Homeless Diaries, Pt. 1

As mentioned before, I'm working with a lady from the Community Kitchen who gives an informal writing class to whoever wants to participate. The class is made up of area homeless. LaDonna, the caseworker/teacher, collects their writings, sends them to me and I edit them--correct spelling and punctuation, etc. I'm working on 10 or 15 handwritten pages by a man named James, but it may take a day or two to add them to these. Here is some of the better stuff we've had so far.

DARRELL JOHNSON

When I was a child living in North Greenwood near Citico Courts I would play football with my oldest brother and my friends every day, rain or shine. I wanted to quarterback yet mostly ran the ball. In those days everyone in my neighborhood would say that I was one of the best players.

While growing up I loved and respected my older brother a great deal. Yet at the present time we don't get along so well. You could say that he doesn't like me at all, not very much, or that he just doesn't like some of the things that I do, but I do feel that he still loves me.

I remember the best time that we ever had. It was on a Thanksgiving back in the Seventies. Now to me he was one of the greatest sportsmen of his time. His specialty was football. On this Thanksgiving we were on the same team, and we were winning. He was blocking and I was running.

On one play, as I was running and he was blocking, we two took my brother-in-law out of the game. That is the best and last good memory that I have of my oldest brother.

JAVA

I took a picture sitting on the front bench at Miller Park that tried to include the Fall. I sit here to rest my legs and my back on the way to Saint Catherine's and I wanted to get some of the architecture of the building and the sky in the picture. However, I wasn't able to include the Cornerstone Bank, there. I think that's got really neat architecture, too.

Okay.

I've had a pretty good day. I've made some jewelry. Hopefully I've got some sold in the near future and...

It's not been bad. It started to rain. I hope it don't rain before I get in but whatever happens happens. I do have a poncho.

And, so, I guess that's all I can think of.

TOMMY PIERCE

When Ladonna told us she wanted everyone to keep a day to day journal I thought, “Cool. I love writing about my life.”

Then she said it would possibly be published in the Pulse. I thought, “Why would anyone want to read about the lives of the community's riff-raff?” I twisted it around in my head for a few weeks and just wasn't feeling it.

Then I was walking down the street last week with some dirty, weak, rancid drunk in front of me. A couple blocks on I tried to pass him by but he stumbled and I let him grab my arm. He was haggard and his eyes showed a long life of hardship and pain but it was his eyes themselves that took me off guard. They were just as clear and joyful and blue as my five-year-old son's. That's when LaDonna's Journal thing hit my heart instead of my mind.

I started thinking about how a human being, the most evolved creature on God's Green Earth, could de-evolve so far. What could break a man or woman's soul into so many pieces?

I started walking and talking with him and asked if he wanted to drink a beer with me. He reached in his pocket, pulled out a few crumpled bills and said, “Sure! What you drinkin'?”

Behind a dumpster, sipping a PBR, I tried to get his story, but the only thing he said was, “Son, my life ain't over yet, and just who the hell would want to read a story with no ending? They'd go damn blind.”

So behind that dumpster ol' Stu taught me the meaning of life. No matter how broken you become and no matter how beaten you are, it's not the end. You still have your Will.

There was a car accident down the street the other night. After the cops were all gone and the wrecked cars moved away a man came back and was sweeping the glass up off the road. He said he'd take it to be recycled.

Isn't that something? Even the broken, beaten windshield's story isn't over. It'll be reshaped into your reading glasses or a new car mirror.

If something as physical and solid as glass can be shattered and then repaired, why not our souls? When you're laying on the ground looking up at the entire world with both fists in the air just know it's not over.

I'm not sure if this'll get published. But I hope to God someone gets a little inspiration to put their Human Will to work and mend the pieces. After all that Will is what evolved us in the first place.

Written by Tommy Pierce in a crummy hotel room, but

one day it's feather beds and goose down pillows, Delmer.

DARRELL JOHNSON

Yesterday here at the Community Kitchen the police brought in some drug dogs. They didn't find any drugs but it served its purpose. It let the people here at the Community Kitchen know that drug activities will not be tolerated. I understand their reasoning for this is not the place for things of that nature.

As it's been said there is a time and place for everything. Yes, and this is funny: Some drugs are illegal yet, as we all know, people misuse prescription drugs. They may say that their physical state caused them to become a drug abuser, the same as a person on street drugs may say that life or his or her environment caused their drug abuse.

So there are a lot of questions. Could one answer be that in the past forty years America has become a society of material values? At one time in our history we thrived on moral values which were God and Country. At one time God came first in our lives. The first thing we did at school in the morning was pray then say the Pledge of Allegiance. As children growing up that gave us something to believe in and for some of us it stayed with us into adulthood. These were our morals. God and Country, not Money.

When we would pray that morning when we got to school we would say from our hearts and with feeling (Our Father), knowing that we belong to God, which art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. We respect and love you. Thy Kingdom come. We look forward to your coming. Thy will be done on earth, as it is in heaven. We want to do what you would have us to do. Give us this day our daily bread. Thank you God for life. And forgive us our debts. If I've done something or owe someone forgive me as I forgive my debtors. Let me be able to forgive others. And lead us not into temptation. Lord help me to stay away from what I know is wrong. Deliver us from evil. Lord please help me when I am in trouble. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory forever. Amen.

Lord you are in control.

JAVA

Dear Mister President,

I voted for you. I believe you had the right thing in mind when you got elected into office. I'm sorry our nation is so fickle and petty about how you do things. They gripe about the same things you said you wanted to do. I believe that's about revamping the government (it certainly needs it). The Education System and our Medical System desperately need overhauling.

I, myself, am a homeless, disabled woman of 56 years old. I have spent a good portion of my life working for free taking care of elderly and ill people to keep them out of nursing homes. I have worked in restaurants, bars, factories and all kinds of jobs through my life. I have taken care of other people's children. My son was kidnapped as a child. I didn't know him for over 30 years and when I was reunited it was very sad.

Anyway, I have faith in your ideals. I believe you're a wonderful family man. I'm confused on your religion, but to me it doesn't matter. This country is made up of... Unless you're a Native American you've got history of immigration in your family. I think all that's correct.

Anyway, kudos to you for trying and I hope they let you implement more of your ideas and hopefully can give us better medical, better education.

Please try and do something more for the homeless. The states that get the money—it don't get to the homeless people. It doesn't help us. There are systems in place but there are too many of us who fall through the cracks and we're left here to fend for ourselves even though we did not cause our own downfall. I'm not a drunk or druggie anymore, although I've had my moments when I was an alcoholic after my son was kidnapped. I pulled myself up out of that and I’ve tried to help people and work. Even though I was physically unable to do it I did it and now I’m having real problems and I wish it'd get squared away. But even if you can't help me personally I still think you've got the right idea and people need to get off your back.

We elected you into office based on your premises and I think it's a shame that our country does not let you implement the same ideas that we elected you for.

So, that's my 2 cents. My name's Java and I wish you well, your wife and your children. I think your wife's got great arms and I think it's silly of our country to make a big deal... See? That's what I'm talking about, fickle and petty.

But, good luck and more power to you—I’ve still got faith. I think you need a few terms in office to get this stuff going and to get people realizing what you're trying to do.

Anyway,

Thank You,

Goodbye

JAVA

It wasn't my pet. He belonged to the people I was staying with and they owned a golf course and a country club and all that good stuff. Anyway, i'd ride around on the golf carts with this monkey named Willie. He was a wooley monkey and that was his breed. He was a wooley monkey. He had a prehensile tail. And as long as he was on his leash he was okay when he was out of his cage but if you ever made the mistake of letting him out without his leash—Uh Oh, you had trouble.

Anyway, Willie and I were riding around on the golf carts and he'd see a gopher and he'd go ape and we'd have to chase it 'til it went down a hole or whatever. So, we did that a lot and we spent our days doing that way and he was kind of like a companion of mine. He wasn't much smaller than me, either. Anyway, he was a good friend, that monkey.

One day, though, he made me total the golf cart into the bushes when we was taking them all into the shed for the night. That was like our job. I think I was about 8, 9 years old.

Anyway, I totaled the golf cart into the bushes and I got in trouble and grounded and Willie wouldn't take the rap. I thought that was kind of poor of him but I only got grounded for a month so that wasn't bad.

ROB

Did you ever just want to give up? Living life in the United States of America you see a lot of opportunities to just stab a person between the eyes, and awaken them from all the lies of humanity. We live our lives by a book that doesn't document creation but only documents psychedelic pipe dreams. Yes, I've been called a godless heretic and yes, that is true, but neither am I a god fearing lunatic and that's why I treat God like an infection. My life is insane, all my words profane, my scars defy and I deny all walks of mankind because in actuality man is more self-destrucive than the creatures that walk on all fours. I want to spread a little hate worldwide. Hate heals. We should all try it sometime. Do you hear voices? Thousands upon thousands of voices. They're whispering, “The time has come for choices...”

JAVA

singing Neil Young:

I was lying in a burned out basement

When the full moon hit my eyes

I was hoping for replacement when the sun burst through the skies

There was a band playing in my head and I felt like getting high

Thinking about what a friend had said, I was hoping it was a lie

Thinking about what a friend had said, I was hoping it was a lie

VARIOUS: SIX WORD MEMOIRS

not wanted, shuffled around, independent survivor

Singing not heard, writer not read

got drunk, got sober, still pickled

take a number, wait in line

growing old gracefully, tired of fighting

tourist of life,tickets still available

had daughter, lost daughter, found daughter

Haywood Patterson Story, Pt. 1

Soft rains fell over the city. Fog came up from the river in little cat steps and street lights twinkled in the grey afternoon. Clouds in the sky turned into each other and a deep, heavy thunder rolled behind them. Somebody laughed far-off, then there was only the rains again. It was Sunday afternoon.

Under empty awnings and concrete eaves people hid away in pairs, alone sometimes, and watched the rain fall on the streets and buildings. They laughed, talked quietly and smoked cigarettes. Some of them drank from brown paper bags and looked up at the sky.

The newspaper house on 11^th Street churned out smoke and fog and their workhouse bells rang letting everyone know that the world had not stopped. I was the fool walking in the rainy shadow of the old building and a stray black and white mutt dog trotted through the rain behind me. He followed me as far as the railroad bridge then ducked down a bushy trail with somewhere better to go. I went on a little ways and walked up the front steps of the Chattanooga Community Kitchen.

Brother Ron Fender, an Episcopal monk in full monk's garb, was leaned back in an office chair behind a help desk just inside the front door. He looked at me as I walked in seeming ready to answer whatever question I had but I had been there before.

It was just after dinner and in the back corner of the Kitchen's dayroom a small crowd had gathered around two men playing checkers. In contrast to the rainy quiet outside this crowd was huddled over the two chess players clapping their hands and acting up like they were watching a chicken fight in the back yard. Hootin' and hollerin', they made careless fools of themselves and they seemed to be the most hospitiable people in the room. I walked back to their corner.

“You ever heard of Haywood Patterson,” I asked one of the men.

“Who?”

“Haywood Patterson.”

“No, I ain't heard of him.”

“He was one of the Scottsboro Boys,” I tried to explain, but one of the checker players made a quick slick move and the crowd of men erupted in howls and laughter. The other checker player cursed him and I was shoved out of the way by the laughing men.

That was that.

I left them alone, went to sit in a chair near near the front door to dry out. An old black couple, sixty years old or so, sat side by side near me. The old man wore stained denim overalls and the woman wore a dress. Their other belongings were in plastic grocery store bags at their feet. The expression on their faces was like the man and woman in the American Gothic painting. They sat still and stared with blank faces at the drizzling rain outside.

Three Haiku

Every now and then I slip off into Japanese literature, in particular re-reading Basho's "Narrow Road to the Deep North." Any one who wants to write, especially poets or songwriters, would do very well to study haiku. There is a stern discipline in writing haiku that, when done well, does not appear when reading it. I may start trying to do one a day. I'd eventually like to come up with some Amercicanized version of haibun. Here are a few old haiku in need to put somewhere.

lightning flashes—
          an old wild dog

          bristles and moans

wood smolders

in the old iron stove

          bare footsteps over the dry wood floor

young boys howl like wolves—

          hiding behind an oak tree

          a little girl smiles

The Lazarus Miracle

As night fell all the Jews were going through the Potter’s Field to build a fire. Swarms of bees floated around purple flowers and little village girls with blonde hair chased one another in circles around them. But a man ran out to the edge of town and in a loud voice called after them, "Lazarus! the dying one--you all know him! He’s dying again!” But those Jews kept going through the flowers to build their fire like they had heard nothing.

Jesus stood alone and looked down the hill overlooking the village. In those days Jesus rarely left the hill and he wore a red tunic. They never saw his body, but the village people caught glimpses of that red cloak flashing through the trees sometimes.

The day Lazarus died again a far off lightning flashed and a great thunder came. All the people looked toward the hill. Jesus shuffled among old olive trees, piling stones in small piles and arranging dry sticks in strange patterns on the ground, all the while remaining constant in his prayers.

Some people in the village said that they heard Jesus was deeply moved. Someone claimed to have seen him up there, moving about wildly among those trees, shaking his arms all around and his hair waved like a torn flag. People said they knew Jesus was working for Lazarus.

An old man went out one night. In the moonlight he walked along the edge of the Potter’s Field and started quietly up the hill where Jesus stayed. He stopped behind a holly bush there and looked up. Jesus had built a small tomb at the base of one of the olive trees. Inside he placed a small, wounded grey bird and sat cross-legged watching it die. The lamp Jesus carried with him shone in the fading light. The old man watched as Jesus knelt on the ground before the small tomb and watched the fast breathing bird.

When the old man returned to the village he went to see Martha, the sister of Lazarus. The old man told Martha that Jesus was not coming.

Martha reproached him, pointing her finger toward the light that could still be seen. She said that everyone knew Jesus stood through the night and watched over them. Lazarus would rise again, she said.

Out by the bumblebees with the Jews the sweet flowers droned.

The next morning the old man again called on Martha. He found her sitting at the feet of Lazarus with her hands in her hair. Martha looked up to the old man then looked out the window, pointing to one of the rosebushes growing out there. “Lazarus planted those.”

The old man shook his head. “Jesus is not coming.” He walked to the window. As he closed the shutters on Martha's window he saw Jesus’ red tunic appear then disappear through the trees. “He is not coming. Jesus saw you weeping. I know he saw you but he is not coming,”

"But the Lord is a good Lord, and today is the last day," said Martha. She put her face toward the floor and started moaning. She ran to the window and pulled the shutters back open. “I’ve learned how to pray and I pray!” She screamed toward the distant hill. “Do what is right, Lord!”

She turned to the old man. “You old fool! Where is the promise? He comes and raises Lazarus from the dead, to show even you old men the glory of the Lord. Even you old men, who have seen everything, that you, too, may believe. He says we must have faith, so we must have faith.” Martha stood over the old man. “My brother Lazarus always goes down roads he should not. Whether he is brave or a fool is not for me to say. But you, old man, should know by now that when the sun goes down in the morning it will come up!”

Later in the day the old man was working cutting down wild grasses that grew near the front door of Martha’s home when he heard loud voices coming from behind the house.

The few remaining Jews, those who had not yet followed the others out to the Potter’s Field, had gathered together before Martha.

They followed her when she tried to walk away. These remaining were the most Godful Jews, some of whom who were there the first time Martha had called out for and received the Lazarus miracle.

"Your brother has been shown more grace than any other man,” one of them said. “The air he has breathed and all the songs he sings of himself should be enough.”

“Or too much!” said another.

Martha said, "Only a short time ago you all entered our village, and were welcomed here as a flock of rare animals. Now look. You over there, as pretty as a woman! And you, with your tied up beard and silly hat. All of you! Who do you think you are? What do you want? For us to forget ourselves to see only your troubles?”

Then one of them said, “God would.”

Another said, “Do you not understand sacrifice?”

Martha began throwing stones and shouting at the Jews: “Go away from me! Go away from my house!“ The stones hit the Jews. “Go away from my house!”

The Jews covered their heads with their hands and ran away from Martha’s house. Some cursed her while others laughed.

Martha ran into the house, crying loud, and threw herself on the floor in Lazarus’ room. The old man sat in a chair and said nothing.

“God damn them! God damn all of them!” she cried. “and us? We’re damned by God, too! What is all of this? Joy comes to us only to be swallowed by a thousand times more pain. And there is no end to any of this. Why?”

The old man looked at Lazarus' lifeless body on the bed. He had begun to smell like death. Flies gathered at the corner of his eyes and came in and out of his partly opened mouth. Martha moaned on her knees, her forehead on the floor.

Suddenly Jesus’ face appeared in the window. He was smiling. His teeth were dirty and his hair was full of dead leaves. He reached his hand inside the window, held his palm up toward Lazarus and said, "Lazarus, do rise again in my name."

The old man stood. Martha pulled her hair from before her wide eyes.

And Lazarus rose.

Martha regained herself and became ecstatic, crying out loud in joy and putting her hands all over her brother’s cold body. She looked to the window where the dirty teeth of Jesus still smiled. “Oh sweet Jesus you are my Lord!” She ran out the door and around to the side of the house to the window where Jesus was standing. But he wasn’t there.

She turned toward the Potter's Field and saw him. She held her trembling hands over her mouth and cried.

Through a field going there she saw Jesus running wildly back toward his hill. His arms flailed madly as he went. He jumped sometimes for no reason his voice howled as though in some strange pain. His red tunic flowed and his hair waved behind him like a torn flag.

Over the next three days Lazarus regained his strength and slept well through the nights. On the fourth day there was a celebration and people came from miles around.

“It is strange. See? So many people rejoice again in the salvation of our poor brother Lazarus,” Martha remarked. “I wonder why?”

“Our God is a strange God,” someone heard the old man say. “One shouldn‘t wonder about such things.”

Children ran in circles and sang songs. Bakers baked and women forgot for a while their modesty and held up the ends of their skirts, dancing in the streets. The men forgot for a while their anger over such things and found pleasure in the spectacle. The sun shone beautifully and small grey birds flew all around, lighting on the tops of houses then flying up to the hill where Jesus stayed. Lazarus smiled at everyone and Martha cried.

At the end of the day, after everyone had gone home, Lazarus walked alone watching dry dust rise from beneath his footsteps. In the evening he went back to Martha's house, went into his room and laid down on the bed. He watched out the window, the same one Jesus had appeared in, as the sun went down and the moon came up.

That night all the Jews were going through the Potter’s Field to build a fire. Swarms of bees floated around purple flowers and little village girls with blonde hair chased one another in circles around them. But a man ran out to the edge of town and in a loud voice called after them, "Lazarus! the dying one--you all know him! He’s dying again!” But those Jews kept going through the flowers to build their fire like they had heard nothing.

All the people looked toward the hill. Jesus shuffled among old olive trees, piling stones in small piles and arranging dry sticks in strange patterns on the ground, all the while remaining constant in his prayers.

Some people in the village said that they heard Jesus was deeply moved. Someone claimed to have seen him up there, moving about wildly among those trees, shaking his arms all around and his hair waved like a torn flag. People said they knew Jesus was working for Lazarus.

Old Letters

I've developed over the years an interest in old letters. Writing letters is a dead art--died in our lifetime. I remember having to send letters home when I was in boot camp, and exchanged a few with a girl I know in Germany before we both had email a few years later. Now facebook--which is becoming somewhat "sluttish" and mostly distasteful. Letter writing is a thing of the past.

But if anyone is so inclined it's fairly easy to look up letters from a long time ago and read them. It would be a good thing to do. Reading them is like looking into an old viewfinder and seeing snapshots from the past, narrated by whoever wrote the letter. You can hear voices and see things that are long gone. It's somewhat strange--all the people and places you read in those old letters are dead. The writer is dead, people and places they're talking about are all gone, but they come alive when you read them.

They do for me, anyway. Old ghost stories.

Here is an excerpt from a nice one I found the other day. I've got a pretty good collection of them now. These old things teach me a lot about writing.

This is early Monday morning. The wind is blowing "fair & free." & here I remark we have not had much wind this spring, & a fresh breeze strikes me as a novelty. There were light showers last night & when I went out last night for a turn in the garden, the larkspurs & white jasmine & holly hocks were in their glory & the cabbages on a broad grin. How sweet it all is, you well know. Do you know that I never can write to you about this old house of yours without a swelling at the heart & often at the eyes. It seems so hard, so incredible that you shd have been forced away from it. I am sitting at your especial window. The Mimosa is just beginning to bloom. June has made up the bed (we sleep in the other room; sit in here) & picked up & put away everything & set both rooms perfectly to rights all but the sweeping wh I did myself. I told her just now, I meant to call her "Help." She is such a help. She sits near in her little carpet bottom chair, dressing "Lea."

One of these windows fell down on my foot this morning & I am quite lame. How could a window fall on a body's foot? Easy enough when you sit with your bare legs elevated out on the window sill in order to get your feet warmed in the sunshine of a cool morning.

I walked through the early moonlight last evening with the children — moon rising red in the east, sun setting gold in the west — to see Dr Hubbard. Found him just lighting his pipe, looking so natural, so pleasant, so cordial. I had a very agreeable hour with them all.

This morning I took the children & rode down to Closs' creek, there we got out & walked down the creek to the "Lake". Thence to the strawberry patch. Fred Hargrave's establishment looks sluttish & tumble down. I told him it needed a mistress. We three & the Malletts went on Monday afternoon to get ivy, aiming for Ivy Hill, but we could not get there. So we wandered & meandered over Purefoy's plantation, the children & Patty M. wading to their heart's content

I think we got more & a greater variety of fine flowers than I ever saw at once before. I like the Mallett girls mightily. They are very agreeable companions. I have been to see Miss Ann Craig several times. She is getting well. Last Sunday evening I found her reading a little old dingy, dilapidated Testament, the type of which tried my eyes sorely when I went to read it to her. Next day I sent her a large copy (with the Psalms). You never saw anyone more grateful than she was yesterday morning when I called in for a minute.

Well. It was so well d (that was not a tear-drop but June , who is fussing now at my hair & wetting it & flirted the water all over everything. She looks over my shoulder very persistent & says, what did you go & tell aunt L. for, that it was me.) It is now after breakfast, nearly 9 & I have just had a visit from Ann Mickle. Such are the interruptions of letter writing.

Redfire and the Dogwood Tree, Pt. 1

This is an experiment--please don't confuse "I" with "me". I'm playing with pacing and nerves here. And symbols. Don't pay too much attention. Thank you for your concern.

I heard a story the other day. The story says that Jesus was nailed to a cross. The cross he was nailed to was made of a dogwood tree. Once upon a time, the story says, the dogwood tree grew majestic and tall. After Christ was nailed to it, God cursed the tree so that its tall majesty was lost. Never again would the tree bear enough lumber to hang a man from. And you know those white flowers that blossom in early spring? The red in the center of them? Those are the bloodstains of Jesus. That's the story I heard.

The dogwood tree is my favorite tree.

I was sitting under one in the woods the other day getting tired of a lot of things. One of those things was sitting under that dogwood tree so I got up and left.

I jumped over a ditch and walked up a hill. I went through a bunch of skinny old straggling pine trees. Red birds flew through scared of me. I got to the top of the hill then went down the other side into a valley where a muddy creek ran—there, I walked down the creek to where it emptied into a shallow pond.

Looking out over that pond I saw what I thought was a leaf spinning in circles. I went to the edge of the water and looked closer. It was not a leaf at all but the tail of a fish, a big carp swimming in circles. I picked up a stick laying by my feet and touched the fish but he disappeared. I knew better and waited. When he came back swimming in circles and stirring up mud I raised the stick up over my head and brought it down hard. A big bubble rose up and a thin haze of red fish blood came through. Towards the middle of the pond I saw the soft body of the fish float up just below the surface of the water.

I threw the stick out toward the dead fish and walked on through the woods. I eventually came out of the woods and walked up on some railroad tracks. I pulled my hat down close over my head and shoved my hands in my pants pockets. I looked for trains but none were coming.

 

The Scottsboro Boys and Chattanooga

I went walking down some railroad tracks near St. Elmo a while back and found this old tunnel. There was graffiti in there ffrom the time the tunnel was built, about a hundred years ago. I was doing a story on grafitti and was secretly in search of something by the FTRA or some other rail-riding gang. I didn't find any of that, but found some cool stuff drawn on the tunnel wall by the workers who carved out the tunnel. It's essentially a cave and everything in there has been preserved. A photographer and I went back later and took photos. Came real close to being hit by a train that day.

Later on I was researching something else I was writing, don't remember what, and came across the story of the Scottsboro Boys. I'd heard of them but didn't know much about their story. Something caught my eye and I read more about them. The quick story is they were 9 black boys accused of raping 2 white girls in the 30's. Their case went from a county courthouse in Alabama to the US Supreme Court. It was eventually dismissed. This case started the civil rights movement.

And it started at that railroad tunnel I'd found. Below is something I copied from a book one of the Scottsboro Boys wrote after the trials were all over. This is what the story will be based on.


The freight train leaving out of Chattanooga, going around the mountain curves and hills of Tennessee into Alabama, it went so slow anyone could get off and back on.

That gave the white boys the idea they could jump off the train and pick up rocks, carry them back on, and chunk them at us Negro boys.

The trouble began when three or four white boys crossed over the oil tanker that four of us colored fellows from Chattanooga were in. One of the white boys, he stepped on my hand and liked to have knocked me off the train. I didn’t say anything then, but the same guy, he brushed by me again and liked to have pushed me off the car. I caught hold of the side of the tanker to keep from falling off.

I made a complaint about it and the white boy talked back— mean, serious, white folks Southern talk.
That is how the Scottsboro case began … with a white foot on my black hand.

“The next time you want by,” I said, “just tell me you want by and I let you by.”

“Nigger, I don’t ask you when I want by. What you doing on this train anyway?”

“Look, I just tell you the next time you want by you just tell me you want by and I let you by.”

“Nigger bastard, this a white man’s train. You better get off. All you black bastards better get off!”

I felt we had as much business stealing a ride on this train as those white boys hoboing from one place to another looking for work like us. But it happens in the South most poor whites feel they are better than Negroes and a black man has few rights. It was wrong talk from the white fellow and I felt I should sense it into him and his friends we were human beings with rights too. I didn’t want that my companions, Roy and Andy Wright, Eugene Williams and myself, should get off that train for anybody unless it was a fireman or engineer or railroad dick who told us to get off.

“You white sons of bitches, we got as much right here as you!”

“Why, you goddamn nigger, I think we better just put you off!”

“Okay, you just try. You just try to put us off!”

Three or four white boys, they were facing us four black boys now, and all cussing each other on both sides. But no fighting yet.

The white boys went on up the train further.

We had just come out of a tunnel underneath Lookout Mountain when the argument started. The train, the name of it was the Alabama Great Southern, it was going uphill now, slow. A couple of the white boys, they hopped off, picked up rocks, threw them at us. The stones landed around us and some hit us. Then the white fellows, they hopped back on the train two or three cars below us. We were going toward Stevenson, Alabama, when the rocks came at us. We got very mad.

When the train stopped at Stevenson, I think maybe to get water or fuel, we got out of the car and walked along the tracks. We met up with some other young Negroes from another car. We told them what happened. They agreed to come in with us when the train started again.

Soon as the train started the four of us Chattanooga boys that was in the oil tanker got back in there—and the white boys started throwing more rocks. The other colored guys, they came over the top of the train and met us four guys. We decided we would go and settle with these white boys. We went toward their car to fight it out. There must have been ten or twelve or thirteen of us colored when we came on a gang of six or seven white boys.

I don’t argue with people. I show them. And I started to show those white boys. The other colored guys, they pitched in on these rock throwers too. Pretty quick the white boys began to lose in the fist fighting. We outmanned them in hand-to-hand scuffling. Some of them jumped off and some we put off. The train, picking up a little speed, that helped us do the job. A few wanted to put up a fight but they didn’t have a chance. We had color anger on our side.

The train was picking up speed and I could see a few Negro boys trying to put off one white guy. I went down by them and told them not to throw this boy off because the train was going too fast. This fellow, his name was Orville Gilley. Me and one of the Wright boys pulled him back up.

After the Gilley boy was back on the train the fight was over. The four of us, Andy and Roy Wright, Eugene Williams and myself, we went back to the tanker and sat the same way we were riding when the train left Chattanooga.

The white fellows got plenty sore at the whupping we gave them. They ran back to Stevenson to complain that they were jumped on and thrown off—and to have us pulled off the train.

The Stevenson depot man, he called up ahead to Paint Rock and told the folks in that little through-road place to turn out in a posse and snatch us off the train.

It was two or three o’clock in the afternoon, Wednesday, March 25, 1931, when we were taken off at Paint Rock.…

Haywood Patterson

“Scottsboro Boy”

1950

Tommy Pierce's Story

I wrote a story for the Chattanooga Pulse a long time ago. This story has been my proudest achievement for the Pulse yet. It stirred up a bit of trouble, but good ones usually do.

The story was about the Chattanooga Homeless. The idea was to hand out some notebooks to area homeless and let them tell their own stories. It worked perfectly. A caseworker at the Community Kitchen named Ladonna Guffey is responsible for it happening. Without her it would have remained just an idea.

Below is an excerpt from that story. I don't know who this guy is or what's become of him. I never met him. I hope he's still writing, though. Ladonna and I talked about making the journals we collected into a larger project. I'm planning on doing that someday.

Here's what Tommy wrote:


When Ladonna told us she wanted everyone to keep a day to day journal I thought, “Cool. I love writing about my life.”

Then she said it would possibly be published in the Pulse. I thought, “Why would anyone want to read about the lives of the community’s riff-raff?” I twisted it around in my head for a few weeks and just wasn’t feeling it.

Then I was walking down the street last week with some dirty, weak, rancid drunk in front of me. A couple blocks on I tried to pass him by but he stumbled and I let him grab my arm. He was haggard and his face showed a long life of hardship and pain but it was his eyes themselves that took me off guard. They were just as clear and joyful and blue as my five-year-old son’s. That’s when LaDonna’s Journal thing hit my heart instead of my mind.

I started thinking about how a human being, the most evolved creature on God’s Green Earth, could de-evolve so far. What could break a man or woman’s soul into so many pieces?

I started walking and talking with him and asked if he wanted to drink a beer with me. He reached in his pocket, pulled out a few crumpled bills and said, “Sure! What you drinkin’?”

Behind a dumpster, sipping a PBR, I tried to get his story, but the only thing he said was, “Son, my life ain’t over yet, and just who the hell would want to read a story with no ending? They’d go damn blind.”

So behind that dumpster ol’ Stu taught me the meaning of life. No matter how broken you become and no matter how beaten you are, it’s not the end. You still have your Will.

There was a car accident down the street the other night. After the cops were all gone and the wrecked cars moved away a man came back and was sweeping the glass up off the road. He said he’d take it to be recycled.

Isn’t that something? Even the broken, beaten windshield’s story isn’t over. It’ll be reshaped into your reading glasses or a new car mirror.

If something as physical and solid as glass can be shattered and then repaired, why not our souls? When you’re laying on the ground looking up at the entire world with both fists in the air, just know it’s not over.

I’m not sure if this’ll get published. But I hope to God someone gets a little inspiration to put their Human Will to work and mend the pieces. After all that Will is what evolved us in the first place.

Written by Tommy Pierce in a crummy hotel room, but one day it’s feather beds and goose down pillows, Delmer.

The Man in the White Hat

I've been reading a lot about Hank Williams. Listening to his songs even more. Me and my boy are planning a trip to Montgomery this summer to go visit him.

Hank's is a sad story. He was born poor, partly disabled by spina bifada. His old man was sick in a hospital the boy's whole life and he was raised by a strong-willed mother. He sang songs on the street to get by.

They say his morphine/pain-killer addiction was brought on by his back problems. That's what they always say. Kurt Cobain was a junkie because of stomach problems, they said. Every junkie has his reasons. Every drunk has an excuse. If you distill the excuses down to their essences you usually find that some people just don't find life that amusing. Being drunk makes you happy, at least for a while.

Hank's joy was a drunk's joy. Booze makes a sad mind see the silly in things that aren't really funny. Your buddy falling down in a wet ditch and unable to get back out ain't really funny. Booze makes a man feel gallant committing acts that are not honorable. Dirty barroom brawls take on the character of incidents from Don Quioxtes Noble Acts and to a drunk it is somehow assumed that a swift smack across a woman's face will make her understand what it is you've been trying to say. She'll surely lay a big wet kiss on your drunk mouth—thankful like in those John Wayne movies. When you're drunk, booze is a wonderful thing.

But you can't stay that way. Tomorrow always comes, whether you care if it does or not.

And when tomorrow comes, she's still as gone as she was last night. That smack across the face don't achieve the John Wayne results. She'll call the police and your boy'll be calling another man daddy in no time at all. There'll be a tear in your next beer sure as shit.

The genius of Hank was that he knew all this and could put it in song. All the hell-raisin' he sang about was countered by at least as much remorse. He didn't sing the blues, he moaned them. He knew that every rambling man would end up on the lost highway and he tried to warn us. His voice was not a stranger's voice. It was our's. We knew him. His songs came from inside us.

Old Hank stood on the side of the road and told us where we were going. He knew what we'd done. Yes, it was funny sometimes—but you better watch out. You'll be telling that old dog to move it on over yourself, soon.

If you keep on it'll get serious. You'll be lost. Alone and forsaken, begging God to hear you and to please hold your hand. He warned us not to follow in his steps or we'd end up like him. Standing lost on the side of the highway.

He sang his songs from the side of that road and later on he died on it.

Lost Art

This is a story about art. Not big city museum art or coffeeshop hipster art. Not even Grandma Moses. Those things are either admireded or laughed at as each of us sees fit. This pile of words concerns roadside things that occasionally appear along backroads and in old beat up places. Behind churches and by-the-week motel yards. Carved tree trunks and concrete Jesuses—stupid things. It's a strange story.

Let's go to this dirt hill in Columbine, Colorado, by way of explanation. This dirt hill is the same as a lot of dirt hills around here. Rebel Hill, it's called—we can relate to that. It overlooks the high school there and sneaky kids sneak up there to tell spooky ghost stories at night. You know how kids can be and it is a haunted place.

The sky glows grey and orange behind the hill and the sky is vast in Colorado.

Around 11a.m. on April 20, 1999 two boys carried backpacks full of guns and homemade bombs into the high school that stood in the shadow of Rebel Hill. In a little more than an hour the two boys murdered 12 other children then committed suicide in the library. Outside there were cops, television reporters and helicopters in the sky. It was all a bloody mess. The TV said there were dead children scattered everywhere.

Why?

Nobody knew.

Later, there were rumours of two awkward boys and football team bullies. But that was silly.

We wanted to know why these two children did this. How could two awkward young boys murder all those other children? What was wrong with them? The boys were made fun of, tormented and cast out. So what. Lots of people are. They were beat up and spit on. Humiliated and laughed at. Well, that's just boys being boys. Teachers condoned it all and parents turned blind eyes. So. One of them once had a paper cup full of shit thrown on him at school one time. That's not the same. That's not killing someone.

It was all inexplicable.

A few days later a man named Greg Zanis came to Columbine to build crosses to memorialize the dead children, including the killers. The crosses were built from hardware-store fence posts and he painted them white. He wrote the name of each dead child on seperate crosses and planted all of them atop Rebel Hill. He did this at night so no one would see. A hundred thousand visitors came to see the crosses in the days that followed. They left flowers and sad momentos.

Brian Rohrbough, a father of one of the dead children, didn't like what Greg Zanis had done. He too climbed Rebel Hill and wrote on one of the crosses: MURDERERS BURN IN HELL. EVIL BASTARD was written on another. Two of these children were “evil,” Brian explained, and that's why this tragedy had happened. These “evil” children had no place among the others, who were angels. Innocent people agreed with him. Those who disagreed with him were also called “evil”.

Later, seeing that he'd created a bit of a stir, Brian phoned CNN and told them to bring a camera crew. He marched up Rebel Hill again with the cameras close behind him. Other innocent people followed, too. Brian further desecrated those two crosses. He swore at them, pulled them down and tore them into pieces. He explained that the dead children represented by these two crosses didn't deserve remembrance. God could not accept them. These two children were full of hate, Brian said, not love. He threw their desecrated crosses in a dumpster.

Brian Rohrbough later became a spokesman. He speaks about terrible things, about all of us. He says you are morally corrupt. He says your children are killed because God is not in our schools. TV shows interview him and he speaks to us about terrible things. You've moved away from God, he says. Suicide has become acceptable when it shouldn't be. Jack Kevorkian was evil, too. Brian speaks about how pro-life God is.

Let's come back to Chattanooga now. Columbine is not a place I want to stay too long—just wanted to let you know where I'm coming from. Let's go out to Ooltewah, right down the road. A place called Summitt. I used to ride around out there with Malcolm Witherow when I was a boy.

Malcolm you may have heard of—he was the black man recently convicted of first-degree murder for shooting an old white girlfriend in 2008. Word is she wore a wire for the cops trying to bust Malcolm selling the dope she smoked. They said they found her laying dead in the middle of some dark country backroad. She didn't deserve to die the way she did. Nobody deserves to die like that. She did the right thing working with the cops and Malcolm will die in prison. Most people say he deserves to.

But Malcolm had a golden smile and a deep laugh. This was 20 years before that girl was killed. He drove an old pick-up truck and he'd do concrete work back then. He did whatever else he could, too, to get by.

I rode shotgun in the middle one day with Malcolm's four-in-the-floor gear shift slamming against my left leg. It was a hot August day and the windows were down. Malcolm was driving and my old man was on my right, hollering over the antenna radio. We curved around past trailer parks and fenced-in livestock. Mick Jagger sang Jumping Jack Flash on the radio while Malcolm and my old man threw empty beer cans out the windows and into the ditches.

We stopped by this old graveyard out there. Malcolm wanted to. They got out and I followed them. The graveyard was overgrown and vile. Small pine trees and weeds had grown up everywhere. Dead mothers and siblings rotted under the ground and the county landfill was nearby. You could smell the dump and a pigfarm across the road. Rats and rabbits crawled through the grass. Buzzing bugs flew by and the sun was hot.

Malcolm had family buried there. My old man went with him and they talked like men do. The weather, the dry yellow grass, the cemetery's upkeep and the county's plan to close down the dump. They laughed some. Drank the beer they'd brought with them. Talked about who they knew buried in some of the other graves. Didn't talk about anybody being sad, though. That's not what men do.

I wandered off. That's what boys do and I was a boy. The dry grass crunched under my feet. They hollered after me to watch out for snakes.

I walked past knocked over tombstones. Old names appeared out of the blackberry bushes. Some of them appeared on fancy crooked marble markers. Some of them just said last names and that God loved them. Some of them had young babies names. I saw a cement brick with MOTHER hand-carved into it. There were places that were nothing more than unholy indentations in the ground and I was afraid to step over them.

Black crows squawked. Dump trucks poured over the road and I could smell the garbage at the landfill. Bugs buzzed in the air.

I looked up toward the middle of the graveyard and an old Jesus statue was there. The statue's hands reached out to bless the dead but his concrete fingers were broken off. I looked up at his face. Old Jesus. His head didn't move but his eyes could see. He looked at me but didn't say anything. I stood there awhile and he let birds light on his head. His broken concrete hands held up the blessing sign all the time.

He looked across the cracked grass and watched the blackberries choke all those marble gravestones. Sinkholes in the bushes mark the spot where women were buried. Some chunked up piles of red dirt just had rocks around them—those dead were nameless. They were all pauper's graves. Mothers, some of them, but paupers still—nobody was supposed to remember them. These were supposed to be people whose living family didn't give a damn about them. Not enough for anyone to come and mow the grass, anyway. They were all in the hands of the Lord, according to some of the tombstones.

A sudden loud crack startled me and I ran back to where Malcolm and my old man were. A long black and green snake was writhing into itself on the ground in front of them. Malcolm had shot it. My old man said it was only a chicken snake and told Malcolm he should have left it alone. “You're crazy,” my old man said. “Somebody's calling the cops right now. Put the goddam gun up and let's go.”

Malcolm said he'd kill any snake that crossed his path.

But that was a long time ago, and I was a boy then. I've got a boy of my own now and he rides with me. His name's Simon. Madcap's his name in our secret club, but don't tell anybody. One of the duties of our secret club is to hunt out the places ghosts may be hiding. That's the mission Simon and I were on the other day.

We rode around the backside of Lookout Mountain and through Tiftonia. Tiftonia is another one of those half-dead towns still percolating because of a super Wal-Mart. Dead motels and kudzu line the main road through there. There are as many For Rent signs in storefront windows as there are windows with Open signs flashing. It's about two miles worth of a town. Old scratched-up and fading signs invited us to visit Raccoon Mountain and the Alpine Slide. Simon wanted to go so we went.

We soon learned that Raccoon Mountain is an RV park with a cave in the back. The Alpine Slide was closed years ago when a newly developed subdivision out there complained about the noise. You can see a private golf course through the trees there. It's part of the subdivision that didn't like the noise the Alpine Slide made.

On the way back out we stopped at an old motel at the top of the road there. It was called the Alpine Lodge. A sign out front advertised “Color RCA TV's”. On the outside walls of the motel were handpainted scenes of eagles flying over mountains or perched in great big trees. Undying plastic flowers were in pots everywhere. Bright red, yellow, orange and blue. I didn't see any cars there so I pulled in.

Around back Simon said, “Look at that.” I parked the car and got out. There was a figure carved from a cedar tree that once stood there. The figure was a life-sized owl-faced woman with angel wings. Beady eyes and a hook nose stared down accusingly and angel wings were folded at her side. Her feet grew into what was left of the cedar trunk. Moss and old tree bark hung on to the back of her wings. But her eyes seemed to damn anybody that looked at her.

A man came out of the motel office's back door. He walked toward us. I waved hello and he nodded toward me. When he came closer I saw he was an older middle-eastern man. He asked us what we needed and Simon stood close behind me. I told him we were curious about the statue.

He didn't know anything about it. It was there when his brother-in-law bought the place, he said. He didn't know who carved it.

I told him it was a strange statue to be in a motel's back yard. I wondered if the same person who carved this weird angel did all the paintings on the outside of the buildings, too.

The man thought so. He said that a long time ago Tiftonia wanted to offer something to the thousands of tourists who visit the big attractions on the mountain every year. Ruby Falls, Rock City and all those places. Tiftonia built the motels, put the Alpine Slide up outside the Raccoon Mountain cave and restaurants suddenly appeared. The man who created the Alpine Lodge and all the paintings and carvings there was one of those people who believed the town would build itself up that way. But it never happened. Nobody came.

“They were hoping too much,” he smiled. His brother-in-law planned to sell the place soon. “It's two acres. Someone could doze everything down and build eight houses here. It's nice property.”

I told him I didn't have any money and he laughed. I asked him if Simon and I could look around a little before we left. He didn't mind and went back inside.

Simon was out in the grass wandering around.

He followed me to a gazebo that was further up the hill. It was at the edge of the property near the woods. I sat there with all the big plastic flowers hanging in pots and looked down at the owl-face woman with angel wings still accusing me.

Simon couldn't stay still. He said this was the perfect place for ghosts. He pointed his finger toward the woods and said he knew there were ghosts hiding in there. He said he was going to find them. I told him to go ahead but don't go too far.

Watch for snakes.

The Chattanooga Underground

Water pourin’ into Vicksburg, don’t know what I’m goin’ to do
“Don’t reach out for me,” she said
“Can’t you see I’m drownin’ too?”
It’s rough out there
High water everywhere
— Bob Dylan

In Chattanooga, early in the first week of March 1867, rains came, and did not stop for four days. People watched as the streets turned to mud and crops were destroyed. The small streams and rivulets that ran off the sides of the mountains turned to raging rivers and, most troubling, the Tennessee River was rising. Those who had the means made for higher ground and those that did not held on.

A telegraph from Knoxville came through to Chattanooga’s telegraph station, asking if floodwaters had entered their building yet. They had not, and Knoxville replied that they would by morning.

Soon thereafter, all the telegraph wires were down and communication to and from the city was cut off. Chattanooga was slammed by a river that had risen 57 feet.

The Military Bridge, then the only bridge in the city, washed out, disconnecting the city from the north shore of the river. Homes and cabins floated by and helpless, dying cries were heard from inside them as they passed. Once operable flour and corn mills floated down the river, as did water wheels, homes and livestock. The rail yard was completely submerged.

Boats paddled up and down Market, Broad and Chestnut Streets, and all the intervening streets as far south as what is now MLK Boulevard. One of these boats was seen to capsize between the Episcopal and Presbyterian churches near 7th Street, killing the three men who were on board. A house floated through the city near what was then Sutlertown with two men hanging on to its roof. The two men slipped off, and when trying to climb back onto the roof the house turned over, dragging the men to their deaths beneath it. The bodies of other men, women and children all floated through the city—one man claimed to have been inside his house on the old Lookout Mountain road and watched as many as 15 bodies pass before him one day.

During the night came the fiends. Windows were smashed and businesses were looted, their goods being paddled silently away down the city streets. Homes were robbed and an angry group of business owners, about a hundred of them, banded together and made their way to the commander of a military post then in Chattanooga, demanding that martial law be declared to stop the looting.

One afternoon, despite the dangers, an unknown but enterprising man rowed a barge from the river up Broad Street and into the Read House, paddled right through its front doors and welcomed aboard a band of fine ladies who were stranded at the hotel.  This forgotten man toured the women through and around Chattanooga’s Venice-like streets and showed them the devastation in progress. The visiting women were said to have very much enjoyed the ride, and this led to a new pastime for the next few days. Boats were constantly rowing through the doors and into the front room of the Read House and other buildings, ferrying visitors about the crumbling town, until the city mayor put a stop to it, hoping to preserve the dignity of the dead and helpless.

In the very midst of all this terror and foolishness, even while the water was still rising, an anonymous reporter wrote this to the desperate, flooded citizens of Chattanooga on March 9, 1867, in the Daily American Union, an old Chattanooga newspaper:

“It seems, indeed, as though upon our fair land the curses of war, pestilence, and famine, were not sufficient, and now this additional calamity has befallen us. Still, one ought not to despair, nor to let their losses be an excuse for a folding of the hands and a cessation from labor. This calamity should rather be an incentive to new efforts. So far as its being an injury to the future prosperity of the town is concerned, our citizens need feel no alarm. Under the direction of his Honor, Mayor Carr, our energetic and worthy Engineer, Col. Wm. B. Gaw, will, when this flood has reached its highest point, make a series of water marks, showing the height of this flood, and when the waters have subsided, and he establishes the grades of the streets in the city as he is authorized to do, the grade of every street in Chattanooga will be raised to a sufficient height above the level of this flood to preclude the possibility of any part of the city ever being again submerged.  Chattanooga is a young and thriving city and, with all the chances in her favor, her people are not to be discouraged by anything. We are bound to make this city the first city in the South, and by the help of God, who always aids those who help themselves, we will do it.”

Reading the accounts of the disaster today, one is struck by the absence of the sad stories. No writer spoke of people waving helpless white flags from rooftops or angry tirades demanding the president come and part the waters. This was a different time. From the determined sound of those old newspaper stories, the citizens of 1867 would have needed an even greater weather catastrophe before they cried out for help. Remember, the Civil War had just ended (in which Chattanooga had played a huge part) and Reconstruction was in its youth. For these drowning people to scream toward Washington, insisting that the federal government was responsible for their lives and livelihoods would have required a weather catastrophe along the lines of a cold day in hell.

It was not until March 14 that the floodwaters began to subside, and the city was left covered in mud and debris and nearly destroyed. The Daily American Union told of the dangers being faced by downtown citizens and shopkeepers, of capsized boats leaning against storefronts, of a house washed up in the middle of Chestnut Street and the wreckage of countless other structures strewn about the city. The newspaper also felt it important to offer this prudent warning to the unwary: “…hoop skirts and unmentionable articles of women’s apparel are seen hanging from drying lines in suspicious proximity to gentlemen’s hats [and] coats.”

The Daily American Union left no stone unturned.

As the years passed, memories of the flood faded. The Tennessee River was dammed and brought under control. Eventually, the harrowing flood and the destruction of Chattanooga were forgotten.

More than a century later, archaeologist and UTC Professor Dr. Jeff Brown became fascinated by strange architectural features he was finding on some of Chattanooga’s downtown buildings. Walking the city streets, he’d find the top of a window at sidewalk level here, a half-submerged doorway there. Asking around, he learned from some of the city’s utility workers that there were tunnels beneath these city streets, some of which ran all the way to the river and others that led to nowhere. There were stairways that led up to the sides of doorless walls. They told him about rooms beneath some of the older buildings that had been bolted and locked shut years ago and no one could say what was on the other side.

Dr. Brown noticed that none of these tunnels or underground rooms were marked on any of the city’s maps, and no one questioned seemed to know when they were created or why these mysterious tunnels and caverns existed. City workers told of digging outside downtown buildings and finding staircases that led into the sides of underground walls. Intrigued, Dr. Brown looked into these architectural oddities further—and what he eventually found was that the city of Chattanooga had been backfilled and lifted, from six feet at 9th Street to more than 20 feet at the north end of downtown. Though forgotten, that anonymous reporter’s exhortation in the March 9, 1867 edition of the Daily American Union had been carried out. The level of Chattanooga’s streets had been silently raised, from the river all the way to 9th Street, up to 20 feet at some points.

Strangely, the amazing feat was poorly documented. There were the newspaper reports and photographs of the flood, then for nearly a hundred years all was forgotten until Dr. Brown rediscovered, in a sense, the phenomenal task the citizens of Chattanooga had accomplished. While people were drowning, starving and the river still rising, they said they were going to pick the entire north end of the city up and raise it 20 feet—a nearly unimaginable task—but the proof of their determination is found right under our feet.

The ruins are still there today.  Under the streets and buildings on the north end of downtown, a person feeling ratty enough can pop down a manhole when no one’s looking and see a side of Chattanooga that hasn’t been seen in over a century. Don’t expect to find gold tombs, Dead Sea scrolls or Rosetta Stones there. There is wonder, though: staircases to nowhere, rusted metal lights hanging from rotten ceilings, doorways that lead to blackness, old signs painted and crumbling on walls that were once street level. These ruins are the dream homes of ghost stories—Chattanooga Ghost Tours will even take you to see part of the Underground. But the ghosts there are of a different sort—you find under this city ghosts of a time when men were determined to make it on their own and when self-reliance and pride determined a people’s worth.

To today’s citizens, the old 1867 mud puddle seems a thousand years away—to most it has been forgotten. But those old citizens who braved the flood, lived through it and swore to restore the city they were once proud of—what if we today were to have passed by them then? They would be standing in the middle of Market Street, knee-deep in mud and garbage, shovel in hand and sweating. They might pause for a moment if we were to pass by and ask them why the president didn’t have the National Guard down here, or even why the president himself wasn’t there to help clean up that pile on the north end of Broad Street.
Back in our world, tonight’s nightly news should remind us all this: oil wells still explode, dams burst, economies still bottom out, banks still don’t give a damn about you and those bread lines are long. But 20 feet under the north end of Market Street some mud-caked ghost might float up and remind a person of what citizenry once was and what self-reliance meant, if one is willing to see them that way; or, if the shoe fits, one could run away scared.

WELCOME

I've started this blog to keep a sort of interactive notebook. I hope it becomes a way to keep notes to myself about stories I plan to write and a way to get feedback on those stories before they're written. I'll try to spare everyone a bunch of opinionated vomit or the mundane "I'm so blessed I love my family"-type junk that makes facebook the annoyance it's become. Any input, ideas, corrections or asshole comments will be very much appreciated.

I plan on posting a few older stories on here just to add to the archive.

Thanks to whoever participates--

Saturday Night Wrasslin'

WRESTLING


Reed Road is the first street on the left past the high school. It winds through a few miles of those tall, old Georgia pine trees and past empty fields with old gray barns falling down. At night, some wild animal might run through your headlights. It’s one of those roads you drive on when you have no idea where you’re going. You just want to go. Stars can actually be seen in the sky out there.

If you’re not careful, you’ll pass a gray cinderblock building with a gravel parking lot. It’s on the left, on the corner of Reed Road and some smaller, nameless road. On Saturday nights, a woman will be smoking a cigarette under the dim light above the door. It’s quiet out there. It’s the night and landscape that inspired the best and most lonesome Hank Williams songs. Crickets chirp and whippoorwills cry. A stray dog might be traveling through the field across the street or an old possum might be crawling through the ditch. Soon the woman will flip her cigarette away and open the door. A bright light will spill out when she opens it.

Inside, the music is as loud as it is in “da club,” but the crowd’s a bit different. There’s a man with his hair painted neon green to match his skintight shirt and black spandex. Another is dressed in what resembles a Superman outfit. A man old enough to be the grandfather of most of the other people in the room stands alone in a corner wearing a black-and-white-striped referee’s outfit. A younger man, maybe 30, walks around in Speedos and a bright red, unbuttoned nylon shirt with tassels hanging from the arms.

A man called Hollywood chides him: “Where’d you get those tassels? You ain’t been in the business long enough to be wearing tassels.” The young man laughs him off and talks quietly to his wife, then kneels down to kiss his young daughter on the forehead. Other children run in circles, too fast to count. Hollywood and a man called Widow Maker hug the children that run up to them to pull on their costumes. Young ladies dance with themselves and the specter of 50 Cent, near the speakers, and laugh. People are everywhere. It’s a capacity crowd in the old building.

An American flag hangs from the ceiling. The walls are spray-painted floor to ceiling with carousel carnival portraits of long-haired men with names like Jimmy Sharpe, Mad Jack, Sheik and Suicidal Talon. There’s a long line at a concession stand in the corner.

Suddenly, a snub-tailed bulldog appears, chasing a chewed-up and empty two-liter Coke bottle through the crowd. The uncountable children roar and every one of them parade together and run in shrieking circles after the dog. If dogs can laugh, this one does.

In the center of the room, three spotlights shine down on an empty wrestling ring.

Drew Germain was in the dressing room backstage. He was being chided by the older guys for carrying his wrestling outfit in a kid’s Sesame Street backpack. “I paid 75 cents for it,” he said. “It holds everything I need. And I bought it for these old guys, anyway. I knew they’d get a kick out of it.”

When Drew isn’t wrestling, he is a business/marketing major and is on the dean’s list at Dalton State College. He also knows all there is to know about the history of professional wrestling. Pro wrestling, he explained, rose out of old carnival sideshows.

There was a time when circuses and carnivals traveled through our rural countrysides. These traveling shows included magicians, burlesque and vaudeville shows, magic lantern shows, games of chance and games for children. With the traveling carnival came the sideshow. The sideshow usually required an extra fee and was in a tent separate from the carnival.

These sideshows were often set up in two parts, the freak show and the thrill act. The freak show would include people with multiple arms or legs, midgets and tattooed people. The thrill acts included the fire eaters, sword swallowers and knife throwers. Straddling the two of these was the Strong Man.

The Strong Man’s act would often begin with displays of strength such as lifting anvils over his head, bending steel or breaking chains. Later, he’d often challenge members of the audience to a wrestling match.

 Promoters would invent names for the Strong Man and dress him in flashy clothing to draw crowds. There was always some tough guy in the audience who would take him on. Trash talking and gambling became involved and, over time, some of the matches became staged.

When television arrived and all the bizarre and fantastic things a person could ever imagine were at their fingertips, the traveling shows faded away.

Pro wrestling, however, did not. With names like Lou Thesz and Ed “The Strangler” Harris, these types of professional wrestling shows endured. They eventually found their way onto television and with new names like Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant and others, pro wrestling rose to become the huge, multi-million-dollar industry it is now.

The Tri-State Wrestling Alliance (TWA) proves every weekend that the old shows haven’t completely faded away. In the block building in the Dalton countryside, the strongmen and their fans still come every weekend to watch and to perform in the grand old tradition.

But now, with the curtains raised and the in-ring rivalries and antics known by everyone to be staged, what is the allure? And why do these men still dress up and perform?

“It’s the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’, like Coleridge said,” Drew explains. “You can put these outfits on and walk out there to the ring and for 15 or 20 minutes you’re a superstar. You’re somebody else. And the fans know what’s going on, but they’re just as much a part of the show as we are. Really, they’re the whole show. What’s the point in a staged fight if nobody’s there to watch it? It’s a show. Though it never ceases to amaze me how many people think it’s real and take it seriously. I’ve had them come up after a show and want to fight me over something that happened in the ring.

“But when we get back here in the dressing room it’s nothing but respect. That’s another important thing about it. You got guys back here who are brand new and guys that have been at it for years. Big Doug over there has been in the business for 38 years, and his father and grandfather were in it. That’s going a long way back. But we all treat each other with the same respect. It’s like that big sign over there says, ‘It’s A Work’. Work means a show, and that’s to remind us not to take anything personally. It’s a show.”

Some of the older guys started chiding Drew again about his backpack and for thinking he knows so much. They poked at him with a cane prop and one of them grabbed at his feet. “Big Doug’s up next,” he laughed. “He knows how to put on a show.”

The showroom’s in darkness now and a loud, growling electric guitar blasts out of the sound system.
Big Doug charges from behind the red velvet curtains, bald, goateed, tattooed and angry. At more than six feet tall and surely 300 pounds, he has a stomping strut that carries him into the crowd. He’s wearing a black leotard and spits angry curses at everyone he sees. Ted Nugent starts screaming through the room:

Here I come again now, Baby!
Like a dog in heat
Tell it’s me by the clamor now, Baby!

One of the women in the crowd begins telling Big Doug what she thinks of him. The crowd cheers her on and he stops to search out her face in the dark and says, “You shut up, old lady.”

“You call me old lady!” she screams and raises up. “You come over here and I’ll show you old lady!” Big Doug points his finger at her and she bows her head quickly back down and begins typing angrily into her cell phone.

Big Doug stomps on and dares anyone to try to slow him down.  He reaches the ring and jumps in. Hot Rod Roberts, his opponent, is already waiting for him. Senior referee CJ, the man who stood alone before the shows started, instructs Big Doug to back into the corner so he can be checked for weapons. Big Doug mocks him and Referee CJ points his finger and tells him to do what he’s been told.

“You shut your mouth, Brokeback Mountain!”

A voice from a dark corner of the crowd hollers, “Bend him over, Hot Rod!”

Big Doug doesn’t care who it was. He runs to the corner of the ring near where the voice came from, holds onto the ropes with one hand and points into the darkness with the other. “I ain’t your wife and I ain’t your mule,” he shouts. “You shut up, too!”

He paces the ring like an angry bull, stomping and shouting curses at the jeering crowd. The referee chases after him, trying to get Big Doug to submit to the weapons check. Big Doug refuses. He walks toward Hot Rod and the referee jumps in between them. Big Doug points over the referee’s shoulder toward Hot Rod and says, “Let me tell you something, boy.” Hot Rod looks truly scared. “I heard you say you’re gonna slam me. You ain’t gonna slam me. And if you do you’re gonna take the biggest ass-whooping you ever got in your life!”

With that he backs into his corner, his eyeballs remaining on Hot Rod. He submits to the weapons check and the announcer says it’s begun.

For 20 minutes, Hot Rod gives it all he’s got. Despite being slung and slammed around in and even outside the ring, he gets up every time and tries to carry out his promise to Big Doug. But he couldn’t even lift the man. They go back and forth until Big Doug picks the younger guy up and hits him with his signature slam for victory.

Hot Rod never stood a chance.

Back in the dressing room, after the show, all the guys are rowdy and still pumped up. Some of them were changing into their regular clothes and getting ready to go home. Some of them weren’t ready yet. Big Doug was one of them.

“Look here,” he hollers over the noise. “I’ve been at this longer than any of them. My grandaddy had a ring in his garage. He said if I wanted to get in it I had to fall backwards on my back on the concrete. I did it and knocked myself out, but he let me in there.”

“That’s what’s wrong with him now,” a younger guy yells back.

Big Doug ignores him. “I’ve trained with the best of them. We used to practice our falls on glass and rocks, son. I’ve been at it for 38 years on my birthday, April 17. But don’t tell anybody how old I am, dammit.”

“He’s 105!” Drew yells, and they started going at it.

Old senior referee CJ was staying behind with them, but he was shying away from their rowdy games and they left him alone. He finally spoke up, but a lot softer than the ruckus going on around him.

“I drive a truck for a living,” he said. “I’m in the National Guard. When I’m not on active duty or driving the truck this is what I do. I don’t drink or do drugs. This is what I do. I’ve been doing it for a long time and I’ve been at TWA the whole time. I’ve never been anywhere else.”

He holds his arms out over a chair in front of him like he was warming his hands over a fire. His forehead shines with sweat from being under the ring’s spotlights all night.

“My brother drove a truck, too. He died in his this week. We just brought him home to Dalton yesterday and I was out seeing him all day.”

He stares at a picture on the wall, an old promo of some long-ago local wrestling legend, then at all the other guys still raising hell around him.

“I’ve been here a long time,” he says again. “I had to come tonight to get away for a little while. I wasn’t going to miss a show. This is home.”