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TWENTY MINUTES FROM DISASTER

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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 wou

FIRE AT THE MAXWELL HOUSE

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    Christmas was a big deal for me growing up in Nashville during the 1950's and early 1960's. After the excitement of discovering what Santa had brought us that morning we would all get ready and drive over to my grandparents house in East Nashville for Christmas dinner and opening more presents. By late that afternoon the excitement had worn off and were just ready to go home and play with our toys. We usually didn't leave, however; until about 9:00 or 10:00 PM. Christmas night of 1961 is a Christmas that I will never forget. I was eleven years old and we were on our way to our home in West Nashville. We lived at 6222 Henry Ford Drive in Charlotte Park subdivision. After passing East High School we could see a bright orange glow lighting up the western sky in the direction of the Nashville skyline. As we approached the Victory Memorial Bridge over the Cumberland river flames were leaping high into the sky and the whole city glowed from the huge fire that would destroy on

SAVING OUR DEMOCRACY

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Alexander Trachtenberg - Activist in the Communist Party USA  Bella Dodd was a teacher, lawyer, and labor union activist. She was a member of the Communist Party USA and the New York Teachers Union in the 1930's and 40's. Dodd was one of the most radical Communists in America until the mid 1940's when she began to see the corruption and hypocrisy of Communism. In 1952 she renewed her old faith as a Catholic and became an anti-communist through the influences of Cardinal Fulton Sheen who was a virulent anti-communist himself. In a speech at Fordham university in 1950 she repeated what a Communist colleague named Alexander Trachtenburg had told her in 1944. He told her " When we get ready to take the United States, we will not take it under the label of Communism; we will not take it under the label of socialism. These labels are unpleasant to the American people, and have been speared too much. We will take the United States under labels we have made very loveable; we w

LOOK AT US

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  On Monday December 18, 2023 at about 12:15 A.M. my wife Debbie woke me up from a deep sleep. She was calling my name and I found her lying face down on the floor near the bookcase in our bedroom. She had fallen trying to get to the bathroom. For several days prior she had complained of being unsteady on her feet. On Sunday afternoon I took her blood pressure and it was very low. This wasn't all that unusual because ever since she received a pacemaker and was diagnosed with congestive heart failure her blood pressure has been consistently low. This was lower than usual, however. I tried to get her to go to the ER but she wouldn't go. Before bedtime I took it again and it has risen about ten points so I was hopeful it would be better by morning. On the previous Friday I had come home from work and she had been shopping all day with her girlfriend. I fixed myself something to eat and waited for her to come home. She pulled into the drive and called me on the phone wanting me to