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Fun 'til the Fuse was Lit
The premiere event on the grassy new North Lawn of the World's Fair Park brought out an estimated 20,000 people for the city's annual Fourth of July celebration. The R.B. Morris Band with Hector Qirko kicked off the festivities with an inspirational rendition of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," plus the band's original tunes and Morris' poetry. Undeterred by the heat and blazing sun, the lawn grew covered with people, and children splashed around in the new fountain. Mike Crawley and the MacDaddies rocked the crowd in the late afternoon. As the sun went down, festival producers at the information booth assured anxious visitors that they would be able to see the fireworks from wherever they were on the North Lawn. But as the sky grew dark and the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra played patriotic tunes, the fireworks went off unseen by most people on the lawn. A southward exodus began to the other side of the Clinch Avenue Viaduct, which blocked the view of most of the fireworks. Next year, the festivities will probably be held on the South lawn, giving everyone a good view of the pyrotechnics. Until then, there's always Boomsday.
Home-Grown Shaft
Follow this logic: 1)Knoxville spends $160 million dollars to build a convention center to help local businesses. 2) Knoxville hires a company from Philadelphia (SMG) to manage the convention center. 3) Knoxville kicks locally-owned catering businesses out of the World's Fair Park so their business can be given to the company from Philadelphia.
Case in point: Buddy's Bar-B-Q, which has done business in Knoxville for 31 years. Founded by the late Buddy Smothers and his wife, Lamuriel, Buddy's family has continued his tradition of philanthropy since his death in 1992. Buddy's was named the National Society of Fund Raising Executives Philanthropist of the Year for the Great Smoky Mountain Chapter in 1998 and the National Restaurant Associations Good Neighbor for Tennessee in 2000.
The Smothers cook a little barbecue, too, and were booked for four July events in the World's Fair Park. But Buddy's catering chief Virginia Smothers reports that she has been notified that "... the city of Knoxville has suspended booking rights to the World's Fair site and is considering giving them to SMG..."
She doesn't intend to go down without a fight: "I feel it is grossly unfair for the city to disallow these jobs to go on at this late date because it cannot make up its mind who it wants to run the park," Smothers says. "A public park should be open to the public community and taking away these jobs will tremendously affect our business."
More Names' Fun
So what do Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan and Ed Shouse have in common?
If you answered "a street in Knoxville named after them," give yourself a cookie. City Council approved the three name changes on 8-1 votes Monday night, with Joe Hultquist being the only dissenter (in deference to his colleague, Hultquist abstained from voting to rename 44th Street "Ed Shouse Drive")
Maybe you ought to start wondering if you and Carlene Malone are going to be the only citizens of this burg who must do without the honor of having a stretch of pavement, park, community center or a fire department defibrillator named in your honor.
Sign Off
We'll no longer hear the clipped syllables of longtime WUOT radio personality Norris Dryer, whose political talk shows were for years the public-radio station's only local news, and who once read the entirety of Cormac McCarthy's novel Suttree on the air. After being the most durable voice of public radio for over 30 years, Dryer is leaving the radio waves to concentrate on his run for City Council. His is a daunting race against community activist Chris Woodhull and former Councilwoman Jean Teague (who would be, if elected, the longest-serving City Council person in Knoxville history).
July 10, 2003 * Vol. 13, No. 28
© 2003 Metro Pulse
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