See You Down the Road

Tuesday before last, I was sitting in my upstairs office at the Jowers house, leaning back in my chair and resting my eyes, when the door swung open and smacked hard against the doorstop. There, in the doorway, stood a big guy wearing a Cleveland Browns jersey. Number One. The big man locked eyes with me and said, "Coach wants to see you. Bring your playbook." Then he turned and left, quietly closing the door behind him.

"What the hell was that?" I yelped to my dogfriend Rufus.

Rufus lifted his massive head off his pillow and said, plain as day, "That was the Turk, man. You know what that means."

Just then, the phone rang and woke me up from what I realized was an unusually vivid chair nap. I looked at the caller ID: Nashville Scene. I picked up the phone and heard Matt Pulle say, "Hey, Walter, how are you?"

"I feel better than James Brown," I replied.

"Well, I'm sorry to tell you," Pulle said, "but we can't run your column anymore."

So now, with 550 columns written, filed and published, I can set the milestone.

Helter Shelter

August 17, 1995 – July 31, 2008

Truth be told, it was about damn time, and I've known it for a while. I have truly enjoyed writing my stories, and I'm honored and flattered that folks took the time to read them. But after a creating 550 weekly columns, making 550 deadlines and using up nearly a half-million words doing it, I need to take some time off and assess my situation. As my buddy Mott said to me some time back, "You're in the third trimester, Jowers. If you've got something you want to do, you'd better get busy doing it."

In the coming weeks and months, as Helter Shelter fades into the rearview, my dear wife might just be able to go in a store and write a check without the clerk reading her name and asking, "Are you...."

"Yes. I'm wife Brenda," she'll reply, as she has for these 13 years. "And he's just like that in person. Funny. Loved his daddy, loves his daughter, loves his dog."

Daughter Jess, who doesn't write checks, will be able to set aside what she calls, "the unsettling duality of being a regular girl and a character in a true story all at the same time."

Just so you'll know: My separation from the Scene is perfectly amicable. I've never had a cross word with anybody at the Scene. I love the Scene. Anybody who loved the Scene yesterday should still love it tomorrow.

Now, if you gentle readers can put up with me for just a few more minutes, I want to tell you just what a wondrous job I've had for the last 13 years.

Writing a column about whatever I wanted to write has been my dream job ever since junior high. When Bruce Dobie hired me in 1995, he put me on probation. If I stunk up the paper, he'd show me the door. As it turned out, he called me two or three times, offered sincere and welcome praise and left me to my work. I had excellent editors, Jonathan Marx and Jack Silverman, neither of whom ever asked for a rewrite or a correction, and both of whom made me look way smarter than I am.

An odd perk of the Helter Shelter job was that a lot of readers hired me to do their home inspections. Every now and then, I'd go to an inspection job and find the Scene on the kitchen table, opened to my column. Sometimes I'd find a Helter Shelter taped to somebody's refrigerator. Some customers would quote lines from their favorite story. For instance: "dirty as a Cheeto-eatin' laundromat baby." Now that's gratifying.

Here's the gratification that sticks tightest: I've had quite a few couples tell me that they read Helter Shelter columns to each other in bed. Some told me that when they were apart, one would read the column to the other over the phone. That humbles me and pleases me to no end. It also makes me unusually sentimental and a little bit weepy-eyed. Pardon me while I dab.

Some years back, I learned of a pair of local teachers who left the schoolhouse at 4:30 every Wednesday, went to a pub, picked up the Scene and started their evening ritual by reading Helter Shelter.

While I'm thinking about schools and schoolteachers: I want to thank all the wacky educators who came up with unenforceable dress codes, pre-dance thong inspections and rules for freak dancing. Those stories made for some easier-than-usual column-writing.

Not that any column-writing is easy. After I'd written a few hundred columns, I found myself spending at least 40 hours a week looking for material that would make readers laugh or cry. Every day and every night, I'd click through endless newscasts, all the while screaming at the TV, "Will somebody do something crazy, please!"

Now, about laughing and crying. Matt Pulle tells me that I'll have opportunities to write future stories for the Scene. I appreciate his kind invitation. Maybe I can come up with a little something at Christmastime. As Helter Shelter readers know, I get sad at Christmastime. And if I'm going to cry at Christmas, I want everybody to cry at Christmas.

Finally, this: Yes, I'm working on a book. Two books, actually. I'm also putting up a website, walterjowers.com. There's nothing there yet. But I'll keep y'all posted.