Smacked Around
I went to the Godsmack show [March 13] at the Civic Coliseum. Godsmack was great but the security seemed to take pleasure in beating on the audience.
Also, I was under the impression that they would be serving beer. I was told by security that because the majority of the audience was under age they changed their minds. But the night before, some wrestling event was held and they did serve alcohol then. Now I believe that more children would be at some wrestling event then at a musical show by Godsmack. Plus the majority of the audience WAS of age. Plus how would security know that the audience was under age.
I was never asked for identification when I bought my ticket or at the gate. Even the bands were under the impression that alcohol would be served. This kind of information would be nice to know before tickets are sold. If I knew about the hostility of the security and the loss of alcohol I would have never gone to this event.
Brandon Ledford
Knoxville
Redneck Beemer Blues
Thank you, Scott McNutt, for having the balls to write and print what so many of us native Knoxvillians think and feel.
I was born here and have lived here almost my entire life. This has got to be the dullest, most redneck place in the almost-civilized world.
The funny thing is that the rednecks here think they are "somebody" just because they happen to live in some over-rated, over-priced, cookie-cutter subdivision in "West" Knoxville and drive their Land Rovers, BMW's and Mercedes. Let me be the first to tell these people they are nobody special. They are just trapped here in this lackluster town with the rest of us with little hope of getting out.
My personal favorite slogan for this town is one that all my friends and I have actually used and enjoyed for many years: "Knoxville—Nothing to do while you're waiting to die." Just a bit catchier than some of the other slogans we came up with.
Well, I guess I'll close now. At least now I have two less minutes to live in this Godforsaken town. Keep up the excellent writing.
Robert Ward
Knoxville
Views and Reviews
In response to Mike Gibson's fine article about Cormac McCarthy:
First, to document one of the names in McCarthy's fiction, the Fred at the pool hall is the late Fred Owens, the proprietor. Fred showed me a copy of the novel that McCarthy sent him, with a signed personal inscription.
Also, Gibson quotes accolades given to McCarthy by a New York Times reviewer. But in this last year, Michiko Kakutani, the Times' prominent daily reviewer, gave a scathing review of his latest novel, calling McCarthy pretentious, an imitator of Faulkner.
(An oddity: 30 years ago, Orville Prescott, the Times' then-reviewer, daily and prominent, dismissed Faulkner as one who could not write.)
What excited me about Cormac McCarthy was his short story, "Bounty," an excerpt from his novel The Orchard Keeper and published in The Yale Reviewer. It is East Tennessee and amazing; the hero, or lead, is described walking up Gay and Market Streets.
One of McCarthy's fervent admirers was Robert Penn Warren. Knoxville has had several important writers in George Washington Harris, David Madden, and James Agee. What isn't known is that it is also the final resting place of Harry Harrison Kroll. His novel, The Cabin in the Cotton, was made into the motion picture starring Bette Davis. I owe this tidbit to the 95-year-old poet James Still, who lives along Troublesome Creek in Kentucky. Jim has a penchant for visiting graves of authors, Thomas Hardy, Harry James, Thomas Wolfe, and so on. Kroll was his teacher at JMU, and he later taught at UT Martin. Amazing that Kroll had no formal education when young, but was able to overcome this and be very successful. He is buried at Gallaher View Baptist Church. I found it for Jim.
Also, in Gibson's article was mention of Brown Mountain, in South Knoxville. I must comment on the 500,000 gallon steel water tank up there. It is over 100 years old and in excellent condition, probably the second oldest operating tank in United States.
Frank E. Bourne
Knoxville
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