As imogene + willie’s store manager, Rhett Murdaugh is one of the first folks you meet when you visit our store – and, thanks to his warm personality and quick wit, he’s one of the last people you forget when you leave.
Born and raised on a farm in McAlester, Oklahoma, Rhett knows a thing or two about hospitality. He spent much of his childhood making sure his large menagerie of pets felt comfortable and loved.
“We had cows, horses, goats, dogs, and even a potbellied pig named Dorothy,” he remembers. “I took care of them all. I was that kid who couldn’t talk on the phone after school; I didn’t go to the skating rink. With that many animals to look after, there was always something that I had to feed or watered or else it would die. It taught me to be responsible really early on.”
As an adult, Rhett has pared down his beastly brood quite a bit. Today, his pet quota is filled by a darling white Shipoo who answers to the name The Mrs., and who accompanies him to the store every day in a chic leather carryall. Being a one-pet-man is just fine by Rhett: between keeping our store tip-top and pursuing his singing career – and this man has some mean pipes on him, let us tell you! – he doesn’t have time for six a.m. feedings anymore.
Rhett did find some time last week to spend a few minutes retelling the remarkable life story of his best childhood memory.
I would wake up early before school every day and ride my three-wheeler over to my great-grandmother’s house – she lived on our property – where she would give me a bottle of powdered milk that I would take to the barn to feed them. Right now, I’ll go ahead and say that I don’t remember what happened to Louise; I think we got rid of her. I just remember stories about Woodrow.
Woodrow was awesome. We were tight: I’d put his leash on, load him into a trailer, hook him up to my three-wheeler, and we’d go off riding around. I drug him around with me everywhere. Up until I got The Mrs., Woodrow was the best pet I ever had – better than any other dog. Just so, so loyal. We were so close that it got to the point where he could tell when it was time for me to come home from school every afternoon. My grandmother said he’d start braying fifteen minutes before the school bus pulled up to our house. He’d get all excited and jump up on the fence when I walked by, like dogs do.
My parents were really involved in the community, and for a while, back in the ’80s, my dad was president of the board that ran the fairgrounds. The fairgrounds were really dilapidated, so dad found a good plot of land to move them to. The problem was he needed three million dollars to buy it. He was able to convince the county government to pass a penny sales tax where the money raised would go to buy the new land. In addition to the land, he also wanted to build an expo building for events like the thee-day music festivals that he started organizing back then. They were really popular; Reba, Randy Travis, Tammy Wynette and lots of big stars came in the early days.
Even with the penny tax, my dad still needed more money. So he came up with the idea to have an auction where farmers, car dealerships, tractor dealerships, lawn mower dealerships, and businesses like that could donate big things that could be sold to make money for the expo center.
One day, I was at home and heard my dad and a bunch of guys in our kitchen having a meeting about where to look for donations for the sale. I walked in and told them I wanted to donate Woodrow. They sat me down and said, “Rhett, you understand that if somebody buys Woodrow you’re not going to have him anymore.” I told them that I understood that, but that I believed in the cause – I love music – and wanted to give something: Woodrow was all I had. So they let me do it.
The day of the sale, I took Woodrow to the fairgrounds, and, when our turn came up, I walked him into the ring. Woodrow and I had won a trophy at the county fair the summer before this, so my little brother Nabe – his name is short for a saying that my mom loved: “Hey, neighbor!” – walked into the ring behind us carrying it: he was five and the trophy was as tall as he was!
My grandfather had talked Woodrow up to all the farmers and ranchers in town, and they were all there; so was the local paper. Right before I went into the ring, a reporter asked me who I hoped would buy Woodrow, and I said, “I sure hope the butcher man don’t get him.” Well, he sold for $4,750 to a man named Dale Moore who owned the grocery store where we shopped and where he was the butcher. Of course, he didn’t buy Woodrow to butcher him, but can you believe the irony?
When it was announced that Woodrow sold, I realized what I had done. I squatted down and hugged him and the newspaper photographer took our picture: it’s me with my arms around his neck and a tear in my eye. Dale looked over at us like that and said to the auctioneer, “Give that boy his goat back. I’m still paying the money, but let that boy keep his goat.” It was so sweet. I ran over and hugged Mr. Moore; he was really tall – about 6’8’’- and there’s a photo of us, with me hugging his legs. I come up to his mid-thigh.
The next day, there was an 8×10 picture in the newspaper of me hugging Woodrow under the headline “Give the boy his goat back.” Of course, I was so excited. But it didn’t stop there: in like two days, the Tulsa paper came down and did a story on us, and it got picked up by the Associated Press. From there, it went on to run in the Chicago Tribune the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Houston Chronicle, the Atlanta Journal Constitution … It went everywhere. One of those tabloid papers that is based in Florida – I think it was The Sun – ran the picture of us on the front cover with the headline “Ewe and Me, Forever.” Seriously! Even though it wasn’t technically correct – Woodrow obviously wasn’t a sheep – it was really cool. I’ve still got the cover at home; I kept all of Woodrow’s clips and letters.
People started donating money to the fairgrounds, too. One man sent me a check for $400 and a six-page letter that talked about the goat he had when he was little. He said his parents had made him give it away; he was like, “I totally understand how you feel: that goat was my best friend.” He told me that the money was for the fairgrounds, but to use some of it to buy something for Woodrow. I bought him a leather collar with his name on it.
Now we’re at the part of the story that I dread.
So basically, Woodrow and I got famous. We started touring around to nursing homes and, like, grand openings of furniture stores and groceries, and letting people pet him. For years, we’d do this. As Woodrow got older and more aggressive, he started to like it less and less; he’d act out by spraying semen on people. Nice, I know. When that got out of control, a breeder in town offered to take him and let him live on her farm. I used to go visit him, but it wasn’t the same. Then, one day, we got word that he had jumped the cattle guard and got hit by a gas truck.
That was a sad ending to an incredible story. I learned so much from Woodrow and what happened to us after the auction. I always compare it to that story “The Gift of the Magi”: Even though you don’t have much, if you give up the thing you love the most, you get back more than you could ever imagine.
The whole experience of having so many people reach out to us, all the envelopes that came in holding cut-outs of the article and letters addressed to me and Woodrow – back then, I didn’t know people did things like that. It was a big lesson to me in the power of acts of kindness. I’m sure there are many more lessons to be learned from my time with Woodrow that will be revealed as time goes on. Right now, I don’t know what they are, but I know they are there.
-I + W
