And the Piper Cub You Flew In On...

Pat Summitt's basketball team will generate lots of publicity. And that's good.

Maybe not, if a snotty "postcard" by Sports Illustrated writer Kelli Anderson is any example. It starts with a commentary on the color "pumpkin," managing to work in a mention of Lady Vols sports information student assistant Jania "Pumpkin" Marshall and to speculate whether Knoxville will name a street after Chamique Holdsclaw.

But then comes the part the Superchamber guys won't be anxious to think about a couple million SI readers chortling over:

Anderson says Holdsclaw has "Just one more year... to soak up the glories of Knoxville, which surely exist somewhere beyond the airport-to-gym-to-hotel triangle I've been limited to in my three trips there. On this visit, time constraints precluded me from making it to Callahan's [sic] cholest-o-fest by the river (among the most popular items on the menu: smoked ribs, creamed spinach and Jack Daniels pie), so I had to indulge in artery-hardening of a different order: the Burger King on Cumberland Ave., which was the best option I could find near campus for lunch. Oh well, Knoxville has never pretended to be a terribly cutting-edge destination, food- or otherwise. At Knoxville's Tyson-McGee Airport [sic], you still have to walk across the tarmac to board most flights.

"If that experience doesn't take you back a few decades, the aircraft will. As I climbed onto my delayed TWA flight to St. Louis on Friday, a gentleman ahead of me said to another adult, 'Trust me, Bob, this plane was built way before you were born. What you are walking into here is aviation history.' As always, it was a pleasure to walk out of it."

Support Your Local Sheriff

Superchamber chief and master sloganeer Tom Ingram's lust for exclamation points (e.g. "Knoxville. Naturally!" and the unforgettable "Lamar!") is clearly evident in a spiffy newsletter, "Howdy! Partners," that made its debut last week.

The newsletter brims with happy talk and good news about "Your" Partnership and reports Superchamber activities like honoring the sheriff with "a special resolution from the partnership board of directors for winning the National Sheriff's Association 1998 Ferris E. Lucas Award for Sheriff of the Year." This belated recognition comes months after the actual honor was bestowed last June. The partners are probably unaware that one of the reasons the award went to Sheriff Tim Hutchison was his role in defeating the 1996 Unification referendum to consolidate the city and county governments. This referendum would have relegated the sheriff to the position of county jailer while making the city police chief the top cop. The National Sheriff's Association is an adamant proponent of sheriffs' rights. Superchamber members were adamant proponents of the failed Unification referendum.

Maybe that's why they called him Tim "Hutchinson" in the resolution.

Dislike's Not a Good Reason?

Cas Walker's barely cold in his grave, and here comes Victor Ashe, reaching out to annex the Knox County Housing Authority complex named for Cas's wife, Miss Ginny. Ashe has had his eye on the Virginia Walker Apartments in northwest Knox County after a previous foray was repelled a year ago.

No matter that County Housing Authority Director Bo Pierce (who actually found out about Ashe's designs the day before the death of Cas Walker, whose last public office was chairman of the Housing Authority) wrote Ashe a letter and asked him very nicely to cease and desist.

Pierce got a return letter in which Ashe said he had "carefully reviewed your reasons for opposition which did not take a long time because they are an enigma wrapped in a mystery. In short, the Housing Authority has not offered any reasons other than dislike for the city."

The annexation of the Virginia Walker Apartments passed on first reading at City Council, with Carlene Malone as the sole no vote.