wanted a drink. Well, that's not exactly the truth, he really wanted a whole damned ocean of whiskey and long tall waterfalls of wine and shooting, spewin,' sprayin, fountains or geysers of beer and bubblin' baths made out of only the best of beads of Chilly Clear French Champagne. To paraphrase a quote of one of Eddie's songs from his first solo album "he did not want just a little bit - Eddie wanted it ALL !” But on that seemly never ending cat on a
hot tin type roof day back in 84', Hinton found himself in the river city with nothin' but a bad need for an illegal drink in Decatur. Okay, many drinks. He did not tell me about this adventure that I'm about to pass on to all of ya'll until after he had been through the whole odyssey - or maybe he thought he had already tapped me for assistance one to many times. So instead he did the next logical thang in
his highly imaginative and creative mind. He set out walkin' to Florence, Alabama - which is 50 miles away by hard road. He later told me that it took him 12 hours to walk that dis- tance...he said that the small one-horse town of Town Creek, Bama-lama gave him a free ride from one side of town to the other just to get him out of their the City Limits. I don't blame them a bit - he would scare a ghost back in those days - long side burns - looked like this Super Hero cat - I think his name is the WOLVERINE or somethang like that. Hinton was a scary lookin' dude back in the
day...and scary actin' as well ! So after walkin' for 12 straight hours he
shows up at Donnie Fritz's house and asked him if he would lend him 38-dollars and some odd cents. He told Donnie it was to pay for a weeks rent in a boarding House. So Don- nie put Eddie in his car and drove him back to Decatur and gave him the money he asked for. At that time Decatur was dry, which meant that you had to know a bootlegger if you wanted a drink or you had to drive 15
miles to Madison, Bama-lama and buy it and turn around and drive back another 15 miles and there was always a Sheriff that ran the County in between Decatur and Madison that tried to bust as many folks as he could for havin' booze in their car as they drove through his Dry County. So Fritz drops Eddie off after givin' him the
money he asked for and drives off into the sunset. And Eddie immediately goes to where he has all of his stuff stashed away and he gets his small worn-out handless brown Sam- sonite suitcase and dumps out all the con- tents and closes the old suitcase back up and then he tucks it up under his arm like he was carring a football across the goal line for his all time favorite football team, The University Of Alabama's CRIMSON TIDE! One of Hinton's favorite fantasies was to
own a football team like The Atlanta Falcons. It would be like Eddie was the team’s Owner/Coach/and player in critical times - like when his team needed that big play, Eddie would hussle into the big game runnin' onto the field still wearin' his wing-t ipped street shoes. And he'd call and execute the big play of the game and then he'd run off in vic- tory and go back to doin' more important thangs like havin' another beer and another until the team needed him to save their asses again! Anyhow Eddie put the suitcase up under
one arm and adjusted his nuts with his other hand and then he sets out again, walkin'
....destination Madison County, Alabama. And he never even missed a step. No tellin' how long that Cat had been up without any sleep at all at this point. He made the 15 miles that he needed in the burnin' hot steamin' Al- abama Hell for sunshine. Hinton had finally arrived at his ultimate destination and goal, The Alabama State Liquor Store. That was just about all there was in Madison back then...just a long row of beer stores on both sides of the highway and one big green front
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