Serving Hohenwald, Lewis County Tennessee Since 1898
Serving Hohenwald, Lewis County Tennessee Since 1898
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One of the highlights of my 93-year-old mother’s week is when she receives an inspirational essay from a church lady (hi, Regina!) who maintains a mailing list for Special People. Yes, the world is flooded with anxieties, conflicts and doubts. Many of us NEED someone hitting us over the head with a metaphorical two-by-four on a weekly/daily/hourly basis -- refocusing our thoughts on truisms about perseverance, forgiveness, friendship, self-worth and happiness. (And about counting to 10 when s...
For most of us, Labor Day will be an occasion for relaxation and contemplation. (And MORAL DILEMMAS, because our contemplation will be complicated by the fact that the little cartoon angel on our right shoulder and the little cartoon devil on our left shoulder aren’t allowed within six feet of each other.) For others, even in the time of pandemic, it will be “just another manic Monday.” My afterschool job required me to work EVERY holiday, so my sincerest empathy goes out to those truckdrivers,...
“The first thing we do, let’s reboot all the lawyers.” No, that’s not really how the line from Shakespeare’s “Henry VI, Part 2” goes; but it came to mind when I read a Wall Street Journal special section on artificial intelligence and encountered the article “Would You Trust A Lawyer Bot?” According to the Journal, numerous startup tech companies are churning out apps and digital services that horn in on routine procedures typically performed by flesh-and-blood, bar-exam-passing lawyers. These t...
I was jealous of my wife a couple of years ago. Our son’s sophomore English class read Ray Bradbury’s cautionary novel “Fahrenheit 451” and she found the time to read along. My writing deadlines and regimen of prioritizing news and nonfiction books blocked me from making it a family affair. But August 22 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Bradbury (who passed away in 2012), so I’ve been doing the best I can to prepare to pay tribute to the author whose haunting short story “There Wi...
My first knowledge of the War in the Pacific probably came from then-new episodes of “McHale’s Navy” and the 20-year-old “Made in Occupied Japan” dishware that my mother collected. Seemingly overnight, I find myself struggling to do justice to the topic of the 75th (!) anniversary of V-J (Victory over Japan) Day. (Japan declared total surrender to the Allies on August 15, 1945. Many nations do use the 15th for V-J Day remembrances, but President Truman delayed the official U.S. commemoration unt...
Tyrades! by Danny Tyree “Shower the people you love with love/ Show them the way that you feel.” – James Taylor With all due respect to the five-time Grammy Award winner, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain and I’ve seen sunny days when I wished people would put their advice where the sun DON’T shine. I think most homo sapiens do a serviceable job of unbottling our emotions when a special person is terminally ill or going into a battle zone; but some well-intentioned buttinsky is always trying...
Much of the nation is experiencing a prolonged heat wave, so of course your humble columnist counterintuitively conjures up WARM MEMORIES to comfort himself. When I was in college, I sometimes supplemented my income by helping my late father with deliveries for Easy Pay Tire Store (the tires-and-appliances store where he worked for the Ritter family). One delivery should have been routine (installing an air conditioner for a countryfied elderly couple I had known since my high school job at...
What spoils even more evening meals than robocalls? How about newscasts with their endless stream of titillating revelations coyly attributed to “reliable sources,” “people close to the matter,” “people familiar with the situation,” “people who thought the situation was a cast member of ‘Jersey Shore’,” etc.? The whole concept of “close to the situation” is overrated. Lots of people “close to the situation” can’t see the forest for the trees until Columbo, Poirot or Jessica Fletcher waltz in...
Dear pandemic-battered readers, as you try adapting to the New Normal, just hope no diehards are waiting to confuse you with a plethora of ADDITIONAL configurations. It’s best just to suck it up and accept the NEW Normal rather than navigating a world of Classic Normal, Zero Calorie Normal, Satin Finish Normal, Fun-Size Normal, Gelcap Normal, Crunchy Normal, Non-Clumping Normal and Extra-Absorbent Normal with Wings. Ever since getting assigned to inventory control at my day job, I’ve suf...
The personal finance website WalletHub recently released its ranking of the “patriotism” of all 50 states. In an era of toppled statues, kneeling athletes, microaggressions, border wall controversies and globalist agendas, trying to define and quantify patriotism resembles voluntarily crisscrossing a minefield. We’ve settled for a society where the “melting pot” is less important than “TAXING pot”; but once upon a time, patriotism was easier to recognize. Good Americans knew that true patriots...
My wife and I experienced some vicarious living when our son Gideon (finishing up his junior year of high school) attended the senior prom. (Yes, VICARIOUS living. It’s not like we got him out of the house, jumped with glee and yelled, “Date night!” It was more along the lines of “Aw, but I yelled ‘Date night’ LAST time. Can’t YOU say it this…ZZZZZZ….”) You see, we had to experience a high school milestone through Gideon’s eyes because neither of us went to our proms. My wife’s high school ho...
Speaking as a father (“What -- am I made of money? Go ask your mother! When you have your own roof, you can make your own rules! No, my abs aren’t flabby, they’re just meditating…”) No, this could go on forever. Start over. Speaking as a COLUMNIST, with a strict word limit, I agree good fathers should be loved and respected; but they shouldn’t take for granted that they will receive the obligatory World’s Greatest Dad merchandise. Seriously, they should actively DREAD such a last-minute,...
A man’s home is his castle – but sometimes the crocodile in the moat decides he wants to try out the bathtub instead. At my day job working in Inventory Control, one guiding principle is “a place for everything and everything in its place.” Too bad wild animals aren’t as easily pigeonholed as nuts and bolts. A string of recent events helped me settle on this week’s tirade. My wife replaced the window screen that had been shredded by an impulsive raccoon. A bird kept flying down my mother’s ch...
“Late at night when it’s hard to rest/I hold your picture to my chest/ and I feel fine, I feel fine/But it’s a rainy night in Georgia…” – written by Tony Joe White and performed by Brook Benton. I need your input. I know this is a terribly personal question, but which songs make you cry? And why? (And would you be miffed if you suddenly, inexplicably started receiving spam emails for Kleenex and Visine?) I could name a dozen or more songs that reliably put ME on a spectrum of emotional r...
One of the most awkward, self-conscious incidents in my life occurred when I was shopping with a group, and one of my companions blithely continued browsing long after the store doors were locked. I have done assembly-line work, junkyard work and freelance writing; but I have also punched enough cash-register keys and worked around enough clerks-slash-sales-associates to know that the retail life isn’t all skittles and beer. (Okay, maybe there IS a lot of Skittles and beer, in the sense of ...
One of my biggest pet peeves: people who can’t hold up their end of a conversation. Oh, I’m not saying that every single human being is obligated to bring jaw-dropping factoids, whimsical quips and provocative perspectives to every mundane conversation. But listeners could at least honor speakers with something more interactive than banal “filler” material like “Uh huh,” “Well, I’ll be!” and “How do ya like that?” If you reveal, “I lost my wallet on vacation, but a former U.S. president voluntee...
“Look around me/ I can see my life before me/ Running rings around the way / It used to be…” – Crosby, Stills & Nash I couldn’t eat at my favorite Chinese buffet, attend the cinema or even hang out at the public library; but in mid-April, I celebrated my 60th birthday, bolstered by the love of my family, the companionship of my pets, an impressive degree of health and the guilty pleasure of newspapers being stuck with conveniently OUTDATED photographs of me. (Mama, don’t take my Kodachrome...
“Never in history has such ruination – physical and moral – been associated with the name of one man.” – Sir Ian Kershaw, English historian. April 30 marks the 75th anniversary of the suicides of Adolf Hitler and his newlywed bride Eva Braun. Historical milestones seem to be a dime a dozen in today’s hectic world, but Hitler’s impact was so great that each of us should pause to remember the Nazi dictator’s legacy in one way or another. (The six million victims of Hitler’s genocidal program...
On a recent Saturday afternoon, 86-year-old Uncle Doug shared a bit of family lore about his grandfather (my great-grandfather). When great-grandpa Henry Lee Gipson was four years old, a stranger came knocking on the door. The visitor introduced himself to great-grandpa and went inside to conduct his business. As he was leaving, he apologized for using a pseudonym; he confided that his real name was Jesse James! (This was when Jesse and brother Frank were living in Nashville, and three or four...
The recent death of actor James Drury (star of the 1962-1971 TV Western “The Virginian”) adds insult to injury when one considers what will occur next month. When the networks announce the shows they’re canceling and launching, yet again there will be no true Westerns in contention for a coveted spot on the fall schedules. The year I was born, there were 30 “horse operas” spread out across three broadcast networks in prime time, and that culture left an indelible mark on me. (Not in the publi...
