Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

     I have always resisted the temptation to profile and stereotype people. This job, however; has made me realize just how quickly many black people are willing to stereotype me. To many, I am just a racist old white guy in a uniform. In my opinion, most black people do not hold that opinion but far too many do. One of my favorite lines from the movie, Remember The Titans, is when Denzel Washington says "I don't dance unless I hear music". In other words my suspicions are not aroused until you give me a reason to be suspicious. If I see anyone acting suspicious, or I have been told that a person is trying to steal, I will respond and follow the people involved at a safe distance. Again, my job is to detect, deter, observe and report. When a person violates mall rules I will say something to them, or follow them, and I could care less if you are black, white, hispanic, asian, homosexual, transsexual, straight or have tentacles growing out of your head. I have been calle...

We have had our share of drug overdoses which have happened primarily in the parking lot. I didn't see this happen but we had a woman run naked through the mall high on drugs one morning. On another occasion I got a call that a man was acting crazy and when I got there he was dancing in the middle of the road having himself a good ole time. Another time a man pointed out a woman that was slumped over her steering wheel. Upon further investigation I realized she was the mother of my niece which was an awkward situation for me. She was so drunk that she didn't recognize me.   One night I got a call that two men were slumped over in a car near Shoe Carnival. I called our on site police officer and he arrived on scene a little before I did. When he first arrived he thought they were dead. After I arrived he was talking to a man on the passenger side that was just starting to gain consciousness. We spotted syringes right out in the open and the officer told me to call 911 in order ...

  Occasionally we run into someone having sex in and around the mall. Or an occasion we have sexual perverts and predators causing problems. One Christmas holiday season I got a call from a tenant that he noticed a nearby photo booth rocking back and forth. He thought something weird was going on inside the photo booth. When I arrived it was obvious that something was happening. I stealthily approached the booth and threw back the curtain which revealed a 14 year old boy being serviced orally by a 14 year old girl. The photo booth was out of order and I guess they thought this would give them some privacy. On another occasion I got a call that something was going on in the east parking lot over by Sears. When I arrived on scene there was a car and all the windows were fogged up. I tapped on the window and it was obvious that a teenage girl was orally servicing a teenage boy in the front seat while a girl was filming it on her cell phone in the backseat.  One day I got a call t...

    To this date I have only had to make physical contact with two people in my 11 years at the mall. In both cases I was assisting a police officer in making an arrest. One night in September 2013 I received a call from the manager of one of our clothing stores that a lady carrying a large number of shopping bags had stolen several children's jackets. I called our on site police officer and we both arrived on scene at the same time. The manager was standing in front of his store when we arrived. He pointed the lady out to us who was in the store next to his. She was looking at something on the far wall with her back to us.   I asked the manager if he wanted to confront her and he said that he did. I told him that we would be there to back him up if things went south. As we walked through the door she spotted us and immediately became defensive. She was loudly saying that she hadn't done anything and to leave her alone before we even got close to her. The manager tol...

 One morning I got a call from a shoe store that a gun had dropped out of a man's waist band and fell to the floor. He was with another man at the time and they were last seen walking toward the food court. I was by myself that morning and on the far end of the mall when I got the call. As I walked toward the shoe store I figured that the men were long gone and had already left the mall. To my surprise I saw them walking back toward the shoe store from the direction of the food court. They fit the description given to me over the phone. I called 911 and remained on the phone with the operator as I followed them from a safe distance. They walked into store after store throughout the mall heading toward the west end where they eventually turned around and headed back toward the food court. As they walked near to the exit doors I was afraid that they were going to get away. There was no sign of the police. Then, in a flash, the police burst in through the food court entrance and from ...

One day I had a caller that said that a woman was standing in our fountain taking her clothes off. It was a hot summer day around noon. Upon arrival I found a homeless woman, about 35 years old standing in the middle of the fountain. She was soaked to the skin and wearing only a bra and jogging pants. When I asked her what she was doing she said it was so hot she was just cooling off. Being homeless she was probably trying to steal the coins out of the fountain. We had an officer who at the time he was working the midnight shift and he was very good at catching people stealing money out of the fountain. Many days I would come into the security office and there would be cups of coins that he had confiscated from people trying to steal money. One night he was lurking in the shadows watching two heavy set black ladies who were stealing coins. They had removed their pants and panties so they could wade around in the fountain. He jumped from his hiding place and scared them so badly that th...

  Sometime after January 2010 I woke up in the middle of the night very short of breath. I thought at first I was having a severe panic attack. My heart was beating wildly and thinking it was a panic attack I jumped on to my exercise bike. Exercise was one of the ways that I had beat back panic attacks for years. I would put on my running shoes and run until the feeling of panic went away. In this case the exercise seemed to make things worse. I stayed up the rest of the night and drove in to work that morning My heart was still beating extremely fast and was out of rhythm.   I am hard headed and should have gone to the emergency room instead of to work. Most of the morning I was as weak as a kitten but  around 11:00 AM I suddenly felt much better. It happened so quickly it was like someone flipped a switch in my body. I felt my pulse and my heart was in a normal rhythm. Thinking that this episode was some kind of a fluke I was hopeful that it would not happen again....

    In September 2007 the bottom dropped out of the economy. A financial bubble had been created in the housing market and the bubble burst. Within four months I lost half of my 401K and the financial crisis was worldwide. To make matters worse, the decision was made to shut down the PSR or Passenger Steel Radial side of our tire plant. There were around 2000 employees at the Bridgestone-Firestone plant in Lavergne. By 2009 there were only about 500 of us left. They transferred me to the TBR, or Truck-Bus Radial side of the plant. I had been building passenger tires and now I would have to learn how to build tractor trailer and bus tires. Those tires of course are much larger and heavier than most passenger tires. I had been building tires on machines that were designed and built in the 1980's with robot arms that placed the tires on metal racks. Now I was building tires on machines that were designed and built in the 1960's.  After removing the tire from the 0 Ring I had...

  In early July 2003 I was able to fulfill a lifelong dream by taking a trip to Gettysburg. Debbie, Courtney, my sister Donna, her grandson's Stephen, and Sean Haffield, along with Didi and myself all travelled to Gettysburg together. Our first stop was in Lexington Virginia which is the home of Natural Bridge. It  was also the home of Stonewall Jackson, and Virginia Military Institute, where Jackson was an instructor. Washington and Lee University is also in Lexington, where Robert E. Lee spent the last five years of his life as president of the school. He died in the president's house and is buried in a beautiful crypt in Lee's Chapel along with his wife and most of his family. His horse Traveler is buried just outside of the chapel. In 2003 we arrived too late to see the inside of Lee Chapel, or the home of Stonewall Jackson. We returned in 2005 and were able to see Lee's chapel and Jackson's home on that trip. In 2003 I found Jackson's grave where he was bur...

Debbie went to the doctor for a routine medical check up in 1999 and Dr. Bishop, our family doctor at the time, casually asked her when she had her last mammogram. She told him that she hadn't had one in several years. Doctor Bishop scheduled a mammogram for Debbie. The technician that read the mammogram spotted a suspicious area in her right breast. Debbie had a history of cysts forming in her breasts over the years and they usually all turned out to be benign. We weren't all that concerned at the time. She was scheduled to see a surgeon that had a reputation for being one of the best in the country. On the day of the surgery I felt as though someone kicked me in the gut when he told me that Debbie had cancer. He said that he had removed a tumor the size of a pea but he thought he had caught it in time. The surgeon said that he wouldn't know for sure until he checked the lymph nodes. It was a very aggressive form of cancer.  She had a big decision to make. He gave her a co...