TWENTY MINUTES FROM DISASTER

Buford Tune is on the left in this picture

 We all remember waking up on Christmas morning in 2020 to the news that a massive bomb was detonated in downtown Nashville. An RV exploded on Second Avenue causing massive damage to a roughly one block area north of Commerce Street. Luckily the only person killed was the idiot who made the bomb. Did you know, however; that the largest car bomb ever found on the North American continent was discovered just twenty minutes before it was timed to explode on August 31, 1979? At least it was the largest ever found until that time and the car was packed with 300 pounds of dynamite. Enough explosives to take out at least three city blocks according to Larry Pennington. I remember this incident because I knew the two heroes on the Nashville police department that had just 15 minutes to dismantle the bomb before it exploded. They were Larry Pennington and Buford Tune. I did not know Buford at the time the bomb was dismantled but I did know Larry. I would come to know Buford pretty well in later years because he owned The Academy Of Personal Protection after he retired from the Nashville police department. This is where I always renewed my armed security license and he was one of the main instructors. I met Larry Pennington when I joined the Tennessee Air Guard is 1977. He was a great guy. I credit him with motivating me to study the Bible in depth. Larry was a Mormon and I was Baptist at that time. Although I always felt that the Mormons had a flawed version of the gospel I wasn't prepared to go toe to toe with him in a discussion. At that time he knew Mormon doctrine like the back of his hand and I didn't know that much about the Mormons or the Bible . Over the next few years I got into the meat of the Word and I studied the Mormon religion pretty thoroughly. My research gave me a much stronger spiritual foundation and I was able to debate anyone after that. 

 My first encounter with Buford was not a good experience for me. After I got to know him at APPS I realized that he was a great guy but one of the most profane people I have ever met. He could curse a blue streak and didn't care if the Pope heard him. That first encounter with Buford was probably the winter of 1979. It had been a bad winter and had been snowing a lot. I was working at Colonial Baking Company on Franklin Road in Melrose and I got off about 11:00 PM. As I was driving south toward home on 8th Avenue I noticed a Metro Police car driving well below the speed limit in the right lane. Since the police car was going so slow I decided to pass him on the left inside lane. The officer looked a lot like Larry so I looked over at him to get a better look and he saw me looking at him. It was then that I realized it wasn't Larry and I continued on past the police car. Just then his blue lights came on and with a sense of dread I pulled over to the shoulder. I didn't have a clue why he pulled me over because I wasn't speeding and it shouldn't be a crime just to look at someone. My first mistake was getting out of the car. That is a no no. I should have sat there and waited on him. He got out of his car about the time I got to the rear of mine. Buford was a giant of a man. I am 6' 3" but he towered over me. As he was walking toward me there was a scowl on his face and I immediately sensed trouble. As he approached he had a rag in one hand and a nightstick in the other. Before I could say anything he handed me the rag and told me to wipe off my license plate. Where I had been driving through slush my plate was so dirty you couldn't read it so I wiped off the plate and realized my sticker had expired the day before. In a loud voice Buford told me that my plates were expired. I told him that I was sorry but I never got a notice. He whacked my license plate with his nightstick and angrily said "that's your notice right there". By this point I was so intimidated by this large cop holding a nightstick that I didn't say another word except yes sir and no sir. He gave me a ticket but I got out of paying it by going to court and producing the receipt for the new sticker. Buford Tune died a few years ago after suffering with diabetes and I went to Larry Pennington's funeral this past Fall of 2023. May they rest in peace. 

I was unable to find a whole lot of information on the internet about the bomb that Larry and Buford dismantled but I found this article from the now defunct Nashville Banner. 

 On Aug. 31, 1979, the Nashville Banner reported: “A bomb with about 300 pounds of dynamite and a timing device was found in a parked car outside the Classic Cat II nightclub at Sixth Avenue and Broadway [today the location of the National Museum of African American Music]. … The explosives were discovered by Jerry Wilson, 42, of Nashville, a roofer who was working with others to repair the nightclub. Wilson was trying to determine who owned the car when he saw dynamite on the back seat. Buford Tune, a member of the bomb squad, described the discovery of the bomb as a ‘luck find.’” Tune and another officer disarmed the bomb, which at the time was considered the largest bomb every rendered safe in the U.S.

A woman who worked at a nearby liquor store first noticed the car parked at the Classic Cat II around 9:00 AM that morning and it was after 3:00 PM when she asked the roofer working on the Classic Cat to check out the car. That is when the dynamite was discovered. The car had been stolen from a funeral home earlier that day. According to Larry he and Buford had about fifteen minutes to disable the bomb after they arrived on scene. The bomb was in the parking lot of the Classic Cat II which was a strip joint that sat directly behind Hume-Fogg High school facing 8th Avenue which is now Rosa Parks Blvd. Why a strip club was able to operate next to a high school is beyond me. I read that some of the male students were able to get lap dances there. Although the bomb was set to go off between 3:00 and 4:00 PM the school shouldn't have been full of students that late in the afternoon but there might have been enough students and staff around to produce large casualty counts in the school alone. The Nashville Christmas bomber gave plenty of warning through loudspeakers mounted on his RV. Police were able to evacuate a lot of people. This bomb would have been exploded without any warning possibly causing massive casualties since it was later in the day and during the summer. At first Larry thought the bomb had been planted by a rival motorcycle gang like the Outlaws. In doing research for this article I found out that the club was targeted by Arthur Wayne Baldwin, a competing club owner and ex-husband of Classic Cat proprietor Elizabeth "Ann" Martin. I do not know if he was ever convicted of this crime. If the reader of this article knows whether or not he was punished for this crime please let me know in the comments.