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would go back and forth andthey had people inside, too, and they’d serve hamburgers, stuff like that. They had another place a half mile further down called Glenn Vista. We’d play on Sunday from one to five at Miller’s Café, and then we’d go over at Glenn Vista from six till closin’ time. I was flat worn-out. But we made a little money. George was pretty good. They’d put money in the kitty and we’d split it up. They paid a little something, like five dollars, which wasn’t bad back then. I was livin’ at home.”
    George’s guitars, Nallie remembered, were catch-as-catch-can. “He kind of borrowed guitars. I don’t know if he had one of his own or not. He had friends that he stayed with that were musicians and he’d use one of theirs. We were still playin’ beer joints and then later on we added a fiddle player, Robert Shivers, and another one by the name of Lloyd Gilbert, and later on as time went on George got up a band with the drums and the whole shot.” He enjoyed creating onstage comedy, sometimes at Luther’s expense. He’d cede the microphone to his partner, whose specialty vocal was the dramatic 1950 hit ballad “Cry of the Wild Goose,” a pop hit for Frankie Laine and a country success for Tennessee Ernie Ford. As he sang, “Tonight I heard the wild goose cry,” George started honking, goose-style, behind him, cracking up the crowd and deflating Nallie’s presentation.
    George drank during this time, but Nallie insisted it wasn’t yet a major problem when they were performing. Offstage was another matter. George and Nallie joined the owners of Lola’s and Shorty’s for a day of fishing on their small boat, equipped with an outboard motor and an ample supply of beer. Fortified with more than a few beers, George took the wheel only to hit something that damaged the propeller. When Luther raised the motor from the water to effect a temporary fix, a laughing, drunken George began rocking the boat.
    It was at Playground Park that George first encountered the Bonvillian family: the patriarch, known as Willie; his wife, Claudia; and their daughter, Dorothy Ann, who’d come to Beaumont from Houston. Dorothy had been born in Houston in 1929. For Willie, going to bars and enjoying live country music on weekends was a respite from his job as a superintendent of the painting division of G. Sargl, Inc., a large Beaumont general contractor Nallie knew well, noting, “They would do like big buildings and they must have had thirty, forty painters, people workin’ in that department.”
    The entire family seemed fascinated with the young singer. Willie liked his voice enough to buy him a portable PA system and a decent guitar. Overwhelmed by the attention, George took a liking to Dorothy. When he proposed, she accepted, but their wedding on June 1, 1950, proved awkward. The upwardly mobile Bonvillians seemed discomfited by Clara Jones and her backcountry ways, and by George’s insistence that Brother Burl, a true backwoods preacher, officiate. Since he and Annie were doing revival meetings in Port Arthur, the wedding was held there. Even in the wedding photo, with both mothers separated by the happy couple, the more urbane Claudia Bonvillian looks uncomfortable.
    The disconnect became all too clear when the couple moved in with the Bonvillians. Willie might have loved his son-in-law’s singing, but he also knew music wasn’t going to support a wife, much less a family, on hit-and-miss payments from Playground Park, Yvonne’s, Miller’s, or anywhere else. He laid down the law. Playing music in bars was fine on weekends, but his new son-in-law needed a day job with steady pay, and he happened to have one in mind: work as an apprentice housepainter for Sargl. George tried it, hated it, and quit, leaving Willie highly displeased. He landed a job driving a delivery truck and moved Dorothy and