at 10 p.m. Everybody had eaten and gone home.

The next morning we unloaded the pipe at The Hollys, and while Donn and Hall went to work on a mud-caked water pump, I drove over to Georgetown and picked up Teddy, so we could take the truck back to Elmendorf and exchange it for his car. Teddy's car was not where he had parked it. We drove the truck around the farm, asking men mucking stalls if they remembered seeing a blue Buick...no. We found Bob Green. Blue Buick, left behind the carriage barn? I had that towed away-not knowing whose it was, of course. Where was it towed? I really don't know—you might ask the police. Teddy nodded.

He called his wife instead. Teddy said she not only was the most beautiful woman in the whole world, but also the most understanding. She borrowed her father's car, picked us up at the Elmendorf office, and without a word, drove to the police station in Lexington, paid the $179.50 towing and storage fees, and obtained a release. We drove down Manchester Street to a lot enclosed by a formidable chain-link fence topped by barbed wire. There they were, the smashed, the abandoned, the illegally parked.

With a sweeping gesture, she asked which one of those numbers he would like to take a ride in. Teddy flashed that great smile. I wonder if they've got a 1939 Ford Deluxe convertible.

In memory of all the 15-minute jobs we worked together, and the prospects of more to come when you return.

Father (Kent)

The other really fun part of the story is that we named our first dog Teddy Shapou, in honor of this story. Note the part earlier where Teddy is described as stocky with wavy black hair and cocking his head; our Scottie had the same characteristics. We were having dinner with Eleanor and Caroline and Aunt Leslie and Gene Waterfill when Eleanor mentioned Teddy Shapou. Leslie was surprised to hear the name, because she thought of Teddy as the man that came and helped them paint little house. We had fun sharing stories.