Crockett White’s West End: Southern Fried Politics, Nashville Style

I have lived in Nashville, TN, practically all of my life. My parents moved here from Milwaukee, WI, when I was less than a year old. My father was hired in 1961 by Vanderbilt University to start up its Materials Science Department in the Engineering School. Even though I could consider myself a "native" Nashvillian (especially when you take into account the thousands of California refugees that have moved here recently), I have never felt like I truly am. It's a cliche that Nashville is a "big city with a small town feel," but it's true. There's a relatively small circle of everyone who's anyone, and they all know each other. Still, I managed to keep up with local politics and society gossip through reading the two newspapers, The Tennessean and The Nashville Banner.

Crockett White is a former reporter for The Tennessean, and he obviously spent his career learning all about Nashville's prominent families and the skeletons in their closets. He utilized that inside knowledge to write West End, a thinly-veiled fictional account of John Jay Hooker's run for Senate in the early 70s. Hooker was a gifted politician who truly had charisma. That word gets thrown around a lot, but very few humans possess it. Hooker had it - even his political opponents acknowledged his gift for connecting with and inspiring practically every person he came in contact with.

I remember sitting in my local barbershop getting a haircut when John Jay walked in. This was years after the height of his political promise and he had become somewhat of a parody of himself. Even so, I recall him launching into a flowery speech praising the styling skills of the barbers in the shop. After he left, one of them cooed, "Gosh, no one can talk as nice as him!"

In West End, John Jay Hooker is Seth Tatum "Tate" Weston, an extraordinarily gifted orator whose grandmother owns one of the three big banks in town. He opens a law office with a partner who does all the legal work, while he spends his time schmoozing the movers and shakers in Tennessee politics. He marries a beautiful woman who could be a model, and he soon starts making a name for himself in the Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, the narrator, David Arthur, starts out at the bottom of the ladder at the local newspaper, Clarion, i.e., The Tennessean. The Clarion's publisher, Jack Hickenlooper, is another thinly disguised portrayal of a real person, in this case, John Siegenthaler. Arthur was born on the wrong side of the tracks in Mill Town, whereas Weston was raised in West End. As far as I can tell, Mill Town is East Nashville (or maybe Bellevue), while West End is Belle Meade, one of the wealthiest zip codes in the entire country.

As Crockett embeds himself in Weston's campaign for US Senate, he learns a lot about how politics in America works. He is also witness to the implosion of Weston's political aspirations as he succumbs to sexual temptation and destroys his marriage. Like many political figures (Bill Clinton, anyone?), he has all the "politically correct" principles and motivations when it comes to seeking office, but he can't keep his pants zipped.

There are some very funny scenes in West End, including a Belle Meade (oops, I mean West End) dinner party where a significant number of the guests are having affairs with each other, and they all come out into the open. White also provides a gripping description of the civil rights lunch counter protests. Arthur's uncle is a police chief who handles the potentially explosive situation with intelligence and sensitivity.

White also describes Weston's foray into fast food franchising. A prominent Nashville family had just reaped a huge fortune investing early in Kentucky Fried Chicken, so Weston was certain he could repeat that success. He recruited a country music star, "Tex Willis" (Hooker partnered with Minnie Pearl in real life), to be the face of his Country Ham and Biscuits chain. Weston managed to secure financial backing, but it came from some very shady sources.

Typical of Weston's priorities is this scene from the kickoff of the publicity campaign for Tex's Ham and Biscuits:

The world's number one cowboy and Weston staged a musical opening of the headquarters for Tex's Ham and Biscuit food chain near Nashville's Music Row and had their pictures taken in the lobby standing in front of a huge oil painting of the "Pardners" clad in Western-cut suits tailored by Tone and hats the size of a long horn. Naturally, I was there to cover it for the Clarion. And after the photographers, television crews, and Tex and his band had departed and Weston was about to turn out the lights, he called me over to stand where he and Tex had stood to peruse the portrait he had commissioned by a young female Western artist name Amy Goodnight.

"Look closely at this, David Aahthuh," Weston said. "Tony tailored these cowboy pants pretty tight and the woman that painted us... well, look good now, don't you think she painted Tex's crotch bigger than mine. I mean, the bulge in his pants is a lot bigger, isn't it."

Well, I looked good, and, well, I had to admit that Tex's bulge appeared a little larger than Weston's. "But after all, he is a cowboy," I quipped.

Weston was not amused.

"Okay," he said. "Then it was not my imagination."

A week later, he visited his headquarters again with me in tow. And we paused once more in front of the painting, which hung just outside his office.

"I had Amy come back and do this part over," he said, pointing at the repainted spot. "She got it right this time. They are closer to the same size now. Mine might be even a little bigger."

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Needless to say, Weston's scheme to get rich via fast food crashes and burns, nearly bringing down his family's bank with it.

West End aspires to be another All the King's Men, set in the mid-sixties to mid-seventies, and it comes close. It's hard, though, to compete with Robert Penn Warren when it comes to creating characters that are fully fleshed out and real. As a Nashvillian who lived during most of the events depicted in West End, I thoroughly enjoyed reading about all the behind-the-scenes wheeling and dealing that went on. To get ahead, a politician had to know whose back to scratch to get his scratched some day in the future. Tennessee was governed by a close-knit network of good ole boys who managed a pretty good job of providing basic services to constituents.

West End chronicles the rise and fall of a gifted man from an era that no longer exists. Our current mayor is from California, and the Metro Council is consumed with empty virtue signaling and raising property taxes while failing to address the city's real needs. In many ways, Nashville is a better city these days, but there is no denying something important has been lost.