Chapter Nine
Classic Cal Battles Booze with a Beaten Butt
Twenty-four-year-old Neveah Lopez (she had kept her original last name when she married) sat in the concert audience with her two-year-old son on her lap and a smile on her pretty face. She was listening to her husband, “Classic Cal,” sing old country tunes as only he could. As he sang the old Gary Stewart tune, She’s Acting Single, I’m Drinking Doubles, he assumed a perfect imitation of the late artist’s powerful vibrato. The quiver that had been in Stewart’s voice, and was now replicated in Cal’s, gave a special poignancy to the lyrics and she knew that the entire audience could, and did, appreciate it.
I know all she plans to do,” Cal sang. “But I don’t know where or when. If I ask who that stranger was, she’ll just say, ‘an o
