Last week I spent a considerable amount of time rescuing old photos from my previous laptop, and while doing so I came across this classic document.
But I digress. This is about Bill Turner.
After my folks split up, my mother also began recreating herself. Now that she was out from under a loveless and awful 16-year relationship, part of her attempting to build herself anew after having lived her growing up years (and beyond) under the iron fist of her domineering Christian cultist mother, then enduring my father, included her taking her first tentative steps at finding a boyfriend, something she had not done since the late 1950's. She had been raised in a rigid Christian household, so her every activity was closely monitored by her mother and the other women of the James family matriarchy, even down to some of her relatives sneaking into her room to inspect her panties for evidence of sexual activity, and that was when she was a grown woman.
Needless to say, with that kind of shit going on, plus her time with dad, she had a very warped perception of men and dating. She was lonely, but her ideal man was an unachievable fantasy blend of Rhett Butler, Kenny Rogers, and Omar Sharif, only black, and he must always be the exemplar of the perfect southern gentleman. (A fantasy that she unfortunately tried to program me to be from an early age. Not in some incestuous way, but the way she treated me like she was grooming me as a chaste surrogate husband really did a number on my young head. Getting out of that house and going to college was the best thing that ever happened to me.) Nonetheless, she began to reach out to various black men she had met in various capacities, all from other towns since the number of single black men in Westport was practically nil. (Hell, the number of black people at all in Westport was practically nil.)
I believe my mom met Bill Turner sometime during 1978. Bill was a house painter of some small renown who did quality work for a reasonable rate, assisted by a sketchy white guy named Donald. He was nice enough, so mom briefly dated him. It didn't work out because my mom is very much a snob, and Bill, as she herself put it, just was not on her intellectual level. She was not wrong, but Bill was the salt of the earth, even if he did refer to a theme song as a "scheme song." Anyway, despite no longer being romantically involved, they stayed good friends, and he was her go-to guy for any house painting or simple home repairs.
Bill was over at the first house, and later the second house, quite often, and I think mom liked having him around so I would have something resembling a father figure and a positive male influence. I never thought of Bill fulfilling either of those roles, but I liked him a lot. He had a very earthy sense of humor and he was downright hilarious once he got going, with a favorite topic for him to take the piss out of being current Top 40 pop music. His derisive imitations of the songs that he hated made me laugh my ass off, especially his renditions of Billy Joel's "Big Shot" and "Pop Muzik" by M. He would also sometimes sing a sarcastic version of Mel Tillis's "I'm Just A Coca-Cola Cowboy," as he found country music to be an endless goldmine of ludicrous songs. In fact, he may be the Patient Zero for my love of old school country, the dumber, the better. Unfortunately it is impossible to translate the nuances of Bill's vocal performance of the aforementioned hits in writing, but if you ask me nicely, I would be glad to perform my approximation of his dulcet tones over drinks.
Between the time when I was 13 through to the end of my 12th Grade year, mom would sometimes task Bill with what amounted to babysitting me, despite me being in my teens and being quite a responsible kid. (To call Mildred overprotective would be a monumental understatement.) That was fine by me because what she didn't know was that Bill was a high-functioning alcoholic who always had two cases of Bud in his truck, and that he and Donald drank all day while on the job. There were a number of times when Bill would have to run an errand while I was in his care, so we would hop in his truck and he would whip out a beer, always noting with a sly wink that I was not to tell my mother, after which he would crack open the can and guzzle like a wolf pup at its mother's teat. And since I kept schtum about his drinking, he would hand me a beer of my own, thus introducing me to the timeless joy of "the Connecticut road beer." Those of you out there who grew up in Fairfield County during my era know EXACTLY what I'm talking about. His truck also had a generous supply of some of the scurviest porno mags I have ever seen, really grungy stuff featuring models who looked like worn-out biker hags. I'm talking the kind of stuff that kids would find molding inside a tree stump deep in the woods, what a friend of mine calls "feral porn." Bill always blew it off by claiming they belonged to Donald, but yeah, whatever.
Bill remained an on and off presence until perhaps the early '90's, at which point I never saw him again and my mother never mentioned him. A few times I asked mom if she knew what became of him, but she says she doesn't know. She was raised in a home where the code of silence on family matters and history was strictly enforced, so for all I know she does know what became of him. If I were to put money on it, I could see him doing himself in with the drink. I hope not, because he was a solid dude.
