Reflections of An Uncommon Common Man

    Teddy Bart has been a local celebrity since the early 1960's and I have listened to him either on the radio or watched him on the WSM Noon Show. On radio I remember him on WSM's early morning show during the 1970's called the Waking Crew and in 1984 he started a political talk show called the Round Table. Because of Ronald Reagan I was a new convert to Conservativism in the early 1980's but I always liked listening to Teddy. I felt that he was fair. He had a wide variety of guest's that represented both sides of the issues. I looked at Teddy himself as somewhat left of center but I respected him. After Rush Limbaugh revolutionized talk radio, for the better in my opinion, I still enjoyed listening to the Round Table in the morning on Super Talk 99.7 WWTN. I especially liked listening to Crom Carmichael who was the resident Conservative, his sidekick Karla Evans, Jimmy Davy on sports, along with others that I can't recall their names now and the...

  Crater Lake National Park is sixty miles from Klamath Falls and we managed to go there twice in 1969. Once in March with our friends Tom and Janet Blevins. Debbie was very pregnant with Robbie and the snow was so deep that it covered a three story house near the parks visitor center. The second time was in August when the snow was gone and Debbie's sister Sylvia, her husband Jimmy, and three nieces Tammy, Connie, and Carol visited us while on vacation. The water is so blue it almost hurts your eyes to look at it, especially in contrast to snow. The Lake was supposedly formed 150,000 years ago when Mount Mazama exploded from a volcanic eruption. It is listed as the deepest lake in America at nearly 2,000 feet deep. The second deepest in North America and the seventh deepest in the world. It is also six miles wide.

 General Felix Zollicoffer is another of the prominent people buried in Nashville's Old City Cemetery. He was the first Confederate General to be killed in the Western Theater during the Civil War. Zollicoffer was born in Maury County Tennessee on May 19, 1812 and died January 19, 1862 at the Battle of Fishing Creek Kentucky. It is also called the Battle of Mill Springs. Zollicoffer began learning the printing business at the age of sixteen. He would work at many newspapers over the years. Zollicoffer would also serve in many political offices including the state legislature and three terms as a U.S. Congressman. His only military experience before the Civil War was as a young Lieutenant in the Second Seminole War. He was opposed to secession and voted for Nashvillian John Bell in 1860. In 1861 Zollicoffer attended the Washington Peace Conference which was a last minute effort to avoid the Civil War.   On May 9, 1861 he was commissioned as a Brigadier General in the S...

  Over the years people have asked me why the Republican Party has been branded as racist. Why is it that blacks vote well over ninety percent of the time for a Party that has been so hostile to people of color. The reasons are somewhat complicated but I would like to take a shot at answering this question. The Democratic Party has had a long racist history. It was for many years the Party that devised various schemes and compromises to preserve the institution of slavery. There had always been a coalition of northern and southern Democrats. They negotiated the Missouri Compromise. The Compromise of 1850 and the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Then there was a last minute attempt to avert Civil War by attempting to pass the 13th Amendment which would have preserved slavery for all time. This attempt fell through. There was the political strategy of Martin Van Buren, who was a New Yorker. He engineered a strategy to elect northern Democratic presidents with pro southern attitudes. Chief Justi...

  For many years now I have had the opportunity to go into local schools and teach the students about the Civil War. I started metal detecting in 1972 and hunted for relics pretty consistently until the 1990's. I have found a wide variety of relics on primarily the area around Stones River, Bell Buckle, Franklin, and Nashville. I hunted with my brother-in-law Hulon Helms until his death in 1984. My interest in the war started about the age of nine when my mother took me to see a John Wayne movie called the Horse Soldiers which was based loosely on Grierson's Union Calvary raid during Grant's Vicksburg campaign. I was about the age of many of the students that I talk to. The value of a movie like the Horse Soldiers is that although Hollywood takes great liberty with the truth, movies can spark your interest in history. Enough that you can find out the truth on your own through a more in depth study of the subject matter. I never understood why Hollywood feels the need...

 Air Force Security Police fighting off an all out Viet Cong attack at Tan Son Nhut AFB in Vietnam during the 1968 Tet Offensive in which American forces virtually destroyed the Viet Cong as fighting force. Air Force SP's also fought big battles at Bien Hoa AFB at which one SP earned the Medal of Honor posthumously defending Bunker #10 before everyone in the bunker was killed. Virtually all airbases were attacked during the Tet Offensive. Air Force Security Police are trained to not only guard Air Force weapons, weapon's systems, and resources but to defend bases from enemy attack.

  There were 90,000 American Airmen who died in the air war over Europe. The Cambridge England American Military Cemetery holds the bodies of thousands of American airmen and is one of the most beautiful cemeteries I have ever visited. American bombing of Europe started on July 4, 1942. The British bombed at night and the American B-17's and B-24's bombed during the day. At first the American bombers had no fighter escorts until later in the war. They suffered huge losses in planes and men. The Americans practiced precision bombing while the British used carpet bombing. The B-17's were armed with thirteen 50 caliber machine guns but American losses did not decrease until the P-51 Mustang came on line and was able to escort the bombers all the way into the target and back. Late in the war the American Army Air Forces virtually destroyed the German Air Force. Strategic bombing focused on destroying German war production like ball bearing plants and plants that produced ...