remembered years later. "I never had any. I can never remember-even
once-hearing my parents say 'I love you' or feeling them put their arms
around me. . . . They showed they cared about me by giving me a good
education, they fed me, they took care of me, but that was their form
of love. I understood that, although I found out later in life that I
wasn't exactly planned when I came along. I wasn't exactly a
blessing.
But I was the kind of kid that thrived off of love. I needed to be
told. I needed to be shown.
Tom grew into a huge teenager who towered over his parents.
He looked like a big old country boy and that suited him fine.
All his life he would hide his intelligence and his education and speak
with a deep southern drawl. He was happiest in the country, competing
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in a rodeo or working in a horse barn. Teenage girlsand not a few
grown women-watched Tom Allanson longingly from the rodeo stands. His
jeans fit him like second skin, and he exuded masculinity.
One of the women was Liz Price, who would move in and out of his life
for years to come, and she laughed as she remembered knowing Tom. "He
was my ideal man coming up. A big rodeo star and-oh, how he fit those
jeans! You hear about his jeans? I thought he was God's gift to
women. . . . One day I was walking across the horse show grounds with
a bucket of water in my hand, and somebody says, 'There goes Tom!" and
I turned around, looking for him, and I ran right into a guy wire with
my neck and I poured all my water in my boots!"
Tom didn't know women looked at him that way. He had had few
compliments in his life and his self-esteem was wrapped up only in his
skill with horses. While he was still in high school, he learned to
shoe horses and worked as a farrier when he was only sixteen. He had a
crush on Liz, who was a few years older than he. But he never
mentioned it to her; he was much too shy. "I won't say I was all that
good on my first horse or two," he remembered. "Liz was my first
horseshoe customer and I like to ruined her horse."
After Tom graduated from the military academy, he enrolled in the
University of Georgia in Athens. He played football; he was a line
coach's dream at six foot four and 250 pounds. But he was forced to
drop out of football-and the university-in 1963 when a rodeo accident
ended his playing career. He transferred to Truett McConnell Community
College and graduated with an associate degree in science. Then he
returned to the University of Georgia.
Despite his father's vehement oppos't'on, Tom married for the first
time while he was in college. He was mesmerized by a tall, slender,
raven-haired girl with clear blue eyes, Judy Van Meter. "I fell in
love with this young girl up there in Athens," he said. "She was
beautiful. She looked absolutely beautifullike Lynda Carter, 'Wonder
Woman."You couldn't tell me anything as far as my parents goes. I was
in love. My dad said, 'You can't get married until you get through
with your college." And I said, 'Well, you can't stop this love I've
got for this girl." He said if I got married, they'd cut off all my
funds for college. Well, I got married and he cut it off just like he
said he would. There wasn't another penny. So I had to make it on my
own."
Tom's marriage to Judy didn't work out. "She had a champagne
appetite," Tom recalled ruefully. "And I had a beer pocketbook.
I was trying to go to vet school and work, and she was working too.
She started playing games. . . . If I didn't do what she wanted me to
do, there was no more sex." He would later admit that it would be a
long time before he had good sense about women.
When his first wife shut the bedroom door on him, his eye soon wandered
to an even more unsuitable choice. "YOU couldn't tell me anything
then-no more than you can tell any young man in love."
Tom's next love was, unfortunately, his wife's best friend, Carolyn
Brooks. Carolyn was a delicate-appearing woman who swept her blond
hair back into a chignon. "She looked like Grace Kelly," Tom said,
shaking his head. "All my women were real pretty." Carolyn was in her
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