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Cas Would Have Signed It
The scurrilously anonymous or fraudulently identified commentators posting recently on the website, www.caswalker.com have indulged in some truly ugly political mudslinging in the Billy Stokes-Jamie Haygood race for the state Senate. The worst of the allegations and misattributions were removed from the website Monday night or Tuesday by whoever maintains the site, which is in a way aptly named for the late Knoxville grocer/politico/scandal monger. Cas Walker could be called a man whose reputation helped put the “cur” in curmudgeon. Rumors abound over who created and runs the website, but Cas Walker himself was certainly never afraid to put his name and stamp on whatever he was peddling.
And Now, Mr. Lightnin’ Smith!
Benny Smith, the Greeneville gadfly, Metro Pulse’s marketing genius, and Mr. Americana Music in Knoxville, inaugurated his Americana Jukebox show on Horne Radio’s West 105.3 Sunday to a radio listening audience of...no one. The station’s transmitter at Lenoir City was fritzed by lightning at about 5 p.m., and Benny decided that, with almost 100 people attending the first-ever live broadcast event at Patrick Sullivan’s, the show must go on. So it did, from 8 to 10 p.m., and on until about 11, to an enthusiastic group of spectators who caught the Old 97’s’ CD premiere and live action from Jay Clark, and Robinella and the CCstringband. “What could have been a horrible situation turned into a really cool Sunday night get-together,” Benny says, even though the taping process was also hosed, so the whole performance went unrecorded. “The sun did come up the next day,” says Benny, whose next live Americana Jukebox show from Patrick Sullivan’s will be Sunday, Aug. 29, and will feature The Tim Lee Band and Mic Harrison and his band.
No Hope for the Clock
Dawn broke on Gay Street last Friday to reveal a gap in the 400 block where the historic Kimball’s clock used to be. In the hour before daylight, it was unceremoniously ripped from the city sidewalk where it resided for nearly three quarters of a century as Knoxville’s best-recognized and most honored timepiece. Kimball’s Jewelry, which acquired the Hope Clock from the defunct Hope Jewelers in the 1920s, removed it to its new Bearden store location. In a news release earlier month, Kimball’s owner James Overbey asserted the company’s ownership of the clock. He voiced concern that the city might claim the clock as its property, and he boasted that Kimball’s had resided at 429 S. Gay for 70 years and “helped promote the revitalization of downtown Knoxville.” Part of that help, apparently, was moving to Bearden. He didn’t say, “National Register be damned,” but he damned well could have. The removal left a clumsily bricked-up hole in the sidewalk and a sour memory.
July 29, 2004 • Vol. 14, No. 31
© 2004 Metro Pulse
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