My City Was Gone, But Not For Long

I got in the car to run some errands and go to the bank a couple of weeks ago, and – knowing I might be waiting in line a little while – I’d taken my MP3 player with me, which I don’t usually do if I’m just running the usual errands. My MP3 player pretty much stays on shuffle.

I plugged it in and started the car, and The Inmates’ 1981 version of The Standells’ “Dirty Water” started up. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I’d go to check the weather online and type in my zip code and the next thing I’d see, on the pages with the weather forecast – ads for water damage restoration experts.

My auto insurance company has finally stopped sending me e-mails asking me if I need to get my car checked out since there has been severe flood damage in my area. No, thank you. I’m just fine.

I know there are people right here in Shelby County, and nearby, and up yonder a little ways, in just as desperate straits as people in Nashville and Middle Tennessee – and in some cases, maybe more. But still, overall – as a whole – we got off easy, here in Memphis, this time. The tornado warnings here that same weekend were pretty scary, but the last time we had a really bad storm like that, I saw debris on the street and trees pushed over dotting the landscape on my little route from here to Kroger. This time, the following Monday, I think I counted only one house that had some limbs on the curb. The north part of the county got slammed, and there were spots of bad flooding even here in the central city – but still, overall and as a whole, the majority of us, we were fine.

But you know, as far as the cities go – in a lot of ways, I’ll always be more connected to Nashville and Murfreesboro and Middle Tennessee than I ever have been to Memphis, even though I was born here and have a long history here and strong connections here, including having had strong family connections here. And probably more than I ever will be to Knoxville. Don’t really have any to Chattanooga, other than a family member living there for a while who no longer does.

But I spent some pretty crucial years in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, as well as a pretty significant number of days throughout childhood and my teen years.  My phone number started with 615 (back in ancient times before there were more than two area codes) for a good portion of the Eighties. It’s almost as much home to me as Northwest Tennessee is.

What a month it’s been. The week after the flood, I was kinda just feeling shellshocked, although I hadn’t actually DONE anything but sit here at the computer catching up on all the news in between periods of working. I kind of drifted off to Facebook for an evening on the following Monday, I think, and got into digging thru old high school photos various friends had posted, after having spent about 15 hours straight reading flood-related updates on Twitter and the Web. Feeling guilty the whole time, because I could get away from it all for a little bit while so many people I know couldn’t. Because they were right there in the middle of it.

Then I was committed to something work-wise from that Tuesday onward, and it was really the end of the week before I really had a chance at all to truly even attempt to catch up on what all had transpired since Monday and the big day of the flood. Couple being completely and totally swamped (no pun intended) with work with the fact that the fourth of the Christian-Newsom trials started that same Monday in Knoxville, which I would have liked to have been able to keep up with throughout the week but there just wasn’t enough time in the days to do so; checking on updates of online acquaintances who have been been dealing with a nightmarish tragedy of the non-flood type; and scrambling to put Band-Aid fixes on what I guess is just going to keep being an ongoing calamity of sorts here on the home front – even if I’d had four or five clones of myself, I’m not sure there would have been enough for me to go around.

So, the flood…

For the benefit of what few of you here reading don’t already read everyone else’s oft-more-updated and finer blogs in Nashville and in Tennessee, the Nashville flood finally got some national attention, though I’m not sure it really would have much if not for all the Tweeting and blogging there was about it. MSNBC was one of the first to give it decent air time, here and with another mention from Keith Olbermann that I think, in particular, was much appreciated by the community at large.

My buddy Travis Harmon – certainly the most successful of the bunch from that wide circle of friends from old ‘Boro and college days – and his comedy partner put out probably the best edition of Red State Update ever, and made me laugh (and laugh and laugh and laugh) and cry at the same time. Many of my personal friends and acquaintances up there have been volunteering their asses off all month, and continue to. I’m so proud to know all of them.

My mom – back in one of the few sectors of West Tennessee that mostly escaped both wind and flood damage almost completely last week – usually gets her faculty a little gift for Nurses Week every year. This year, she made donations in their names to one of the community relief organizations that WKRN had listed on their website instead of gifts. She said it just seemed like the right thing to do this year. I’m very proud of her too.

So many of my friends wrote great truly stuff that week. This was one of the very best, as was this post that led me to it. This was another one that particularly touched me. This angry one from one of our own forced to watch it all unfold from thousands of miles away clear across the country, expressing all the frustration pretty much all of us who still had power and Internet access were feeling that day. And pretty much everything over here all week long, but especially this one. I wish I could list more, and there are more I probably haven’t gotten around to seeing yet as I’m still (always) catching up. But they all outdid themselves on the writing thing that week, especially those many that were smack dab in the middle of it all.

Most everyone I know was okay and while many had flooded basements and such, overall everyone I know made it through and, most importantly, alive and uninjured. I’m thankful for that. I know everyone up there, though, has continued to be almost all exhausted beyond belief, though, mentally and physically.

I still have a little bit of a nagging worry – because I have known SO many people throughout my life from all over and have been fortunate to have made many friends throughout – that news has yet to turn up that won’t be as good. I think I’ve now accounted for most everyone I “need to know about” – if not directly, I’ve seen them Tweet or someone else mention them on Facebook or Twitter or on the phone – and have racked my brain all month long trying to figure out who hasn’t crossed my mind that should have by now.

One friend who didn’t get too lucky was an old college friend and ex-boyfriend who arrived home after a week in Chicago to find thousands of dollars’ worth of musical instruments, studio equipment and gear swimming in his basement. He was prepared for it, as his neighbor had been able to reach him by phone and warn him, and luckily the water damage was limited to the basement only – by about a half inch below the upstairs door. It was a too-close call for the rest of the house, but things could have certainly turned out much worse.

Unfortunately he got hit by a double whammy, though, as he still owns and rents out his mom’s old house in Bellevue, and it was nearly completely submerged. Last we spoke, which has been a while now, he still didn’t know where his renters had fled to, but presumably by now they’re probably some of the folks out there having to sift through and throw away most of the entire contents of the house. I know he sure wasn’t looking forward to the expected hassle forthcoming with his insurance company and was already preparing himself to be SOL.

Lots of teary moments that week, often over the oddest of photos, of all the many horrific ones that were hitting the Internet out of Nashville and Middle Tennessee. Lots of times just sitting there gaping, open-mouthed.

Highway 96 from Murfreesboro to Dickson was my usual route back and forth between college and home for me. Naturally, if I had five bucks for every time I was back and forth on I-24 between Murfreesboro and Nashville, whether going out downtown or going to work, I could have probably retired on that. I worked at Southern Hills, so you Middle Tennesseans know what my usual route to work was. To see that intersection in Franklin on 96, and those stretches of I-24, with cars and trucks nearly completely submerged – just surreal.

The (current) Opry House, which wasn’t very old when I attended a rock concert there in the garishly neon, New Wave, how-many-items-of-Esprit-clothing-do-you-have-in-your-closet days of 1983. My friends and I thought it would be a kick to get matching outfits made for the event, and – though they were each made of different colored material and design – we all showed up in matching camouflage miniskirts (with equally matching skinny ties) and just about every color of chunky neon jewelry you can imagine. I think we probably all looked like Catholic schoolgirls, except in camouflage instead of plaid – which I guess was unintentionally ironic, since we were from a small town in West Tennessee where dates on the weekend during duck and deer season ended at 8 pm, because your date had to go home and go to bed so they could get up at four in the morning and go shoot stuff.

So I was looking at the flood picture of the Opry stage that first week, and in my head seeing clearly what the stage looked like from the floor, standing in the third or fourth row in from the stage that night in 1983. Remembering that I was looking, basically, up – since I’m short anyway, but still, it was relatively high off the floor.

Realizing that that water I was looking at in the picture was quite a bit – a lot - higher than I am tall.

I wrote in a post that’s yet to be published that the Opryland Hotel’s what really did me in, sifting through pic after pic as I was early in the week. I know it’s silly, and I know they’ll repair it and build it back. It’s just seeing a place like that where you have a really strong, clear and special memory so devastated – that’s when it really hits home, when you’re having to watch like this from afar.

And speaking of home over here in West Tennessee… although I had heard and read about and seen some of the horrible devastation in Dyersburg, pictures that were forwarded to me of the flooding in Jackson struck it home even more.

Though things have progressed a great deal in many of the smaller towns, when you’re from Northwest Tennessee, Jackson’s a big hub – that’s where you go shopping for Christmas or your prom dress, that’s where you go to the orthodontist once a month, where people end up in the hospital when they have things more severe than the smaller ones can handle, where folks go to the doctor regularly – all those things. Many friends and old classmates live there. I lived there once briefly too, matter of fact.

The pictures from Jackson were as awful as the ones I’d been seeing out of Nashville and Middle Tennessee all week. A main stretch of road with vehicles as submerged as all those pics from I-24. A Sonic Drive-In with water up to the lighted menus, menus that are generally quite a bit higher than the bottom of your average car door’s window.

Virtually almost all of West Tennessee, as well as so much of Middle Tennessee, has now been declared a disaster area by the Federal government. Of my two little hometowns here in the West, one is in one of only maybe two or three counties in West Tennessee that were not. My other home county is.

I know a lot of people who were watching from other places on Twitter and Facebook and the like, and folks from other places reading Nashville and Tennessee bloggers’ blogs – and probably especially people who live in cities and areas that do experience such devastating flooding fairly often – maybe thought we’d all gone mad, overboard with it all.

But it just doesn’t happen here. Not like that.

Not but in a few pockets of the state (like up around Reelfoot Lake and off the Mississippi to the north), and certainly not like this. And absolutely not in this state’s largest cities.

Tornadoes – we know tornadoes, yep. We are all too familiar with tornadoes. Maybe not quite on the scale of, say, Kansas – but we know tornadoes.

Floods like the one earlier this month – they just don’t happen here. Not at all in Nashville since the 1970s – and bad though it was, that was really nothing compared to this one.

So yeah. Most of this state, except for those in the mountains in East Tennessee – we’re a little loopy right now, still. We’re better than we were, but things are still pretty bad for a lot of people down here. We’ll be okay, eventually.

But so much help is still needed, and will continue to be. It was heartbreaking a couple  of weeks or so ago to see one of my friends who’d gone out to volunteer and help Tweeting for more help, because apparently a lot of elderly people showed up at the location and she was only one of a few (if not the only) volunteer that showed up. I know a lot of major relief efforts went on all the following weekend after the flood, and I’m sure the larger ones have been more successful than that one was. I hope not too many of the smaller ones had problems like that one did.

It’ll be a long ongoing process for a long time, and daunting. In Nashville, the potential economic repercussions alone are a little bit terrifying. Not only are many of Nashville’s biggest landmarks and tourist attractions, and other large industries, going to be under repair for some time – some of the largest are out of commission for possibly the rest of the year at the very least, and literally thousands of people are about to be (or already are) without jobs.

And the same goes for other places in Tennessee, with varying degrees of what and how much those counties are going to be hit economically. In a state that has already been struggling with disastrous state budgetary issues, widespread unemployment, and general economic downturn statewide for some time now – it’s no wonder if everyone’s holding their breath to see where we go from here.

Some resources for those who want to help (many of these are also aggregating efforts for other Middle TN counties as well):

• The United Way of Metropolitan Nashville – you can also text RESTORE to UNITED (864833) to give $10 to help victims of the Nashville flood.
• Hands On Nashville – also in the process of major relief efforts for Nashville
• DonateNashville.org - a Craigslist-type resource recently put together by The United Way of Metro Nashville and Cool People Care to more efficiently organize directly what people need and what people have
• The Red Cross – you can also donate $10 to the Red Cross to help the flood victims by texting REDCROSS to 90999
• Cool People Care also has some great “We Are Nashville” t-shirts for sale with proceeds going to help flood victims

Speak to Power has put together some listings of resources for help, donations and more in several of the worst hit counties in West Tennessee also:

• Dyersburg – Dyer County Relief & Donation Resources
• Tipton County Relief & Donation Resources
• Shelby County – Millington Relief & Donation Resources
  

My hat’s truly off to Christy and Morgan (and anyone else helping behind the scenes that week) at The Nashvillest, who did an outstanding job of collecting, organizing and getting information out on the Web through this whole ordeal that week and just really became the central point of Internet communication regarding the Nashville flood and continue to be. I should point out, too, that the website is not their job – they have full-time jobs elsewhere – yet they still managed to kinda outshine the local print and television news media when it came to the WWW. The local media still did a good job and continues to, but in this situation, they kinda got pwned as far as getting critical information out on the Internet goes.

(Sadly The Tennesseean‘s website, though better than it was in the past, is kind of a great big cluttered mess and I really don’t know how anyone finds anything on there. Messy, messy, messy. I’m not a big fan of the Scripps template that The Commercial Appeal and the Knoxville News-Sentinel are using these days, but it’s 110% better than the garbled cluttered up mess I see every time I go to The Tennesseean looking for something. And while I know newspaper and television news sites pretty much MUST have ads on them these days, and that’s fine – it’d be nice if someone would come up with a solution for nearly all of the media sites nationwide where advertisements wouldn’t cause the page loading issues they do. There’s nothing more annoying than going to your local TV news station’s site when the tornado siren’s going off outdoors… only to see the page hanging FOREVER when it’s trying to load via some ad supplier’s domain.)

Anyway, so there. I would say that’s all, but yesterday the floods came back and a little too close to home for me – way too close to home for many of my friends.

Summer hasn’t even really begun in Tennessee and, this year, I don’t think winter can come too soon.

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On a final note – I’m going to make a valiant attempt to start posting again at least a few times a week, if not more. Even if it’s stupid. I’ve been so busy for so many months now and it really has been almost impossible to get here and post most of the time. But I feel better when I do, so I’m going to make an effort again and guess we’ll just see what happens. I’ve decided it wasn’t just because the week of the flood was so grim and critical – it just felt better, being on Twitter more, being here more. So there you go. It might get really dumb around here, but I guess that’s okay too.

If Tennessee Floated Away, Would The Other 49 States Notice? (Bizarro World Weather, Nashville Waterworld, and the Tennessee Complex)

We interrupt this (really mostly unplanned) posting moratorium ‘cos I just wanna say, WTF?

Having survived Hurricane Elvis, the Great Ice Storm of 1994, and – even more up close and personal than I like to think about very often – the 2003 tornado that tried to eradicate Jackson from the planet, there’s not much about natural disasters that comes as a surprise anymore. I’ve seen lots of crazy whacked out weather down here.

But this weekend was like Bizarro World Weather down here. In almost 22 years of living in the same house (and a hop, skip and jump from the same tornado siren at the fairgrounds), I am pretty certain I have never heard that thing go off five (at least five, it might have been six) times in a 24-hour period. And I’m absolutely certain I’ve never heard it blare for TWO HOURS (could have been three, definitely two). Having really only fairly recently gotten to where I’m not practically hyperventilating and paralyzed anymore when the thing goes off, it was better than it would have been a year or so ago, but still – decidedly on edge for a very long period of time.

At the time of that two or more hour siren, they were also evacuating the thousands of folks down at the Beale Street Music Festival (i.e., MudFest) on Saturday night. And then last night, people in the crowd were acting like jerks and booing when headliner Three Doors Down had to be canceled and couldn’t make it down here because they were having trouble getting from Nashville to Memphis, because of the flooded mess this state is right now. Nashvillians John Hiatt and Alison Krauss’ BSMF sets were also canceled due to the flood situation, as was a Dierks Bentley show in Knoxville on Sunday night, seeing as how Bentley was in his flooded basement with a bucket just like most everyone else in Nashville. (Why the Beale Street Music Festival hasn’t yet been moved to a different weekend in May after all these years is beyond me, since it almost always rains and storms that weekend, and either doesn’t rain at all or hardly rains the rest of the weekends in May. Seriously.)

And while things are fine right here where I am in the center of the city, they definitely are NOT around the whole region in general. It was kinda bad enough in Memphis and Arkansas and North Mississippi, with all the flooding (in places I’ve never seen flood before) and storm damages and, sadly, several deaths. The tornadoes that did come through (mostly hitting the more rural areas) were terrible with horrific damage – but the rain itself just gutted the entire Mid-South. It just kept on coming down, and coming back again and again, and it wouldn’t go away.

And Nashville, poor Nashville, is practically totally under water and now the Cumberland, which was 19 feet on Friday, has a flood stage of 40 feet, and was currently 55 feet last I looked at the news – the river’s on the verge of completely swallowing up downtown Nashville. I spent most of Sunday reading friends mentioning that co-workers had had to abandon their homes, neighbors had totally lost their homes, just about everyone I know up there has water in their basement (and rising in many places), and many of my friends discovered on Sunday that they now own lakefront property all of a sudden.

I saw a photo snapped not far from where an ex-BF used to live used to be (officially I never lived there but technically I did), and at first I thought well, we’d have been all right probably because the living space was actually on the second floor. Then I remembered how small the building was and how low those ceilings were. If this had happened 23 years ago, we’d have been like those other people clinging to their roofs or the top of their vehicles waiting to be rescued. (Consequently, that same ex moved back to Nashville a few years ago and texted me last night, lamenting the thousands of dollars in musical instruments, equipment and other gear currently swimming around his basement – according to his neighbor, that is. He was in Chicago this weekend, so he hasn’t yet seen it for himself.)

And it’s not just Nashville. One of my two little hometowns an hour to the west is being besieged by an overflowing Big Sandy River (and though I haven’t seen photos, I’m sure the Tennessee River is flooding the other end of county at the beach and beyond), and judging from the conditions in this photo that was sent to me in e-mail last night:

… if I was still in high school, I would have had to had a boat to get there on Monday morning. That building in the photo is NOT “out in the sticks” out in the county – it’s very much inside the city limits – and really isn’t all THAT close to the river in question, so presumably nearly every business on that side of town was fighting the same watery madness.

Most things south of Nashville in Middle Tennessee are apparently a wreck as well, including this house. She was supposed to leave for NYC in three weeks, they have no renter’s insurance, and they’ve lost everything.

Levees are leaking and breaking all over, sinkholes are developing everywhere (including still in West Tennessee as well as Middle Tennessee), people and animals are stranded, drowning. So many roads closed and it’s bad all over, but Nashville itself has kinda turned into one gigantic lake with thousands of little islands around.

I am old enough that I vaguely remember the major flood Nashville had in the 1970s, but that was nothing compared to this. There are places up there that have never been under water in my lifetime – or probably for hundreds of years, or ever. It’s just stunning.

All of this coupled with the fact that three members of my family were in Nashville on Saturday – and had already planned to stay in a hotel overnight (good thing) – but trying to get them out of there Sunday was a bit daunting, especially when – after hearing road after road after road was closed or closing, and downtown was closed in all kinds of places and flooding, and most especially when authorities up there were practically begging people not to drive, all of which I was texting with every new closure or warning I read about – after encouraging them to stay put, they left anyway. They couldn’t go what would be the usual route back on I-40 West (we already knew the main highway off the interstate was marked as flooded by the Highway Patrol, and knew most of the other alternatives were probably little better.)

It took them a while to get through downtown, but once they made it to I-65 North, things were okay to Clarksville and beyond. But I pretty much held my breath until I knew they’d gotten out of Nashville, and still until I knew they’d made it home.

And Nashville, poor Nashville – later Sunday morning, friends and others were Tweeting that the waters in their basement were starting to recede. And then around noonish – just like the weather and news folks had said it would – the rain and sirens and everything else started up again.

People are going to need serious help to put Nashville and Middle Tennessee back together again. It’s such a mess, but you probably heard that already.

Or maybe you didn’t – because apparently much of the national news has mostly ignored what’s happening in Nashville and Middle Tennessee, as well as the rest of the damage in West Tennessee and our neighboring states. Little blips here and there, but you know, it’s not like when some other cities have gotten decimated by Mother Nature and you can’t get away from it on the news and in your newspaper, no matter where you are.

And it’s kinda doubly puzzling because some of those cities I can think of that have had their disasters plastered on TV and other media for days at a time – the hurricanes and floods and such that have happened in those places, they happen fairly often. What’s happening in Nashville right now has never happened in my lifetime (and I’m getting kinda old, you know) – we have some rural flood zones with relatively small area dotting the state, but a national emergency-type flood of this proportion is just unheard of.

It’s kinda like the (cough) “straight line wind” storm dubbed Hurricane Elvis that paralyzed Memphis for weeks in 2003 – I recall one of our city officials commenting at the time that a hurricane that wound up not even materializing and hitting one coastal city got more national coverage than Hurricane Elvis did. People died, the city was in pieces (including parts of the city that had never or rarely seen such kinds of damage), the whole city was mostly without power in 90+ degree weather for weeks – yet unless you lived fairly close by, you probably had no idea what was going on down here.

What, do we (Tennessee in general) need to switch deodorants or something? At this point – and after this many crises that have gone mostly ignored – it’s enough to give an entire state a complex.

Aunt B. writes about the current situation and similarly puzzling lack of interest here and here, and the fine folks at The Nashvillest have done a stand-up job gathering and providing information during this awful time up there. Honestly, The Nashvillest and Twitter, as well as the Internet in general, have become invaluable resources for sure time and time again, and kept a lot of folks in the loop and informed that would have otherwise not been.

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And finally – yes, there was supposed to be an Alex Chilton post in March and no, you weren’t imagining things. As I kinda said the day I posted the last one (about Doug Fieger), the Alex post was nagging at me so much it was going to make me sick if I didn’t post it that day – and then I never posted it. Because I haven’t finished it. Because for some reason, I can’t. There’s a personal piece to that post that I’m struggling with – maybe it’s because I’ve told the story many times before, but this will probably be the last time I ever tell it. Maybe I’ll finish it and post it soon. Stay tuned.

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EDITED TO ADD: What a beautiful and horrific photo at the same time @brittneyg‘s place:

Nashville Submerged

A Long Overdue Thank You

I am here today because there’s a post I need to write that’s going to make me sick if I don’t get it out of my head today, it’s been nagging at me so much since yesterday afternoon. If you happen to have arrived here before the next post is posted, then I’ve probably already spoiled it because you probably already have an idea what it’s about. Sorry for that. They probably both belong on the music blog instead, but I really need to post them here instead (don’t ask me why, like a lot of things it really makes no sense, but there ya go).

First, though, before I get to that post, I would probably be really remiss if I didn’t go back to about a month ago and admit to you all that the day the news came out that Doug Fieger, leader of The Knack, had passed away, I cried my fool head off that entire day and night.

This really didn’t make any sense on the surface. As a 13-year-old, I bought Get the Knack in 1979 just like most everyone else did and played it to death, “My Sharona” was a great tune, it was cool. All peachy.

But The Knack were never, like, one of my VERY favorites, you know. That’s a record that’s somewhat surprisingly stood the test of time, but it would have been far, far down the list of my stranded-on-a-desert-island picks. And goodness knows the music world has lost a bunch of my big heroes in the last several years – Joe Strummer, three of the four original Ramones, many many more. All of which made me sad, of course, but none of which left me incapacitated in tears and unable to do anything but drown my sorrows in YouTube for an entire day.

It finally dawned on me at some point during the course of all that misery why it was affecting me so. The more and more frequent occurrence of the heroes and idols of my youth passing away over the last several years had indeed been more and more disturbing and upsetting, and each one another reminder of how much older I myself was getting and that – since most of my musical heroes were far older than me when I was a preteen, teenager, college kid – I knew these depressing moments were going to happen more and more as time went on and as we all got older, sure.

This one hit HARD, though. Almost like losing a family member, because of the sheer importance of it all.

Importance? The Knack????

Scoff if you will. The Knack changed EVERYTHING – for some of us, anyway.

Oh sure, there was great, and greater, music around. The Ramones had been around for years by that time, The Clash, and dozens of other legendary bands springing up in New York City, on the West Coast, in the UK, lots of places, yes.

There was great music around somewhere. But you’ve likely no idea how hard it was to GET to that music in 1979, if you lived in small towns in West Tennessee. Probably would have been a little different had I grown up in Knoxville, Nashville, Memphis – but it still took a long time for a lot of that stuff to filter down to even those places. I’ve written numerous times over the years about how hard I had to scratch and scramble to get my hands on anything I read or found out about that wasn’t “mainstream”, and how I’d have been oblivious to most of it were it not for the fact that I was (A) a night owl and (B) rarely missed an airing of things like Saturday Night Live, Fridays, and Don Kirshner’s Rock Concert.

And you must remember as well – people still listened to radio back then. In the car, at home – wherever – radio was still pretty much king of the hill when it came to getting music to the masses. Yeah, I had a lot of records as a kid – but there were lots of times the choice was either radio, or no music at all.

Were it not for the fact that I was a major Cheap Trick fan from nearly the start, and a KISS fan, and the fact that The Cars put out their first two albums (which still didn’t get played on the radio down here all that much back in the day), I’d have been mostly 100% S.O.L. throughout the late 1970s because there was just so very much horrible crap on the radio. For years up to 1979, the radio airwaves were dominated by disco and so much easy-listening-type junk that even though I listened to it anyway – and even though I bought a lot of it at the time – it was really like a vast musical wasteland out there filled with stuff that might have been better than no music at all, but was thoroughly unexciting and barely tolerable.

There was one FM station in the area that wasn’t on around the clock and did play mostly progressive rock – a lot of which I didn’t like and still don’t, but some of which I did – but it was better than what was on the rest of the stations on the dial, so I’d listen to it when I could. But then we moved too far away in the beginning of the summer of 1979 for me to get the signal anymore, so there went that.

And to make matters even worse, bands I did like whose music made it to mainstream radio were releasing stuff I couldn’t stand, to fit in with the times. God knows I love The Rolling Stones and always have, but with the exception of “Shattered”, you can keep the Some Girls album. Then KISS goes all disco and releases the “I Was Made For Loving You” single and adds even more insult to injury. It just kept getting worse and worse.

That summer of 1979, The Knack saved mainstream radio. For those of us stuck out in the sticks (or almost), those of us who didn’t have easy access to all the cool stuff out of the norm that they didn’t play on our local radio stations and had to scramble to get anything like that – The Knack were a godsend. When “My Sharona” hit the top of the charts and stayed there and stayed there – ultimately becoming the top selling rock single of the entire decade of the Seventies – Doug Fieger and The Knack changed everything, for those of us who didn’t live in the cool cities like NYC and L.A., or even Memphis and Nashville and Knoxville.

The Knack opened the door for all those other bands that came after to get played on Small Town USA radio – some great or good, some not so good, some just plain bad – but they weren’t disco, and they weren’t all that soft rock-easy listening stuff that kind of put the entire nation to sleep, I think, for most of 1974 or 1975 to 1979. Finally there was something new and fresh and different to listen to on the radio – ‘cos listen, if you weren’t old enough to drive yet, you were still pretty dependent on whatever was on the radio for the most part back then.

And all those bands The Knack’s big hit opened up the door for made their way to MTV, when it began – but most of us outside of the cities didn’t have MTV, not for years. You’re reading the blog of someone who, for years, one of the big highlights and treats of going to visit friends and family in Memphis was getting to watch MTV while there, after all.

Radio became tolerable again – kind of funny NOW to think of being THAT dependent on what was being played on the radio – but you just didn’t have that much of a choice back then and, again, a lot of the time, it was radio or no music at all. And I started out growing up in one small town, but spent my teenage years in ones even smaller. My little hometown’s FM radio station would have probably still been playing disco and all-Eagles-all-the-time (nothing against the Eagles, but you get what I mean) by the time I was in high school. Instead, thanks to what happened the summer of 1979 and The Knack, that little radio station was the first place I heard things like Wall of Voodoo’s “Mexican Radio”, Billy Idol’s “White Wedding”, and any number of other tunes that might have never have had a shot on mainstream radio had they come out a few years before that.

John Cougar-before-he-was-Mellencamp, Bryan Adams, Loverboy, .38 Special – all those probably would have made it out there anyway, but I have doubts that things like Donnie Iris’ “Ah! Leah!” (still to this day one of my fave all time tunes) would have ever made it to Small Town USA airwaves without the overwhelming initial success of The Knack. Maybe so, who knows – but The Knack still started it all, and at the best possible time when it was desperately needed by those of us far from places like NYC and L.A.

So when I found out that Doug had passed away, I mourned, probably for many reasons. Here was another senseless cancer death, for someone who was really far too young to leave the world this early (he was 57). And the fact that, though The Knack were never a “top favorite” of mine, they were a band that was so instrumental and so important in such a very big change in the world of easily available music that was my youth. And then there was having to face the fact that it’d been now over 30 years since “My Sharona” was released, so that was kind of like the final nail in the coffin of my gloriously misspent youth (not that I don’ t know my youth has been gone a LONG time, but something like that just makes it oh-so-final and irreversible).

It’s hard to believe that was so long ago. If I close my eyes, I can remember a certain day that song was playing and see the radio it was playing on, the dresser the radio was sitting on, see the mountain view outside the window the dresser was next to, and almost – almost – hear the voices of the several people that were lounging around the room that day, most of whom were tapping a foot or fingers or bobbing their head along with the music. It’s that clear. It’s just one of those songs that can immediately whip me right back there to that very spot in time… if only for four minutes and 54 seconds.

Anyway, it was that long ago indeed. And it was just all so depressing and I felt so blah that I just cried my fool head off all day because it was really the only thing I felt like doing.

Which, again, was kind of odd, as Doug was someone I hadn’t really even thought about in a long time. I remember way back during the Kevorkian trials, noticing that the doctor’s attorney’s name was Geoffrey Fieger and thinking he sure did look an awful lot like the only other person named Fieger I’d ever heard of (and of course he does, he’s Doug’s older brother, as it turned out). That was probably the last time Doug Fieger’s name had crossed my mind, really, consciously anyway.

And in the course of that day of mourning, I also discovered that he was once married to actress Marin Kanter, who starred in one of my favorite music films of all time that nobody ever saw called Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains with Diane Lane, Laura Dern and Ray Winstone (along with Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols, Paul Simonon of The Clash, and Fee Waybill of The Tubes) – a film that finally won a DVD release in 2008 after years of clamoring for it by its cult following of fans, most of whom had only seen it back in the early 1980s when it ran on The Movie Channel and the like. Anyway, that was kind of a neat Easter egg to come across, something I didn’t know.

In any case, The Knack just changed everything for kids like me that were stuck out far away from the cities back in 1979, it was really as simple as that. If not for them, some other band might have come along and done it, sure  – but as it were, it was Doug Fieger and The Knack that saved radio for us. I’ll be ever grateful for that.

This was a neat video from 2008 I found that day on YouTube where Doug and a friend gave an impromptu performance of Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” at a party (yet another one of those cool things I find from time to time that make me wish I’d had a video camera in the ’80s to capture some similar moments around Nashville back in the day).

On a final note, here’s a hint – the Get The Knack album is still really, really good. It’s a little dated, but it’s stood the test of time pretty well – you’ve got to get past “My Sharona” and listen to the whole thing to really get it (no pun intended), but I think it’s held up a lot better over time than many of the other big albums from that early New Wave era of rock & roll.

I kinda knew this a long time ago back in the mid-’80s when Greg and Joey and I started messing around musically and (in that honeymoon-like period when you are first getting to know people you’re playing music with really well and everything you discover you have in common is such a treat) we frequently found that the songs we all liked best and had spent time learning were usually the songs on various albums that were the “filler” tunes and ones other people often didn’t know or care about (and because of that, we’d often have to correct people who’d think it was one of Greg’s or Joey’s originals, but that’s another story).

Of the probably thousands of albums we pulled out (whether actually by hand or just talking about them) that summer of 1986, one of the tunes Greg started picking out softly on his guitar in my stupid little apartment north of the MTSU campus was this thing I immediately recognized and started singing the first line before he even opened his mouth, and it eventually became a staple and something people often thought Greg wrote, especially since we kinda indie’d and punked it up a little like we did most everything. This happened all the time – name an album, and whatever obscure “filler” track on that album one of us liked best almost always turned out to be the one the others liked best too. This one, too, was just another one of those “back of the album” tunes we all liked best on the album that most people never heard – along with other ones that weren’t “My Sharona” or “Good Girls Don’t”. It was The Knack’s “Your Number or Your Name”, and we just made it our own for a little while.

“My Sharona” was deservedly the hit for The Knack though – and that guitar solo is actually pretty awesome, and lord knows it sold bazillions of copies – but really when you listen to the album, the other single to me was really always the standout, brilliant one and the gem among it all. It was a favorite of KC’s, and when we were about 14 & 16 he once told me that all I really ever needed to know about teenage boys was in this song  (that was, of course, before The Replacements and before Paul W. wrote “Sixteen Blue”) – but this was always (no surprise) his favorite Knack song and really it was pretty brilliant in its straightforwardness and its simplicity. I was going to post the original video and then I found this semi- (or all?) live version of “Good Girls Don’t” from some appearance on VH-1 in the early ’80s. KC’d be happy with this one and he’d say this is the correct version (because it’s the dirty version, which obviously didn’t make the original video). ;)

In any case – even though I’m a month overdue in posting this – RIP Doug. Thanks for the music, the memories, and thanks especially for saving radio and making it tolerable again for us kids stuck out in the sticks and almost-sticks in the summer of 1979. For that, I will be always grateful.

About This Insane Weather

I’m so cold.

That is all.

Confessions of an Aging Beach Bunny

When most people think of the beach, they think of sunny Southern California, or Florida or other Gulf Coast beaches, and the like. When I say I grew up on the beach, people sometimes raise an eyebrow in response (whether literally or through the monitor).

This is not unlike the time Prince Charming made the mistake of calling me a “country girl”. I’ve never lived more than a half a mile outside of any city limits in my life, but my insistence at the time that I was a town girl elicited guffaws and floor-rolling paroxysms of laughter, and still to this day there will be the occasional side remark - “Oh, that’s right, you’re a town girl“ – followed by the kind of barely muffled snickers and chuckles that just make you want to kick the living daylights out of someone sometimes, just because they grew up in Knoxville (oh please, Knoxville is a small town disguised as a big city) and Columbus, Ohio and think that makes one ohhhh so worldly and metropolitan, hmpfh.

But truly I did spend most of my teenage years on the beach, and it maybe wasn’t as beach-y as the beaches of Southern California and Florida and the Gulf Coast, but it was a beach, no less. I spent a fair amount of my earlier childhood just a few miles up the river, where the occasional catfish would graze my ankles (Newscoma just died reading that) while I waded around searching for shells. I spent the teenage years as a beach bum at all hours of the day and night and in all four seasons (please don’t ask me what we did down there on dark winter nights, heh) – especially summers, of course, when I spent a good bit of that time perpetually failing to ever learn how to water ski despite about a hundred people’s attempts to successfully see that I did. I blame this on the same reasons I never successfully learned to roller skate or ice skate. My ankles couldn’t deal.

But ah, the beach.

And now that I’ve been out of high school 25 years, I can own up to the fact that yes indeed, Michelle and I absolutely did skip out of school almost every day of sixth period in the 11th grade to go to the beach – because we were teacher’s aides that period anyway, which basically that was the whole plan of snagging the teacher’s aide gig that year, of course. Senior year it didn’t matter ‘cos I got out of school at 1:00 anyway – presumably for work, but I didn’t have to go to work until 5:00.

Sweet? You bet.

The State of Volunteer State Dudeblogging

I had had this rather damning post on the backburner in draft for some time where I was going to cry and whine and moan about the fact that “most” of my fave Tennessee dude bloggers that I’ve been reading for years had pretty much hung up the keyboard.

But then since I originally started that post and left it sitting in my drafts eight or ten months ago, two things have happened. First, two of the ones I was going to pout about most  – CeeElCee and FreakyWeasel – showed up again. Yay! (Well, actually FreakyWeasel never left, just nobody told me he’d relocated. I went to his old blog one day and was shocked to find him gone, and when I asked about it, everyone was all quiet about it like it was some big conspiracy so I didn’t ask again.)

And though it’s been a while now since his return, Roger also came back, which made me and a large portion of the regional blogosphere all happy and stuff.

Anyway, then there my other discovery, when I got to looking at my blogroll – I discovered less of the dude contingent had dropped out than I’d really realized, which I suppose part of the reason it seemed to be like “all” the men had quit was because so many of the ones that went MIA were just huge favorites. Still, there are loads of dudes I like to read still out there – Mike, Michael, Christian, Joe, Jack, Jackson, Kleinheider, Jon, Michael Silence, Chris, Jeffraham, Sean, Wally, Mack, Frank, Rob, and Ron (who’s not a Tennessean but we kinda adopted him), to name a few. And a few more I’ve picked up along the way, like Steve and Steve.

And then there are some that aren’t writing much lately, but still show up from time to time and I’m thankful for that – LeBlanc, Jon, Slarti, and the very much missed (and not Tweeting lately either!!) Hutchmo. I’m glad you guys are still around, I wish we’d see more of you though. And these two, too.

So I guess my originally months ago intended post about how the blogger women were kicking the men’s butts bigtime by still going at it when all the dudes had quit is unwarranted and unnecessary now.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t miss the heck out of reading Sarcastro, Knuck, Rex, and Kerry Woo any less, even though three of the four still entertain me on Twitter regularly. (ADDED: I knew I’d forget someone here – Russ. Who also still entertains me on Twitter regularly, but still, dang it.)

If somebody misses reading you, I bet you’ve still got something to say. Sigh.

Seeing Justice Served: Let’s Do the Right Things on BOTH Sides of the Mississippi

Here when, in a few hours, a Knoxville jury will begin deliberations on the sentence for convicted murderer, torturer, and rapist Lemaricus Davidson, I’m reminded of some rather interesting new info I came across while browsing around the ‘Net a few weeks ago regarding a very, very old case that’s still sorta in limbo to this day.

More than likely, unless you’re from around here, you probably didn’t hear about the West Memphis Three case until the documentary Paradise Lost: The Child Murders at Robin Hood Hills was first aired on HBO in 1996, a broadcast that kickstarted a wave of national attention like a snowball rolling downhill that still kinda continues to roll and grow as time goes on.

I was right here in Memphis in 1993, in my late twenties and working down in the Medical Center, and remember very well the morning I sat down at my desk and flipped open The Commercial Appeal to do my usual quick morning skim of the news to find that they had discovered the mutilated bodies of three young boys across the river in West Memphis. I was usually the last one into the office every day, as most everyone else came in before I did, so the rest of them already knew and had already talked about it, so after a couple of “Yeah, I know”s and a little small talk, I was pretty much left alone with the horror of it all the rest of the morning. Nobody really knew what to say anyway.

Then there was the shock of the arrest of three other West Memphis boys – teenagers – and nobody really knew what to think. I’d never in a million years say Memphis and the Metro Memphis area in general was a place of “innocence” – probably not ever, really – I think probably throughout history it’s always pretty much been the “harder, tougher, meaner sister” to its three other large siblings in the Volunteer State. But back then things were not quite what they are these days, we weren’t quite as overrun and (sadly) numb to crime here as now – I seem to recall it was not all that long before this incident that some official was claiming publicly that there wasn’t a gang problem in Memphis. In short, people as a whole could still get really shocked here as one big group and community. Maybe not so much now.

So as I said, nobody really knew what to think – and therefore, I think probably a whole lot of us at the time just let the media do the thinking for us. I pretty much thought they were probably guilty – these kids, these teenagers – because the local media (all outlets) pretty much said so. And they were mainly publishing what they were given, what they were told – you can’t blame them all that much, really. Especially since as time went on, things got more and more convoluted – documents went missing, potential suspects inexplicably never followed up on – that case was a great big mess, but most of us who were just occasionally following it on the TV news and in the paper weren’t all that aware of that either – how messed up it was – until much, much later.

So from 1993 to 1996, I really never once thought to question it, what I and everyone else was told. They said the teenage boys were guilty, and pretty much everything we in the general public had been exposed to up to that point in the papers, on TV – they looked pretty guilty. Jason Baldwin and Jessie Misskelley got sent away to the penitentiary, and Damien Echols landed on Arkansas’ Death Row, and that seemed to be pretty much that.

And then Paradise Lost aired for the first time, and sometimes I wonder just how many people besides me in the Mid-South were sitting in their living rooms shaking their heads and going, “Waaaaaaait a minute…”

Mara Leveritt’s book about the case, Devil’s Knot, as well as other books and articles, just added to the mix of questions and doubts. Leveritt was one of the local media on the case in Arkansas at the time. By the time I got around to reading her book, I had seen the documentary and had read more and more convoluted stuff about the case coming out of the local media, so a lot of the things in her book weren’t a surprise or anything new, but the book certainly further outlined just how screwed up the whole case was. (Not to mention this one simple fact – how many people end up on Death Row or incarcerated for life with NO physical evidence linking them to the case?)

I’ve been blogging since February 1997 and I could be wrong, but I think today is the first time I’ve ever written anything about this case. For a long time still after the documentary aired – well, those boys from West Memphis just weren’t a real popular topic around these parts, or maybe I should say there was still a lot of intensity on both sides of opinion when it came to the West Memphis Three. I remember witnessing a debate on the subject among a group of people downtown that nearly dissolved into a fistfight, years after those kids were dead and years after the others were sent up to do time.

It’s kind of funny now, as times have changed – really now the thought of mass public hysteria about Satanism and sacrifices seems as dated to me now as ’80s Brat Pack movies and big hair and mullets. But this case hadn’t been the first in this area to get all that mass hysteria and suspicion flowing – it was one of three or four big ones all around the same time, if I recall right – it was kind of a big deal, back then. I don’t think I ever felt like I was afraid, per se, to say, “You know, this stuff is starting to sound like maybe it didn’t really go down like they told us it did in the beginning.” But still, given what is somewhat of a Southern trait and tendency to just keep your mouth shut when things are intense or inflamed – sometimes it just seems best to do just that, and I think probably a lot of folks around here did that for a lot of  years, after that documentary started putting questions in people’s heads.

And I’m sure there’s still some out there that think the boys – all grown men now – were guilty as hell and are right where they should be. But I just can’t imagine there’s a whole lot of people, other than those that were very close to the case and relatives, that didn’t start to question and wonder about it all after Paradise Lost.

Or at the very least – and this has really been my own personal feeling all along – I can’t imagine that most weren’t convinced that they deserved another trial, a fair one. That’s what I’ve said, in private company among family and close friends, all these years. Maybe they are guilty – I don’t think they are, but maybe they are – but the trial and investigation that sent them up was rather abominable, a great big giant convoluted mess. They deserved another, better, and more fair trial, at the very least. Especially since it put one of them on Death Row.

And I guess that’s one of the reasons the West Memphis Three case came to mind this week, while I’ve been closely following the trial of the ringleader in the Christian-Newsom murders in Knoxville. There’s been no big major-release documentary (yet) of this particular case like in the West Memphis one, but the Knoxville News-Sentinel put together a small one that was excellent, Death on Chipman Street, and there’s loads of video, transcripts, articles and all kinds of other stuff to be found among the Knoxville media. Between reading and viewing a lot of that, and now having watched the majority of Davidson’s trial and most of his brother’s trial -

Well, it’s rather stunning when you compare the two cases, the two trials. I’m sure they’ve had their fair share of problems up in Knox County with that whole thing, but just comparing them on the surface, from the point of view of the general public, a bystander looking on – that Knoxville case is running like this fantastically organized, well-oiled machine in comparison to the disorganized and dysfunctional mess that investigation and trial in the West Memphis case was years ago.

What kind of nudged my interest into seeing what was new with the WM3 case recently was a sort of accidental discovery of something I wasn’t really looking for at the time. If you watched Paradise Lost and/or the sequel, no doubt you remember John Mark Byers, stepfather of one of the victims, the “crazy wild man” from the documentary who was once himself a prominent suspect in the case, even after the West Memphis Three were convicted. His enormously angry and enraged presence fairly dominated both films, especially the first one. A great big and imposing guy, he repeatedly and very loudly and vehemently called for the deaths of the accused. His rage was so visibly huge, you didn’t have to use your imagination much to figure what would happen if he could get his hands on any of the three, and get away with it.

When I rather accidentally came across this site and this blog a month or so ago and learned that even Mark Byers – of all people!!!! – now thinks that Echols, Baldwin, and Misskelley were convicted by mistake and should be set free or at least get another and more fair trial, I was just blown away. Who would have ever, ever thought that this man, who ranted and raved on camera at great length and in very great detail about his hatred for the three convicted and the horrendous ends he wished upon that time, would do a complete, 100% turnaround and now be in support of seeing them freed?!?!?!

That’s when I knew the doubt that had been nagging at me in the back of my head ever since the documentary aired in 1996 was there for a reason and rightfully so.

I should pause here and add that I mean no disrespect to Mark Byers here by bringing up his past behavior. Quite the opposite, in fact. At the time, way back when, I felt so sorry and such sympathy for all of the parents, including Byers, but anyone who saw the documentaries witnessed how over the top he was at the time; and then when there were several turns of events that pointed the finger in his direction over possible guilt, I thought that was credible at the time (and one of my relatives was convinced upon seeing the first film that Byers did it, not the teenagers). The fact that he’s made it through many difficult years and hurdles, mostly all the while with thousands of people suspicious of his own innocence in the case, and not only past all the rage towards the convicted but this 100% turnaround supporting them in their quest for a new trial – sheesh, my respect for Byers has increased immensely.

In any case, so many lives have been lost needlessly here. Stevie Branch, Chris Byers, and Michael Moore – the “real” West Memphis Three – should have never had to die as they did. They should be young men in their mid-twenties now, but nothing’s ever going to bring them back and they are forever eight years old. Melissa Byers has passed away since, never knowing (if I’m not incorrect here) that new information was going to surface that would point guilt in a completely other direction from the three convicted in the deaths of her son and his friends.

And then you have Damien, Jason, and Jessie – now all in their thirties – locked up over 16 years now with 16 years of their lives gone for all practical purposes. And Damien’s physical life hanging in the balance on Death Row.

Here in a few hours, we in Tennessee are going to find out what’s going to happen to Lemaricus Davidson, whether it’s life with parole possible (51 years minimum due to his convictions, so it might as well be life without parole, really), life without parole, or death. I don’t really think, especially after this week, that there are any lingering doubts or questions in anyone’s mind that the right person’s been convicted in this case. People may continue to argue the outcome of today’s (hopefully it will be today) sentencing, but the Christian and Newsom families feel justice has been served, and one way or the other – one of those three ways – Davidson will be off the streets forever, whether totally or theoretically.

I’m okay with that. I’m all for it, really.

But the West Memphis Three case – there’s too much doubt and too many questions in this other one, here to the west. Not only that, but new doubts and new questions – and new evidence – that have yet to be followed up on fully and followed through. If Damien, Jason, and Jessie were to win their freedom with a new trial – or if the new leads and evidence don’t out the real killer or killers – that would mean the killer’s still out there. I’m not really okay with that – who would be?

And you know, even still – maybe they did do it, the teenagers, when they were teenagers. Sure, I don’t think so, obviously, but that possibility is still out there.

But I think we should find out. And do it right this time. Give those men a fair trial this time – one that’s not an unholy mess and circus of disorganization and dysfunction and mishaps that get pushed aside just for the sake of convicting somebody - and go from there. Wrap up this case for once and for all, as cleanly as the Knox County folks just did with theirs this week, and see what the outcome is this time.

What a horrific mistake it would be to execute the wrong man for this awful, horrible, tragic and terrible crime. It would be equally awful and horrible and tragic and terrible as the little boys’ murders themselves, as would letting two other men sit there for the rest of their lives if they didn’t do anything wrong. It’s already been almost 17 years, almost 14 of which have now been shrouded in an incredible amount of doubt and unanswered questions.

Without another trial, and a fair and better one this time – or without seeking out the answers to the questions all the new evidence has brought up – if Damien Echols is put to death without any of that happening, none of us may ever find out in our lifetimes here on earth whether the wrong person was executed or not.

I’m not okay with that. We might all be dead and gone eventually without ever knowing the truth, if that happens.

But that doesn’t make it all right to just go ahead and do it right now. I’m not okay with that at all.

(I’m posting this without proofreading it, but then again this post has been simmering in the back of my head for about a decade now, so hopefully I got it sorta right.)

Twitter Twisters

So, here I sit on the western side of the state, where there hasn’t been a raindrop all day, once yet again witnessing on Twitter while all my friends in Nashville are Tweeting about the tornadoes/storms/whatever coming through there once yet again. Deja vu.

Of course, we just had our own little dance with straight line winds last Friday that took out a good bit of Memphis greenery, and again on Sunday. I had not gotten out of the house since before the weekend, and was quite shocked yesterday to discover a tree about the size of my house fully uprooted and laying in the yard of someone’s home around the corner from me and about six or seven houses down, not to mention the landscape dotted with trees through roofs of various houses on my route to the grocery store. There wasn’t, like, this massive and constant scene of destruction like with Hurricane Elvis or the infamous ice storm of ’94, but there was at least one house on every street between my house and Kroger that had (or had had) a tree stuck in its roof.

As for Middle Tennessee, the wrath of Mother Nature is still winding its way through and I’m watching various friends Tweeting and checking in either to say everything’s okay, or they’re headed for cover, or it’s passed and look at this poor demolished tree in Aunt B.’s yard. (She’s more upset about the power being out, though, as would I be – it’s frickin’ hot down here for June right now.)

I don’t know what’s worse – being smack in the middle of one, or watching like this from afar when people you care about could be in danger. Well, I do know what’s worse, but they’re both pretty bad. My mom can probably relate to the latter – I’m sure the 15-20 minutes or so between the first call and my second call to her wasn’t fun the night I got stuck in one of Tennessee’s most severe tornadoes of all time. First I called her from the interstate to ask if they were saying on TV there was a tornado warning; 20 minutes or so later, I was calling back to report I was okay, save for my tornado-pummeled and totaled car with the completely cracked windshield.

I did agree with a commenter somewhere or another on one of the Memphis media sites that it was rather laughable how the tornado sirens in the center city went off AFTER the storm had passed through on Friday.

Glancing at Twitter again. Aunt B. reporting that her neighbor’s car is under a tree. Fun, fun.

Quote that made me giggle of the day: @jimreams (the entity formerly known as the Nashville Knucklehead): I’m glad I live in South Nashville. Tornadoes don’t speak Spanish.

I Might Be Typing This in My Sleep, But Probably Not

Thursday was an odd day. First and foremost, it would have been my father’s 67th birthday, if he were alive.

The annual big Relay for Life event was in my hometown over the weekend, and the paper has been publishing the list of donations for luminarias as they come in for about the past month – donations made in memory of those who died from cancer or related illnesses, in honor of cancer survivors, and this year, in honor of caretakers. Well, Thursday was also the day that my father’s name appeared as one of those donated in memory of (by a relative of mine). Not so surprising, though somewhat ironic as far as what day it was.

The paper also publishes snippets of news from bygone days frequently – 25 years ago, 50 years ago, 75 years ago, and sometimes earlier. What was really kind of odd was that 50 years ago, on that same day, the paper showed him and a group of other young men from the county preparing to leave for Castle Heights Military Academy in Lebanon to attend that year’s Boys State session.

I don’t know. It was just kind of an odd day all around.

I want to thank everyone for the kind notes they’ve been leaving; I could never put into words how very much they are appreciated. There are several of you I have been meaning to e-mail personally for days now, but the kinds of hours I’ve been keeping, and time I’ve been spending lately scrambling around as I have trying to slow down this impending disaster – I sleep at weird times, and when I’m not asleep I’m usually snowed under, and my actual working schedule is usually overnights, so I’m usually awake when everyone else is not and vice versa. Except I also will just (when I’m not doing shift work) go for several hours, pass out for two or three or four hours, get up and go some more trying to get stuff done. But many of you will hear from me personally soon, I promise (and KathyT, I did e-mail you and hope you got it, sorry it took five days before I heard the voice mail, oops).

And thanks to many especially for the kind words about Dobie. He was here for so long, and still my “baby puppy” even when he was old and his health failing, and it’s still very hard to believe that he’s really gone. I have a very nice picture to share that my mom took at Christmas when I had to take him with me because of his failing condition, which has wound up being the last taken of so very many that were taken of him over fifteen years. But I can’t really look at it much yet, so I’ll save it for a day when I can.

I probably need to write some more about all the horrible stuff that’s going on and why things have disintegrated to the disastrous point they have, but I’m not really sure how to put it into words here because there’s really only so much I can say publicly – and for good reasons. But it sucks, because for those same reasons, I’ve sort of been stuck fighting this battle on my own almost, and with no one I could really be open with about the details other than my very closest family and friends.

But I will do all of that soon. Unfortunately a good bit of this week is going to be focused on probably selling what little I have left that is worth anything at all (not much, but a little) that is truly just mine – a few things that would have been, I guess you’d say, family heirloom-type stuff if I were leaving anything behind one day. Not that I’m likely going to have children or anything like that at this point, but you know – stuff I never dreamed I’d ever be forced to part with, not like this. I guess if I outlive my mom (doubtful), there’s still a houseful of family things – but nothing that’s just mine, except these few things it looks like I’m going to have to part with.

It’s not much – I guess that’s the worst joke of all about all this stuff, I’m not dealing with thousands upon thousands here and it’d probably be a whole lot easier to swallow if that were the case – but no, there’s only about a grand or two standing between me and complete disaster. Much less than 2K, really, more like about 1.5. That’s the part that really stinks, that in the grand scheme of things, it’s not really all that much. But the problem is now I’ve run out of time is all.

In trying to think things through – and coming to the conclusion there were really no more options anymore but the one thing I have tried for over a year now NOT to have to do – it’s occurred to me that no matter how tough things might be right now, that really doesn’t bother me nearly as much as thinking about how I’m going to feel about it all a year from now, or two years from now, or five or ten years from now – when presumably things will probably be better, but stuff that meant something to me – things bought with me in mind and given to me for very specific reasons – will be gone. And I just can’t even let myself think about all that right now.

Anyway, this week will be busy busy – and I need to get going now as it is, much to do and much to finish – but I’m going to try and keep at the blog again, even if it’s just stupid stuff. Aside from all the awfulness of late, there’s also some really funny stuff I’ve been saving up to share. And I’ll be trying to get some personal e-mailing done this week and next too, some of you I’d been meaning to touch base with anyway and either the constant need-to-do-this or constant passing out cold from exhaustion kept waylaying. So will speak to many of you soon, and will definitely be back here shortly, as soon as I wrap up one big project that has tied me up for months. ’til then…

Have You Lost a Dog in Memphis in December 2008?

If you have recently lost a dog in Memphis (today is 12/12/2008), it may be running around my neighborhood.  It’s a largish, dark brown dog that might be a German Shepherd mix or something close to that, but with pretty long hair and a lot of it.  The face reminds me of a German Shepherd anyway.  I think it’s a she, but I’m not sure – it could be a male.

I’ve been seeing it around for about three days now and on different streets.  Seems to be very friendly and playful from a distance anyway – I can’t get too close because the majority of my brood is generally rather rude to other dogs.

Anyway, it’s running around the Central/Buntyn area a few blocks from the Liberty Bowl, among the streets just past the S-curve on Central when you’re going east towards the university (and away from the Liberty Bowl).  Once you go through the light at Hollywood and then through the light at Central & Buntyn that’s past the S-curve, any of those first several streets to the right – the dog’s been in yards and driveways in all of them.

I saw a guy yesterday apparently find his dog over here, having stopped his car and ran all over with a leash trying to get it and finally succeeded – oddly that one was black & white and looked a lot like my Petey – so I hope maybe whoever’s lost this one will be successful as well.  He/she seems like a nice dog from afar anyway, I wish I could take him/her in until an owner pops up but I can’t.

On another note – my domain map may run out this week – depending on how you’ve linked me, I may disappear for a few days but you can always find me at thelynnsterzone.wordpress.com – I’ll fix it as soon as I’m able to, should it run out.  Things are a little, um, well, not good right now.