The Maddog dropped out and kept a low profile for the next 20 years.
Talking to Maddogs is engaging but confounding. When contacted for this story, they told funny tales about Milner and the wild days. Memories, though, are foggy. Stories often contradicted each other. When anecdotes were relayed to Milner for confirmation, he would usually laugh and say, "That's bullshit," and tell his own version of events. The stories are colorful and contain elements of truth but are blurred by whiskey, time, and the sheer number of stories to recount. For instance, Larry L. King's tale about Milner avoiding the hotel desk clerk all those years ago in Washington D.C., differed from Milner's version. "Hell, I talked to Sports Illustrated and was waiting on that check," he said. "I asked them to Western-Union it because I needed it. They asked me if twelve-fifty would be OK. I said, 'Well, I guess that's all right,' thinking they meant $12.50." When $1,250 arrived, he felt compelled to blow it on partying -- with King as a willing companion. Shrake, an excellent storyteller (and Willie Nelson biographer), recalled how Milner snagged the 1949 Cadillac hearse that became his mobile calling card for a couple of years. A bar near downtown Fort Worth was a favorite spot for gamblers, criminals, and writers, Shrake said, and, in 1962, "Jay and I won some kind of a bet from this gambler named Circus Face, and we wound up with this Cadillac hearse." Yet, Milner explained it like this: Milner, Shrake, and Circus Face had decided to go on a road trip to Mexico. Circus Face gave Milner money to buy a car for the trip, and Milner bought the hearse from a Dallas car dealer for $75. He later converted it to a sleeping van so he could travel the state and write freelance stories for Texas Observer. When the stories contradict, one has a tendency to believe Milner's version. His friends are famous arthers, playwrights, screenwriters, and novelists, with more room to fictionalize, while Milner is more apt to follow the reporter's credo of describing events without embellishments. Shrake, however, is adamant about one detail. Shortly after Milner got the hearse, he drove to Shrake's house, which had no grass in the front yard and was a muddy mess from a heavy rain. "I pulled up and saw that hearse, and my wife was waiting for me and she was pissed off," he said. "Jay had walked right through the yard, mud up to his knees -- he must have gone out of his way to avoid the sidewalk -- then tracked mud all over the house and was sitting on the couch waiting for me." The hearse, dubbed "William Randolph," carried Milner on several long road trips, until 1964 when it caught fire during a trip to El Paso. Another Texas writer, Larry McMurtry, used Milner's mobile hearse as inspiration for a character in his novel Moving On. Friends recall Milner as a big bear who made people laugh but remained a bit mysterious. "Jay is slow-moving, funny, an extremely good writer, and very good company," Shrake said. "He was always kind of hard to put your finger on. Jay is the kind of guy who you'd look around for at a party and he'd just be gone." Escaping to Lufkin took Milner off the party path, and friends gave him the space he seemed to desire. "You never knew when Jay was going to show up and when he was going to leave," Shrake said. "When he dropped out, it wasn't strange. But all of sudden you realized, he's been gone for several years instead of a week. After that, he never really did get back into it. A scene was still going on, but Jay wasn't there anymore." The search for it had worn him down. In Confessions, Milner described it as a vague calling, something inside that pushed him toward misadventure. It could be the possibility of meeting the ideal woman who would recognize his deep qualities and fall instantly in love, or the possibility of an enlightened conversation that might open a new window of perception. Shrake understands the quest for it, and, like Milner, has trouble with the definition. "For some reason we thought it was important to stay up all night," he said. "We partied all the time. I still can't figure out what on earth we thought we might miss."
Whatever it was, the attraction left Milner and didn't return. He kicked his vices and began exercising, eating and sleeping more regularly. He described his sabbatical in Lufkin as a poor-man's version of entering the Betty Ford clinic. He didn't miss the vices so much, but he missed journalism -- both the writing and the camaraderie among journalists. He sent word that he would like to meet Joe Murray, editor of the Lufkin Daily News. Murray was skeptical, thinking "this worn-out old fellow was going to come by and interview for a job," he told the Weekly. Milner arrived, and they had a long and entertaining conversation, but Milner never mentioned a job. Murray finally brought up the subject, and Milner said he wasn't looking for work, he just wanted to visit with an experienced journalist. Murray, whose little paper had won the Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1977, lacked the celebrity status of Milner's former buddies, but he had qualities Milner admired -- stability, a gift of gab, and the ability to have fun without it becoming self-destructive obsession. "We had a grand time," Murray said. "Some people you just mesh with." Before long, Murray offered Milner a regular column, and he's written about books and authors for Cox News Service ever since. After Milner married his third wife, Gail, in 1983, he divided his time between Lufkin and their Fort Worth home. As he got older, he dreaded the commute and now spends his time in Fort Worth, enjoying his grandchildren, working on his novel, and taking it easy. Growing old has its advantages, he said. "It's handy because I don't have to do a lot of shit. I don't have to work in the yard anymore -- I'm physically not able to," he said with a laugh. During an interview for this story, Milner talked about dieting and how he no longer eats carbohydrates. Within minutes, we were on our way to a bakery on Bluebonnet Circle, where he drank a large coffee and ate three carbohydrate-filled delicacies. Over the snack, he pondered a question about mortality and recalled a memory of Hondo Crouch, the informal mayor of Luckenbach, Texas, a tiny town made famous in the 1970s by a Jerry Jeff Walker album and a Willie Nelson-Waylon Jennings tune. Crouch and Milner had stayed up late talking one night in the mid-1970s, and Crouch was about to turn in for bed when he paused and asked Milner if he'd ever heard his theme song. Milner hadn't, and so Crouch broke into song, complete with a dance and a big clownish smile, all while framing his face with the palms of his hands like Shirley Temple. Crouch died a couple of years later. No, Milner said, he doesn't worry about old age or death. Then, with pastry crumbs scattered on the table in front of him and a steaming cup of coffee in his hand, Milner smiled and recited the lyrics to the song that Crouch performed that night: "Life is just a bowl of cherries, don't take it serious, it's too mysterious. ..."
|
|
