Metro Pulse/Ear to the Ground

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All Victor, All the Time, One More Time?

We're going to miss you. Over the years, you've enriched this page with a cornucopia of column fodder so bounteous that it defies quantification. We followed you through the years of Victor and Dwight Kessel; of Victor and Sheriff Tim; of Victor and the firemen; of Victor and Carlene Malone; Victor and TDOT; Victor and KUB; Victor and Don Sundquist—to name just a paltry few of the fights you picked. You plumbed the depths of our desires, and you anticipated our every wish. We couldn't have made up stuff like the time your nonagenarian mother came crashing out of your driveway in her Volvo, slamming into a station wagon in front of the mayoral mansion and leaving the scene of the wreck, or the time your kid was trying to "fire" a TV reporter from a float in a Christmas parade. And even now, as some are counting down the days until you are flushed out of your sixth-floor aerie, you are continuing to provide us with fresh meat.

Just this past Monday, you called us at home with a special invitation to come see the unveiling of a new sign you've put up on Sharp's Ridge. So what if some grumble that you are spending our money like a sailor on shore leave in Manila, cutting ribbons and putting up plaques with your name on them and appointing your pals to boards nobody knew existed before you took office?

It was a thrill to pick up the phone and hear you say a Johnny Cash-like "Hello, this is Mayor Victor Ashe" and invite us "... to join me and City Council members as well as parks Director Sam Anderson to unveil the new sign at the overlook there at Sharp's Ridge on this Tuesday morning, Dec. 16."

You told us that the "... new full-color interpretive sign is being placed at the overlook and will identify the gaps and peaks of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and will really be a great addition to Sharp's Ridge."

In addition, you told us "what a privilege it has been for me to serve as mayor of our great city for the past 16 years, and certainly improving parks and greenways has been an important part of this administration..."

As a last (maybe) gasp, you invited all and sundry to the north end of the Gay Street Bridge on Thursday Dec. 19 (today), your second to last day as mayor, to a dedication ceremony for the bridge, which is under renovation. The bridge isn't to reopen for about a year, but the early dedication gives Victor the chance to reestablish that he deserves the credit for saving the beautiful structure from replacement. He does deserve a lot of that credit. But a year early?

Oh, well...what's up for Friday, Mr. Last-Day-in-Office?

No Guts, No Glory

The sheriff's Chief Deputy Dwight Van de Vate was the first to blink in a hotly-contested eBay bidding war, and he lost out on a coveted collector's item: one of the flexible refrigerator magnets emblazoned with Mayor Victor Ashe's name, office phone number and city web site address that were enclosed in the envelopes last month containing the city's annual budget survey. Smart aleck politico Lynn Redmon kicked off the refrigerator magnet war when he started feeling guilty because he had his very own very attractive Victor Ashe refrigerator magnet, and the rest of us didn't.

"I was chosen at random," he said in his Powell Post column. "You, on the other hand, have practically no chance of owning a Victor Ashe magnet for your fridge."

So he decided to give the rest of us a chance by selling it on eBay for an opening bid of 22 cents. "Do not be fooled by the low starting bid for this item," he said. "The market for Mayor Ashe collectibles is at its low point right now and can only head upward. And that is not a dig at Mayor Ashe. In years to come the spotlight will be taken by others, and Ashe memorabilia will be scarce.

"You missed the Abe Lincoln theater tickets on eBay—you missed the George Washington false teeth on eBay—do not miss your chance to own this Victor Ashe Fridge magnet."

Needless to say, the Victor Ashe refrigerator magnet sold faster than a Peach Bowl ticket, commanding a final price of $2.25. The winner was Kurt Land of Karns, who blew away the competition (Van de Vate) with a final power bid.

"Kurt was a winner in that he bought the magnet. Dwight was a winner in that he did not buy the magnet. I was a winner in that I sold the magnet. Victor Ashe was a winner in that he got one more chance to remind everyone who is mayor. The only real losers in this deal were the taxpayers who had to pay for the magnet in the first place," Redmon said.

People and Parties it Warn't

The Market Square Meander, this year's officially sanctioned literary pub crawl of the White Mule Preservation Society, drew about 40 literary pilgrims, among them a couple of surprise guests: Kathy Shorr, a Cape Cod resident who recently wrote an item about Knoxville's pub crawls for the Boston Globe, and her husband Bob Finch, author and co-editor of the Norton Anthology of Nature Writing, first published in 1990. That book includes a couple of selections by Knoxville-raised writer Joseph Wood Krutch, some of whose work was read in his brother's Krutch Park. The recent pilgrimage featured readings from about a dozen novelists, journalists, and poets on the subject of Market Square in extended visits to three downtown pubs, as well as Yee-Haw Industries, whose 19th-century printing presses made an appropriate locale for quotations from Parson Brownlow and Adolph Ochs.

Finch and Shorr rounded out their day in Knoxville blowing kazoos at the Dor L'Dor album release show at the Laurel Theatre. Shorr's sister Susan Brown is pianist and arranger for the family klezmer band.