Spank the Honkey

Last year, a lifetime of racial animosity boiled over in the parking lot of a Flying J truck stop in Fairview.

The transaction took longer than usual, and when Armoster returned to the fuel pump, another driver, a white man named George Enlow, was waiting impatiently.

“Well you know it had to be a nigra’,” Armoster recalls Enlow saying. “It had to be a nigra’ stoppin’ [the line] up.”

An argument ensued.

“We had a few words for a good while there,” Armoster says. “Until the squeegee got involved. You know when the squeegee gets involved, there’s a problem somewhere.”

Armoster, who is 6-foot-1, 300 pounds and describes himself as “kind of a big-ass man,” says that Enlow hit him across the head with the squeegee and then attempted to flee, falling down in the process. That’s when Armoster grabbed the 61-year-old Enlow and, as he puts it, began to “spank his ass like a kid.”

Armoster says that he purposely opted to spank the grown man with an open hand—as opposed to punching him with a closed fist—to teach him a lesson.

“You better make sure that you be a man the next time you meet up with me and not be a damn boy,” he recalls saying.

Fairview police took a different view of the matter and arrested Armoster, charging him with assault resulting in bodily injury. An additional count of assault with eminent fear of bodily injury was later added. Last week, a jury found him guilty of the eminent fear charge, but hung on the more serious bodily injury indictment. He was sentenced to two days in jail and will serve the time on a weekend this month.

Mary Katharine White prosecuted the case on behalf of the Williamson County District Attorney’s office and describes the melee as much more than a slap on the tush.

“The victim says that Armoster grabbed his shoulder, pushed him down and his knees buckled,” White tells the Scene. “[Enlow] ended up on the ground, and the defendant picked him up by the legs and then was hitting him with an open hand while [Armoster] dragged him around.”

A Flying J employee witnessed the fight and testified at trial that Armoster kicked Enlow while he was down.

One of the jurors in the trial, who spoke to the Scene on condition of anonymity, says most of the jurors believed that Enlow used a racial slur.

“Most of us on the jury felt like it did happen,” the juror says, adding that it explains Armoster’s violent actions.

Both a police report of the incident and White describe Enlow’s injuries as minor. Enlow, who lives in Mississippi, did not return calls seeking comment.

Armoster says that he’s always endured racism stoically, but Enlow pushed him to the boiling point.

“I was raised up around racism my whole life, and I know how to deal with it,” he says. “But when you continue to talk trash, something has to be done.”

Besides the criminal charges, Armoster says that the incident has damaged his professional reputation and made it harder for him to get trucking jobs. He says that colleagues at his trucking company in Memphis found out about the spanking almost immediately.

“I get back to the [truck] terminal and they say, ‘Oooh, I heard you spanked a man’s ass down there. I heard you really spanked a man’s ass.’ ”

Armoster also says that police have targeted him because of the incident. “I’ve got tickets everywhere.... It’s the biggest harassment you ever want to know about.”

While Armoster doesn’t seem to regret spanking Enlow, he says that it will be the last time he administers such rough justice.