There's a new Nashville mural that includes a famous moment in Nashville history. But the family of the man in the mural calls it "plumb ugly, hideous, and NOT accurate".
It says "Nashville" in giant letters but features late country legend George Jones riing a lawnmower. The mural, on the side of Colonial Liquors (not coincidentally), depicts a story from George's memoir. He said he was drinking pretty hard and his wife had hid the keys to all the vehicles so he couldn't drive. From his life story:
Once, when I had been drunk for several days, Shirley decided she would make it physically impossible for me to buy liquor. I lived about eight miles from Beaumont and the nearest liquor store. She knew I wouldn't walk that far to get booze, so she hid the keys to every car we owned and left.
But she forgot about the lawn mower. I can vaguely remember my anger at not being able to find keys to anything that moved and looking longingly out a window at a light that shone over our property. There, gleaming in the glow, was that ten-horsepower rotary engine under a seat; a key glistening in the ignition.
"I imagine the top speed for that old mower was five miles per hour. It might have taken an hour and a half or more for me to get to the liquor store, but get there I did."
But his widow HATES this mural. In a statement to FOX 17 Nancy Jones said:
“Have you seen that thing?? It is plumb ugly! It doesn’t look anything like George. It is stupid, hideous, self-serving, NOT accurate and certainly not sanctioned by the estate or the museum. George was a great writer, a great singer and a proper mural should be about him and his music not a mischaracterization of him on a lawnmower!” – Nancy Jones