Hank's Last Stop

shoeless

shoeless

Riffin'
The Mrs. and I took a road trip through West Virginia last week hitting several state and national parks along the way. One unexpected stop was a little dive called the Skyline Drive-In. It was getting on lunch time and she found this place because of their West Virginia dogs (a hot dog with chili and slaw) and that it had some connection to Hank Williams. When we went in and asked the owner/bartender/cook/waitress what the connection to Hank was, she told us it was the place where he was found dead in the back of his car on New Year's Day 1953. So if you're ever in the Oak Hill WV area, stop in for a dog and some history.

1716905922821.png


1716905973363.png


1716906008367.png


They have a little memorial to Hank, including his death certificate and poster for the show he was heading to.

1716906091595.png


1716906136946.png


Just down the road in Oak Hill, there is a proper plaque.

1716906202725.png
 
Honkridge said:
Ummm..what happened to Hank's body?
Click to expand...
According to Wikipedia:

The body was transported to Montgomery AL on January 2. It was placed in a silver coffin that was first shown at his mother's boarding house at 318 McDounough Street for two days. His funeral took place on January 4 at the Montgomery Auditorium, with his coffin placed on the flower-covered stage. During the ceremony, Ernest Tubb sang "Beyond the Sunset" followed by Roy Acuff with "I Saw the Light" and Red Foley with "Peace in the Valley." An estimated 15,000 to 25,000 people passed by the silver coffin, and the auditorium was filled with 2,750 mourners. During the funeral four women fainted and a fifth was carried out of the auditorium in hysterics after falling at the foot of the casket. His funeral was said to have been far larger than any ever held for any other citizen of Alabama, and the largest event ever held in Montgomery, surpassing Jefferson Davis' inauguration as President of the Confederacy. Around two tons of flowers were sent. Williams's remains are interred at the Oakwood Cemetery Annex in Montgomery.
 
Andrew Sak said:
How were their West Virginia dogs?
Click to expand...
They were pretty good. The owner said the chili and slaw were home made, and they were both good. The dogs, however, seemed like generic (e.g. Oscar Mayer) and would have made for a better overall meal if they were upgraded to something more substantial. OTOH, the generic dogs fit the dive vibe pretty well. :shrug:
 
smurfco said:
hey let's eat at that place where the guy ate right before he died! what could go wrong?
Click to expand...
A. It was over 70 years ago, and
B. He didn't eat there, he was already dead in the back of the car. That's just the stop where he was discovered dead with rigor mortis already setting in.
 
shoeless said:
A. It was over 70 years ago, and
B. He didn't eat there, he was already dead in the back of the car. That's just the stop where he was discovered dead with rigor mortis already setting in.
Click to expand...
Well either it was his last stop when he was alive (it wasn't apparently) or his last stop when he was dead (unless they buried him in the parking lot it wasn't that either) what i am saying is they are dirty liars
 
smurfco said:
Well either it was his last stop when he was alive (it wasn't apparently) or his last stop when he was dead (unless they buried him in the parking lot it wasn't that either) what i am saying is they are dirty liars
Click to expand...
Anything to sell a hot dog I guess... :)
 
Dew Knot Humps said:
Morphine if I remember correctly. :frown:
Click to expand...
His cause of death has had controversy attached to it, but I think most agree that the combination of alcohol and morphine contributed to it.

From Wikipedia:

Williams was scheduled to perform at the Municipal Auditorium in Charleston, West Virginia, on Wednesday, December 31 (New Year's Eve), 1952. Advance ticket sales totaled US$3,500 (equivalent to $40,158 in 2023). Because of an ice storm in the Nashville area that day, Williams could not fly, so he hired a college student, Charles Carr, to drive him to the concerts. Carr called the Charleston auditorium from Knoxville to say that Williams would not arrive on time owing to the ice storm and was ordered to drive him to Canton, Ohio, for the New Year's Day concert there. Williams and Carr departed from Montgomery, Alabama, at around 1:embarrassed:0 p.m.

Williams arrived at the Andrew Johnson Hotel in Knoxville, Tennessee, where Carr checked in at 7:embarrassed:8 p.m. and ordered two steaks in the lobby to be delivered to their rooms from the hotel's restaurant. Carr also requested a doctor for Williams, as he was feeling the combination of the chloral hydrate and alcohol he had drunk on the way from Montgomery to Knoxville. Dr. P.H. Cardwell injected Williams with two shots of vitamin B12 that also contained a quarter-grain (16.2 mg) of morphine. Carr and Williams checked out of the hotel at around 10:45 p.m. Hotel porters had to carry Williams from the hotel to his vehicle, an Olympic Blue 1952 Cadillac Series 62 convertible, as he was coughing and hiccupping. Carr and Williams headed out of Knoxville from the Andrew Johnson Hotel via Gay Street to Magnolia Ave to 11w. At around midnight on New Year's Day, Thursday, January 1, 1953, they crossed the Tennessee state line and arrived in Bristol, Virginia.

Carr stopped at a small all-night restaurant and asked Williams if he wanted to eat. He said he did not, and those are thought to be his last words. Carr later drove on until he stopped for fuel at a gas station in Oak Hill, West Virginia, where he discovered Williams seemingly asleep in the back seat. He was unresponsive and rigor mortis had already begun to set in. Carr immediately realized that he was dead and informed the filling station's owner, Glenn Burdette, who called the chief of the local police, O.H. Stamey. Because a corpse was involved, Stamey called in radio officer Howard Janney. Stamey and Janney found some empty beer cans and the unfinished handwritten lyrics to a song yet to be recorded in the Cadillac convertible.

The town's coroner and mortician, Dr. Ivan Malinin, a Russian immigrant who barely spoke English, performed the autopsy on Williams at the Tyree Funeral House. Malinin found hemorrhages in the heart and neck and pronounced the cause of death as "insufficiency of [the] right ventricle of [the] heart." Malinin also found that, apparently unrelated to his death, Williams had also been severely kicked in the groin during a fight in a Montgomery bar a few days earlier in which he had also injured his left arm, which had been subsequently bandaged. That evening, when the announcer at Canton announced Williams's death to the gathered crowd, they started laughing, thinking that it was just another excuse. After Hawkshaw Hawkins and other performers started singing "I Saw the Light" as a tribute to Williams, the crowd, now realizing that he was indeed dead, followed them.

The circumstances of Williams's death are still controversial. The result of the original autopsy indicated that Williams died of a heart attack. Author Colin Escott concluded in his book Hank Williams: The Biography that the cause of death was heart failure caused by the combination of alcohol, morphine and chloral hydrate.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top