Month: June 2002

Taking the Plunge

Post author By Leonard Gill
Post date June 28, 2002

The Dive From Clausen’s Pier

By Ann Packer

Knopf, 370 pp., $24

Things were going if not great then well enough for Carrie Bell and Mike Mayer the day Mike took a dive off Clausen’s Pier and wound up a quadriplegic.

Clausen’s Pier: at Clausen’s Reservoir, an hour’s drive north of Madison. Madison: home of the University of Wisconsin, where Carrie and Mike had graduated college just a couple of years before. Madison: Carrie’s and Mike’s hometown as well, with Mike still living with his parents. Carrie and Mike: junior high sweethearts since the day Carrie, age 14, spotted Mike on the school’s ice-hockey team and the two became a couple made for each other. Marriage: only a matter of time, sometime but when? Mike: without much thought, taking a job at a bank. Carrie: at her library job with no greater thought and wearing Mike’s engagement ring. All of which makes Carrie’s spur-of-the-moment decision one night to pack a duffel bag and quit Mike’s bedside, quit Madison entirely, and head in her car for New York all the more a mystery — to Mike, to Carrie’s mother, to Mike’s parents, to Carrie’s best friend Jamie, even to Carrie herself.

Carrie’s decision: not as spur-of-the-moment as those around her might think. And not so much a mystery when one considers Carrie’s unhappiness, ill-defined but unmistakable and simmering for some time. Carrie had been aware of it, Mike had been aware of it, and Mike’s accident brought that unhappiness into full if no more understandable view. Plus, Carrie’d met a guy, a New Yorker named Kilroy who was visiting Madison, one evening at a dinner party, an evening when Carrie couldn’t bring herself to make one more hospital visit and play wife-to-be to an invalid, a role she was finding she couldn’t fill. This guy Kilroy was sharp, worldly. He’d sized Carrie up — hometown girl, no goody-two-shoes maybe but so Midwestern — without putting her needlessly down. Plus, Carrie’d run into another guy, a high school friend from Madison named Simon who’d gone to Yale and come out of the closet and from Yale had moved to New York. Simon, she found, she could talk to, be honest with. There was indeed a world out there. Carrie would join it. She’d look up Kilroy.

She moves in with Simon and the dilapidated brownstone in Chelsea that he shares with a houseful of roommates working to make something of their dreams. She halfway moves in with Kilroy, who shows her a native New Yorker’s Manhattan and gives her a taste of the big-city life she’s been craving and wasn’t getting in her college town hometown.

Something about Kilroy though … he’s smart as hell but hellbent on achieving … not a thing. He knows New York like the back of his hand, but his apartment’s a blank: whitewashed walls, standard furniture signifying nothing. His knowledge of history, science, and literature, pool-playing and fine cooking is considerable, but he settles for temp work and latter-day Marxist pronouncements. He’s mum on the subject of his parents and equally mum on the subject of his given name. When he reveals his age, even less about him adds up, but, hey, Carrie’s crazy about the guy — great in bed, a little aloof sometimes — and willing to put off, to her own bewilderment, the questions put to her by those back home. This isn’t the Carrie they knew and loved, but it’s the Carrie whose arrival’s been overdue. And it took a departure to make that arrival possible.

No departure, though, from this: Carrie’s abiding love, be it in Madison or Manhattan, for sewing, for the feel and measure of fabrics, her joy at working her sewing machine, working from patterns, fashioning new patterns. And in Ann Packer’s meticulously observed first novel, The Dive From Clausen’s Pier, patterning’s the thing, the pattern we put to life, the decisions we do and don’t make, right, wrong, or somewhere in between and for all the right or wrong reasons. Or maybe right and wrong are beside the point, as Carrie’s mother, a therapist, explains (convincingly?) in answer to Carrie’s proper guilt for abandoning Mike:

“[Y]ou do what you do. Not without consequences for other people, of course, sometimes very grave ones. But it’s not very helpful to regard your choices as a series of right or wrong moves. They don’t define you as much as you define them.”

So let Carrie’s final move in this fine novel not be a defining one (it sure has the look of one), and you can argue all you want whether she makes it for all the right or wrong reasons. But this Kilroy character … you don’t see him now or ever with a friend in the world, just as he’d have it and just as for Carrie Bell that’d never do.

We Recommend We Recommend

On Board

Post author By Bianca Phillips
Post date June 28, 2002

Need a place to practice your chink-chink, casper flip, or roast beef without being harassed by the po-po? The Memphis area is now home to three skate parks where skateboarders, in-line skaters, and BMX bikers can feel free to do it all without being hassled by the cops or angry property owners. The newly opened Skate Park of Memphis (SPM) in Cordova, the indoor Kullison Ramp Park in Midtown, and the outdoor Houston Skate Park in Germantown offer a variety of ramps, bowls, ledges, and rails.

“People say Memphis is behind a couple of years from everywhere else,” says Clay Clements, manager of CBS Skateboards in Cordova.

A couple? Try about 23, at least when it comes to skate parks.

The parks have been around for nearly 30 years in the United States, and there are currently about 800 in the country. Curved plywood ramps were first used for skating in Melbourne Beach, Florida, in 1975, and in 1976, Port Orange, Florida, became home to the first skate park, Skateboard City. Memphis didn’t join in until 1999, with the construction of Houston and Kullison. And on June 9th, SPM, the city’s largest, opened its doors.

SPM is the Mid-South’s first professional skate park and boasts 14,000 square feet, 10 quarter pipes, 10 ledges, eight bank ramps, a six-foot bowl, and a 1,400-square-foot pyramid with ledges, stairs, and rails. At the grand opening, ages ranged from 7 to 35. Skaters zoomed from ramp to ramp, somehow managing to avoid collision. There were, however, quite a few “slams” — that’s skater-talk for falling off your board.

Josh Lowry, co-owner of CBS Skateboards, saw SPM to fruition with the help of his parents Janis and Jeff. The facility was designed and built by experienced skaters from the Memphis area. “We want to be a stopping-off point for the major teams that come through,” says Janis Lowry. “We want to do demos, contests, that kind of thing.” On June 30th, the park will host Mike Vallely, a pro skater with his own line of boards and interactive DVD-ROM skater trading cards. Vallely also sings in a band called Mike V and the Rats and recently released the skateboarding video Drive.

Skaters can join SPM for a $50 annual membership fee and receive a discount on skate sessions. BMX bikers get to use the facilities on Thursday nights.

Kullison (pronounced “collision”) is smaller than SPM but has a loyal following. It has 8,000 square feet with 13 ramps, including a half-pipe, a pyramid, two jump boxes, and a box rail. The park is open to skateboarders, in-line skaters, and BMX bikers, or, as owner Derrick T. Jones says, “We ride and jam on bikes, skateboards, and blades.” And since Kullison is the only park that allows BMX bikers to practice alongside skaters, there are quite a few regular bikers.

Kullison is located inside an old warehouse that was once used for designing BMX bikes. Several bike sponsors suggested to the warehouse’s previous owner, Clyde Warner, that he build a few ramps for bikers to practice on. The ramps were constructed, and the park was opened as Darkside Ramp Park, catering to both bikers and skaters.

The park’s signature is a ramp built for the MTV Sports and Music Festival, which was held at Tom Lee Park in October 1998. “We found out where a bunch of MTV ramps were. This guy wanted to sell them, so Clyde Warner bought a ramp. We put it back together, and it’s still rockin’,” says Jones.

The park charges an annual membership fee of $20, although nonmembers can skate or bike for a few extra bucks. The park even has a lounge so tired skaters can take a breather and watch some TV.

There’s also the option of skating for free at Houston, located within the Houston Levee Park in Germantown. Composed of various slopes, embankments, walls, rails, curbs, and a fun box, it’s open only to skateboarders and in-line skaters — no bikes allowed.

Houston was built in 1999 by the Germantown Parks and Recreation Department. The area has safety rules posted, but since it’s located in an open area in a public park, there is no one to supervise and ensure those rules are followed. And while the park attracts skaters due to its outdoor location, it also lacks the large obstacles found in the other parks.

“I usually skate at Houston, but I’ll be going to Skate Park of Memphis in the future because it’s one of the best parks in the South,” says Joseph Williams, who, at 20, has skated half his life.

Just having the ability to choose is a good thing. Says Williams, “There’s a pretty decent skate culture [in Memphis]. It’s not as big as in other parts of the country, but it’s definitely growing.”

Skate Park of Memphis: 7740B Trinity Road in Cordova. Kullison Ramp Park: 116 Cumberland, just off Broad Avenue in Memphis. Houston Skate Park: behind Houston High School in Germantown.

Putting on the dog

Skateboarding is as popular today as Monopoly, french fries, and vacations to Walt Disney World. Tony Hawk is a household name, and the X Games cater to the loyal fans of this “extreme” sport. Numerous video games allow the less active a shot at perfecting their virtual frontside air. But none of this would’ve been possible without the Z-Boys, the fathers of modern skateboarding. Dogtown and Z-Boys, a documentary about the group’s activities in the 1970s, chronicles skateboarding’s history back to the days before its commercialization.

Ex-Z-Boy and filmmaker Stacy Peralta tracked down 11 of the original 12 members (one could not be found) to come together and bear witness. Peralta tells the story of growing up in Dogtown, a rundown area of Santa Monica that served as a mecca for surfers, street gangs, and graffiti artists, through a montage of interviews with grown-up Z-Boys, 1970s video clips of the skaters, and stills of the boys frozen in action.

The film is beautifully edited, and the chaos created by the mix of media, pumped up by the soundtrack of ’70s rock-and-roll, paints a picture of the anarchy ingrained in the Z-Boys. Dogtown brings long-forgotten moments back to life with an amazing energy that makes you wish you’d been invited to the party.

Narrated by Sean Penn, a former skater himself, and with guest appearances by Henry Rollins and Tony Hawk, the film not only tells it like it was but also shows how much influence the Z-Boys had on aspiring skateboarders back in the day.

Dogtown and Z-Boys takes the story of a group of beach-bum teens with bad grades and a hatred for authority and makes them modern-day heroes. This is not just a film for skateboard enthusiasts but for anyone with a streak of rebellion in their heart and a touch of rock-and-roll in their soul. — BP

News

The Air Up There

Post author By Andrew Wilkins
Post date June 28, 2002

Air-quality reports have become a regular feature of local television news: warnings from the Shelby County Health Department to the young, sick, and elderly that our air simply isn’t safe to breathe.

The threat is primarily from ozone, a pollutant exacerbated by the heat and humidity so common during Memphis summers. About one-third of the pollution problem comes from the region’s power plants, which have been harshly criticized by environmental groups for not doing enough to reduce emissions.

Stricter pollution guidelines were established in 1997, but power-industry lawsuits and the Environmental Protection Agency’s foot-dragging have delayed enforcement of the standards. The delay will push 59 Southeastern cities — with 23 million residents — into noncompliance, says a representative from the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy (SACE), an East Tennessee-based environmental group that has filed an intent to sue the EPA.

“The eight-hour ozone standard [that was established] to protect human health in 1997 puts many more areas in non-attainment,” says SACE spokesperson Ulla Reeves. “The power industry has been fighting it, but recently, the courts shot down their appeals. Now, we are trying to hold the EPA’s feet to the fire to enforce the laws that protect public health and the environment.”

Another major air-pollution problem, Reeves says, is the Tennessee Valley Authority’s reliance on outdated, dirty coal-fired power plants. While 56 percent of TVA’s power comes from coal-burning power plants, those plants produce 93 percent of TVA’s nitorgen-dioxide emissions, the pollutant that reacts with sunlight to form ozone.

And sulfer dioxide, the tiny particulate matter that might be more harmful than previously believed, is emitted at twice the levels from coal-burning plants as from new plants.

These old power plants are allowed to slide by the new emissions standards due to a “grandfather clause” that gave power companies the right to operate older plants without installing new technology because they were soon to be retired. Reeves says power companies have invested tens of millions of dollars in these old plants under the guise of routine maintenance without updating their pollution-controls equipment. A lawsuit has been filed, but the case remains in litigation.

“Pollution knows no boundaries. That’s why we need a national cleanup,” Reeves says. “There are hundreds of grandfathered power plants that should have been cleaned up a long time ago. Industry made the upgrades but didn’t install the new technology, resulting in serious pollution problems.”

TVA is installing scrubbers at more than half of its coal-burning plants, including Memphis’ Allen Steam Plant, but this technology will only be used during peak pollution times, Reeves says. SACE recommends shutting down coal-fired power plants and looking for renewable energy options like solar, wind, and geothermal power. TVA currently derives only 1 percent of its power from renewable sources.

Diane Arnst, technical manager for the pollution-control section of the Shelby County Health Department, says Memphis and Shelby County are in compliance with current ozone standards and the standards SACE is suing to have imposed.

There haven’t been any days of dangerous levels of ozone yet this year, Arnst says, but she adds that it’s important to warn the public and commends local television stations for their cooperation. Elevated levels of ozone can cause irritated lungs in asthmatics, young people, and the elderly; higher levels can affect everyone. During high-ozone days, the Health Department recommends that pollution-sensitive people stay indoors with the air conditioning running, and that everyone avoid exercising outside between the peak ozone hours of 4 and 7 p.m.

Sulfer dioxide, tiny particles of soot that bypass the lungs’ natural defenses, might soon be monitored as closely as ozone, Arnst says, adding that preliminary research shows these particles could trigger heart attacks.

Arnst says the recent improvement in Memphis’ air-quality standards is due to a “significant” reduction of emissions from the Allen plant. Two new natural-gas power plants near Lakeland and Arlington are being constructed. Arnst says natural gas is cleaner-burning and provides more power with less environmental impact.

Earlier this month, the Bush administration finally caught up with the rest of the world and issued a report stating that global warming is caused in part by burning fossil fuels. The report detailed how the environment of the United States will be substantially changed in the next few decades — disruption of snow-fed water supplies, more stifling heat waves, and the permanent disappearance of Rocky Mountain meadows and coastal marshes. However, the administration isn’t proposing any major shift in its policy on reducing greenhouse gases.

A report issued last month by several environmental groups, including SACE and the United States Public Interest Research Group, determined that over 860,000 Tennessee children live near coal-fired power plants. These children are exposed to pollutants that cause many health problems, from asthma attacks to neonatal death and slowed neurological development. The authors of the report urge legislation to protect our children from air pollution.

“[The report] shows that our children’s health is at stake if we fail to clean up these plants, especially since we have the technology to do it,” says Dr. L. Bruce Hill, senior scientist at the Clean Air Task Force and author of the report. “With a plan moving through Congress for a cleaner energy future, now is the time for parents to better understand the risks of air pollution on their children — and the ultimate cost of delayed action.”

News News Feature

CITY BEAT

Post author By John Branston
Post date June 27, 2002

BIG FISH, BIG RIVER

Wesley Hollis has been doing a little fishing in his retirement.

Make that a lot of fishing. Hollis, 74, is one of the last of Memphis’ commercial fishermen on the Mississippi River. On a bad day, he’ll bring in over 100 pounds of catfish, carp, and buffalo; on a good day, his haul exceeds 300 pounds.

In 25 years of almost daily fishing on the river, Hollis has landed monster catfish weighing well over 100 pounds, run through at least 10 boats, battled poachers, rammed a catfish spine through his big toe, and fallen out of his boat and nearly drowned. For his trouble, he makes enough money to maintain his boat, motor, trailer, and nets plus a little extra. For the money, he may be the hardest-working 74-year-old in Memphis.

Hollis calls commercial fishing his hobby and says he wouldn’t know what to do with himself if he stopped. You can usually find him at the boat ramp on the north end of Mud Island around 6 a.m. As the sun comes up in a haze over the downtown skyline, Hollis slips a light rubber suit over his jeans and shirt and checks to see that everything is in place in his 20-foot boat — three large plastic coolers, a paddle, net, gaffe, assorted hooks and knives, and extra gas tank. Usually, his son accompanies him, but on this day he has agreed to take me along instead, provided I do my share of the work.

A big, friendly man, Hollis was a supervisor for several years for a dairy in Midtown before taking up commercial fishing in 1977. He shares the boat ramp with a handful of sport fishermen distinguished by their smaller boats and trailers.

“I want to be comfortable and safe,” Hollis explains. When the wind is out of the south, the river is choppy, and the wake of an upstream barge produces waves three feet high. Slam over those in a 14-foot john boat and you’ll soon want something bigger.

Hollis cranks the big outboard motor to life and heads upriver toward the mouth of the Loosahatchie River. He wrinkles his nose at the foul smell in the morning air and points toward shore at the city sewer, the source of the problem. The water is browner than it was a few weeks ago.

“I don’t know whether it’s Missouri mud or what,” he grumbles, but it is not good for the fishing. His nets in the Loosahatchie yield an eight-pound yellow catfish that has suffocated in the mud, a three-foot paddlefish that is also dead (and out of season to boot), and a few live yellow cats and carp. Dead fish go back in the river, live ones into the coolers.

“There isn’t enough oxygen in this water, and there’s too little current this far from the big water,” Hollis says. “A few weeks ago, I took 45 buffalo out of this same spot.”

You can’t get rich in this line of work. Hollis gets 30 cents a pound for buffalo, 60 cents a pound for catfish, and 10 cents a pound for carp in the rough. The fish markets won’t buy anything over 15 pounds, so Hollis peddles big fish for bait or gives them away. A year ago, he caught two flathead catfish over 100 pounds apiece. He wound up selling one to a man in West Memphis who promptly gutted it, sliced it lengthwise down the middle, and stuffed the two sides into his freezer without further ado.

Hollis heads upriver to a chute on the Arkansas side where he has strung out a long net marked by floating milk jugs. When he cuts the motor, the only sounds are bird calls and the gentle lapping of the current against the bow. I hook the jug with a gaffe and Hollis begins hauling in line hand over hand. A big carp and a blue catfish are caught in the skein, and Hollis painstakingly separates net from fish with a small tool called a shucker. The fish still have plenty of fight in them and flop heavily against the bottom of the boat. A nearby trot line has snagged a 35-pound flathead catfish, an ugly mother if there ever was one.

“Watch how you handle them,” he advises. “A guy helping me one time was pushing them back between his legs when a fish flopped right up into his balls. He like to went through the floor.”

A small blue cat once stuck its poisonous fin into Hollis’ boot and all the way through his big toe. When he pulled it back out, his foot was throbbing with pain, and by the time he got to a doctor, the boot was filled with blood.

Hollis’ most serious accident happened 15 years ago when he was fishing alone and fell out of his boat into 20 feet of water and caught his foot in a net. He bobbed to the surface three times, gulping air and trying to free his foot. By the fourth time, he figured he was a goner, but his foot came free and he swam to a sandbar. Another fisherman saw his empty boat float by and rescued him.

“I said I would never fish anymore after that,” Hollis says.

But he did. A few weeks later, he was back on the river, albeit with a partner.

“I’d come out here even if I wasn’t fishing,” he says. “I just love this river so much.”

Sports Sports Feature

THE SCOOP ON SPORTS

Post author By James P. Hill
Post date June 27, 2002

HIGH MAINTENANCE

It’s about 4 a.m. You’re at home in bed, enjoying some REMs and dreaming. For Steve Horne, Memphis Redbirds director of field operations, this is one of his favorite times. “I have dreams,” he says, “and when I wake up, I put field patterns on paper and then talk to the guys on the grounds crew. After the pattern is mowed on the field, we get satisfaction from fans’ feedback.”

The three-man full-time crew works long hours through the Mid-South summer heat and winter cold all year round. “In July and August, it’s pretty hot,” says grounds crew worker Ed Collins. Just as the Redbirds have a strategy to win baseball games, the grounds crew has its own system to work through the extremes of Mother Nature. “You gotta come out in 20-minute shifts and drink a lot of water,” says Jeff Vincent, another crew member.

Despite an ever-changing and sometimes unpredictable schedule due to rain, the grounds-crew staff is passionate about the results of their collective work. “It’s a lot harder than I thought. It all pays off when you see how good the field looks at the end of the day,” says Vincent.

The normal routine for the crew includes pre-game field preparation mowing, applying fresh chalk lines and post-game care, such as raking and filling holes. Some people compare grounds-crew work to

gardening, but that’s like comparing redbirds to bluejays. “The difference between gardening and yard-building is I have about 25 guys who come out and attempt to tear

everything up that I do,” Horne says. “They’re out there to play a game. That’s their business. It’s our job to make it where they’re as comfortable as possible doing that.”

Most of the grounds work at AutoZone Park is unglamorous, to say the least. There are no fans in the stands, no hot dogs, no apple pies, and no excitement in the air. This ballpark scene is all about preparing the field of dreams.

Redbirds catcher Alex Andreopoulos says he admires and respects the job the grounds crew does. Andreopoulos also understands how hard work behind the scenes can often be overlooked. “The fans don’t see what they’re doing before the game, what they do after the game especially, and then in between innings,” says Andreopoulos. “You don’t see the guys doing their job, but it makes it easier for us to go out there and play.”

The grounds work is not just for show.

Maintaining a quality playing surface can help prevent injuries. The coaching staff and players can tell a good field from a bad one. “Say the field is too soft,” says Redbirds manager Gaylen Pitts. “You’re gonna have guys slipping and sliding out there. They’ll have a tendency to pull a

muscle or whatever. If it’s too hard when they slide, they can hurt themselves. Or if the grass has some bad spots, if it’s loose, they can catch their spikes. A good playing surface is worth its weight in gold.”

Or diamonds. n

News News Feature

TRANSLATION: MEMPHIS

Post author By Jenn Hall
Post date June 26, 2002

MAKING A ‘NIGHT’ OF IT

Say, what abridgement have you for this evening?

What masque? What music? How shall we beguile

The lazy time, if not with some delight?

—A Midsummer Night’s Dream

In case you didn’t know, this past Friday was the Summer Solstice. Which means that the longest day of the year has come and gone–a night that various cultures past have referred to as Midsummer’s eve.

A pagan holiday by definition, (wait, isn’t that every day in Memphis) the summer solstice is historically a celebration of the fruits of one’s labors, a rejoicing in the bounties wrought in the work of the days before and after. A celebration, then, of the cultivation and reward of nature itself.

How fitting, then, for this day to be chosen as the kick-off for the Live at the Garden summer concert series at the Memphis Botanic Garden.

Admittedly, I am shamefully untrained in the particularities of the flora and fauna of the world. What you call an orchid, I call that pretty flower over there. When you see clover, I see those neat little things that close up at night. You get the picture.

The beauty of the grounds, however, is in no way lost for want of the name of a genus or species.

At night, under a string of lights hung from the boughs of, um, the pretty trees by the stone-lined walkway, even the stretch of porta-potties brought in for the show looked somehow majestic.

The locale serves as an entirely enchanted backdrop for an evening of music, headlined in Friday’s sophomore season opener by the great Ray Charles.

Charles, hands down, was a wonderful performer. I strain to imagine myself at the age of 71, clad in an adorable little blazer and hitting the piano keys as if I was 16, and I cannot. I can barely imagine it now.

Blessed with the peaks and valleys due a voice through the passing of years, Charles played to a crowd of several thousand for well over an hour. Those peaks and valleys were especially apparent during the slow and quieting Georgia on My Mind. Though the performance is surely somewhat changed from what it might have been in years past, there was something about it that gave me chills.

Maybe it was just the evening itself, or the way the warm air swirled amidst the bodies in the crowd. But watching Charles make his way through the song, you could really hear the physical man singing that was singing the notes. It somehow reached beyond the glow cast by his status as a living legend, and it was sublime.

The arrangement of the seating area offers pluses and minuses to compliment tickets at all price points. Direct views of the stage, of course, are most choice in the encore section, a group of numbered tables right in front of the backlit dome where the performance takes place. Catered meals are offered there, as well as complimentary drinks (with a limit of 5) for the very best tables, which run at $60 per ticket.

Initially I sat in the second tier of the tabled seating, which afforded me a chance to catch the band from a close-up perspective.

Or so I thought.

A bit claustrophobic when it comes to crowds, I decided to wander for a bit and check out what the lawn seats had to offer.

These seats, or patches of grass rather, are hands down the best bet for the series, which has five more shows on deck before the season draws to an end.

With speakers set up all over the venue, the sound was just as good whether you were 5 or 500 feet from the stage.

In addition, large screens were placed around the perimeter of the lawn, in effect creating a really neat outdoor pay-per-view with live audio kind of vibe. It sort of made me think about how strange modern life is, where we can shake and groove to a live performance, while sitting cross-legged on a lawn in front of a television screen beneath the stars. It’s like a childhood backyard sleepover fantasy.

Regardless of where you choose to sit, the venue allows you to bring coolers filled with the nectars of your choice. Ignorant of this fact, I neglected to tote along my own bucket of fun, but there are vendors on hand for the ill prepared. Seasoned attendees brought along everything from blankets and 12-packs, to bottled liquors with full-on candelabras and place settings.

It was a study in human recreational habits, wandering around and looking at the myriad set-ups ranging from cans and paper towels, to expensive wines and chilled glasses. Unfortunately, the locale forbids circus animals, bad attitudes, and dirty laundry (as stated on their Web site) so you’ll have to part with these for one lonely evening should you decide to go.

One concern for the event is the traffic flow before and after the show, which can get a bit on the congested side. I suggest getting up and dancing near the back of the lawn when it feels like things are winding down and then sprinting to your car with all of the speed that you can muster. This is what I did, and although I probably only made it to the car about 5 minutes before the majority, I could see that the cars were mighty jammed up as I drove my merry self down Park, wait free.

My advice to you would be to check out at least one of the remaining shows, which include performances by the Memphis Symphony Orchestra with the Stax Academy of Music, Dr. John with Mavis Staples and The Dirty Dozen Brass Band, Kathy Mattea, Al Jarreau with the Gamble Brothers, and the Blind Boys of Alabama.

It’s guaranteed to be a great evening amidst the, well, truly lovely plant-life that Memphis is graced to have housed at this garden refuge.

Though the summer heat might induce laziness indeed, you’ll be glad you went out for this evening delight.

News News Feature

CITY BEAT

Post author By John Branston
Post date June 26, 2002

BIG FISH, BIG RIVER

Wesley Hollis has been doing a little fishing in his retirement.

“There isn’t enough oxygen in this water, and there’s too little current this far from the big water,” Hollis says. “A few weeks ago, I took 45 buffalo out of this same spot.”

“Watch how you handle them,” he advises. “A guy helping me one time was pushing them back between his legs when a fish flopped right up into his balls. He like to went through the floor.”

“I said I would never fish anymore after that,” Hollis says.

But he did. A few weeks later, he was back on the river, albeit with a partner.

“I’d come out here even if I wasn’t fishing,” he says. “I just love this river so much.”

Politics Politics Beat Blog

GOING, GOING….

Post author By Jackson Baker
Post date June 25, 2002

Saturday night’s Shelby GOP Master Meal at Homebuilders in Cordova included a fund-raising “auction” of political celebrities (here, mayoral candidate George Flinn and Senate candidate Lamar Alexander). Yes, folks, we know there are alternative possibilities for captions. You cynics out there can just provide them at will. We’ll keep to the high road.

Ensembles: Congressional candidate Brent Taylor shared his rostrum time with son Gage; Towhead sons Field Norris (left) and Chad Blackburn have in common, besides the haircut, a college affiliation (Ole Miss) and the fact that a parent (State Senators Mark Norris and Marsha Blackburn, respectively) aspires to Congress.

StateSen. Blackburn watched politely as rival Norris’ campaign video, featuring endorsements from Shelby County suburban mayors, rolled via VHS; meanwhile, Norris and County Register Tom Leatherwood came to an apparent meeting of minds.