Funerals are huge in Fitzgerald, Georgia. Next to weddings or the high school proms (One
high school, two proms. One for the black kids and one for the white kids. Seriously.), funerals are the biggest social occasions in town.
Now, I bitch about Fitzgerald a lot. (Not that it's not justified. See parenthetical comment above for reference.) But, there is one thing my hometown is fantastic at -- responding in a crisis. These people who can be so full of venom when talking about a neighbor's hair or choice of car, come together and respond like no other community I've ever seen when there is a tragedy. When my grandmother died a few years ago, a church Grandma had never attended more than twice invited our entire family to have dinner in their Fellowship Hall. Women none of us knew spent their entire day cooking food and serving us and cleaning up after us. It was loving and caring and exactly what we needed. Part of that comes from being intuitively kind. Most of it comes from practice. You see, people die in Fitzgerald all the time. Personally, I attended over thirty funerals in my life. Twenty plus of those were between the ages of 15 and 20. And this is in a town that only had about 5000 residents at the time.
Fitzgerald in the 80's was a shitty, shitty place to be a teenager.
Michael Waller was the first one I remember. I wasn't there, but this is the story that circulated:
It was a Friday night and Michael was at a friend's house and he had a pistol. This isn't unusual in my home town. Most boys got their first gun for their eighth Christmas. So, the boys were drinking and for some reason, Michael shot a hole through the refrigerator. His friend naturally freaked out and Michael looked him in the eye and said, "Well, this one's for you, buddy," and he shot himself in the head. He was sixteen.
Our chorus group was on a field trip to Six Flags over Georgia when we heard the news. We had been at the park all morning and when we met for our noon check-in with the chaperones, they told us Michael had died. I don't remember the rest of that day, but I do remember the following Monday and walking into my second period history class and seeing his empty desk. Even writing about it now, twenty plus years after the fact, I get a catch in my chest remembering that desk.
Not long after Michael died, the rumors started ... the Wallers had decided to sue
Ozzy Osbourne. His song
Suicide Solution was being blamed for Michael's decision to shoot himself that night. Then there were the stories ... the Ozzy tape was in his truck that night. Oh, no. It wasn't Ozzy. It was INXS and the Ozzy claims were bullshit. Stories of how he had told his friends and girlfriend goodbye before that night. On and on.
Then the Tent Revival showed up. Right in the middle of the Piggly Wiggly parking lot, they erected an enormous white tent, hung crude lighting and started advertising the Revival. All were welcome and encouraged to attend. Unfortunately I didn't go, because I hear it was amazing. Most of the preaching was against rock music and drugs and they kept harping on how Ozzy was to blame for Michael's suicide and how other fans of Ozzy were in danger of becoming the next victims.
Then, of course, what better way to end a tent revival than with a good old fashioned bonfire fueled by all the kids' evil records and cassettes. Teenagers -- friends of mine -- threw piles of music into the fire. AC/DC, Cinderella, Bon Jovi, Whitesnake ... all melting in the middle of town. I even heard that Billie Spears threw a bag of cocaine into the fire to prove his love for Jesus and to denounce all drugs and rock and roll.
Of course, the next week everyone was lined up at Record Fitz buying replacements for everything they burned. That's the problem with tent revival fever ... no staying power.
After Michael killed himself, the act of dying really caught on. For the next two years, 17 more friends of mine died. The majority of those people killed themselves. All but one of those suicides involved a gun. When my boyfriend killed himself, he used a rifle. I still think of him with no shoes on, forcing the trigger back with his toe. Of course, some of these people were closer to me than others, but in such a small town, you know everyone and each loss was intimately personal for me.
Not long after, Ozzy came to Albany -- the closest music venue where anyone who anyone cared about played -- and we saw Ben Mills, Fitzgerald's most prized attorney, in the stands of the civic center. In his attorney suit. Looking miserable. He was representing the Wallers against Ozzy and I suppose he was looking for evidence. Unfortunately, by this time -- 1991 -- Ozzy was already half-dead from his days with Sabbath and all he did was pace and occasionally make half-hearted swipes at his chest with his nails. No bats, no blood. Nothing.
It was all pretty disappointing.
An opportunity to run through $50 in 10 minutes, 75 cents at a time.
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