Jones and his wife, Nancy, have made numerous trips to the southeastern Alabama community (population 27,000), about 70 miles south of Montgomery and 90 miles north of Florida’s Gulf Coast. The couple reportedly plan to live in the community two to three months out of the year. “The more we visit, the more we seem to like it,” says Jones. The town is touted as “a safe haven from hurricanes, yet still close enough to feel the ocean breeze.” The housing development, to be called The Legends, is situated on 200 acres directly across from the Enterprise Country Club, and according to the Enterprise Ledger, Jones has already signed up as a member.

	George Jones has lent his name to a variety of products, from sausage to bottled water to “gourmet” pet food. (click for larger version)

“I’m working on a jingle for Enterprise to coincide with one of my hits,” Jones said at an Enterprise press conference several months ago. “I like the fact that life is slower here . . . It’s a lot less traffic and it’s peaceful and that’s what my wife and I are excited about moving here. It’s a nice place.”

Ronnie Gilley Properties has constructed residential communities and commercial projects that include restaurants, hotels, neighborhood retail centers, and office buildings in southern Alabama for two decades. The company’s partnerships include country music stars Alan Jackson, Kix Brooks, Tracy Lawrence, and Darryl Worley.

Jones and his wife Nancy also plan to open the Possum Holler Restaurant, a meat-and-three cafe that shares the same name of a nightclub Jones once owned in Nashville. Stamping his name on products is nothing new for the man whom country music stars revere as the greatest country singer of all time (“Hoss, if we could all sound like who we wanted to, we’d all sound like George Jones,” the late Waylon Jennings once claimed). Jones has marketed his own brand of pet food, bacon, barbecue sauce, country sausage, honey, and “White Lightning” bottled water. Earlier in his career, he even considered marketing “Possum Panties,” with his face emblazoned on the crotch.

No one knows for sure how he came to be called the “Possum.” It may have derived from Jones’ unpredictable behavior, such as pretending to be passed out drunk before suddenly leaping to his feet to brandish a notorious temper (especially while married to the late-singer Tammy Wynette). The stories are legendary. He once drove a riding lawn mower 10 miles into Nashville to a bar after Wynette hid the car keys from him. On another occasion, police found Jones in a stupor in a Cadillac that was littered with whiskey bottles, empty sardine cans, and a life-size cardboard figure of Hank Williams, Sr., sitting next to him. His career appeared to be on the rebound until an appearance in 1980 with Tammy Wynette on “The Tonight Show.” Jones stopped midway through the couple’s duet of “Two-Story House” and confessed to a television audience that he couldn’t remember the lyrics.

Enterprise can be thankful that Jones’ notorious wild days appear to be far behind him. But with the 75-year-old Jones, one can never quite be sure. After several years of reported sobriety, in 1998 he crashed his car into a bridge, blaming the wreck on a cell-phone conversation with his daughter. A half-empty bottle of vodka beneath the Cadillac’s seat suggested otherwise. Rushed to the hospital in critical condition, it was doubtful that Jones would survive this latest episode, as his long-abused liver was severely lacerated as a result of the accident. A couple of weeks later he walked out of the hospital, and two months later he was performing again.

People from across the United States are already making deposits to secure acreage in The Legends. Jones’ future next-door neighbor is reportedly a couple who recently won the Florida state lottery and contacted Ronnie Gilley directly to plunk down a deposit next to Jones’ lot, site unseen. “I just want to live next to the Possum,” the lottery winner said. &