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it,” said Ott Devine, general manager of the Opry, in an interview in Nashville in 1961. “They just don’t understand the informality .”
    â€” The Country Music Story , by Robert Shelton
    I n 1962, Dad took a job at the Tennessee Valley Authority plant near Paradise, in the southwestern part of Kentucky. It was at the atomic energy plant, and they needed skilled welders. This was no ordinary job for hire, done in a few weeks and on to the next. It was full-time employment, so the whole family was moving with him. But the TVA welding job wasn’t the only reason he uprooted the family to leave the hollow. It was mostly on account of me and my mandolin.
    Paradise was only a few hours’ drive from Nashville. And Nashville was home to the Grand Ole Opry, where all the country stars played. Dad moved us close to Nashville so I could have a decent shot at the country-music business, and so we could give it a go with the Skaggs Family band, too. His greatest dream was to get me on the Opry. The only way to get on the Opry, he figured, was to be in Nashville.
    So we moved to Goodlettsville, Tennessee, a suburb north of town. It was a big change for us. It was probably hardest on my oldest brother, Garold, because he loved hunting and fishing and running the woods so much. The rest of us were excited. And we wouldn’t be leaving everyone behind at Brushy Creek. My dad’s cousin Glair Mullins got hired at the TVA plant, too, and he and his wife also moved to Goodlettsville, living two doors down from us in our new neighborhood.
    It was a brand-new subdivision: tidy little three-bedroom houses all lined up and straight driveways down to the paved street, complete with a street sign for Fannin Drive. Roads back home curved like a copperhead, and most were simple dirt paths cut into the land. We were a long way from Brushy.
    I still had a lot of Kentucky in me, though, and it didn’t take much for me to put it on full display. One of the first things that happened after we moved in was me getting in a fistfight with a boy in the neighborhood. We’d barely even met, and I busted his nose.
    The stupid fight was over a mulberry tree, if you can believe it. We got into a crazy argument over this tree that grew along our street. I don’t remember how it even started, just him saying, “It’s my tree!” and me saying, “No, it ain’t!” Something in me snapped, and I reared back and popped him right in the nose. It was a hard punch, too, and I knew his nose was broken. I still don’t know what triggered it. I guess this boy had pushed me to the limit.
    When I saw his nose spewing out blood, I was as surprised as he was. I immediately felt terrible and ashamed of what I’d done. I started to tell him how sorry I was and tried to hug him, but I just got his blood all over me, too. Now we were both a bloody mess standing there under the mulberry tree.
    He went home screaming to his mom, and I went home crying to mine. This wasn’t a very good way to make a new friend. The boy’s mother came to our house and told my mom what had happened. Mom said, “When your dad gets home, you’re gonna get it.” I dreaded to see Dad pull into the driveway, and when he did I really got my butt busted. He didn’t want me growing up fighting, especially over something piddly like that. If that boy had challenged me, or said something about my family, there may have been a little more justification. But to get into a fight over a mulberry tree that didn’t belong to either one of us? That was pretty senseless.
    After that I never got into another fight. One was enough. Now, I did learn to spit and whistle and do all the other things boys my age did back then. I was a regular kid except when it came time for sports, and that’s when I wished I didn’t play music so much.
    Dad didn’t let me try out for any team sports, because he thought I’d