Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

  When I was a teenager I used to camp out with my best friend Gus Fowler who lived on Greenwood Avenue in a big white house the next street over from our house on McKennie. We would camp out regardless of the weather or temperature because his father worked for the ATF and let us use his government sleeping bags that kept us warm as toast in the winter. Many of our friends camped out with us. I had a paper route and my papers were dropped off early, at Company 18 Fire Hall on Gallatin Road. They would help me deliver my route which we delivered on foot or by bicycle. We would usually have them delivered by daylight. My most memorable night was the night that my Aunt Didi grounded me for something I had done and of  course I couldn't camp out. I was determined to get my way, however; and went to bed fully dressed. After everyone was asleep I eased out of bed and for what seemed like an eternity I quietly unlocked the door. Just as slowly and carefully I locked the door back ...

 As a child I heard stories about life in Nashville during World War II. I loved these stories because it sounded like a time that I would have liked to have experienced. It made me proud to be an American because everyone pulled together and supported each other. I was especially proud of my family because my grandmother told me how she opened her home to soldiers, sailors, and airmen. How the family gave them a place to live at times and how she fed them. I believe this because of all the times I saw her feed hungry people that came to her back door.   As a student of history I know that Middle Tennessee was important militarily to the war effort. Nashville's Berry Field and Smyrna's Sewart AFB trained bomber crews for the Army Air Force. Vultee aircraft plant built military aircraft which later became known as AVCO. My grandmother talked about all the convoys that passed through town on a regular basis. Just before the war and during the war the Army prep...

  In 2003 and 2005 on our way to Antietam and Gettysburg we visited Natural Bridge in Lexington Virginia. While there I was able to visit Washington & Lee University. This is the place where Lee spent the last five years of his life as President of what was then Washington University. Lee was a great General but his tenure at this University proved the true character of the man. He took a university on the edge of bankruptcy and nursed it back to financial health. His primary message to his students, of which many were ex-Confederate soldiers, was the importance of education to a defeated South. That it was their duty to become good and loyal American citizens again. Lee had been in bad health ever since about the time of the battle of Fredricksburg when he suffered a heart attack. On September 28, 1870 he suffered a massive stroke at his home on campus and died two weeks later on October 12. He is buried in a crypt in the Lee Chapel on campus and the rest of the Lee...

  I lost two of my favorite people in 2012. My Aunt Goldie Brown Evans who was not only my Aunt but my second mother who raised me after my parents died. She was my mother's last remaining sibling. Also my father's last remaining sibling who was my Aunt Freddie Segroves Davidson. Freddie told me sometime before she died that she met Goldie, who we called by her nickname "Didi", before my father ever met my mother. During World War II they both worked at Liggett's Drugstore which she said was on Church Street in Nashville. After Didi passed away last May I found these two pictures of Liggett's. Didi is in both pictures.

Share on facebook Share on twitter Share on gmail Share on stumbleupon Share on email Share on print More Sharing Services 20 Man banned from Stones River Mall for offensive t-shirt Posted: Dec 18, 2012 9:09 PM CSTUpdated: Dec 18, 2012 09:42 PM Reported By Joe Avary, Video Journalist MURFREESBORO, Tenn. - A Murfreesboro man was arrested Saturday for wearing a t-shirt bearing an inappropriate and disruptive phrase at an area mall. According to a mall representative, Bryce Myszka wore a shirt that read, "Has your gun killed a kindergartner today?" inside the Stones River Mall. Myszka told Nashville's News 2 that he purchased the custom-made shirt from a kiosk inside the mall. Mall authorities asked Myszka, 45, multiple times to remove the shirt or turn it inside out but he refused. "They were actually escorting me outside the property at the time I interacted with Murfreesboro police," Myszka said, adding, "I was complying with their requ...

BIZARRE: Drunken man attempts to fight others  By: THE MURFREESBORO POST Posted: Sunday, April 28, 2013 12:00 am A 31-year-old Murfreesboro man was arrested for public intoxication and disorderly conduct Sunday, April 21 after a security guard at Stones River Mall called police. The suspect was accused of “attempting to fight strangers in the parking lot” outside Sam’s All American Sports Grill, according to an arrest report filed by Murfreesboro Police Officer Zachary Ferrell. When Ferrell arrived the suspect fled from the security guard, but the officer quickly caught up to the man who allegedly smelled strongly of alcohol and was unsteady on his feet. He had injuries to his feet and elbows, which resulted from running from security, according to witnesses. According to the suspect, the injuries came when “someone knocked him out and that a finger went inside his rectum,” Ferrell reported. But witnesses said no one assaulted the suspect. He was then tra...

  My father-in-law Johnny Stewart Phillips was one of the proudest and hardest working men that I ever knew. I am not sure that he was all that fond of me because I am very opinionated and my opinions and his opinions didn't match. Naturally a very curious person I asked him one night about his military service and war record when Debbie and I were dating. Since it is Memorial Day weekend I wanted to tell you what he told me that night and honor his service in World War II. He was an Army Cook and was drafted in 1944. Johnny was nearly thirty years old with a wife and two children. My father was five years younger but was drafted the same year and he also had two children.   One of the misconceptions to come out of World War II is that after Pearl Harbor more men volunteered than were drafted. There was an initial surge of patriotism and many men volunteered for the military. Most men, however; were drafted that served in World War II. Before September 1943 t...

  On Mother's Day 1945 my wife Debbie's grandmother Grace Brown received the following letter from Dorothy Kilgallen a reporter for the New York Journal American. She later became a panelist on the 1950's game show called "What's My Line". She would later die under mysterious circumstances after newspaper articles that she wrote skeptical of the Warren Commissions conclusion about the Kennedy assassination and Jack Ruby's involvement in the death of Lee Harvey Oswald.  Dear Mom: I've just seen your boy. He's fine. He sends you his love He's been wounded, as you know, but he want's you to believe he'll be all right. He doesn't want you to worry. When I told him I was writing you he sat up in bed, propped by his elbows, and grinned, and said: "Just tell her I'm getting along swell. Tell her I'm getting the best of care, and I feel okay, and they treat us fine here." Right then a nurse walked past ...

 This is a C-130 H model called the "Spirit Of Music City" that was the first H Model sent to the 105th Tactical Airlift Squadron in 1989. I flew back from England on this plane in June 1990 after annual training at Mildenhall RAFB. These brand new H Models replaced all of our old A models. Most of those planes had fuselage cracks and bullet holes from the Vietnam War. One of our planes held the record for carrying the most passengers at one time. A C-130 was only designed for about 95 regular passengers and about 65 soldiers in full combat gear.  When Vietnam fell to the North Vietnamese one of our C-130's evacuated 538 South Vietnamese civillians. They were tough planes. When I was picked for jury duty in 1986 I served on a trial with a C-130 pilot that managed to land a plane on one engine after three of his engines were drowned out during a downpour caused by a violent thunderstorm near Pope AFB North Carolina. He said that the only thing that saved him and his cre...

Ft. Negley During The Civil War   On February 25, 1862 Nashville was surrendered to Union Forces after the fall of Ft. Donelson. Union Captain James St. Clair Morton built a string of forts to the South and West of Nashville. The Cumberland River provides a natural defense to the east and north. Nashville became the most fortified city on the North American continent outside of Washington DC during the Civil War.  Local slaves and slaves from surrounding areas flocked to Nashville thinking they would be protected by the Union Army. Nearly 3,000 of them were recruited to build the largest of the forts which would be named after General James S. Negley. William G. Harding, the owner of the Belle Meade mansion, was arrested as a "Known man of treason," He was forced to provide supplies, slaves, and money to build the fort. Union cavalry went into Black churches, businesses, and barber shops arresting free Blacks. They were marched off to St. Cloud Hill, a forme...

 You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that Democrats get a pass by the press when they break the law or violate rules of ethics. For starters we can go back to John Kennedy. His mafia connections, sexual liaisons with hundreds of women, including mafia mistresses, illegal wiretaps, pairing the mafia with the CIA. Then there was his brother Ted who moved heaven and earth to cover-up, with the help of the media, his negligence and cowardice in the drowning of Mary Jo Kapechne in 1969. Bill Clinton's many scandals as Governor of Arkansas that carried over into his presidency. The violent rape of Juanita Broderick while he was Attorney General, his sexual addiction, Whitewater, drug use, Troopergate, sexual harrassment of Paula Jones and Kathleen Wiley. Perjury and obstruction of justice. I don't have enough room to list them all including the scandals of Hillary Clinton. Then there is our illustrious president Obama. Fast and Furious, Benghazi, the IRS audits...