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Poverty Pockets Run Deep
That it's not surprising doesn't make it any less depressing. Earlier this year, reporter Dave Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson drove 6,000 miles—from Washington, D.C., through Tennessee, to Texas—to document poverty in the home states of this year's major party presidential candidates for this month's Georgemagazine. Unfortunately, they found plenty of people in East Tennessee whose financial fortunes haven't kept up with the booming new economy. Among them: a couple in Pigeon Forge who are raising their two grandchildren on a single $210 a week paycheck and $63 in food stamps, and a man in the Cumberland Mountains who drives two hours every morning to his job as a mechanic in Knoxville but still struggles to feed his children.
Neither Albert Gore nor George W. Bush agreed to interviews for the story, but Maharidge quotes Gore as saying he's proud of the economic accomplishments of the Clinton administration. So how does he feel about the 57-year-old man, disabled by a series of strokes, who once worked 100 hours a week at $5 an hour on the Gore family farm in Carthage, Tennessee, but now lives on less than $9,000 a year for himself, his wife, and their 11-year-old son?
She'll Hug Anything That Doesn't Run
Beautification czarina Mary Lou Horner rarely misses a chance to gig the mayor, so she was licking her chops Tuesday over the opportunity to present Victor Ashe with a pair of onions at the "Onions and Orchids" luncheon sponsored by Keep Knoxville Beautiful.
The city was to be "awarded" two of the booby prizes given to the unattractive areas around and about Knoxville. One was for the former Court of Flags on the World's Fair Park, which has been graveled over to accommodate parking near the convention center construction site. The other was for what Horner describes as "those ugly green benches that Victor put all over town with no trash cans beside them. They just look awful!"
Unfortunately for Horner, Mayor Ashe ducked out before he could collect his awards, and she had to content herself with giving one to fellow County Commissioner David Collins (who had just tendered his resignation to Ashe from his job as city architect). She gave the other onion to Sheriffian mouthpiece Dwight Van de Vate, who was puzzled at his selection.
"The injustice of it all. I recycle everything, buy green power from KUB, live in the county, and I get stuck with a city onion—all because Mary Lou wanted to hug up on me."
But Is He an Architect by Design?
David Collins, by the way, says reports that Ashe was highly POed over Collins' resignation from the city administration are greatly exaggerated. Collins had held the position of city architect since 1993, five years before he was elected to County Commission.
"Victor wasn't mad at me—I would say he was deeply disappointed, but he took it pretty well," said Collins, who has accepted what he terms "a fantastic offer" to join the firm McCarty Holsaple McCarty as a partner. Although this is a career move, Collins said his credibility as an elected official could be enhanced by his job change.
"I know there are some people who have always questioned whether my motives are true."
Drive-By Victim Goes Bye-Bye
Apparently sliding beneath the usually indiscriminate radar of local news media outlets was a Sept. 25 shooting outside the Fort Sanders dance hall the Carousel, Knoxville's longest-running and most storied gay club.
According to police reports, it was shortly after midnight on that early Sunday morning when two young men in their mid-20s were perched on the concrete wall that buttresses both the Carousel, at 1501 White Ave., and its upstairs neighbor, Vic and Bill's Deli. Accounts say a car occupied by three men in their late teens or early twenties passed by eastbound on White, and one of the occupants allegedly shouted at the young men outside, "What are you looking at?" then mounted the door frame and fired several shots as the car sped away. A bullet grazed the head of one of the men on the wall, but he refused treatment when an ambulance arrived.
Carousel manager Marlene Lane says club employees were as mystified as police in figuring out what took place. "They (the suspects) were there; then they were gone," Lane says. "We couldn't understand why we didn't hear anything inside. No one really knows what happened."
October 12, 2000 * Vol. 10, No. 41
© 2000 Metro Pulse
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