"On one of my visits, one Saturday in January 1818, the great Andrew Jackson came by the Dickson store. He was a long, lathy, rawboned man who looked mighty peaked. He wore a fine buff and blue general's uniform trimmed in bright gold braid and was astride a huge, magnificent, restless, gray stallion.
"I had taken myself down to Camp Blount across the Elk south of town a few days earlier to watch the militia and volunteer troops gathering, there had to be a thousand or more, for the march to Fort Scott down in Georgia for action against the Seminole, Spanish, and British. I was right impressed by all the sights and commotion. Most folks I'd ever beheld in one place.
"Now here before me was the hero of New Orleans come into the shop to secure some needed work on his warhorse's harness. I remember his fierce cropped mane of hair was the color of ripe wheat, and his ruddy face was pox marked. I reckon he had the countenance of a lean old lion. Despite his feeble carriage, his eyes were penetrating, sharp, and hard blue. I was sitting in the corner on a two foot length of oak log I used for my perch on visits.
"The great Jackson saw me and nodded. 'Pray, son, perchance could I trouble you to find the nearest ordinary and secure me a quart of their best, medicinal, sour-mash whiskey?' He winked at me. His blue eyes now were warm and kind. 'My supply has been depleted on the march from Nashville.' For such a sickly body to have so vibrant a spirit impressed me mightily, sir," Mr. Jones recalled.
"Yes, sir, General," I said. "I'd be pleased to do that your honor, sir, most pleased." I should have been struck dumb by the eyes and attention of the Hero of New Orleans-Old Hickory-Tennessee's demigod, but somehow I answered him coherently and properly.
"'Very well, son,' he said. As he went to his britches' pocket for a coin, he asked, 'How are you known to the world? What's your name young sir?' "'General Jackson, sir, the name's Jones. Sir, I'm George Washington Jones.' I answered more bravely than I felt.
"'A most common surname prefaced by the grandest name in America, very good. Make it a good whole name, son, it's yours and only yours,' he said, as if a challenge and a blessing. He tossed me a quarter Spanish silver piece, which I caught with ease and a smile. 'On to your mission, Master George Washington Jones,' spoke the greatest man in Tennessee or maybe the whole world to me. Within an hour he was on his way along the Huntsville road that he'd had cut by the Tennessee militia in the 1813 Creek War. With him was a fresh stock of Old Lincoln County sour mash and my heart. He would be my idol till death, no, no, forever." After a moment of glorious reflection he added, "And I had my first silver earned, a ten-cent piece. He'd told me it was mine for my prompt dispatch of an order." His face glowed.