The journey that led me to become a whistleblower began on Spear Branch Road in Tennessee.
Plus, hear about the first time I cussed. It involved a cow.
The news out of my home state of Tennessee is that the state is paying big money to get farmers to vaccinate their cows against respiratory and other diseases. But the governor is balking at providing incentives to human beings who live in the state to get life-saving Covid-19 shots. Cows are king in Tennessee. People apparently are dispensable. The way my weird mind works, that reminded me of my first encounter with a Tennessee cow. Read the tale below.
(Note: When I launched this newsletter, I noted that from time to time I would veer away from politics and health policy and throw in some autobiographical stuff for those of you who are curious about what makes me tick. No hard feelings if you can find a better use of your time than reading about me. But if you know anything about my story, you might recall that a turning point in my life came when I saw people standing in long lines at a county fairground to see a doctor–and get treated in animal stalls. When I witnessed that, I thought of the people I grew up with in Tennessee and who meant the world to me. You’ll meet some of them in this piece.)
The question I’ve been asked more than any other over the past dozen years is: Was there one thing in particular that pushed me to blow the whistle on the health insurance industry, or was it something that happened more gradually over a long period of time?
It was both, to be honest, and I’ll explain that before long. But even more important was how–and where–I was raised. That and the fact that ever since I was a little barefoot boy in Mountain City, Tennessee, I’ve had a defiant streak.
My Aunt Dot Dillon, who took credit for naming me (after her favorite politician), claimed to be an eyewitness to what apparently was the first evidence of that streak, and she never tired of telling about it.
According to Aunt Dot, a cow belonging to Dana and Jestie Buchanan, who lived on the farm across the creek, made a run for it one summer day and headed straight for our house. The four-year-old me was not going to stand for it.
“Get out of my yard, you damn cow!” Aunt Dot said I said. I eventually figured out why she told that story so often: it gave her a rare but perfectly acceptable excuse to do something forbidden on Spear Branch Road. We were all God-fearing Baptists (and Republicans, which is a story for another day). Not only did we not drink, dance or otherwise carry on like worldly people do, we didn’t cuss.
No one ever owned up to teaching me that bad word, but Uncle Garrett–Mom and Aunt Dot’s unmarried, ne’er-do-well brother–was always under suspicion. I had six uncles and loved them all, but Garrett was a favorite. To me, he embodied freedom and defiance. He had a bald eagle tattooed on his right arm, rolled his own smokes with tobacco from the Prince Albert can he kept in his back pocket, traveled whenever and wherever he pleased (by Greyhound when he could afford it, by thumb when he couldn’t) and, I would eventually learn, go on the occasional bender.
I’d sometimes overhear whispered reports of Uncle Garrett being in a jail somewhere. And I’d hear a lot of praying that he’d get right with the Lord before it was too late. I remember being worried sick that Uncle Garrett would get stabbed in a fight in some dangerous, godless city and wind up in a lake of fire for all eternity. So, even though I admired him and secretly wanted to be like him, I too would pray for Uncle Garrett’s safe return home–but most of all for his soul.
Except for “shut-ins” and sinners like Uncle Garrett, just about everybody else I knew would go to Bethany Baptist Church down on the highway every Sunday morning and every Sunday night and then again on Wednesday night for “prayer meetin’”. Our lives revolved around the church and our small farms and each other. It seemed to me that my little family–I had no siblings–was at the very center of that universe, in no small part because Mom and Dad ran a little country store next to our house, both of which my dad built.
There was a sense of community on Spear Branch that I loved and could never imagine leaving. My grandparents–Ma Hattie, Pa Mullins and Ma Horn–my Aunt Iva Lee, who dipped snuff and drove a stick shift, and a lot of cousins lived just a short but steep walk up that road (which, if you kept walking for a few minutes, would take you to the Appalachian Trail). My Uncle Otho and Aunt Frances and several other cousins lived a few farms down the road. I spent summer days picking beans and strawberries, helping plant tobacco, catching crawdads in the creek, and playing in the corn crib with Tom and Linda Buchannan, two of Dana and Jestie’s many kids. It was Tom, not Uncle Garrett, who taught me how to cuss. I learned a lot from Tom that I knew I had to keep to myself.
Spear Branch was a gravel road back then, which meant that everything would get covered in a layer of gray dust during dry spells. A hard rain would wash the dust off but it’d also wash out the road. I remember hearing the rumble of the road grater coming up Spear Branch a few days after a big rain to smooth out the ruts.
Another act of my early defiance took place at church. I always paid rapt attention to the offering plate as it made its way from the back of the church to the front. By the time it got to our pew, it would already be close to overflowing with change and wadded up dollar bills.
I had no idea what all that money was for, but I knew it could buy toys. So one Sunday morning, right after the usher put the plate on the offering table, I scooted past all the grownups on our pew, ran down the aisle and stuffed as much cash as I could get into my little pockets.
My parents were mortified and made me fork over my loot, which was a disappointment, but I did gain something else from that failed heist: fame. By Monday morning, everybody on Spear Branch knew what I had done.
Me and my folks were already sort of famous anyway because of our little store, Potter Grocery. Our customers were our neighbors, so everybody knew us. Unfortunately, Dad made a bad business decision by letting people buy stuff on credit, and many of them couldn’t settle their debts. I was too young to understand back then, but just about everybody on Spear Branch was having a hard time making ends meet. Life for me was great, but for the grownups, scratching out a living on small farms was hard work. I didn’t realize it at the time, but most of the families, including mine, were poor. But Spear Branch was home. If Potter Grocery hadn’t wound up being a money-loser, we probably wouldn’t have left, and my life would have been entirely different.
But Dad eventually realized the store was never going to turn a profit. So when he heard that one of the factories in Kingsport, about 60 miles away, was hiring shift workers, he applied and got hired. He would work there, keeping watch over an endless river of hot molten glass, until he retired 25 years later.
I was too young to understand the financial stress my little family–and just about every other family we knew–was under back then. Dad didn’t want to leave Spear Branch any more than I did, so for more than a year he “commuted” to work in an old gray Willys Jeep. After growing weary of the long and, in winter, dangerous drive home, especially after a graveyard shift, Dad decided to convert the Jeep into a kind of RV with a cot and hotplate so he could camp out in a Kingsport relative’s yard between shifts. I didn’t see much of him for a year or so after that and I missed him, but I had everybody else I needed in my life on Spear Branch. It never occurred to me that I’d live anywhere else.
But at the end of my first year of school, my wonderful life in the country came to an end. Dad decided he couldn’t live forever in his Jeep, which meant we’d all have to move to Kingsport, a place that was as foreign to me as the moon.
My parents didn’t tell me we were moving until the night I “graduated” from first grade. As soon as the ceremony was over and I got a final hug from my teacher, Miss Margie Grindstaff, Dad told me he had been fixing up a house for us in Kingsport and we were moving there. I was heartbroken and begged him and Mom to let me stay on Spear Branch and live with Uncle Otho and Aunt Frances. I prayed that Dad would turn the car around. I had a feeling Kingsport was not going to be a good place for me.
And damn it, I was right. There was no joy in Kingsport, not for me anyway, for a long, long time.