My pappy said, “Son, you’re gonna’ drive me to drinkin’
If you don’t stop drivin’ that Hot Rod Lincoln.”
— Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen
I was northbound on Cooper, first in line at the stoplight at Central, patiently waiting for it to turn green. A guy a few cars behind me wasn’t in a patient mood. He peeled out of the line, roared forward using the oncoming traffic lane, then made a hard right onto Central, squealing his tires as he accelerated across my bow, headed east. I turned to my left to see the driver in the turn lane next to me looking wide-eyed, shaking his head in disbelief.
Two days later, I was having dinner with a friend at an outdoor table in crowded Overton Square. As we were about to dig into our meal, a matte-gray Mustang about 40 feet away on Madison Avenue began spinning its tires, sending up a sulfurous cloud of burning rubber, before passing two cars and accelerating through a red light at Cooper.
The following day, while discussing the incident with friends, I was shown a TikTok video of a white muscle car pulling up alongside a Memphis police cruiser and doing a complete donut around it before speeding off into the night.
The condensed version is that a subculture of souped-up muscle cars has emerged in the city, fueled by over-powered vehicles (Dodge Chargers, Mustangs, Infinitis) from the mid-2000s that have become cheap to buy, and by the ability of their drivers to obtain or create fake drive-out tags in lieu of license plates. Since Memphis police are prohibited (thankfully) from high-speed chases, the hot-rodders have gotten bolder — on the streets of Memphis and in displaying their dangerous antics on social media.
There’s nothing new about the love affair between reckless youth and reckless driving. It’s been glorified in pop culture since at least 1951, when Jackie Brenston’s “Rocket 88” (cited by most as the first rock-and-roll record) was released right here in Memphis. Tell me which of the following tunes rings your bell, and I’ll tell you how old you are: “Little GTO,” “Fun, Fun, Fun,” “Mustang Sally,” “Radar Love,” “Little Red Corvette,” “Pink Cadillac,” “I Can’t Drive 55,” “Bitchin’ Camaro,” “Shut Up and Drive.” I could go on. And on. The Google “songs about cars” rabbit hole has more inventory than Covington Pike.
If it makes you feel any better, the raging muscle car craze is a nationwide phenomenon, not just a Memphis thing. But that doesn’t help the people who’ve been killed by drivers illicitly racing through the city streets of America, including two people here who were killed by an off-duty Memphis cop going 100 miles an hour in his Dodge Charger. Local television stations have aired video of cars racing around the I-240 loop, using other traffic like participants in a video game. It’s crazy out there.
The Memphis City Council passed an ordinance designed to punish those who take part in organized races and stunt demonstrations. The police department launched Operation Slow Down Memphis in August and says it is directing extra resources for patrolling and monitoring local thoroughfares. Speed bumps have been added on Front Street and other areas popular with motorheads.
All good, but I think a more proactive approach might be necessary, at least as long as this phenomenon lasts. Call it profiling, if you want, but these vehicles aren’t hard to spot. If MPD officers see a drive-out tag on a muscle car while on patrol, I would have no problem with them pulling that car over and doing a license and registration check. These vehicles can be as dangerous as a loaded gun. Drag racing and performative stunt-driving in crowded entertainment districts and residential neighborhoods are putting lives at risk for nothing other than misguided testosterone. It’s time to hit the brakes.
Tatine hangs with Al Yankovic. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)
Facebook is a daily presence in my life and has been since 2010 when I joined the social medium to post pictures of a trip my wife and I took to the Grammys in Los Angeles. I remember I created an “album” of photos, each carefully captioned: the beach at Malibu; the HOLLYWOOD sign; Tatine meeting Weird Al Yankovic. So exciting!
It was around this time, I suppose, that most of us basically stopped shooting pictures with a camera. You remember that tedious process: You’d take your film to Walgreens, then wait a few days to go pick up your developed pictures (along with the negatives, in case you wanted to go crazy and print another copy). Then you’d sit out in the parking lot, looking through your vacation shots or whatever. No filters, no enhancements. What Walgreens gave you is what you got. How crude.
Now, our phones take care of all of that. Instant sharing! Filters! Video! No more dusty sleeves of old photos stuck in drawers. And Facebook has all our shots organized by date and subject matter and helpfully suggests reposting them as “memories” for us, so we can amuse/bore our friends all over again.
Around the world, three billion people are using Facebook to advertise their lives, faces, interests, writing, families, gardens, pets, food, businesses, music, vacations, politics. And Facebook uses all that free information we provide to make mega-billions of dollars from companies that want to advertise to us. It is a marketing behemoth with algorithms so advanced, you’d swear they’re reading our thoughts. That’s because they are, literally — the ones we write down for them. We are Facebook’s product and they’re getting top dollar for us, but we don’t seem to much care. Check out my new shoes, y’all!
Facebook has made some huge blunders. When the company pushed for a “pivot” to video in 2015, thousands of journalists were laid off, replaced by video “content providers.” Three years later, Facebook had to tell advertisers (and newspapers and media organizations) that video was not working as they’d promised. People actually preferred reading to being spoon-fed videos. Oops, said Mr. Zuckerberg, give us some journalism again, please.
And the company seems a little touchy these days, given all the bad press it’s gotten regarding its failure to remove political disinformation and racist, white-supremacist content from its platform. I have a friend who was reprimanded by the Facebook popo last week for using the word “Chubby” in referencing the Sixties singer, Chubby Checker. Yes, it’s his name, but it breached some sort of algorithmic dog whistle. I’m guessing that typing “Porky Pig” would definitely get you 30 days in the hole.
Two weeks ago, I wrote a column about the daily emails I get from Donald Trump. The Flyer art director illustrated the column with an image of a Trump fundraising ad that had been emailed to me. Normally, when I post my column on Facebook on Wednesday morning, I start getting comments, likes, etc., within minutes, mainly because I’m followed by a few hundred people, so it shows up in their news feed. That week, however, nothing. By mid-morning, I’d had two comments, maybe three or four likes. Facebook was obviously suppressing the distribution of the column.
When I figured it out and changed the art, things got back to normal quickly, but it gave me a real sense of how much Facebook can shape what all of us read in our news feeds — for good or evil.
Here’s hoping they’re as vigilant at stopping nazi memes and hate speech as they are at keeping Donald Trump from getting a free ad — and at protecting Chubby Checker’s feelings.
It was October 15th and President Joe Biden was pissed, fuming, from the soles of his shiny brogans to the tips of his little white mullet. He looked around the White House Situation Room at his gathered political team and growled: “We have an issue, people.”
“Yes sir, several,” said press secretary Jen Psaki, brightly, “and we’re tackling all of them today, as you’ll see. First, of course, we need to figure out what the heck to do about Joe Manchin …”
“Eff Joe Manchin,” said the president.
“Well, yes sir. Sure. We can come back to that. And we have to determine what concessions we can get on climate change from …”
“Eff climate change.”
“What? Sir, please … What about your trip to Europe in two weeks? You’re meeting the pope.”
“JEN, you’re not understanding me. There is only one issue we need to deal with right now … and that’s Brian Kelsey.”
“Who?”
“Brian Kelsey, the Tennessee state senator who lives in Nashville and represents Germantown. He’s the key to everything. If we can bring down Brian Kelsey, it all falls into place! We’ll be able to get full socialism, at last — gun bans, knife bans, in-utero vaccinations, $50-an-hour minimum wage for Black people, forced healthcare for the sick, the teaching of facts and science in public schools, required face masks for pets, all of it.”
“I had no idea,” said Psaki.
“Oh yeah,” said the president. “Kelsey’s the head of the snake. That’s why I’m announcing today the launch of a top-secret federal plan to take him out. It’s called ‘Operation Let’s Go, Brian.’ That little rat bastard’s going down like the Titanic.”
I may have made up some of the above material. Or all of it. But after seeing Brian Kelsey’s overwrought, self-righteous reaction to the announcement that he’d been indicted on five federal felony counts of campaign fraud last week, it’s clear he’d love us to believe it.
“Look, this is nothing but a political witch hunt,” Kelsey said when the indictments were announced. “The Biden administration is trying to take me out because I’m conservative and I’m the number-one target of the Tennessee Democratic Party.”
Really? This presumes that a) Joe Biden has actually ever heard of Tennessee state senator Brian Kelsey, which is doubtful; and b) that even if he had heard of him, he would have been able to launch an investigation in 2017, when the FBI began looking into Kelsey’s case and when a certain orange-haired former president was in charge of the Justice Department. In short, Kelsey is spewing horse puckey.
His case stems from 2016, when Kelsey was making a run for Congress and attempted to switch funds he’d raised for his state races to an account for his federal race, which is a federal crime. The grand jury that indicted Kelsey alleges that he laundered the money by using state campaign funds to “buy” a membership into a Nashville supper club, which then conveniently made a like donation to Kelsey’s Congressional campaign fund. Slick, if true. And I’m guessing it is, since a number of Republicans are facing similar allegations regarding this “supper club.”
And, as is usual for Republicans these days, Kelsey immediately played the victim card, claiming persecution by the current GOP whipping boy, President Biden. Let’s go, Brandon!
It’s really bad timing for Kelsey. He’ll be distracted from the “Right to Get Sick” special session currently going on in Nashville, in which Republicans are attempting to pass every possible measure they can think of to stop local health departments, private businesses, and government officials from mandating any precautions against any pandemics, current and future.
I can’t imagine anything stupider, but then again, I could have never imagined a major U.S. political party intentionally linking itself to the Dark Ages, eschewing science and reason and spreading ignorance and divisiveness — from the top of the party to obscure state senators from Tennessee.
Brian Kelsey says he’s innocent, and that President Joe Biden is out to get him. We know the latter statement is a lie. The jury is still out on the former.
Call me a masochist, but I’ve stayed in touch with former president Donald J. Trump. Or, better said, I’ve allowed him to stay in touch with me.
Trump was booted off Twitter on January 8th for violating that social medium’s “glorification of violence” policy. And there’s little doubt that his tweets surrounding the January 6th insurrection and its aftermath glorified the actions of those who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol.
“American patriots,” Trump tweeted on January 8th, “will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly.” Trump added, “I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th,” which Twitter interpreted as: “So if some of you patriots want to come and mess that up, feel free.”
That was Trump’s last tweet. He briefly experimented with other social media platforms but got no traction, and finally he settled on email as the best way to deliver his message. I signed up for it on the theory that we better keep an eye on the sumbitch.
At first, Trump’s emails were tweet-length rants in the form of a “Statement by Donald J. Trump, 45th President of the United States of America.” All the catchphrases were there: “Radical left Democrats,” “Disgraceful RINO Republicans,” “Fake News,” and, of course, “Russia, Russia, Russia.”
Now things have changed. Sure, Trump still emails the occasional “statement,” but it’s almost like he’s just going through the motions, like the Beach Boys playing the Beau Rivage casino — singing the hits for the money. And make no mistake: Money is what this is all about.
Consider: On October 14th, a typical day, I got 15 emails from Trump. Fifteen! I’m old, so I’m targeted by a lot of email marketers, but none of them think I’m stupid enough to open 15 emails a day in order to win a football signed by The Donald or an invitation to Mar-a-Lago or to become a member of the Day One club (where, according to Donald Trump Jr., “your name will be first on the list my father sees”). Or I could win a signed hat, a signed poster, a signed photograph, a personalized welcome mat, or (gasp!) lunch with Kimberly Guilfoyle. The approaches vary but the closing pitch is always the same: Give me, your beloved president, some money.
If you click on “Donate,” you’ll see a countdown clock at 59 minutes with the following clever text:
President Trump is working around the clock to SAVE AMERICA from Joe Biden and the Radical Left, but he cannot do it alone. He’s calling on YOU to step up.
For 1 HOUR ONLY: you can INCREASE your impact by 300%! Please make a contribution of ANY AMOUNT IMMEDIATELY to help President Trump SAVE AMERICA!
So, as you can see, it’s an emergency. Helpfully, when an American Patriot™ donates, say, $50 to Save America, he is automatically signed up to give that amount monthly forever — or until he notices the money disappearing from his bank account and decides to opt out.
If you read the fine print (so boring!), you discover that the money goes to Save America JFC, a joint fundraising committee on behalf of Save America and Make America Great Again PAC (“MAGAPac”). And if you read all the way to the bottom, you’ll reach the money shot: “Not authorized by any candidate or candidate’s committee.”
That means this money is not going to help Donald Trump or any candidate get elected. It is not going to help Donald Trump “save America.” It is going to help Donald Trump pay his bills, fuel his jet, fund his lawyers, and settle his lawsuits. It is a grift, pure and simple. It is what Trump has done all his life.
No salmonella with this gecko — only smiles and car-insurance deals. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)
If you’ve felt a strange urge to buy car insurance lately, it could be because of the subliminal influence of the gecko invasion that has swept into Memphis and environs in recent years. To be precise, these new (-ish) residents are Mediterranean geckos. Speckled and almost translucent when they are young, they can reach about four inches in length in adulthood. They are sort of adorable-looking. At least, I think so. Your mileage may vary.
I first spotted one of the MGs hanging out around my porch light on a summer night about five years ago. I took a picture of him, looked him up on the Google, and thought, “Cool, we have a gecko.”
Little did I know.
Now we have a lot of geckos. I still see them around the back-porch light at night, where I’m told they are very good at snagging the occasional careless june bug or moth. They also live in the rocky crevasses around our flower beds and under the patio furniture. When I open the garage door, I can always count on seeing one or two scampering for cover. (I mean, if geckos can scamper. They kind of writhe for cover, if I’m being honest.) Our cat has nailed a couple and left them as trophies on the doormat.
We have a thriving population, to say the least, one that has blossomed in the past couple of years. And we’re not alone, apparently. The MGs have been the subject of several posts on nextdoor.com, which means they’ve arrived — right up there with dog poop, fireworks, doorbell videos, and suspicious characters.
One post — “Anybody know what kind of lizard this is?” — drew numerous comments. Turns out not everybody thinks they’re adorable. One commenter said: “I hate those see-through things. They give me the hebbie jebbies big time.” Another person warned that someone told her that geckos carry salmonella as a “defense mechanism.” Which is misinformation. (I know, hard to believe that an internet comment could be wrong, but crazy stuff happens.) Salmonella is a phenomenon occasionally associated with pet geckos, but not our local wild MGs. And it’s not a defense mechanism. Jeez.
On another gecko-related nextdoor.com post from September 24th, someone commented: “I’ve had two in my house the past week! I accidentally got the tail on one and it squirmed for a half hour after I put the gecko outside lol.” Whoa. That’s enough to give anyone the “hebbie jebbies.”
So where did they come from? Why are they in Memphis? And what do they want from us? I turned to Matthew Parris, an associate professor of biology at the University of Memphis, for answers.
“The Mediterranean gecko is an invasive reptile species native to southern Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East,” he said. “It has expanded its range through unintentional introduction to the United States, with first reports of it in Florida from around 1910. It’s established populations throughout the southeastern U.S., and there have now been reported sightings in more than 20 states.”
So when did these little dudes get to Memphis? Parris said the first reports of the species in the Memphis area were in 2007. “The species is very adept at surviving in urban landscapes,” he added, “and is relatively common in city environments within its range.”
The geckos have also obviously become adept at finding ways to survive Memphis’ occasional sub-freezing temperatures. MGs appear to be hardy and resourceful little suckers, to say the least.
“They’re nocturnal and feed on insects,” Parrish said. “Their impact on native reptile communities is unknown, but the animal causes no obvious harm to people, pets, or the natural environment.”
Which means, no matter what you might read on the internet, they’re not suspicious characters. They won’t hurt you, even if you can see through them. They’re just friendly immigrants from the Mediterranean region who mean us no harm. They’re sending their best.
Cars parked on the Greensward (Photo: savethegreensward.org)
Let us hearken now to those halcyon days of 2016, back to the difficult final months of the Great Battle of the Greensward. For those of you new to the history of the Kingdom of Memphis, let me share the tale: The Memphis Zoo — led at that time by a rather intransigent fellow named Chuck “You and the Horse You Rode In On” Brady — had begun to allow increasing numbers of cars to park on the Overton Park Greensward, a large, flat, grassy field used by park patrons for Frisbee football, soccer, picnics, and the occasional drum circle.
Over several years, the zoo kept expanding its parking footprint, finally going so far as to set up temporary fencing across the middle of the Greensward — usually on nice weekend days. On one side of the fence were people doing the aforementioned park things. On the other side were cars, SUVs, trucks, and the occasional bus, which left dead grass, mud, and deep, rutted tire tracks in the Greensward, rendering it useless for recreation even when it wasn’t being parked on.
Things started getting really heated in 2014. Park lovers formed groups: Get Off Our Lawn (GOOL) and Citizens to Preserve Overton Park (CPOP). Activists stood on nearby street corners urging zoo patrons to park on nearby streets, rather than despoiling the Greensward. Aerial photographs were taken that showed just how much of the people’s parkland was being taken over by a private entity. The pictures got national attention. Protestors were arrested. Houses all over Midtown bore signs urging Memphis to save the Greensward. Then the zoo cut down some trees. Some activists threatened to begin spray-painting cars. A zoo sign at the park entrance was defaced. Things were tense.
And then, in the winter of 2016, newly elected Mayor Jim Strickland managed to get both sides into mediation. After months of costly negotiation, a compromise was struck. The zoo would be allowed to enlarge its lot to 415 spaces, taking some of the Greensward, but with the great majority of the land being preserved. The zoo subsequently announced that it would build a parking garage on nearby Prentiss Place and wouldn’t need to expand its lot. Huzzah! Parking on the Greensward was a thing of the past. Peace reigned in the Kingdom.
At least it did until last Friday night at 5:06 p.m., when the zoo and city issued a joint press release stating that the Prentiss garage project was being scrapped because it was too expensive and that the zoo would go back to the lot-expansion plan, and, oh, while it was being expanded, the zoo would once again be letting its customers park on the Greensward. Enjoy your weekend. Nothing to see here.
This is some seriously tone-deaf policy and very stupid politics. The zoo has amply demonstrated over the past five years that it can operate without parking on the Greensward. The zoo has also amply demonstrated that it has the resources to raise millions of dollars from its patrons and funders. Now it can’t afford a parking garage? There’s an aroma of fish here. You don’t do a Friday night news dump unless you know you’re doing something that doesn’t bear scrutiny in the light of day.
Activists are already meeting and planning. This move is not going to play well with those who went through all this drama five years ago. And I need not remind those who’ve lived here a while that Overton Park has been under assault before, and that its supporters (then derided as “little old ladies in tennis shoes”) once managed to defeat the mighty U.S. government when it announced plans to split the park with Interstate 40 more than 50 years ago. Overton Park is the only place in the country where I-40 was stopped and forced to take a detour.
The force is strong in this place, this Old Forest, this people’s park. There is a history here, and the Memphis Zoo and the city of Memphis would be wise to take a cue from it.
It’s a simple question, really, one I’ve heard numerous times in recent months: “Who’s going to live in all these new apartment buildings in Midtown?”
New complexes have sprouted all along Madison — across from Minglewood, next to Cash Saver, at the corner of McLean. There are new apartments at McLean and Union and more going up at Sam Cooper and East Parkway. There is no doubt that there is an apartment-building boom.
So, who’s going to live in all these new apartments? The question got even more interesting on the heels of just-released U.S. Census data that show Midtown and Downtown (where another apartment-building boom has occurred) both actually lost a little population between 2010 and 2020. There seems to be a disconnect.
I asked two developers (both of whom asked to comment anonymously) and a former president of the Memphis Area Association of Realtors. Interestingly, all pointed to the recession of 2008 as a major turning point in the housing market.
“After 2008, it was the same all over the country,” said one of the developers. “The single-family home building business got decimated, so the supply of new housing was constrained for a number of years. There was a demand shift to less owner-occupied housing, more rental housing. Some of that is still playing out.”
“Midtown is really hot,” said the other developer I talked to. “Houses go on the market and sell within hours. There’s not much new housing stock, really — nowhere to build. Developers develop what the market demands, and right now, that’s apartments. And these apartments are getting leased.”
Kathryn Garland, immediate past president of the Memphis Area Association of Realtors agreed that the Midtown market is tight. “It’s gotten to where some people might want to sell, but they’re afraid they won’t be able to get another house in the area, and they can’t afford to close on a new house before selling their old one, so they stay put, which keeps the market tight. And many landlords lost a lot of money during the pandemic because of the eviction freeze. I know some who are turning rental units into BnBs, just to try to recoup. And that also tightens the available housing.”
So how do we reconcile population loss with an apartment-building boom? There are several possibilities, not all mutually exclusive. It’s possible, for example, that Midtown’s population fell lower at some point, say 2015, and started to pick back up in the past couple of years, which looks like a boom. It’s also possible that the demand for Midtown housing and the attendant rental increases have driven the less-affluent to other neighborhoods, countering the population growth of new people moving in.
“I’m still not convinced the data has caught up with any of what’s happened in the past couple of years,” said one of the developers. “The pandemic has impacted housing in ways we’re still not completely understanding. People whose company headquarters are in New York or Chicago are now letting their employees work from anywhere. Some of those people are moving to markets like Memphis because they can afford nicer apartments and homes. We haven’t been able to quantify that yet, but it’s happening.”
“The pandemic is affecting the commercial market, as well,” said Garland. “Commercial realtors will tell you that the office space market has changed entirely. Companies are downsizing their space, moving to Zoom meetings, letting employees work wherever they like. Things are in flux.”
But what happens when all the young people moving in get older, have children, want a yard and a dog? Does the apartment bubble burst?
“Of course, the apartment bubble could burst,” said one developer. “You’re always trying to figure out your next move. Sometimes, you just pull in your wings and see where the demand goes.”
“Often, apartment buildings become condo buildings as demand changes,” said Garland. “There are lots of older folks, retirees, who are moving into apartments and condos in Downtown and Midtown when they downsize. Their homes out east get bought by young families. It’s all a cycle.”
I’m sitting in a kayak somewhere between Lamar and Airways Boulevard. There are two barbs from a fishing lure’s rear treble hook embedded in my left calf. The lure’s front treble hook is snagged on the backpack in the bottom of my boat. To simplify, I am attached to my backpack by a fishing lure. It hurts. A lot. I’m too tired to panic, but I am starting to wonder why I am here — and how I will get out.
Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden
How It Started
It’s a story that began with a simple pitch to my editor: I’ll float Nonconnah Creek from somewhere in East Memphis all the way to McKellar Lake. It will be a quirky lark, and it could be interesting to see what I find in and along the Wolf River’s unsexy sibling, a creek that follows I-240 through the southern underbelly of Memphis. A couple freelancers wrote about it for the Flyer a dozen years ago, but things have probably changed since then. I pitched it as a fun urban adventure. He went for it, probably because I’m quite the smooth talker.
While planning my trip, I quickly learned that getting onto Nonconnah Creek is not an easy thing. There are no access points, no parks, no trails, no obvious spots where you can slide a boat in. After much searching on Google Maps, I finally spotted a nondescript motel near Perkins Road that appeared to have a parking lot that backed up to the creek. When I drove there, I discovered the lot was only 30 feet from the stream, with no fence to impede a launch. I figured it might be dicey if security cameras caught me, but knowing I could be in the water in five minutes made me confident I’d be paddling before anyone could ask questions. I just needed a getaway driver.
For that, I enlisted my stepson, Roman, who cheerfully drove me to the lot around 8 a.m. last Tuesday. It all went off without a hitch — no motel gendarmes, no hassles — as we schlepped my kayak down to the creek. I tossed in a backpack filled with four cans of water, three power bars, two bananas, a rain jacket, two phone chargers, sunscreen, and a small box of fishing lures. And I stuck a spin-casting outfit in the rod holder.
The author naively enters the stream. (Photo: Roman Darker)
As I waded in and pushed off, Roman snapped some pics. McKellar Lake was 11 miles away. I told Roman I’d meet him at the Riverside boat ramp in Martin Luther King Jr. Park, probably around 2 o’clock, figuring on a leisurely two-miles-an-hour paddle, including time to dawdle and fish and take pictures. Piece of cake.
“I’ll text you when I’m near there,” I said. “Thanks for bringing me.”
“Have fun!” he said.
The water was slightly murky at the put-in, three to four feet deep in most places, but you could easily see the bottom. There didn’t seem to be much flow. Wildlife was abundant. Turtles fell like stones from logs. A night heron calmly watched me pass by from a low branch, showing no fear. At the first bend I flushed eight wood ducks and a white egret from a gravel bar. I felt like David Attenborough should be narrating this trip. Except for the plastic bags.
If you aren’t opposed to plastic bags, paddling Nonconnah Creek will change your mind. There’s pretty water and lots of wildlife, but hanging from countless limbs and branches are plastic bags, left during high water, festooning the shoreline like ghostly Halloween decorations. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. Anyway … think about it.
The first rock-pile traverse of the day at Perkins. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)
Twenty minutes in, I spotted the Perkins Road bridge ahead — and a massive pile of rocks beneath it, all the way across, dry as dust. I made a note on my phone recorder: “Looks like I’ll have to spend a few minutes dragging the kayak over a pile of rocks.”
Fifteen minutes later, I was finally back in the water on the other side. My shirt was soaked through with sweat. I broke out a can of water and inhaled it. Hopefully, not all the bridges between here and McKellar Lake were going to be like this one, I thought. Mentally counting, I could think of eight: Getwell, Lamar, Airways (two), Nonconnah Road, I-55 (at least two), and Highway 61. Yikes. Surely the water will get deeper, I hoped, knowing if it didn’t, I could be in for a very long day.
How It’s Going
The creek between the Perkins and Getwell bridges had pools of paddle-able water interspersed with a shallow channel snaking between gravel bars that I had to wade, pulling the kayak behind me. It was beginning to dawn on me that I should have checked the creek’s water level more thoroughly than I did. It had seemed fine at the motel lot. Downstream, it appeared, not so much. I was spending more time wading than paddling. After one exhausting 10-minute drag, feet going six inches into the mud with every step, I came to a long, deep pool — no gravel bar in sight. The Google map said I was getting near the Getwell bridge. I plopped into the kayak with a sigh of relief and began to paddle.
I spotted some minnows being chased in the shallows, so I tossed a small Rapala lure near the nervous water. It was immediately whacked by a 10-inch largemouth, which jumped and ran and finally slipped the hook. I cast again and hooked another bass, which I got to the boat and released. My mood improved immensely. Finally, I was paddling and catching fish, just as I’d hoped I would be. Things were looking up. A great blue heron glided past. Surely a good omen. Nope.
A black-crowned night heron surveys the hapless paddler. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)
The Getwell bridge was another nightmare — 50 yards of arduous rock-pile leading to a drop of three feet into the next pool. Beyond that pool, 100 yards downstream, I could see an immense gravel bar. I was beginning to understand that reaching McKellar Lake was probably not in the cards. I’d been on the creek for almost three hours and was approximately one-sixth of the way there. At this low water level, Nonconnah wasn’t a stream. It was a series of still pools and gravel bars.
An abandoned railroad bridge below Lamar provides another obstacle to be portaged around. (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)
I pulled out my phone and looked at the Google map. The next two bridges were quite a ways downstream — first Lamar, then a mile or so later, Airways — both busy, multi-lane highways. Even if I could somehow drag an 80-pound kayak up to either road, there was no place to wait for pickup. I was beginning to realize that Nonconnah Creek was going to be just as hard to get off of as it was to get onto.
Just past Airways on the map was Nonconnah Boulevard, a smaller road — not a highway — as I recalled. After that, it was a long way to the next bridge. Nonconnah Boulevard would have to do, somehow. I texted Roman and told him the new plan and that I’d call when I got there.
There was a sense of relief in the decision. The goalpost had been moved closer, and I was halfway there. Making things better was the happy discovery 20 minutes later that the bridge at Lamar had no rock-pile. I paddled blissfully under the road, thanking the stream gods as the pools seemed to grow longer and the sandbars fewer. An osprey, chased by two kingfishers, skirted the treetops.
Welcome to the Hotel California
It was early afternoon and I was thinking writerly thoughts — about how I might reconfigure my Nonconnah Creek story in light of the fact that it had changed from a fun float to McKellar Lake to a grueling slog about a fourth of that distance. I was thinking about fresh headlines: “Nonconnah? Not Gonna!” Or maybe, “Nonconnah, the Hotel California of Creeks.” Because, you know, you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.
Like that.
Still, I was feeling better, a burden lifted. I was paddling more than I was wading, and I only had another hour or so to go, with any luck. I slammed another can of water, ate a banana, and decided, what the hell, why not fish?
I will say this about the stretch of Nonconnah Creek between Lamar and Airways: It has very good fishing. I caught one feisty bass after another. I was actually enjoying the day again. After a few hundred yards of this, I tossed the Rapala near a submerged log about 30 feet away and was startled by a huge eruption. The biggest fish I’d seen so far lunged to the surface but missed the lure. Hurriedly, I tossed the Rapala back to the same spot and jerked it a couple of times. It got stuck on the log underwater. Dammit. I gave the rod a hard jerk and watched the Rapala shoot like a bullet into the kayak, simultaneously hooking my calf and my backpack.
There are moments in life when something so ridiculous happens so suddenly you don’t realize its import. It takes a minute. I sat there observing the absurdity of my situation, unable to move without making it worse, stuck in the middle of a creek with no one around to help or commiserate with me — or even laugh about it.
In this situation, as any fisherman will tell you, there are two basic options. One is to force the embedded hook-points out through the skin, flatten the now-exposed barbs with a pair of pliers, and then slide the hooks back out. The other is to just rotate the hooks as far back out as possible, then jerk them out the rest of the way, barbs be damned. I didn’t have any pliers, so option two was pretty much it.
I used my pocketknife to cut away the backpack from the other end of the lure. The Rapala hung from my calf, like a leg earring. I paddled to the shore to get firm footing for the coming pain festival. I sat on the gravel, slipped the blade of my pocketknife under the bend in the impaled hooks, took a deep breath, and popped it away from my leg, quick and hard. It hurt, but it didn’t bleed much, and I had a bit of a “fuck yeah, I did that” moment. Then I poured fizzy water on it and ate a power bar and got back to paddling. It looked like I’d been bitten by a tiny rattler.
Nailing the Landing
There were three roads to go under at Airways, but the water was high enough under all three that it made me think that the wading-and-dragging sections were finally behind me. I did note that all three bridges were at least 40 feet above the water and that there were no discernible paths up to the roadways through the undergrowth. I hoped Nonconnah Boulevard would be different, thinking it would be somehow poetic if I could end this misadventure on a street named after the creek I was on.
Twenty minutes later, I was sitting in my kayak on Nonconnah Creek underneath Nonconnah Boulevard. Nonconnah possibly understand the joy I felt when I saw that this bridge was lower, closer to the creek, and that the angle of the terrain to the top was not overgrown and considerably more reasonable than any I’d seen so far. I left the kayak and clambered up the slope, paddle in hand as a walking stick. At the top, just under the bridge itself, I found a flattened grassy road of some sort. Eureka! As I emerged from under the bridge, I surprised three people sitting in the bed of a pickup truck with a gas company logo on it. They looked at me as though I were strange or something. Go figure.
“I need to bring my kayak up from the creek,” I said. “Is there a place around here I can put it until my ride gets here?”
“Sure,” said one of the guys, pointing. “That office building parking lot right there ought to be okay.”
This was the best news I’d had for a while. I went back down to the kayak, texted Roman my location, and laboriously dragged the boat up the slope to the parking lot. It was 3 p.m. I’d been on Nonconnah Creek for seven hours and gone about four miles, wading and dragging a kayak about half of that distance. I was as exhausted as I’ve been in many a year.
Friends, I do not recommend this float to you, unless the water level is at least a foot higher. And even at that, I recommend you start at Lamar, where the creek gets a bit deeper and the fishing is good, and you can get out in fairly short order. This is not a stream to mess around with. Take it from someone who messed around with it.
The issue of a possible city/county government consolidation for Memphis and Shelby County has been somewhat buried in the news cycle. In case you missed it, here’s the short version: Memphis City Council members Chase Carlisle and JB Smiley Jr. are floating a consolidation proposal that would be put on the November 22, 2022, ballot.
Let me cite the Daily Memphian’s report: “By the terms of the resolution, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland would appoint five citizens to the eventual 15-member body and take those names to a council committee for review within 21 days of the council vote approving the resolution. … A confirmation vote on the five by the council would follow within 30 days of the council approving the charter commission resolution. The resolution urges the Shelby County Commission to take the same action. … The charter commission would hold its first meeting Nov. 1 and complete its work August 1, 2022, with filing of the charter.”
Are you still awake?
This has about as much chance of passing into law as does a countywide anti-barbecue ordinance. Past efforts at conjoining county and city have failed for a reason. Remember the disastrous “consolidation” of the city and county school systems? Memphis City Schools shut down in order to merge with Shelby County Schools. The suburban municipalities would have none of it, forming their own districts and bailing on consolidation. For all intents and purposes, Shelby County Schools is now basically Memphis Public Schools under another name.
We are a bit like Afghanistan, where the U.S. government tried for 20 years to establish a national government, spending billions on infrastructure, weaponry, education, and our own blood and treasure. It all collapsed like a Jenga tower on a trampoline when the final date of U.S. troop withdrawal was announced. The puppet regime fled the country; the Afghan government troops evaporated; the Taliban walked into Kabul, unopposed.
The original withdrawal deal was set up by former President Trump, who released 5,000 Taliban troops as a gesture of good faith and pledged to remove U.S. troops by May. President Biden backed up Trump’s withdrawal date from May to September but didn’t change much else. The final week of chaos, hurried flights to safety via a massive airlift, and a last-minute suicide bombing that cost 13 American lives gave pundits and keyboard kommandos of every stripe a couple weeks worth of second-guessing, but not much else. Most Americans are glad we’re finally out of that hell-hole.
What did we learn? Afghanistan is a landmass with a prescribed border, but it is not a country and certainly not a place to attempt nation-building. Rather, it is a conglomeration of tribes and religious and ethnic groups, many of whom have been feuding for centuries.
Shelby County is also a landmass with a prescribed border and home to various tribes, most of whom have little in common, and some of whom have been feuding for decades.
How many times have you heard a Midtowner say, “I don’t go beyond the Parkways”? How many times have you read an online comment from a suburbanite disparaging Memphis’ crime? People who live in Bartlett, Millington, Germantown, Lakeland, Arlington, and Collierville don’t see themselves as Memphians. And why should they? They don’t live here. They have their own communities with schools, police departments, and governments. The proposed consolidation would leave the burbs intact as towns, but their citizens — as residents of Shelby County — would still have a vote in the referendum. How do you think that will go?
Memphis is blue. The rest of the county is red. We can come together over barbecue, the Grizzlies, the Tigers, and not much else. I love this city and I’m proud to call it home. People in Germantown feel the same way about their town. We can get along fine for the most part, as long as we avoid politics. We even make occasional forays into foreign territory for shopping, dinner, sports, or music. But putting together a consolidation package that would win 51 percent of the vote in this fractious county is not very likely to happen.
And let’s be honest: Nobody wants to go through an airlift around here.
It’s become almost a daily story in the media: Some outspoken anti-vaxxer dies of Covid. Some are repentant in their final days, like conservative radio talker Phil Valentine of Nashville, who, after coming down with the disease, changed his tune and urged his listeners to get vaccinated — before he died on a ventilator. Others have gone to meet their maker still insisting that a) Covid was a hoax, b) the vaccines don’t work, or c) they really just had the flu.
Three conservative radio hosts have died in recent weeks: Valentine and two Florida talk-show mainstays — Marc Bernier and Dick Farrel. All three disparaged the vaccine, masks, and distancing; trashed the CDC; and told listeners not to fear Covid. Bernier tweeted: “Now the government is acting like Nazis, saying ‘get the shot.’” Farrel tweeted: “Why take a vax promoted by people who lied 2u all along about masks, where the virus came from, and the death toll?” He also called Anthony Fauci “a power-tripping lying freak.”
This week, Joe Rogan, aka the “little ball of anger,” the most popular podcaster in America, announced that he’d contracted Covid. Rogan, unsurprisingly, is also an anti-vaxxer. He claims that he is taking a horse dewormer to treat his case. I hope he is as lucky as he is stupid.
But it’s not just radio hosts who are dying from denial of science and common sense, who are losing the ultimate bet, making the deadly choice to pick ideology over science and medicine. It’s evangelical ministers, politicians, anti-mask leaders, and other assorted right-wing spokespeople, now dead because they bought the bilge being spewed by Valentine and their cohorts, and, even worse, by prominent talk-show blatherers with national audiences, like the loathsome and hypocritical Tucker Carlson (who’s been vaccinated) and Laura Ingraham (also vaccinated), to name just two. Their lies are quite literally getting people killed.
Several country music stars and boomer rock heroes like Eric Clapton and Van Morrison are also virulent and outspoken in their anti-vax, anti-mask positions. The latter two have written horrible songs about losing their freedom. To be idiots? Most of Kid Rock’s maskless band caught Covid at the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally last month. (South Dakota’s Covid infection rate went up 700 percent following the gathering.)
Locally and statewide, we are seeing the results of a low vaccination rate and anti-mask sentiment, due mostly to ignorance and ideology. Parents in this county and this state are intentionally sending their children to school, unmasked and unvaccinated, convinced that all these deaths, these ever-rising case numbers, these young people dying in our hospitals, are somehow a Joe Biden/Anthony Fauci plot to take away their freedom. Their own children (and ours) are being sacrificed on the altar of know-nothing ideology, aided and abetted by GOP state governors, including our own absurdly incompetent Bill Lee, who when asked how he planned to deal with the fact that Tennessee now has the highest infection rate in the nation, answered that he didn’t plan to “change strategy.”
“Strategy?” No, Bill. “Strategy” is a plan, a course of action, a way to take on a problem sickening and killing the people in your state. Sitting on your ass and saying that “parents know best” is not a strategy. You are an embarrassment, a wanna-be DeSantis, a mini-Trump with the charisma of a pine-stump.
King Arthur and the Black Knight
All this reminds me of nothing so much as the fight scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, in which the Black Knight refuses to allow King Arthur to pass. In the ensuing sword fight, the knight’s left arm is hacked off. “’Tis but a scratch,” he proclaims, fighting on. When his right arm is severed, he still refuses to surrender.
“Look, you stupid bastard,” says Arthur. “You’ve got no arms left!”
“’Tis but a flesh wound,” says the knight.
Then a leg is sliced off, then the other. Still he persists, shouting insults and threats, a noisy torso on the ground. “The Black Knight never loses!” he shouts.
