Month: December 2000

Well, I’m no Tim Sampson. I’m just the intern, so I’ll try to be brief. Here are some ideas for New Year’s Eve that don’t involve a large pizza and a six-pack.

FOOD

Koto, The Restaurant: Gourmet meal, $65 per person. Seatings are at 6, 8, and 10 p.m. 22 South Cooper (722-2244)

Melange New Year’s Eve Party: Four-course dinner with lots of champagne to bring in a toasty New Year. $65 per person before 9:30 p.m., $80 per after that. Apparently, someone at Melange figures that latecomers will want more booze than food. Go figure. 948 S. Cooper (276-0002)

Sekisui Pacific Rim: $65 per person with seatings at 6 and 9 p.m. 4724 Poplar Avenue (767-7770)

EVENTS

The most obvious choice is the Beale Street New Year’s Eve Countdown Get Down. Your $20 will get you a wristband and admission to more than 20 clubs as well as Handy Park. It gets pretty crowded, but that’s cool if you need someone conveniently within arm’s reach for a kiss at midnight.

The Peabody New Year’s Eve ‘00: Five gala parties at The Peabody: the Memphis Ballroom with the Jim Johnson Orchestra, the Continental Ballroom with the Tyrone Smith Revue, the Venetian-Forest Rooms with Orquestra Caliente, the Grand Lobby with the Di Anne Price Trio, and Hernando DeSoto Club Bar’s Martini and Cigar Bar. The parties start at 7 p.m. and prices start at $550 a couple, which includes entry to all parties and accommodations at the hotel. 149 Union (529-4140)

Hands on Memphis 4th Annual New Year’s Eve Ball: Entertainment by Figure 8, DJ Stash, the Daddy Mack Blues Band, and Lex Bonner. The show is at the Memphis Botanic Garden and tickets are $90. 750 Cherry Road (725-2132)

Gold Strike Casino: Magician extraordinaire Brett Daniels will give his farewell performance on New Year’s Eve. Tickets are $24.95 with performances at 7:30 and 10:30 p.m. Casino Center Drive, Tunica, MS (1-888-24K-PLAY)

Bright Lights! Broadway!: At the Germantown Performing Arts Centre, come watch performances of Broadway’s biggest hits, including selections from Les Miserables, The Phantom of the Opera, Chicago, Rent, Titanic, Cabaret, Cats, and Miss Saigon. Show starts at 8 p.m. and tickets are $40. 1801 Exeter Road (324-3627)

Blues New Year Party: The Fieldstones will bring in the New Year at the Center for Southern Folklore. Tickets are only $10. 119 S. Main at Pembroke Square (525-3655)

Say it with me: Flaming Stone Beer is very cool. Go to Boscos at the Saddle Creek Shopping Center for a four-course dinner, swing music with the Memphis Hep Cats, and a beer if you want it. 7615 W. Farmington (756-7310)

MUSIC

Hey Youse Guys who thinks theys in New York or something. Go on out to Automatic Slim’s and celebrate “Big Apple-style” with Gary Johns & His Orchestra. There are two seatings, and reservations are required. 83 S. Second St. (525-7948

The Loony Bin will host comedian Rahn Ramey for a special New Year’s Eve performance. 2125 Madison (725-5653)

Playing at Dick’s Last Resort, Rockers Oysterfella. 340 Beale Street (543-0900)

There’s lots happening at Rum Boogie Cafe this New Year’s Eve. The Calvin Newborn Duo plays from 6 to 9 p.m. and then James Govan & the Boogie Blues Band will perform with Rufus Thomas from 9:30 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. Also, in the Blues Hall Coffee Shop, Memphis James will jam from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. 182 Beale Street (528-0150)

Ringing in the New Year at The Black Diamond is Reba Russell. While you’re there, stop next door to that voodoo shop to pick up a love potion. If you’re wearing that shirt, you’re going to need it. 153 Beale Street (521-0800)

Why settle for the glitz of The Peabody when you can saunter over in your best duds to Bubba’s Ale House & Grille? Little Miss Lethal Lisa and the Chronix will be there. 7041 Highway 64 (937-1911)

There’s always a big show at The New Daisy Theatre and this New Year’s Eve is no different. As always, the names of the bands are as interesting as the music they play, with Saliva and the Verbs bringing down the house with spit and an active voice. 330 Beale Street (525-8979)

One of my favorite dance clubs, Alfred’s, will host three full acts on New Year’s Eve. First, Reid, Tutor, and Sometimes Smith will perform from 6 to 9:30 p.m. Then Nation will bring in the New Year with a set from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m. D.J. Mark Anderson will end the evening with dance music until 5 a.m. 197 Beale Street (525-3711)

JoJo Jeffries will be at Justin’s Grille this New Year’s Eve, playing songs from her newly released CD. Tickets are $7.50 in advance and $10 at the door. Show starts at 10 p.m. 7020 E. Shelby Dr., Germantown (758-2432)

Four of the six Huey’s restaurants will host their own music on the 31st with the Roulette Brothers Band playing at Huey’s Downtown (77 S. Second, 527-2700), The Barnstormers and Sam Carr of the Jelly Roll Kings playing at Huey’s Midtown (1927 Madison, 726-4372), Chaser playing at Huey’s East (2858 Hickory Hill, 375-4373) and the Witch Doctors playing at Huey’s Cordova (1771 Germantown Parkway, 754-3885). All shows run from 9 p.m. until 1 a.m. with a $5 cover, which includes a party favor and “celebratory beverage” at midnight.

Remember last year’s millennium hysteria? One popular theory was that aliens would come down and take over the world. Well, you can still live that dream at The Flying Saucer and its New “BEERS” Eve featuring the band Exodus. There’s a $10 cover and table reservations are available. 130 Peabody Place (523-8536)

At Newby’s, Memphis favorites Big Ass Truck along with the Kudzu Kings will perform. 539 S. Highland (452-8408)

What could be better than a monkey on New Year’s Eve? How about a Blue Monkey show with The Sallymacs? 2012 Madison (272-BLUE)

Start your New Year being a polite little camper at the Have a Nice Day Cafe and their Disco Ball 2001. There’s a buffet from 8 to 11 p.m. and a countdown and dropping of the Happy Ball at midnight. 349 Beale St. (529-8845)

Okay, here are some other venues with shows on New Year’s. At The Cockeyed Camel (5871 Poplar, 683-4056), Backstage Pass; at the Bottom Line (1817 Kirby Parkway, 755-2481), Fall from Grace; at Patrick’s (4698 Spottswood, 682-2853), Bobby Lawson & Smokehouse; at Elvis Presley’s Memphis (126 Beale Street, 527-9036), the Dempseys; at Club 152 (152 Beale Street, 544-7011), the Kirk Smithhart Band; at The French Quarter Suites (2144 Madison, 728-4000), Todd Hale & Company; at Backtracks, Gabby Johnson; at The Inkslingers Cafe (299 S. Main, 527-3758), Crash Pattern and Bad Planet; at Legends on Beale (326 Beale Street, 523-7444), the Untouchables and CYC; at High Point Pinch (111 Jackson, 525-4444), the 5 that Framed OJ; at Hard Rock Cafe (315 Beale Street, 529-0007), the John Lisa Band; at the Hi-Tone CafŽ (1913 Poplar, 278-TONE), the River Bluff Clan; at T.G.’s Lounge (3870 Macon, 324-5967), Stuart Patterson & Company; at T.J. Mulligans on Quince (6635 Quince, 753-8056), the Plaintiffs; and at The P&H Cafe (1532 Madison Ave., 726-0906), the Ramparts.

I’m sure there are a bunch more, but that’s a pretty darn big (and good) selection. Be safe, have a great time, and get out for New Year’s!

With a piteous deprecation of what turned out to be a bust of a New Year last January, the millennial purist is now heading to Greenwich, England to celebrate the real thing. Site of the Prime Meridian, 0000 hours Zulu, and repository to the quest for the most accurate of clocks, Royal Observatory Greenwich is where the first nanosecond of the third millennium begins. Heralded only by the flickering CRT of an atomic clock, time will pass across a gleaming brass rail set at zero degrees longitude and 2001 will officially commence. As bracer for the night air, and the only civilized way to greet the arrival, one should neatly quaff down, with gusto, several fingers worth of Cutty Sark, a Scotch whiskey whose namesake is also an icon of Greenwich tradition.

It will cost 6 pounds (about 10 bucks) to stand on the dateline. It’s a true Kodak moment, so smile sweetly and say cheese. If you do it with sincerity you’re bound to win your money back at one of the slots in Tunica.

Easily accessible by a subway and light rail journey from central London, Greenwich is the first stop for anyone imbued with a historical yen for naval history. The nearby Maritime Museum, fronted with towering limestone ionic columns is a trove of English nautical exploits.

Like an old dame dowager, smartly appearing under a facade of new paint and rigging, the China Tea Clipper, Cutty Sark, beckons you with her tall, elegant three masted siren song of the sea. Built in the hybrid years between wooden and iron ships, she sits dry-docked and moldering. Out of her natural element, the massive, American rock elm planking has shrunk, causing gaping, open seams where rainwater leaches out the salt and washes onto and around her cast iron frame and keel. The inevitable rusting is taking a crushing toll on this once elegant lady who has been rescued from more impending and demeaning fates than even perilous Pauline.

If you don’t already know it, Cutty Sark is Scottish in origin. According to a poem by Robert Burns, a farmer named Tam O’Shanter came upon a coven of witches dancing by the fire. One of these witches, named Nannie, was young, lovely and extraordinarily graceful. She wore a ‘cutty sark’ which means ‘short chemise,’ or shirt. Startled and angered, the witches chased after Tam as he galloped away for his life.

Nannie almost caught him, grasping only the tail of his horse as it crossed over a bridge. As the ship’s original figurehead, Nannie, bare-breasted, her cutty sark askew and holding out the horses tail, greets you as you cross the gangplank and enter between decks. This was an area for the carriage of cargo, which would have been filled completely with crates of tea or later with bales of wool during the ship’s working days. It now houses replica boxes of tea, nautical paintings and ship models, while the lower hold has become home to the world’s largest collection of ships’ figureheads, rescued from oblivion by an eccentric English collector.

Her name is world renown and evokes a proud image of one of the true thoroughbreds of the sea. Launched the same year the Suez Canal opened, she vied with an international fleet to bring in the first tea harvest of the year. The age of steam and the Canal doomed her profitability and she took on an up and down career as a Portuguese merchantman. Cast about and almost a derelict, she was rescued from oblivion, restored and used as a naval cadet training ship. A bit long in the tooth, but still buoyant with promise, Cutty Sark was later gifted to the British Government and then to a public service corporation. A prominent staple in British tradition, she is a tour de riguer for most English schoolchildren.

One of the Island’s true museum bargains, entrance fees are only 3.50 pounds. Docents in period costume skillfully weave the story of this hearty princess as they guide you from deck to hold, galley to captain’s cabin, explaining such terms as bowsprit, keelson and uses for a marlinespike and belaying pin. Crewed by 18 to 24 men she remains the epitome of a tall ship.

There’s a decent pub just across the way and again, another opportunity to savor the other unofficial national drink, besides gin. Cutty Sark whiskey took its name from the ship when it began production in 1923. In deference to its namesake, the firm now sponsors the Tall Ships’ Races; an international sailing regatta dedicated to preserving the days of wooden hulls and iron men. So a toast to the fleet little lady of the sea, and may no one ever shiver her timbers.

It’s not that some of us don’t like Barbara Swearengen Holt. It’s just that she scares us when she acts alone.

It all started with the $800 phone that Holt had installed last spring in the council office bathroom. But it didn’t stop there.

In October, Holt suggested and approved an increased per diem meal allowance for traveling council members. Saying that members “could not eat at McDonald’s” on the previous $45 a day allowance (the amount which applies to all city employees). Holt upped it to as much as $75 a day. Incidentally, Holt alone approves all council members’ requests for travel, including her own.

Throughout her tenure she has approved not only the bathroom phone, but also two policies designed to limit public (particularly media) access to council affairs.

The first of these stipulated that any requests for council information must be approved by Holt before being filled. This, understandably, led to a bottleneck in the availability of information to the public and an increase in the workload of city council staff members. To decrease the number of requests and offset the costs of filling them, Holt introduced a proposal she designed with city council attorney Allan Wade. Her proposal applied a $10 research fee for each hour a council staff member spent on a request and a $1.50 per page for each copy made. The proposal drew scathing criticism from not only the city news agencies but from First Amendment experts and journalism academics nationwide.

In mid-Decemeber Holt acted alone again, this time announcing that she would reward selected city council staff members with year-end bonus’, though such bonuses are not given to other city employees, they did in fact go out, but only to the employees Holt felt were deserving.

Holt’s tenure as Chairwoman of the Memphis City Council will expire at the end of this year. The chairman for 2001 will be Councilman E.C. Jones who has already said that one of his first official acts will be to remove the bathroom phone.

Though Jones seems well-intentioned, this year’s problems cannot be blamed entirely on Holt, rather they are the fault of a system that allows a chairman to unilaterally introduce and approve costly proposals. As an act of good faith, Jones or any of the other council members, should introduce a proposal to amend the city charter removing from the chairman the ability to act alone on matters of fiscal or budgetary importance.

The Memphis City School board wanted more parental involvement. And in a way, it has gotten it. After the December 12th runoff election, Lee Brown and Patrice Jordan Robinson join Wanda Halbert as the newest members of the board, taking the District 1, 3, and At-Large (Position 1) seats, respectively. Both Robinson and Halbert ran on platforms of being MCS parents.

“I decided to run because I had a child in the school system and the other parents and I would complain,” says Robinson. “But I decided I couldn’t continue to complain because then I was just contributing to the problem.” Robinson currently has a 16-year-old son in the Memphis city schools, as well as three other children who are city school graduates.

“I think we have a gap in communication between the parents and the system. I want to help heal that relationship,” she says. Robinson also wants to get everyone who has a stake in public education, including teachers, parents, businesses, and even the students themselves, involved. Lee Brown also has two children who graduated from MCS.

The incumbent of At-Large Position 1, Bill Todd, is a retired MCS athletic director; his two sons were not educated by the school system. Neither were the children of District 1 incumbent Jim Brown.

The other day I found myself at the grocery store counting the items in my cart. As I went down the aisles, I carefully picked up the foods I needed most: cheddar cheese, wheat tortillas, firm tofu, diet soda; the basics. But I made sure that when I got up to the checkout, I only had 15.

Even last year I would have been counting so I could go to the express checkout where some poor high-schooler would be ringing up groceries as fast as possible. But this time there was no high-schooler.

There was only the U-Scan Express.

U-Scan Express, a product from Optimal Robotics that first hit Memphis in 1998, at a Bartlett Kroger, lets consumers be their own cashiers. While it doesn’t quite have all the bugs worked out yet — there always seems to be annoyed and perplexed customers frowning in front of the machines — four customers can check out with only one (ONE!) employee overseeing the entire thing. Talk about a time-saver.

This is the sort of technology I love to see. At any other type of store, I’ll browse until my heart’s content, poring over lingerie, magazines, shoes, school supplies, even packing tape. But put me in a grocery store with the carts and the children and I can’t wait to get in and get out.

So I don’t mind bagging my own groceries for the sake of efficiency. In fact, I like it. I don’t have to make polite conversation with a cashier or even endure not so polite conversation (Sometimes, and I understand there’s a whole on-your-feet-all-day element there, the cashiers are not nice). I don’t have to worry about whether the baggers are putting the eggs in with the canned goods, or quadruple bagging the 2-Liters or if they’re giving each individual item its own whole bag (Imagine carrying out 22 plastic bags, each holding only a pound of spaghetti or a can of soup).

U-Scan is like the ultimate vending machine: pick out your items, scan them in, and insert your crispy dollar bills. Even better, you don’t even have to have crispy dollar bills. The machines take debit and credit cards, too.

Now all I really need to make my grocery shopping experience perfect is for the stores to upgrade to the U-Scan Carousel for larger purchases. Then I can finally buy that 16th item.

“If the law supposes that,” said Mr. Bumble, squeezing his hat emphatically in both hands, “the law is a ass — a idiot.”

Charles Dickens’ Bumble, Oliver Twist’s nemesis in the novel of the same name, should have counted his lucky stars. At least he wasn’t caught up in the American judicial system of the last decade of the twentieth century.

When we were children, my generation cut its legal teeth watching episodes of Perry Mason, giving us all a good-triumphs-over-evil perspective of the Rule of Law that would have made Pollyanna proud. In the television courts where Perry did battle, virtue was always rewarded, the innocent redeemed, and the wicked exposed and punished for their crimes.

Funnily enough, as we grew older, the great legal issues of the day played themselves out in real life much as they did on television. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 swept away two centuries of inequity virtually overnight, for the first time giving African-Americans something resembling equality before the law. An unpopular war in southeast Asia that was itself patently illegal was halted in its tracks by the force of public opinion. And in 1974, a President who sanctioned grand larceny was forced from office after a series of orderly (and bipartisan) Congressional inquiries.

When finally confronted with irrefutable evidence of his dark deeds, Richard Nixon chose resignation rather than risk impeachment and almost certain Senate conviction. But recent events raise this question: what would “Tricky Dick” have done, had he come to power during this far more jaundiced age?

Would he have retained Johnny Cochran, a superb legal gymnast able to convince a jury that a bloodstained murder weapon, a motive, and an absence of alibi need not stand in the way of demonstrating a client’s innocence? Or would Nixon plum for Bill Clinton’s crack legal team, who convinced a majority of the Senate that lying under oath was no big deal, really, and anyway, doesn’t it all hinge upon your definition of the word “is”? Or why not go straight to the top, and hire James Baker’s goon squad, the guys who successfully took to the courts of Florida with the legal equivalent of a four-corners-offense, running out the clock on the recount issue and handing the presidency, on a technicality, to the popular-vote loser?

No, wherever he is today, Richard Nixon is cursing (and he liked to curse, remember) his misfortune for having been born two decades too early, to have reigned at a time when the phrase “Rule of Law” actually had some meat on its bones. When celebrity murderers went to jail for their crimes.

When Congress actually embraced and enforced standards for Presidential conduct. When Supreme Court justices put down their political agendas when they donned their judicial robes. When right and wrong were quantifiable terms, not simply two five-letter words that happened to be spelled differently.

Back then, of course, the legal process wasn’t on display on CNN and CNBC 24 hours a day. Lawyers and judges are now our great contemporary celebrities. Back then, Perry Mason only came on once a week. I saw more of David Boies this past month than I did of my wife.

Something else has changed as well. Call it Hamilton Berger’s Revenge, if you will, but it seems that the bad guys carry the day, every time. O.J. slipped the slammer. Clinton had his (cheese)cake and ate it too. And W. was able to ride the robe-tails of Antonin Scalia straight into the Oval Office.

No, Mr. Bumble would not be amused. The law is way more than an ass and an idiot. Its misuse has begun to eat away at the institutional foundations of this country. Each of the great “show trials” of turn-of-the-century America have contributed to a weakening of the national spirit, as more and more of our citizens embrace what Michael Wolff in New York magazine last week called a “conspiratorial view of American public life.” And that’s a view that does neither our country nor its people any semblance of good.

[Kenneth Neill is the founder and publisher of The Memphis Flyer.]

Friends and relatives of Gary Paul Hooten, 24, are hoping that the missing man will make it home in time for the holidays. They are asking Memphians and any others with information on Hooten to assist them in their search.

Hooten was last seen on Wednesday, December 13th. He had telephoned his fiancee, Natasha Tejwani, at the home they share in Midtown to tell her that he would be going to attend a class at ITT Technical Institute and then returning home. No one has heard from Hooten since .

Police searches of the Memphis area have not discovered anything, not even Hooten’s vehicle.

Tejwani and Hooten are planning to be married in July and she says that at first she thought that maybe he was just “taking some time off,” to work off a case of prenuptial jitters. But as days went by Tejwani began to worry, especially when Hooten’s friends and relatives had not been contacted by him.

Tejwani and members of Hooten’s family ask that anyone who has seen the missing man or his vehicle contact the Memphis Police Department.

Name: Gary Paul Hooten

Age: 24

Race: White

Height: 5’9″

Weight: 160 – 170 pounds

Hair: Brown, curly and thinning

Eyes: Change from blue to gray; always wears prescription glasses with brown, oval frames

Other: Has a tongue piercing, also has a medical condition which causes the veins in the thumb and index finger of his right hand to always be swollen. Last seen wearing black jeans and a blue denim short-sleeved button-down shirt.

Hooten drives a 1997 metallic teal green, two-door, Chevy Cavalier with tinted windows and a rear spoiler. His car has a specialty Tennessee license plate with a purple cat and the license number is D4052.

As council chair, while I sit

I’ll make the changes I see fit.

I’m in charge and I can do

Whatever it is that I want to.

I’ll put a phone right by my loo

I’ll put it there ‘cause I want to.

It will cost the city lots of dough

But no one’s harmed if they don’t know.

I’ll stick to my guns like gum to a shoe

I’ll spend your money, ‘cause I want to.

I’ll change the policies, yes sir and mam

I’ll change the policies, council chair I am.

If it’s steak and potatoes that I lack

I’ll raise the per diem and take the flack.

We council need more money to eat

So up goes the budget, now bring on the meat!

And if I want to take a “business” trip

The city will pay, I don’t give a flip!

I sign off on my own receipts

It’s all in the records, so there’s no deceit.

If someone asks why I do what I do

I’ll let them know, because

She always leans in when she talks about people’s money and it’s usually just after they’ve left the room. “You know that’s so-and-so’s daughter.” She looks at me expectantly. I look at the closed door, enlightenment pending. I look back and jump: She’s leaned in closer and is now officially in my personal space, eyebrows raised suggestively. She’s waiting, ready to burst with her secret news, but needing the go-ahead from me, lest she be a lone gossip. After a subtle but essential body shift, I give her all I can muster, and that grudgingly.

“So?” (In retrospect, I realize I must be a terribly disappointing player in the Who’s Who game.)

“‘So?’” She’s mocking me now. “So, don’t you know what they own? They’re the ones who did the thing back a few years ago that made them all that money.” More tangible disinterest by me.

“And?”

“And, they’re set for life on a bad day.” I’m still not biting.

She harrumphs, dealing with my ignorance but unable to forgive my indifference toward one of the single hallmarks of her life: knowing who has money, how they got it, and how they spend it. To assume that my neighbor just has more time on her hands than I do might be missing the point. It’s certainly a generational difference as well, in this day of Internet riches and millions for the making the way they are in our culture. She lived through the Depression; I went snow-skiing every spring break. She packs everything away; I spring clean four times a year. She loves to talk about money; I prefer to dream about it.

My generation looks at money nonchalantly, the way we look at each other in bars — over our shoulder before we turn back to our drink. We know it can’t buy us love, we’ve forgotten Emily Post, and if we ever were Material Girls, most of us are over it. We’re jaded; we hunger for inspiration, “and everything else that money just can’t buy,” like Mr. Lovett says. We’re not so much uninterested with money as we are just bored with it. It’s just not news anymore; every third person we know comes from lots of money, makes a decent amount, or gets a quarterly check from the trust fund. One must either have a grand, undeniable fortune or have gotten whatever they have in some extraordinary fashion to be considered true grist for the rumor mill these days.

Growing up in an upper-middle-class suburb of Little Rock, I lived a charmed and sheltered life in which my biggest concern was not air-balling free-throws (which, to my dismay, I did quite regularly and publicly) and getting a date to the homecoming dance. I couldn’t distinguish between who had money and who didn’t, since everyone just did. As I’ve grown, I’ve learned that not only are there people out there with very little money, but I am one of them. The years since I waved Dad’s ticket goodbye have been startling and ugly, but I have a sneaking suspicion that this has more to do with money management than the money itself. Even through my “hard years,” there has still been money around, out there for the taking and the giving away. The years I spent at The Charitable Institute of Mississippi (some call it Ole Miss) only reinforced the everyday-ness of other people’s big money because folks there give money away in rather large chunks to avoid any number of taxable debacles in April; free parking anywhere on campus and/or building dedications merely a bonus.

So while my relationship with money has changed as I’ve gotten older, my view of it will never compare with my neighbor’s. My generation has never seen widespread poverty; we can’t even imagine it. That’s something for other countries and other times to deal with. Our parents say we don’t appreciate the value of a dollar, and they’re right. We haven’t been forced to appreciate it as their generation was, and we haven’t been taught to, either. TV shows give away millions for the right answer to a trivia question and our political leaders talk in the lingo of “surplus billions.” How could we possibly understand the notion of working for 20 cents an hour?

What we have been taught is that money means freedom: to do what we want, when we want. We fantasize about money — not our parents’ or our friends’, but our own, by our own success, and most of us search for it even today in our jobs, our life choices. The question my generation asks isn’t what would it be like without money, but what would it be like with even more?

My own fantasies are pretty basic, centering around the small, currently useless piece of plastic in my purse, which becomes a powerful, svelte Supercard, able to go places and not be declined. I hand it boldly to the car salesman when my ‘91 Mazda — with no washer fluid these three months and an unidentifiable squeaking noise — becomes more than I can bear, and I say, “Ya got anything with washer fluid and no squeak?” (I am an easy sell.) I use it at dinner with friends who’ve come through for me when I can’t pay my phone bill, and I say, “Kids, it’s on me,” and my friends cheer me. These are the dreams I have of money, and of financial freedom — from counting every penny, from staying on a budget, from making responsible choices — but they are likely no more accurate than my nightmares of having none.

Money brings requirements with it, likely the least of which is less responsibility. Be it by a church, a family, or a nosy neighbor, expectations and judgments of the wealthy in our society run rampant. I dream that I could live in seclusion with my money, inviting only nice people to my private island, but while the path of great money isn’t heavily trodden, it certainly is watched.

I know a young wealthy fellow with nary a higher education degree who made his fortune on a good idea and lucky timing, and if his small business ever goes public, he’ll count his success by the millions before he turns 25. But when I see him berate his employees — most of whom are twice his age with twice his degrees — I wonder what forces cause the pendulum of fortune to swing in his direction; I think he’s not worthy of the opportunity he’s been given to live in a society where success doesn’t stand in proportion to degrees framed on a wall. I expect things of him I wouldn’t expect of other people, as if his money somehow requires him to be a better person than I am. Does this come from seeing so many wealthy people give their money to “a good cause”? Is it the view of the American-churched, that like heaven, wealth is a reward for some good deed? Maybe it’s just the view of my generation: We don’t talk as much about money as older generations, but we expect more from those who have it.

Whatever has created this moolah-la land I’m not sure, but it may be the one place where my generation and my neighbor’s meet — we both pluck people with money out of the masses and find them different from us because of what they have. We find them worthy of our judgment or our conversation, and we quickly offer both. What we both miss when we do that is how they’re like us, which is in every other way. I believe that having money is like having an extra window in your home — right in the front with no blinds. Some people look in as they run by at night, glancing at each house; others set up camp in the yard and cook out, sending in notes about the dust on the mantel. Thus, the window, if we look in it right, reflects our curious faces, our outrageous expectations, and our clumsy feet, always tripping on the same crack in the sidewalk because we’re watching someone else’s path and not our own. May-be there are better days ahead, and the next generation will be the balance between the packrats and the simplifiers, the gawkers and the judgers, the view of our parents and the view of our peers. How much our children have or don’t have isn’t as important as someone near them who leans in and says, “See that girl over there? The one from that wealthy family? She looks exactly like you.”

[This originally appeared in the November issue of Memphis magazine.]