Monthly Archives: May 2010
Sunday 7: Hometown Songs
Madison, WI – I’ve been in my hometown of Madison, WI, for the last week, visiting family, friends and scoping out what’s new around town. As such, The Feral Scribe this week has put together a list of hometown songs. Could it be there isn’t a single hometown song about my hometown?
The Beatles: In My Life
Bruce Springsteen: My Hometown
Iris Dement: Our Town
N.W.A.: Straight Outta Compton
Neko Case: Thrice American (Tacoma)
Louis Armstrong: Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans?
Tom Lehrer: My Hometown
24 Hours of ‘Rage’ in Indiana
Indianapolis, IN – Not long after stopping off in Indianapolis, I meet “Bonnie”, a 30-something jam band scenester, at a cafe on the city’s east side. Thirty-three hours into a 50-hour bender, Bonnie is mushy brained from the ecstasy she ate at a show the night before. At the show, she met some kids with a bunch of nitrous tanks and ended up at their hotel instead of her bed. One of the guys, she tells me between sips of her latte with a double espresso shot, is at her house. “We raged hard,” she explains. “Sorry if I’m not… Continue Reading ‘What I love about Nashville…’
Nashville, TN – Businesses along the Cumberland River in the Music City are back in business after floods swamped large sections of Nashville three weeks ago. Even though sub-pumps are still a-humming along the lower sections of Broadway, it might otherwise seem as though this part of Nashville never flooded at all. The river was still high, but spirits were higher. Dudes in cowboy hats and shitkickers, pretty girls, street musicians, tourists, bums and bouncers were out en masse yesterday afternoon shopping, eating and of course playing music. Preparations for June’s Country Music Awards were underway. As morning wore into… Continue Reading Stood-Up by the Sasquatch Hunter
Overton County, TN – Earlier this year I spoke with Jeffrey Teagle, the self-proclaimed Chattahoochee Bigfoot researcher, about accompanying him on a bigfoot research expedition. He replied that in May, him, Janice Carter and Igor Burstev would be in Tennessee doing field research in Overton County and invited me to join them. They had reserved a cabin in Standing Stone State Park, where, Teagle said, is one of several areas in the south where clans of Sasquatches live.
He said they’d be there May 19 – 21. All good. See ya then. I began researching Janice Carter and Igor… Continue Reading Outtakes Vol. 1
This album features photo outtakes of people I’ve met, places I’ve been and things I’ve seen.
Welcome to Gaw’s, the Best Bar in Overton County
Livingston, TN – I arrived in Livingston in the early evening. Being a puny town in north-central Tennessee, there isn’t much too it. Fast food joints. A gun shop. Cash store. Its salvation is Gaw’s, a divey little joint and pool hall. Driving, interviewing and writing doesn’t leave much time for drinking, but Gaw’s had $1 drafts, so what the hell, I thought. I needed to consolidate some notes, an activity that a cold one always makes a little pleasurable.
I had one. And then another. Before I knew it, I was chatting with Kat, an older lady who… Continue Reading Comp Time with Repo Man Ray Crocker
Nashville, TN – Ray Crocker is a voice of reason in the otherwise chaotic and largely unregulated repossession industry. The mafia failed in the 1950s to bring repos into their rackets, but Crocker has watched over the last 25 years as tow-truck companies and auto auctions have not only low-balled professional companies like Crocker’s, but have also caricaturized repo men as lawless renegades at the ready to strong-arm consumers. On the television show Operation Repo, situations based “on real life events” are re-enacted, depicting repo agents muscle-men wrestling property from owners using headlocks and mace.
Nonsense, says Crocker, 62,… Continue Reading Futility Wins the Day in Central Tennessee
Lewis County, TN – The day begins on a sour note, with torrential rain and a headache. I wake outside of a gas station 30 miles south of Nashville to the sound of sweeping gushes of rain pitter-pattering against Purple Thunder’s windows. Due in Summertown a few hours from then for a tour of The Farm, an eco-community established in the 1970s, it doesn’t appear any outdoor excursions are in the forecast. I gather my things – my toothbrush, toothpaste and change of clothes – and bolt inside the store.
The clerk, a frumpy middle-aged woman, asks, “Is it wet… Continue Reading Rebuilding Lives After the Flood
Nashville, TN – Carlo Zantucttiss, 57, lost everything two weeks ago after flood waters washed away his home, decimated his used car business and put out of business a restaurant he rented out. The businesses and properties, which Zantucttiss purchased six years ago, were an investment for retirement, something that now is unlikely.
“All of my money was here,” he says.
He still owes the bank $230,000 and says he’ll be lucky to receive $100,000 from insurance. He may get a loan from FEMA, he says, but even then, the city has told him that he cannot rebuild his properties,… Continue Reading 
Walking the Memorial Mile