A chill beginning to infiltrate our nights, the gentle rasp of fallen leaves crumbling underfoot and the starts-earlier-every-year onslaught of holiday advertising already approaching full eye-stab — it can mean but one thing: Decorative gourd season is fully upon us. And with it comes our annual binge on everyone’s favorite amino acid (tryptophan, which is actually more prominent in Parmesan cheese than in turkey), not to mention the artful display of a varnished zucchini or two. But between shaking out our moth-bitten sweaters and heroically chopping cords of rugged firewood for the winter (or, y’know, maybe just sticking to our Internet tendencies), we took a break from our seasonal chores to compose our thoughts and, yes, our feelings, in letter form. So here’s to the city we love, the people we admire from afar and some other stuff we generally find tolerable about life, all in an open forum. We don’t expect a reply, but wouldn’t mind a retweet. Happy fall!
An Open Letter to Nolensville Road
By Sean L. Maloney
First and foremost, I’d like to thank you for smelling like meat at almost all times. Specifically, meat cooked over low heat for hours on end. That could be my favorite scent in the whole olfactory spectrum, and nothing says “we’re home” to my wife and me after a long trip like the whiffs of barbacoa and al pastor that waft into the car once we get off the highway on the way back to nuestra casa. Not that the smell of charcoal-fueled cooking is confined to the main drag — most weekends you’d think our little neighborhood was on a mission to keep Kingsford in business forever. As a person inherently suspicious of gas grills and propane tanks, this is about as comforting as it comes, like a security blanket made of smoke.
And of course there’s the actual food, rather than just the smell, that’s really the selling point. See, we used to live in, um, a fancier area that had all sorts of trendy eateries with contemporary design and all the bells and whistles that are supposed to scream “Good Food!” But really, the food wasn’t that good — middling at best on most days, more expensive than it ought to be on all days. Oh, but now that we’ve traded in our 500-square-foot yuppie cage for five rooms on the South Side, we’re eating like champs for half the cost. And the options! Even if we’re being super-duper lazy and don’t want to go past the end of our street, we’ve still got a globe’s worth of options: Ghanian over at Musaake, the best chicharron de queso papusas in town at La Papuseria Salvodoreana, grocery stores featuring the fare of at least four continents!
It’s like we’ve died and gone to foodie heaven! Except we’re not dead, and there’s still money left in our bank account. But the best thing about living right next to Nolensville Road, at least for this record critic, food lover and full-time nightclub denizen, is that El Amigo — the convenience store-cum-taqueria on the corner of Elysian Fields — is open after the bars close. In terms of late-night dining, Nashville doesn’t have a ton of options and the South Side even less, but do you even need other options when there are tacos to be had at 3 in the morning? No, you don’t need other options, just tacos. Or maybe tortas, if you’re really hungry. Which is all to say: Thank you, Nolensville Road, for keeping us fed, keeping us happy and keeping the lights on at the legit taco shop so we don’t have to go to Taco Bell after last call. There is nothing worse than a Taco Bell-flavored hangover, so thank you for being you.
An Open Letter to Gov. Bill Haslam, the Great Journalistic Benefactor
By Liz Garrigan
Are you The Great Pumpkin? Santa? Or did one of them send you?
Because what you have given journalists is nothing short of wondrous. In fact, you have singlehandedly made me question my choice to quit the profession. And not just because of that vaguely pretty boy face of yours. (Yeah, baby, you’ve got a little something. Crissy’s not the only one who’s noticed. But take it with a grain of salt: I think Art Garfunkel is hot.)
I was once the editor of this newspaper. And I left. Damn it, I left. Then a little time passed, Crissy smiled for 10 months straight, you were elected, and finally, because of some combination of self-destructive political malpractice, constitutional ignorance and tragically (for you) incompetent advisers, your Tennessee Highway Patrol goons went and arrested citizens lawfully expressing their right to protest in a public space. Even richer, they roughed-up and cuffed a baby-faced journalist working honestly and diligently in the freezing cold for really crappy money.
And then, praise be, you defended it, claiming something that not one human being or authority on the planet could confirm: that the reporter was publicly intoxicated. From ink-and-Internet-cookie-stained wretches everywhere: Thank you, thank you, thank you. It was so beautiful, governor. It contained all the ruinous, mean-spirited, wrong-headed government overreach that every red-blooded journalist prays for. Not as citizens, mind you. But as storytellers.
In fact, your Occupy Nashville crackdown, deemed unlawful by both night court and federal judges, was the first story since my erstwhile editorship that made me wish I’d clung to that job with the same tenacity you defended — for a cringe-inducing length of time, otherwise known as lots and lots of news cycles — your horrible misjudgment. It may not have felt like it to him when he was mid-perp walk, but Nashville Scene reporter Jonathan Meador — though very talented even without the aid of a governor serving him a juicy career enhancer on a silver platter — was presented with the best damn Halloween treat of his life. If his career were a goody bag, he got a king-sized Snickers bar with a Benjamin and a joint taped to it, courtesy of you and yours, governor. Which is exactly what I would have told him if I’d had the chance to take him out for an actual public intoxication.
Oh, the laughs and frivolity you supplied! I bet even newsroom rivalries evaporated over this story, so “Kumbaya” it was for journalists. At Christmas, when your people lay out the big cocktail shrimp and bar for the Capitol Hill Press Corps party at the executive residence, you can have a few gin and tonics and pretend to look back on the whole episode as though it were a big misunderstanding. If it comes up and everyone’s laughing, and then someone spills a drink on your shoe because he’s so buckled over at the thought of the whole debacle, just remember: They aren’t laughing with you; they’re laughing at you.
Meanwhile, locals weren’t the only beneficiaries of your administration’s sweet, sweet incompetence. Meador’s jailhouse encounter gave lots of outlets the occasion for righteous indignation. CNN weighed in, as did The Huffington Post, Gawker and Romenesko. The Chattanooga Times Free Press even likened you to a “petty Balkan dictator.” For what it’s worth, governor, your smile is much nicer than any petty Balkan dictator I’m familiar with. So take heart.
Finally, governor, I just want to say that this space doesn’t fill itself. Except when you act like someone even the hapless Ron Ramsey could mentor. For that, from the bottom of our beer glasses, we thank you.
An Open Letter to WVOL
By Jack Silverman
Damn, modern life is fickle. Rock bands have the shelf life of mayonnaise, and Internet memes spew forth at such an alarming rate that I risk getting berated for Facebook-posting any link that’s more than three hours old. I feel as if I’m being tossed about on turbulent seas, and I’m frantically searching for any rock to grab onto. And that drowning sensation is most overwhelming late at night, when the day’s frustrations have taken their toll and I’m left to battle my inner demons.
But just when things seem most hopeless, there you are, like a beacon in the darkness. As I make my way home, down avenues strewn with broken dreams, ghostly apparitions and the occasional food truck, I flip through my radio dial, and there you are, at 1470 AM, just like always. Sure, WSM 650 AM has its honky-tonk merits. And Neal Conan, he’s all right — but not so much at midnight, when WPLN is rerunning Talk of the Nation.
But you, WVOL, know how to soothe my soul. I know you’ll give me everything from Muddy to Marvin, from Al to Aretha. Sure, I may have to sit through a few contemporary R&B numbers that aren’t my thing, but I know that sooner or later you’ll be workin’ your way back to me, babe. And when I hear The Temptations singing, “I can’t get next to you,” I’ll be thinking how grateful I am that I can get next you.
And how awesome is the nickname “The Mighty 147”? Honestly, I kinda fell for you as soon as I heard that. No vain attempts to rhyme, or to sound mellifluous. It’s straightforward and in-your-face. It sounds like a storied military unit, like The Fighting 69th.
I know things won’t be the same now that local talk-radio legend T.J. Graham has passed on. (May he rest in peace.) But know this: Whether times are good or bad, happy or sad, we’ll be together.
An Open Letter to the Procrastinating Pricks at Rogaine
By Mike Jameson
When I first started losing my hair, I was in my 20s. Music came out of Sony Walkmen, and microwaves were the size of Buicks. So I had little faith technology would cure my pending alopecia. But rumors persisted of a miracle cure — an ointment (or, as my father would say, a “salve”) that reversed hair loss. So I waited.
And waited. And while those mindless little bureaucrats at the FDA were undoubtedly testing my miracle rub on lab rats, my hairline was retreating faster than the French at the Battle of Any-War-France-Fought.
But then, finally, you layabouts at the Upjohn Company brought Rogaine to the market in 1989. Now, by this time, either my hair had turned a strange flesh color or my scalp was fully in view. Regardless, I tore open the package and awaited my hirsute future ... only to read in the instructions that “applicants” (I swear to God, it called us “applicants”) whose scalps were “fully visible” were “less likely to experience full rejuvenating effect.” In other words, while those damn furry lab rats were getting Michael Jackson-sized dosages of my miracle cure, the salvageable follicles on my head were dwindling to the point of hopelessness. Like Titanic passengers sinking into the abyss as lifeboats dawdled.
So, my thanks to you dilatory pricks at Rogaine. And what’s really great is that, thanks to you, younger generations of men won’t suffer my fate. ‘Cause I’m all about making every other man look good.
An Open Letter to Korean Veterans Bridge
By Ashley Spurgeon
”Crossing the river” is a big deal to Nashvillians. It doesn’t matter which way we’re headed, something about the geography is off-putting, as if moving from bank to bank will add an insurmountable amount of time to our commute, even if that commute is just from downtown to Five Points. That’s why I’d like to thank you for making that trip slightly less annoying. Know why? You’re a fun bridge to drive on!
Being neither an architect nor an engineer, I’m not sure what the proper name is for your Dali-esque melting-ladder canopy, but the way the rungs pass overhead is so entertaining to watch, it almost distracts from the skyline, and your vantage is the best in the city. In fact, the whole neat curve of you is a lovely contrast to the wholly pedestrian pedestrian bridge (which looks like an Erector set gone wrong) and, ugh, the bridge on James Robertson Parkway, which contains all the charm of Soviet Bloc construction.
Also, when I’m in a particularly silly mood, I like to shorten your name to “KorVet.”
So thanks for the hundreds of safe trips back and forth. And a special thanks for adding a bit of gentle charisma to a city that occasionally forgets that people like nice things to look at.
See you soon.
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An Open Letter to Jonathan Kaplan, Inventor of the Mighty Flip Digital Video Camera
By Jonathan Meador
In the summer of 2009, my love affair with your invention began in earnest. I was covering the Jefferson County (Kentucky) Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner, milling about the crowded ballroom of a hotel in downtown Louisville, Flip camera in hand in the hopes of scoring footage of the Bluegrass State’s then-Sen. Jim Bunning acting a curmudgeonly fool during the function’s pre-dinner cocktail hour.
As a properly credentialed cub reporter for the Scene’s sister publication, LEO Weekly, it never dawned on me that someone would actually try to kick my ass for doing this job. Such naïveté was shattered when a GOP rank-and-file began harassing me and, without provocation, assaulted me just a few yards away from the cash bar and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. My assailant, J.D. Sparks, repeatedly tried to pry the camera from my hands, but thanks to its ergonomic design, the wedge of plastic remained firmly locked in my sweating fist. Sparks and I eventually fought our way to the room’s periphery, crashed through a door and spilled into the hallway, whereupon he scampered off.
The story might’ve ended there, but thanks to the awesome power of the Flip, this rude altercation was captured and ultimately produced in court as evidence of “disorderly conduct.” Sparks pleaded guilty and had to pay fines, all thanks to the Flip. Score one for the technocracy.
Lately, the Flip saved my ass while I was filming the Occupy Nashville crackdowns, capturing my unlawful arrest by state troopers and refuting their fabricated charges — the footage of which went viral.
While it saddened me to learn that, as of April 2011, the Flip is no longer in production — and puzzled me to discover you’ve eschewed the tech business to open a grilled-cheese restaurant in San Francisco — my heart for your lasting product, as the lady says, will go on. My only regrets? That I never got to thank you in person, and that you never distributed a version that came with a bottle of asshole repellent.
An Open Letter to People Who Mangle My Name
By Demetria Kalodimos
I know 17 letters is a lot. Not to mention 10 consonants. I don’t expect you to get it right on the first try. I’m used to it, believe me.
I’ve been dealing with this for a long time.
My birth certificate was misspelled. (REALLY.) Then my college diploma. But that’s where I drew the line. The tuition bills always got it right. And geez, I was nearly 40 when I paid off all the student loans. That sheepskin not only needed to look right, it should X#^&* dance.
Bill Hall was charming and cute when he would call me Demetrius. Then it stuck. Like a TJ Maxx tag on a wedding gift. Not to mention my lovely last name. How could anyone who hears it think the Walt Disney rule applies? It’s Kalodi-M-O-S, not -M-O-U-S-E.
Granted, Greek is intimidating. We think we invented everything and we use that fraternity and sorority alphabet. Maybe an Irish approach would be easier. Cal O’Deemus?
In the meantime, my best advice is refer to the 100 times a night they show my name on the screen — and my email address, and maybe soon my blood type, favorite color and astrological sign (Virgo).
After 28 years, you guys apparently still don’t know me.
So I’ll help you a bit. I’m the one on every morning at Channel 5, with Bob Mueller.
The name’s Dementia California.
And don’t wear it out.
An Open Letter to the Tennessee Republican Party
By Southern Beale
I’m Dorothy Cooper’s vote.
I’d like to thank the Tennessee Republican Party, and in particular Rep. Debra Maggart, for letting me finally have an election year off. I haven’t had one of those in over 50 years! Considering the United States has a voter participation hovering around 40 percent, that’s pretty unbelievable. Jim Crow couldn’t do it, inclement weather couldn’t do it, two oil shocks couldn’t do it. Nope, it took the Tennessee Republican Party to let me be like the rest of the votes belonging to clueless American couch potatoes who’d rather pick the next American Idol than the next American president. Thanks for letting me be like all of other gnats hovering over the rotting fruit of the republic!
An Open Letter to Phil Bredesen
By J.R. Lind
Whenever I near the end of my last pre-game pint at one of our city’s finer holes-in-the-wall and head up Broadway to its intersection with Fifth for a hockey game, I save a little sip to offer a toast to you, Mr. Bredesen.
I don’t actually offer a toast in the literal sense, because surely everyone around me would think it bizarre, but I do raise a metaphorical glass in my mind. By this time, my IPA is room temperature and, besides, warm-ups start in 10 minutes.
But you deserve that honor — even if it is just mental — because, during your mayoralty, it was you who rejected the prevailing planning wisdom of the mid-1990s and plopped what is now Bridgestone Arena right in the middle of town.
Other civic leaders thought they were being smart. “We’ll put the arena in this depressed area and business will boom!” they would say. Or, “Let’s put this out in the suburbs as part of some large-scale development scheme, and besides, getting downtown is a real bastard.”
But you were the real genius, sir. You saw all that scheming as too clever by half. You convinced the council — and eventually Metro voters, who backed the tax increase — to build an arena and to do it right on the gateway to Honky-Tonk Canyon.
Sure, parking is scarce and traffic can snarl — but Predators fans can grab a pint, a bite and be in their seats in time to hear Dennis Morgan sing two anthems flawlessly.
The Predators hosted their 1,000th game last week. Next month, the arena will celebrate 15 years. Both have had ups and downs in the meantime, but the team is still here, finally fitting into the fabric of the city the way the arena does.
You could have done what Phoenix did and put the arena 20 miles from downtown, but you knew: Nobody is driving to Mt. Juliet for anything except a country ham from Rice’s, much as no one in Phoenix seems to have any desire to drive to Glendale to see the Coyotes.
You could have put it in one of our scarier neighborhoods, but you wanted people to come early, stay late, have a good time. (You’re such a legendary party animal, we should have known your judgment would be flawless in this regard.)
When something big is at the arena, downtown is full of energy and — finally — the mucketies-muck at the arena are trying to pull that energy back inside. (Draft Yazoo will no doubt help with that effort.)
Thanks a lot, Big Phil. This one’s for you.
An Open Letter to Jack-FM Billboards
By Laura Hutson
Hey thanks — your dated, out-of-touch references make me feel like I’m 13 again! You don’t know how quickly those years have flown by. ... Maybe you should think about it a little, actually. Because nobody plays Kenny G on the radio anymore. Also not so relevant? Bobby McFerrin and, like, Dennis Rodman. Just so you know. And when you brag about not playing Kenny G, it doesn’t make you seem cool or rebellious.
Don’t get me wrong, you play some good songs — we all like Bananarama! — but c’mon, you’re not fooling anybody. We know your audience can’t possibly be both the douche-y frat kids and clueless uncles you make them out to be.
Sometimes when I’m alone in my car, I’ll catch myself thinking about my younger years as if it were all just a really good episode of My So-Called Life. But then I’ll drive by one of your phoned-in “your mom” jokes and remember all the dicks in eighth grade who made fun of everyone for everything.
Thanks for helping me keep it in perspective!
An Open Letter to the Kroger Employee Who Bags My Groceries Carefully
By Steve Haruch
I don’t know your name. It’s not that I don’t care. (Quite the opposite, I think you should win a medal for valorous conduct in the line of bagging groceries, but I’m not sure who I’d nominate you to, since the woman with the pointy haircut doesn’t seem to work there anymore, and they haven’t put up a new store manager photo.) It just seems sort of nosy to lean over and read your nametag as if it’s any of my business.
Also, you’re not always working when I gather my weekly cartful of comestibles, and because you’re a good person, you’ll often rotate over and intervene when giant, sad-looking sacks of frozen chicken wings and shrink-wrapped multi-packs of bottled water threaten to breach the stainless-steel checkout barrier on another lane.
Anyway, I’m writing this to let you know that a wave of relief washes over me whenever I see you at the other end of that monotonously looping black belt. I know you won’t start throwing my groceries into plastic bags and then, halfway through, realize I’ve brought my own. I know you won’t put the bottle of drain opener on top of the bananas. I know you recognize the fact that I put my items on the conveyer in a particular way: frozen and cold items together, boxed dry goods together, canned goods together, fragile things at the very end. (As much as I “enjoy” wondering what I’ll find next in each and every bag I unpack at home, opening and closing the refrigerator a dozen times in the process, I also enjoy opening a bag and finding — behold! — a bunch of stuff that all goes in the same place.)
Once, after you carefully lowered the last of my breakable items into a separate bag — in exactly the manner one would expect of a person who possesses a basic grasp of the way massive and delicate objects interact with each other — you said to me: “I’m sorry. It’s just that when it comes to bagging, it has to be perfect.”
Sorry, you say? You were sorry?
My friend — if I may call you that, even though I don’t know your name, for the reasons put forth above — what is there to be sorry for? Expecting perfection from yourself? Oh, the world is littered with fools who only wish they could have that to apologize for. If anyone should be sorry, it’s the people who regularly scatter, smother and mash my groceries, undoing their shape- and temperature-specific groupings and redistributing them with a carelessness so profound it almost resembles effort.
No, you should not be sorry. I hope, at the very least, your manager gives you a free turkey for Thanksgiving. Or if you’re a vegetarian, something comparable, and not some bullshit “at least it doesn’t have meat” substitute like a pasta salad. And I hope you get the whole week off, and when you come back you don’t have to cover for anyone instead of taking your break, which you deserve. My cap, which I wear most Sundays to conceal my greasy, unkempt hair, is off to you.
An Open Letter to Bill
By Jim Ridley
To the man I never saw at my mother’s funeral, I wanted to say: Thank you. There is much I do not remember about that day. It was the summer of 2010, and I was standing in front of the altar at the First Baptist Church in Murfreesboro. It was the church my mother attended for 75 years, the church where she was baptized, and the church where she married my father. I knew that whenever the time came to send her home, this is where we would be — but not so soon, and not this day.
The visitation remains a blur, though over the weeks and months that followed, I would recall something someone told me as if I were hearing it for the first time. As a host, I was a washout. I don’t think I ever told my wife’s father how grateful I was that he went, or told my own father how tall he stood, or told my brother how proud I was of him for everything he did, before and after.
But one thing I remember.
Down front, my father, brother and I stood receiving people by a large table draped with dark cloth. On it were flower arrangements of all sizes, huge sprays of white gladiolas and dahlias and orchids. All were beautiful, and all bore cards from my parents’ many friends, some of whom had known my mother since she was a dimpled kindergartner growing up on Cherry Lane.
But when the last of the mourners had passed, I looked down at the table and saw a flower that hadn’t been there before. It was a single carnation wrapped in cellophane, the kind you might see on a convenience-store counter. It had no card. I asked my father, and he had no idea who placed it there. My brother didn’t know either. After the service, I asked the pastor if he knew who’d left the flower. He smiled.
Every Sunday, on her way into church, my mother made a point of saying hello to a large man who’s often seen walking the streets of uptown Murfreesboro. The pastor told me he was a veteran who lived in a home down on Maple Street, and sometimes he would do odd jobs for the church. Some Sundays, my father said, he would wait at the door for my mother and give her a gift — a box of Archway cookies, maybe. On this day, he’d showed up at the church as the mourners arrived. He was holding a single carnation.
The pastor told me his name — your name — was Bill.
It was not the first time you had offered someone a mysterious, unbidden act of kindness. One day my father was giving his handyman Wendell a ride home. Wendell, a good man in his own right who is no longer with us, didn’t have a car, and spent about as much time walking as you do. He saw you coming in your big down jacket. “You know that man right there?” Wendell asked my father. He said that he did.
”Every time that man sees me on the street,” Wendell said, “he gives me a quarter.”
I met you only one time. It was weeks after the funeral, and there was a small ceremony on the square in my mother’s memory to unveil a historical marker. My father and I sat on benches out in front of the courthouse, where a group of singers was preparing for a pageant. Without a word, you appeared beside us, just long enough for my father to greet you and ask if you wanted to sit with us. You did — but only for a moment. I went to get you some punch, and when I came back, you were almost a block away.
If you read this, thank you for reminding me how much one small gesture can ripple outward and resonate and touch a complete stranger’s life. In other words, thank you for reminding me, every time I think about you, of my mother. And as for the punch, I owe you.
Email editor@nashvillescene.com.
