Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

  The libs are going crazy here lately over Burger Kings decision to move their corporate headquarters to Canada to avoid paying high American corporate taxes. I wonder if they get so upset when Hollywood movie producers film in Canada to avoid taxes. Of course we never hear about that. Instead of going crazy and calling them unpatriotic how about pushing for real tax reform in America. It is stupid to tax corporations anyway. The government is really taxing the consumer, which is that precious 99% that the libs are always crying over. I am a 99 percenter by the way. I am in the 50% with a brain however. Companies simply pass on the higher cost from higher taxation to the consumer which is a tax on the 99%. Lets do this. Do away with taxes on corporations, capital gains taxes, and inheritance taxes.   Give us a reasonable flat tax, or a consumption tax. Do away with the graduated income tax which enables Democ-rats and Republic-rats to reward who they want to and pun...

Major John Buchanan   At the time that the James Robertson Party arrived in Nashville, crossing on foot from present day East Nashville over the frozen Cumberland River on Christmas Day 1779 into present day downtown Nashville there were several tribes of American Indians living in a twenty mile radius of Nashville. The Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, and Creeks. Some northern tribes like the Shawnee also hunted in the area. Nashville was packed with game because of the salt lick that was located near the present day Werthan Bag Co. building and Sulphur Dell. Because of the lick it was a major hunting ground for the tribes. The French had traders living in the area in the early 1700's but the Indians never bothered them because they weren't considered to be permanent settlers. By 1740 they were gone from the area. Timothy Demonbreun arrived in 1766 but he was not bothered by the Indians either. It wasn't until the arrival of the Robertson party and the John Donelson ...

Michael Brown A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on. Winston Churchill   My sense of justice came from various sources. Primarily my parents but I can't leave out Marshal Dillon. I watched Gunsmoke for much of the twenty years that it was on the air and no matter how evil the "bad guy" was Marshall Dillon was determined to guarantee that the man received a fair trial. Marshal Dillon only killed the "bad guy" in self defense. When I heard about the killing of Michael Brown I was very skeptical of how it was being portrayed by the media. That Michael was holding his hands up in surrender and a police officer shot him down in cold blood. That he was an innocent high school sudent and a gentle giant. This was so reminiscent of the way the media had portrayed the killing of Trayvon Martin. The narrative in that killing was the same as Michael Brown. The media at first portrayed Trayvon as this young in...

Eddie Rickenbacker   When I was in basic training at Lackland AFB in August 1968 I looked over at a man standing next to me and noticed the name Rickenbacker on his name tag. I asked him if he was related to Eddie Rickenbacker and he replied "he's my grandfather". I knew that Rickenbacker was our greatest Ace of World War I, with 26 kills, but beyond that I didn't know much about him. In later years I learned that he had been the CEO of Eastern Airlines. What I didn't know was how smart, tough, patriotic, and brave that he was. He was born on October 8, 1890 and died on July 23, 1973. He only had a seventh grade education due to his father being killed in a fight at a young age.. Rickenbacker had many brushes with death in his life. The first was when he was nearly crushed to death in a wagon accident at a young age. Then he almost died as a result of a botched tonsillectomy. A near fatal commercial airliner crash in 1941 and the following year when his bombe...

Robin Williams Warning: If you are offended by an open and honest discussion about suicide then please don't read this post. Political correctness dies a violent death here and I am not afraid of controversy. Those of you that know me, know that suicide has touched me and my family in a personal way and members of my wife's family have been affected by suicide. So it is a subject that I am familiar with and have given a lot of thought to over the years. The subject is much in the news right now because of the death of Robin Williams. Now I am not suicidal and have no suicidal thoughts. So don't send out the rescue squad or perform an intervention on me but I have thought about suicide many times over the years. Not in a serious way. I have never been suicidal. There are, however; scenarios where I might give it serious thought. For example if I were blinded, facing a hopeless medical condition, paralyzed, or surrounded by a bunch of Muslim terrorists who were intent o...

The Lotz House   I finally got around to touring the Lotz House in Franklin and I enjoyed it so much that I wondered why I didn't do it sooner. The house and furnishings were beautiful and the story of the Lotz family was fascinating to me. Johann Alfred Lotz was a German immigrant that bought five acres of land from Fountain Branch Carter in 1855. The land was right across the Columbia Avenue from the Carter House. In 1858 he completed his house. He was a master woodworker and he used his house as a showcase for his work to potential clients. He not only built his house which he built a wraparound handrail to his staircase but the bottom post is an inverted leg to a grand piano. He was also a piano maker and repaired guitars and violins. Lotz also built three fireplace mantels that demonstrate his range of talent, He started out in Nashville but moved to Franklin because there was less competition there and wood was more plentiful. He did work for St. Cecelia and St. Bernard ...

Independence Hall  One of the highlights of my trip to Philadelphia was to see the birthplace of the two greatest documents that man ever devised The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Very few people are indispensable but Washington in my view was indispensable on three occasions in American history. As commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolution. As President of the Constitutional Convention. And as President of the United States.The purpose of the Constitutional Convention was not to form a new government but to reform the Articles of Confederation. As one of the delegates Washington, along with Madison and others, wanted to write a new constitution that would recognize the sovereignty of the states but would create a strong central government that would be the supreme law of the land with the power to tax. Washington knew what it was like to try to fight a war supported by a central government that had no real power. It had to beg the in...

  The Dem's are in an all out push to raise the minimum wage. This is a non-issue to me. Lately I have noticed more and more propaganda on Facebook about it. The last time I worked for minimum wage was January of 1968 when I was a seventeen year old Senior at East High working for the Big Star grocery store on Riverside Drive making a whopping 1.40 an hour. I worked for them about a month before I left to take a job at Baird-Ward Printing Co. Before Big Star I worked at H.G. Hill at 6th and Shelby from July 1966 until January 1968 where I also earned minimum wage. Baird-Ward was my first job that paid higher than minimum wage and I have never looked back since. The following are the facts about minimum wage. According to the Bureau of Labor statistics in a country of 317 million people only 3.6 million people are at or below the minimum wage. That is 2.5% of all workers in the United States and 1.5%^ of all potential workers. Of that percentage 31% are teenagers working entry le...