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.
The I-40 exit for Highway 13 is pretty typical, as these things go. There’s a McDonald’s, three gas stations, a couple of chain restaurants, four motels. Numerous signs tout Loretta Lynn’s Ranch and Resort, just up the road. A little north of Loretta’s place, 15 miles from the exit, sits the town of Waverly, Tennessee, home to 4,000 people and the site of a horrific disaster on the weekend of August 20th.
A freak storm hit the mountains to the east of Waverly that night, dumping 17 inches of rain in six hours near the hill town of McEwen, all-time record for the state. The only outlets for the water were five streams: Trace Creek, Blue Creek, Hurricane Creek, Tumbling Creek, and the Piney River. Waverly has the misfortune to be split by Trace Creek, normally a small clear stream, maybe 30 feet wide, three feet deep in its pools. But on this night, the placid little waterway became a deadly funnel for the torrential rain coming out of the highlands. Dozens of houses along the creek in Waverly, mostly modest frame structures, including some public housing — what locals call the “projects” — were inundated by the wave.
Twenty people were killed. Twin seven-month-old babies were ripped from their father’s arms; two teenage sisters were separated in the deluge. One survived; the body of the 15-year-old, last seen clinging to a piece of debris being washed downstream, was later found. Houses, cars, furniture, appliances, and the contents of more than 100 homes were flushed away.
As you enter Waverly, nothing seems amiss in the business district, which is on higher ground a couple blocks from the creek. But the two streets nearest the stream are a nightmarish wasteland: Houses sit in the middle of streets; cars are stacked against trees like ladders; washing machines, boats, fencing, furniture, books, televisions, and other human detritus are strewn everywhere. At a gas station, a house sits near the pumps, as if looking for fuel. An enormous dead wild boar floats belly-up in a backwater pool.
A freak storm leaves Waverly, Tennessee, in a state of catastrophic despair, with 20 people killed. (Photos: Bruce Vanwyngarden)
I wander the area, taking pictures, trying not to bother the National Guard and other salvage and cleanup operations. A Tennessee park ranger pulls up as I survey the trashed but now-tranquil stream.
“Is this your property?” he asks.
“No, I’m from a Memphis newspaper, up here to do a story.”
“Good,” he says. “All this just disappeared from the news in one day, and it’s just unbelievable what happened here. Go ahead, just be careful.”
I approach a man and woman sitting on the porch of a white frame house that looks largely unaffected by the storm. Across the street, a house sits cockeyed on its foundation with a pickup truck standing nearly vertical in the yard. Tricia and Chris Wilcher, mother and son, have stories to tell.
Tricia was home and saw the water rising, which isn’t uncommon in Waverly. Creeks rise. “We’ve lived through lots of flooding here, but nothing like this one,” she says. “People were out looking at the water. At first it looked like a monster crawling around on the ground between the houses, then BOOM, it was like a tsunami — and everything just got swept away.”
How does a tsunami happen in the middle of Tennessee? The current thinking is that a massive amount of water pooled behind a railroad track bed that suddenly gave way. Chris Wilcher says he witnessed it. “I was on my way home from work in Nashville and I stopped in Gorman because the roads were getting flooded. You could see the water building like a huge lake behind the railroad tracks up there. Then it started pouring over the tracks, then the bed gave way, and all that water just rushed out at once. It looked like a dam had broken, or like the levees with Katrina.”
“Chris saw that and texted me and said, ‘Mom, you have to get out. Lots of water is coming,’” says Tricia. “A friend of his came and got me. Water didn’t get into our house, but it came up to the porch. I’m still having nightmares about it. I’m still shaken.”
She’s not alone. A lot of people are shaken in Waverly. A week after the horror, they stand watching bulldozers clear the streets, everything they owned, gone or destroyed.
On my way out of town, I notice a young woman in shorts and tank-top walking in Trace Creek with a wading stick. She pokes at debris, moves tree limbs, then wades on, looking for something, something that’s likely gone forever.
For information on how you can help, call the Red Cross Disaster Health Services in Waverly: 1-800-REDCROSS.
Between Manassas and Danny Thomas, just a block from the restored and gilded mansions of Victorian Village, is another village of sorts. It’s the Hospitality Hub, a resource center for those experiencing homelessness in Memphis.
Outside the small office, a line of 10 or 12 men stands, waiting to meet with an outreach advisor, someone who might help them get an ID so they can access their social security checks or a veteran’s pension, someone who can maybe help them find work or shelter or food or medical attention — someone to listen.
As I approach, one of the men asks if I have any work for him. He’s a small, personable fellow, who seems sincere. We chat for a minute. I say I don’t have any work but I might someday, and I start to turn away.
“Well, how you gonna know who I am?” he asks, reasonably enough. He pulls out a photo ID and proudly shows it to me. “Elliot Allen is my name,” he says. “Can you remember it?”
“Yes, I can. I’m gonna record it.” I speak his name into my phone. “Elliot Allen.”
“That’s pretty slick,” he says. “Nice talking to you.”
Kelcey Johnson (Photo: Bruce VanWyngarden)
Hub Director Kelcey Johnson shows me around the place. We walk over to take a look at five mini-homes. “We finished these in early July,” Johnson says, opening the door to one unit. “Four are occupied and we have a possible client for this one.”
The interior is clean and simple and smells of wood. There is a bed, a chair, a picture on the wall, a heater, a small AC unit.
“These are all hardwood inside,” Johnson says. “Walls and floor. Each resident gets a new robe, slippers, sheets. As people are starting this new life journey away from homelessness, we don’t want to put anything old in here.”
I ask Johnson who gets to move into these units.
“The people living here are those who have been chronically homeless, long-time people we’ve known. Their mental and emotional conditions don’t allow them to stay in a shelter. Here, they have their own space, safe from the crowding, safe from the virus. They have a key to their unit and a key to the bathrooms. There is a sense of community in that they are separate but at the same time are together. The case managers are right here for them.”
The Hub provides, as Johnson says, “all the services you need to exit homelessness.” That includes helping clients get a state ID or birth certificate. “It’s something that brings you back into citizenship,” he says. “We do all the navigation with state and federal agencies. We’re also creating income for people through our Warm Welcome program. Every day, up to 22 people go out to work for three or four hours. They get $50 and lunch. It’s great for them and great for the city because it’s a big step in exiting homelessness.”
Johnson says the hardest people to get out of homelessness are those who have aged out of foster care. “These people have nothing, no support, no family to help them. We’re working with a woman now who fled her foster care at 14 and has been on her own ever since. She’s basically homeless because she’s never known how to find an apartment or sign a lease or do applications or get a birth certificate or social security card. She needs someone to guide her through these basic processes.”
This week, the Hub celebrated the start of construction on its new 32-bed women’s shelter. The organization also hopes to increase the number of its mini-units. “If this gets scaled up, it could be a national model,” says Johnson.
There is good work being done here, and it’s palpable.
As I leave, I spot my friend. “See ya, Elliot,” I say.
My fellow liberals, it is time to face up to the simple truth: The MAGAs have won. They’ve seen through our charade. The game is up. They have owned the libs.
For 18 months, we’ve attempted to fool them into thinking COVID-19 was real, and for 18 months they’ve resisted. We tried to convince them it was a deadly disease and that only a vaccine would stop it and save all of us from a plague of sickness and death. We reassured them that the vaccine didn’t cause birth defects or contain a microchip, but they were too smart for us. We told them over and over again how important it was to wear a mask, but they saw that scam for what it really was: just another way for us to take away their freedom.
We tried everything: scientific “evidence” from the Centers for Disease Control, terrifying mortality statistics, scary maps of infected areas in red states, tearful and heartfelt testimonies from overworked healthcare providers, and even interviews with dying people saying they wished they’d taken the vaccine. None of it worked. The MAGAs saw through it all like cheap plastic wrap. All that “news” about the vaccine being 90 percent effective, all those crisis actors in nurse uniforms, even “Dr. Fauci” — it was all in vain. (In retrospect, having Fauci rhyme with “ouchy” was a bad move.)
They didn’t believe us when we told them 35 million unvaccinated (and counting) Americans had gotten COVID. Or when we said more than 625,000 Americans had died from the disease. Or when we pointed out how quickly the disease receded once we started getting millions of Americans vaccinated in January of this year. Or when we tried to explain that there was a new strain that is about to make us go through pandemic hell all over again if we don’t get 70 percent of us vaccinated.
They knew better. Of course, they had help. Republican Party leaders and their friends at Fox News and elsewhere in the right-wing media caught on to the liberal hustle years ago — our secret plan to let Black and brown and queer people take over and turn the country communist and give everybody free healthcare and college tuition. They knew COVID was another liberal hoax, just like climate change, and they raised the alarm.
Now the gory “statistics” on COVID are rising again, but the Republicans and their faithful base are hip to our scam. They’ve figured out it’s just more fake news, another attempt to give the evil communist Democrat Joe Biden more power over the lives of real Americans.
GOP governors in Texas, Mississippi, Missouri, Florida, and elsewhere in Trumplandia are standing strong, signing executive orders banning schools, businesses, and local governments from issuing mask mandates or vaccine requirements. The courageous Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose state was averaging more new infections a day than the entire country of France last week (if you believe those “statistics”), issued the following statement on Friday while banning mask mandates for schools: “For more than a year our freedom has been under a constant assault by the radical left. Now they’re coming for your freedom again.”
It’s time for liberals to admit defeat. MAGAs and others are not going to take the vaccine or wear masks, and there is simply nothing we can do about it. We tried to take away their freedom but they stopped us.
Perhaps it would help if we started to accept that the vaccine is like a comfort blanket for us liberals. We get it because it makes us feel safer. And since we’re not hurting anybody by getting that silly jab, let’s keep doing it. In fact, if the Republicans don’t want it, maybe we can start using the country’s remaining vaccine supply for boosters for us snow-flakey creatures who would take some solace from it.
And I think we liberals should keep wearing masks in public indoor spaces for a while longer. It’ll be a cool way for us to recognize each other.
That and the fact that we’re not dying on a ventilator.
Tiara Woods and Paul Tracy are cleaning lions this week — namely the fearsome-looking stone creatures that guard the bottom of the stairs leading from Morrie Moss Lane up to the west side of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.
The lions have been on duty in this location since at least the early 1980s, when they were moved here from a grand mansion that once stood on Union Avenue. Paul and Tiara have been on duty in this location for seven days, as of last Friday.
Though the lions were unable to protect their former home from the predations of a fast-food franchise developer, they’ve held up nicely here in this shady nook in Overton Park — except for some lichens, moss, soot, forest detritus, and occasional bird poop. They still look fierce, but they’ve never been cleaned and could use a proper spruce-up. Which is where Tiara and Paul come in.
Paul Tracy has been a preparator at the Brooks since 1982, when he was hired fresh out of nearby Southwestern College (now Rhodes). You might say he knows the neighborhood, having grown up in Crosstown and gone to Catholic High School, a couple blocks away.
Tiara graduated from Overton High School and attends the University of Tulsa. She is working at the Brooks this summer through an internship sponsored by Studio Institute, which endeavors to get young people connected to the visual arts and art careers. She wants to be an art conservator.
Tiara Woods, Paul Tracy, and a lion. (Photo: Bruce Vanwyngarden)
For the past week or so, Paul and Tiara have been working side by side. Paul has the lion on the right side of the steps; Tiara, the one on the left. They are using a combination of brushes, headstone-cleaning solution, water, and bamboo skewers. It is tedious, serious detail work. The stone is porous, pocked with nooks and crannies, tiny fossils, and complex carving details.
“You have to wet down an area, then spray it with cleaner and let it sit for a bit.” says Paul. “Then you scrub with brushes and pick at the small crevices and pock-marks with the skewers. Your fingers get kinda numb, so after a couple of hours, you have to stop.”
It’s the kind of work that might test the dedication of some young people, but for Tiara, it’s all part of the learning curve. “I like finding out how all these roles come together,” she says, “how people wear different hats.”
“It’s true,” says Paul. “It’s always something different. One day I’m matting a Rembrandt print, the next day I’m moving a heavy crate to a gallery to unpack.”
The museum began the cleaning of its outside artwork during the pandemic. “A lot of employees could work from home,” says Paul. “But the preparators, not so much, because we work on the objects, the art itself, and we couldn’t work in the museum. So it was decided that we would work on the art objects that were outside. It kept us on the payroll, which was nice, and it’s really spruced things up around here. Before this, we cleaned the seasons statues and they look wonderful — and they were a lot easier than these lions.”
After Paul and Tiara are finished cleaning the kings of Morrie Moss Lane, Tiara will move on to spend some time working on pre-Columbian objects with conservators.
“She wants to be a real conservator,” says Paul, laughing. “I just play one on TV.”
Tiara smiles. “I’m just really interested in art conservation,” she says. “And interested in working in a museum setting — so this is a great opportunity for me to get experience in an actual museum.”
