SCOTT SIMON, HOST:
December 15, 2021, an obituary appeared in the Fayetteville, North Carolina Observer.
ANDY CORREN: (Reading) A plus-sized Jewish lady redneck died in El Paso on Saturday. Because she was my mother, the death of zaftig good-time gal Renay Corren, at the impossible old age of 84, is newsworthy to me, and I treat it with the same respect and reverence she had for, well, nothing. A more disrespectful, trash-reading, talking and watching woman in North Carolina, Florida, or Texas was not to be found.
SIMON: Ah, nothing like a son's love is there? Andy Corren, the performer and playwright has written a memoir of his mother so colorful and pungent. I don't think we can ask him to read as much as a paragraph on the air. His book, "Dirtbag Queen." And Andy Corren joins us from Durham, North Carolina. Thanks so much for being with us.
CORREN: It's such a thrill to be with you, Scott. From one son of a showgirl to another son of a showgirl, we really grew up cared for and loved by the best ladies in the biz.
SIMON: I absolutely agree with that. You refer to you and your siblings as - I'm going to quote you again - "Renay's little tribe of nose-picking, to-the-quick nail-biting, change-stealing, dirty-minded, no good" - and I'm dropping a few words. How so? What kind of kids were you?
CORREN: We were her kids. We were, as many children in this country are, raised in our parents' image. She was both mother and father for us. We were taught to ask wrong questions only, shoot first, ask after, and to raise ourselves. Because her version of mothering certainly didn't fit any conventional sense or word of mothering that we have come to appreciate and understand. Her version of mothering was put on a helmet. It's tough out there.
SIMON: Yeah. What brought Renay, and hence, your family to Fayetteville, North Carolina? 'Cause she told you she thought she would never end up there.
CORREN: I used to beg her, can we please move to Durham (laughter)? I would just beg her every day (laughter). Please.
SIMON: Glad we could oblige you today, at least, yes.
CORREN: Please, can we just move to Durham? No, we ended up in Fayetteville like most people - our car broke down. Just kidding.
SIMON: (Laughter).
CORREN: It was the Army. It was the Army. Most people end up in Fayetteville for one of three reasons - they just got out of jail, they just got out of the Army, or their car broke down on the 95.
SIMON: Did you feel at home there?
CORREN: This book, for me, the end result has been I've really healed my relationship with who I truly was in Fayetteville, which was a happy, relatively speaking, well-adjusted, talented, vivacious, vibrant, young, gay kid. And while growing up, the way we grew up was chaotic, it was my town. It was my people, and I'm so proud to be from Fayetteville. Just as proud as I am to have, of course, left it.
SIMON: Could you tell us about the days you helped your mother at a local bowling alley?
CORREN: Yes. We were raised by a woman who frequently worked three shifts. Some of those were legal jobs. Some of them were not as above board, but B&B Lanes was the center of our life. And B&B Lanes was an incredibly fun, almost like a community center. It was really like an island of misfits.
SIMON: She saw to it that you and your brothers and sisters were well-fed there, didn't she?
CORREN: We could really count on getting at least one hot square meal - a hot and a cot at B&B Lanes because we could always get the keys to the snack machines, a burger off of the snack bar or a nap in the nursery. And so we loved going to B&B Lanes, you know, as kids. Of course, who doesn't love being able to run free in the arcade? But because our mother ran the place and then more or less ran an after-hours casino at the place, we were, like, you know, the crime boss' kids. We were respected and feared.
SIMON: We ought to add, Renay, your mother was a voracious reader, wasn't she?
CORREN: Yes, she was. She was an indiscriminate and fast reader, I might add. I'm a good reader because of her, but I've never mastered how fast she could read a book. A day, and it was gone. We grew up really sharing story as our first primal love language.
SIMON: And she had gorgeous hands, didn't she?
CORREN: The hallmark of surviving her existence was a little vanity goes a long way when you're a blue-collar worker and so regular-scheduled hair dying sessions and weekly manicures. Even at the very end, when she lay passing in an El Paso hospital, she went in with manicured peach nails, and that's how she left this world.
SIMON: I know what you mean. When my mother was in her last days, one of the errands I had to run for was to tell her manicurist she wouldn't be in 'cause she was going to die (laughter).
CORREN: The most important thing for her was getting Elva (ph), who she used to go to weekly in her garage in El Paso, to come to the El Paso hospital and fix her hair.
SIMON: Could I get you to tell me about the nights you and your mother and siblings would spend in an area of town called Hay?
CORREN: Yes, Hay Street, as most people who came through and around Fayetteville throughout the 1960s, '70s and early '80s before it was demolished, was one of the most legendary red-light districts in all of the world - bars, billiard halls, strip clubs, fights, bikers, soldiers, farm boys, hogs, pickup trucks. And we delivered the papers there between 3 and 6 a.m. or so. Hay Street has been long gone. It's been gone for over 40 years. But up until they really demolished the 500 block of Hay Street, it really stood as an example for my mother that at least we had this going on in Fayetteville.
SIMON: I'm touched by the scene of how you and your mother and family would end the night in the predawn hours at the Shoney's buffet. I mean...
CORREN: That's right.
SIMON: ...That's almost like "The Waltons."
CORREN: I never wanted to leave the impression that my mother didn't love us or care for us or try her darndest to keep us together and keep a roof over our heads. Those roofs were leaky. Those houses were shaky. Many of them were filled with bugs. We played whack-a-mole with utilities. We burned bowling pins for warmth. It was hard. But what wasn't ultimately hard was that we were together. And delivering those papers, that's our third shift. We would end up at a Shoney's buffet and relive the whole night together. It was an exquisite and tender way to care for her kids in the only way that she could.
SIMON: And I do have to ask you, is your childhood more fun in the retelling than it was at the time?
CORREN: (Laughter) The truth is - and you know this, son of Ernie, son of Pat - you know that when you're raised by a comedian, you take the sweet, and you take the bitter, right? So we laughed. We laughed while it all burned down around us. She just couldn't help but laugh at all the troubles, many that she caused on her own, but that wash ashore of a big, broke, single mother of six in the South in the '70s and '80s. So was it hard? Of course, it was hard. Many of my brothers have what I think is an appropriate trauma response. They've completely forgotten most of their childhood. But I didn't. I took notes, and it was fun sometimes.
SIMON: I'm so glad you did. Andy Corren's book "Dirtbag Queen: A Memory (ph) Of My Mother." Thank you so much for being with us.
CORREN: It is such a thrill to talk to you and to be on NPR. Thank you so much, Scott.
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