Serving Hohenwald, Lewis County Tennessee Since 1898
Serving Hohenwald, Lewis County Tennessee Since 1898
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If some retro prankster had asked me a week ago, “Is your refrigerator running?,” my reply would have been, “It’s complicated.” (Actually, I would have reported the scamp to the authorities. In these enlightened times, “Is your refrigerator running?” obviously dredges up traumatic memories of the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850. Or something. When you factor in all the Name-Brand-Products-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named that have systemically occupied shelf space in such kitchen appliances, it’s enough t...
Prospects of a long, hot summer bring pet peeves to the surface. Surely someone besides me encounters deceptive packages of frozen microwaveable meat. “Tear here,” they cajole. So, you tear on the dotted line, only to discover that it’s an inch BELOW the grooves required to reseal the package. Are the designers at the meatpacking plant cross-eyed, or just bad with math? Instead of calculating how many insect parts per MILLION are allowable, they’re probably singing a Mary Poppins-ish, “A spoo...
My new supervisor anticipates being a first-time father in a few months. I hope he doesn’t become one of THOSE fathers. Most fathers take a laidback, minimalist approach; but a few are overly competitive about being cool, outshining mom or presenting a perfect-parent image to their peers. (“Yeah, I’m keeping up with the Joneses – using my Army surplus helicopter-parent HELICOPTER. Run, Joneses, run!”) Whether they feel disrespected (Americans spend only half as much on Father’s Day as on Mother...
“I could search the whole world over/Until my life is through/But I know I’ll never find another you.” -as performed by The Seekers. Five years ago, in conjunction with my 25th wedding anniversary, I was halfway finished writing a 40,000-word book of hard-won marriage wisdom. A few months later, my wife Melissa (the former Melissa Brower, Lewis County High School Class of 1984) proofread the completed manuscript but reserved the right – when time allowed -- to read it from cover to cover a...
By the time most of you read this, my son Gideon will have marched across the gymnasium floor and received his high school diploma. I have brainstormed some sage advice for Gideon’s next phase and hope that his fellow grads nationwide can benefit. I’ll allow someone else to lecture 2021 graduates about following your dream, keeping a journal, subscribing to the local newspaper, formulating a career backup plan, paying it forward, starting retirement planning early, yada yada yada. I prefer to sh...
Misery loves company, but it’s cold comfort that many of you – like me -- still haven’t filed your 2020 income tax returns. (And I’m aware others of you had already pre-spent your refund SIX MONTHS AGO, but come on, dude. When you announce, “I’m anxious to revisit 2020!,” you probably need to spend part of that refund on an ensemble that matches a white straitjacket.) Prompt filers, don’t judge your foot-dragging fellow citizens. People have the right to prioritize their time, and income tax...
Since you asked, my niece Claire is expecting her first baby in August. Her sister Emma is expecting her second child in October. I have faith that both young ladies will someday earn a spot in a Hall of Fame for Mothers. Alas, history is littered with mothers who DIDN’T receive proper recognition. Here are some particularly egregious examples: The mother of “Washington Post” owner and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who once scolded him, “Democracy dies in darkness? It smells like something died in...
Tree HUGGERS, are you contemplating a Zoom meeting with Mr. Elm instead? Yes, this is dedicated to the millions of you who share my susceptibility to seasonal allergies. (SEASONAL allergies? Yes, “When is allergy season?” is a popular Google question. I don’t mean to be ungrateful for fleeting symptom interruptions around Christmas; but that question is as pollyannaish as asking “When is double-chin season?” or “When is robocall season?”) Hopefully, this column will also have a little someth...
Did I ever tell you about my late Uncle Vernon and the time his slanderous lies about a respected business got unceremoniously debunked? In the mid-70s Uncle Vernon hired a Nashville company to apply vinyl siding to his home. When he was completely disgusted with the finished product, he tried and tried to get satisfaction from the company. Failing that, he turned to the consumer-defender “action news” segment of a high-rated local TV show for help. After a painstaking investigation, the omb...
My wife and I would never have met, except that her family fled a densely populated state when she was 11. Given her satisfaction with the simple life (deer in the yard, the neighbors’ ponds and livestock across the road), I dreaded sharing game-changing news with her the other evening. “One of the neighbors said a 100-house subdivision is planned for one mile away on our country road.” (Technically, I think the revelation was “One of the neighbors said a 100-house subdivision is planned...
“My father and mother were Irish, and I am Irish, too.” As Saint Patrick’s Day approaches, I keep remembering that song from our third-grade music book, which strove to examine music from an international perspective (WITHOUT a “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” detour into “Come see the cultural appropriation inherent in the system!”) I am proud of my Scots-Irish heritage; but at the time, when I discussed the music assignments with my father, it was unsettling to hear him talk about the son...
The relentless airbag recall notices concerning my mother’s old truck have progressed from a mailbox-clogging nuisance to a grim reminder that our unresponsiveness has felled more trees than Paul Bunyan in his prime. Okay, I realize more consumers should be conscientious about product recalls, for the safety of themselves, their families and mankind in general; but when you’re a husband, father, son, inventory clerk, writer and Sunday school teacher, arranging your schedule around somebody els...
Presidents’ Day 2021 may still be fresh on your mind, but be advised that I’m already thinking ahead to Presidents’ Day 2071. If you get your jollies reading about the only bachelor president or the first bathtub in the White House, just think how many more milestones and tidbits of trivia will have built up over the next 50 years! In the next five decades, we may very well see the first female president, the first Hispanic president, the first Asian-American president, the first openly gay p...
Although the bar has been set remarkably low during some epochs (“Dearest, you’ve survived to produce seven more viable male heirs than my second wife”), society has always expected couples to use terms of endearment to grease the wheels of their relationships. I have it on good authority that the custom goes all the way back to Adam and Eve (or as he affectionately referred to her, “McRib”). Of course, the sweet nothings were probably muttered through gritted teeth when Adam asked questions...
There’s no middle ground with middle names. You either love them or hate them. Or, if you’re a politician, you treat them however the latest opinion poll indicates. (“It’s way past time this nation took the bold bipartisan move of giving Harry S. Truman an actual posthumous middle name – not for our own benefit, but FOR THE CHILDREN.”) Middle names come from various sources. My son and I both carry on my late father’s middle name of Lewis. My brother was named for the surgeon who delivered him...
It has been a bittersweet experience seeing the mailbox flooded with college recruiting brochures addressed to my son Gideon. Bittersweet because, speaking as a science fiction fan, each “road not taken” represents an alternate timeline involving different friends, different instructors, a different spouse, a different career path, a different city, a different strategy for administrators to hound grads for alumni donations. (“Remember that colorful gluten-free parking sticker we gener...
Reminiscing with one of my mother’s photo albums, I encountered a snapshot of a long-deceased neighbor (a dear, sweet man) who is still summed up by the phrase “He never met a stranger.” I’m sure all of you know someone like that (or ARE someone like that): the one-person welcoming committee who is drawn like a moth to the flame and wants every casual acquaintance to feel like they’re loved, appreciated and the survivor of an interrogation by Jack Bauer on “24.” Alas, thanks to social distan...
I spent Monday nights in the fall of 1975 breathlessly watching my favorite TV show. And I do mean breathlessly. That’s because I had to rush home from my afterschool job at a nearby convenience market and hope that I didn’t miss much more than the “goils were goils and men were men” in the theme song of blue-collar comedy “All in the Family.” I hated being a latecomer – again. I didn’t see the first few episodes when the program premiered 50 years ago (January 12, 1971), but I was certainly a...
Veterans Day parades? Veterans Day school essays? Veterans Day ceremonies on the courthouse lawn? Star-spangled Veterans Day memes on social media? Platitude-enhanced newspaper editorials? Sure, I’m familiar with all those expressions of patriotism and appreciation; but until I stumbled across a certain article the other day, I had been blissfully ignorant of the widespread availability of Veterans Day CARDS. Whether you use a preprinted card, customize an online template or create a unique m...
I was trying to clear the cobwebs from my mind, and all I could find was random thoughts about Halloween (a.k.a. Hallowe’en, a.k.a. Allhalloween, a.k.a. All Hallow’s Eve, a.k.a. All Saints’ Eve, a.k.a. the Holiday That Is Bankrupting the Federal Witness Protection Program). My son and I recently lamented that there are only a handful of well-known Halloween-appropriate songs, and they’re played to death. (What I’d give if Queen had taken the time to record “We will…we will…EMBALM y...
This is a year of double milestones: my mother’s house turns 75 and (as of October 30) she will have been living there for 50 years. She grew up as part of an itinerant sharecropping family during the Great Depression, so I’m glad she has enjoyed all these decades of stability. (I lived in the house from age 10 to age 31.) One of Mom’s friends dubbed the property “El Rancho Rocky” because of the ample supply of limestone, but the Tyree family pulled together to make something of the place. (M...
My electronic key fob is putting more mileage on ME than on the car. For the past several months, I have tried to build up the nerve to do a thorough search of the contents of my trunk. I am hoping against hope that an overly sensitive trunk-release button on the fob HASN’T left several of my childhood keepsakes strewn along the roadside. Granted, a neighborhood raccoon has already on more than one occasion done a PARTIAL job of searching through the trunk (kindly forcing me to scoop up s...
My son Gideon has now finished both his ACT and SAT college entrance exams (scoring at an impressive percentile somewhere between “It’s …it’s…go ask my wife” and “Never you MIND what his father’s score was”), but I wonder if the tests will still be relevant when HIS hypothetical kids reach college age. Hundreds of colleges dropped mandatory test scores this year because of Covid-19 disruptions, but standardized tests were already falling out of favor with admissions officers long before the v...
Realizing that September 25 marks the 50th anniversary of the premiere of “The Partridge Family,” I am reminded that time moves more swiftly than a 45 RPM turntable. It seems like only yesterday that I was a fifth-grader and my mother was teasing me because 10-year-old Danny Partridge (played by Danny Bonaduce) was in love. In the blink of an eye, it’s 2020 and I feel compelled to sing, “I woke up in Depends this morning/ I woke up in Depends this morning/ Went to sleep with Hot Wheels on my m...
What were you doing the night of Saturday, March 19, 1977? Like 21.2 million other Americans, I was watching the final episode of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Watching it and making a nerdy audio recording of it for posterity. Sure, I didn’t anticipate the cassette keepsake having such an eardrum-assaulting HUM on it; but at least I felt like I was a part of something historic. And maybe I should use the tape’s hum even today to drown myself out when I spontaneously start singing, “It’s a...
