Orphan of the storm's fictitious? fable about the joy of abandoning freezing house to travel on icy roads to seek refuge and ask "Why?" .... & ''When?" the city and NES will remember the winter of 1994

 Me and Suzanne sat in our house. It was cold. Boy was it cold.  A week's worth of sub-freezing temperatures in Nashville had set the stage for a disaster.

We were naive enough to think that our city -- the so-called "It City," that apparently spends trillions of dollars to seduce drunken conventioneers and splay-legged bridal parties and tourists from enemy lands like Denmark and Greenland -- would be equipped for what followed.

The first wave of the disaster came in the form of heavy, driving snow for most of a Saturday.  Now, having grown up near the shore of Lake Michigan at Chicago's edge, I wasn't too worried about the snow. Oh, I figured we'd be trapped a few days, since Metro Nashville only plows occasional streets. They use the old "rock, paper, scissors" method to determine who gets served.

After all, you got to serve somebody in a city where a modest 70-year-old brick house gets taxed by several thousand every year. They say the big tab is for the police -- who I haven't seen in the last week and a half, even though some burglars with frostbitten balls broke into a house three blocks away during the heart of the disaster.

The tax money also goes for schools, and as a proud parent of two full-grown former Romanian orphans who spent their learning years in the public schools system, I'm all for that, though I wonder where were the vouchers when I needed them.

Then, of course, there is trash pickup and biweekly rumblings through the neighborhood of the recycling truck. It's efficient. Got a message from them in the heart of the freeze that we needed to put our trash can on the street's edge before 6 a.m. Monday, to make up for the missed collection during the ice storm. Can's still up there.  

Still, I'm grateful for Metro services provided to the fortunate in the Urban Services District.

What I'm not grateful for is the apparent ineptitude of city and utility leaders on the day after the snowfall, when a nightlong and daylong storm of freezing rain left our city in the darkness, as we were bathed with sheets of ice and the power grid exploded. Or at least the transformers did, sounding like ICE agents were tossing mustard gas grenades across the Metroscape.

But the only ice attack this time was not a bunch of hooligans with masks and automatic weapons looking for kindergartners to deport. It was the for-real ice. Ice, baby. At least three-quarters of an inch of the frozen precipitation gathering on the power lines and tree limbs.

Nashville, by the way, is among America's prettiest places to live, at least in part because of the plethora of mature trees in yards and along streets and the limited number of city sidewalks.

As my old pal Little Johnny Cougar might sing: "And the limbs came tumblin' down. Tumblin', Tumblin'.......... Dow-ow--on" ... striking power lines and bustin' roofs and crippling what had been -- for bridal parties and their rent-by-the-hour sloppy-drunk male cohorts -- a wonderful city. Frosty Apocalypse Now.

On the very-early morning of the storm, 6 or so, our power went out.   

"It will be back by this afternoon or tomorrow," I said, sure that everyone knew what to do and how to communicate nowadays. "They musta learned somethin' in all those years."

Surely, I figured, the city did learn from the ice storm of 1994. That time we were without power 12 days at this same brick house.  Ow, she's a brick house,...Well put-together, everybody knows.

This is how the story goes:

Leaders surely were prepared this time in the utility departments and Metro's various other services who get paid for via the massive and unfair property tax that is aimed at making salt-of-the-earth types of people, many of them Black, move because it is unaffordable. That paves the way for the gentrification and tall, skinny houses filled with White people and California refugees (Please, go back. Hell, I'd not move to Nashville from Malibu where my old and now-dead pal, Bart Durham used to host me in his beach house.) I loved to walk the beach and watch the seals.

I am an old-timer and a cranky old man in this city. I love it here. I was working at the old Nashville Banner the morning of the 1994 storm. I remember my friend, Lyle Graves, and I walking into the 1100 Broadway building at around 5 a.m., trading descriptions of how the exploding transformers lighted up the night. It was a failed-electric blitzkrieg, and you could see the flashes of the transformer explosions, followed in seconds by the loud boom.

"It's like World War II out here," said Lyle, who didn't live during the Great War, but lives in a pleasant neighborhood that at least used to have mature trees just off West End and in the earpath of I-440. I haven't driven there in the last few days to see what's left.

"Except we're attacking ourselves this time," I countered, as we laughed at each other's stupidity and stepped into the back foyer of the building. I greeted my good friend Johnny Sibert, a Hall of Fame steel guitar genius who worked as a security guard at the newspaper in order to feed his family and buy new strings. I've known and befriended many steel players. Johnny was as good at steel as the kid from "The Devil Went Down to Georgia" was on the fiddle.  I throw that analogy in here because Charlie Daniels, who played both the kid and Beelzebub, was a friend of mine.  Like Johnny Sibert, he's dead. Pretty much all of them are.  Josh Graves, Eddy Arnold, Mac Wiseman, Peter Cooper, Perry Baggs, Kristofferson .... But that's not the topic here. 

Since we had that experience back when Phil Bredesen, the gentle trillionaire, was mayor, I figured that by now, six mayors later, we needn't worry. That first one in 1994 was a sneak attack. The most recent one -- and I'm sorry many of you still have no power --had been forecast for about 10 days before it "snuck in" and ruined our lives. 

"Snuck in?" The ice was coming, the weather forecasters, wet with spit or sweet emotion, chirped basically every 15 minutes for days and days."Look what it's doing in Texas.... Oklahoma ... Arkansas ... it's coming our way."

I am a normal Nashvillian, a washed-up journalist who writes for sanity (Many friends proclaim I fail in this mission. Perhaps that's why most of them don't call, but, as noted above, many of them are dead.) Whatever gets you through the night, it's all right.   At least my wife tolerates me most days, especially if I remain in my basement office surrounded by Beatles memorabilia and a few souvenirs of my ill-fated half-century newspaper career. (The latter can be read about in the great book "When Newspapers Mattered: The News Brothers and their Shades of Glory," available on amazon.) 

As a "normal" -- or close-to-it -- Nashvillian, I really wasn't too worried when the storm came and shut off the power for which I pay four times market value, thanks to the Saudi Crown Prince and his pale ally. Oh, hell, I guess they have nothing to do with NES or its elephant jam of initials, acronyms, anagrams, whatever the term. Oh yeah, alphabet stew, not elephant jam. But I like, so that's all right. I like it. One and one and one is three. 

Apparently, leaders in the city and NES, who could have better prepared for what was coming, if you believed those wide-eyed forecasters as they leapt with joy about their impending overtime, didn't recollect the 1994 storm.

I don't know the truth and probably couldn't handle it if I did, but as far as I could tell, the limbs broke off and fell, knocking out power in most of the city. The roads already impassable with snow -- as Metro plows seemed absent in my neighborhood on the day of the snow -- iced over.  It wasn't until today, 10 days after the disaster, that I looked  out the window and saw a police car. And I wonder why.

Nothing and no one was on the streets for the first 56 hours after the limbs began crashing into the city's infrastructure. Power was out. House temperatures dropped into the 30s because of loss of heat. Unless  you had a four-wheeler that you didn't mind getting damaged by sliding off the road, no one was out there.

Oh, sure, on that first day, the children across the street who I buy lemonade from in the summer, were using the snow and ice as the source of joy. Slipping, sliding, sledding, falling on their asses. Laughing. Until massive, struggling limbs over their yard began to succumb, and fall to the ground, almost in rhythmic, destructive dance.   The kids' parents yelled for the kids to come in. I would have, too. But I had enjoyed watching them, as power was out and so was the source of entertainment an communication.

It turned out -- we discovered a week later -- that there had been no communication to miss. Metro workers toiled hard to attempt to clean roads after the storm, but they were largely ineffective. The fact my had been neither brined nor plowed for days kept me trapped here as the ice froze even harder. That didn't surprise me when we finally did get out to see that Franklin Road, U.S. 31, had maybe a lane and a half cleared. Massive limbs, that I would expect to have been picked up, cut up or simply moved, blocked large sections of the road. Plows couldn't move them. And NES workers couldn't get to the lines.

I am not blaming the brave and worthy men and women of NES or city street workers for what is generally referred to as a massive SNAFU, but which I like to call "Situation Normal: All Fucked Up."

I am upset because things that could/should have been done in the week that the forecast icy apocalypse was headed our way.  Hell, David Muir led with the approaching devastation caused by ice as often as he led the ABC TV news with the human devastation caused by ICE and its puppy-slaying boss. And the Weather Channel guy, the bald-headed asshole ... what's his name ... oh, Jim Cantore ... focused on the horror headed our way.     

But the city and NES just waited. No lessons learned in 1994? I guess everyone from back then is dead. Or stupid. Irresponsible.

The first thing that should have been established was a line of communication, so that residents and others, including the linemen and rescuers, would know what was happening and what was going to be fixed next.

When we finally decided that the house was unlivable for an old man who just had had his spine rebuilt as well as for his much-younger and kinder bride, we tried to find a hotel room. We failed. No one to blame but us, but I did expect the power to return in three days or less. And the six blanket, sleeping bag and even one of  those foil emergency covers were ineffective.

We did get a reservation in a hotel a mile or so away, but when we got there, it was closed. That's not Metro's fault. It's that of this era when you have to make reservations on an 888 line with a kind operator who tells you the weather is fine in Bangalore.

Anyway, we turned eastward, checking and calling all along for hotel rooms, finding first refuge in a Holiday Inn Express in Lebanon, where we snagged the last room available.  I felt bad for the folks who followed us in, but it was us or them, and I wanted it to be us.

The next day, we decided to move back to Nashville and our son, who lives in wartorn Minneapolis, worked the phones as we drove, finding a single King room left at the Brentwood Sheraton. Since it is maybe two miles from my house and would allow us to monitor our property by daily drive-throughs, we took it.

Nice room. Great shower, with one head that washed my belly-button, hard bed. Great staff. 

But the stomach-souring truth was that while we were warm, our daily or twice-daily drives (slow as ice) were discouraging. No road cleaning. No power.  I did see a suspected prowler going into yards and called the non-emergency number, but no cops thought the trip worthy.

At least in the hotel, we could watch coverage of the cleanup that wasn't really happening. Fortunately, we were in communication with our councilperson, Courtney Johnston, who did her best to work the phones and feed us scraps of information that should have been served up by the NES chief who avoided media questions at press conferences..

As for our mayor, Freddie O'Connell, well, he did pose for photo ops with a six-foot stick he picked up (our MAGA governor did the same after seeing Freddie's display of unity.)

In my head, I kept singing Little Richard's "Ready Teddy" tale. Although I changed it to Ready Freddie, with the climactic lines "'All the flat top cats and all the dungaree dolls/Are headed for the gym to the sock hop ball/The joint's really jumping, the cats are going wild/The music really sends me,/I dig that crazy style" finishing with "But are you ready, ready, Freddie? No I'm not ready, ready, ready, Freddie...."

The only good thing from the storm was the sense of joint suffering from folks in the hotel and the fact guests could bring pets. I met a lot of nice dogs down in that lounge.

I also had the opportunity to chat with one of the nicest guys in Nashville, acclaimed sportswriter and columnist Larry Woody. He and his son were staying a floor or two below us. I first met Larry almost 50 years ago, when he and Joe Caldwell covered the Ohio Valley Conference for The Tennessean and Nashville Banner, respectively.

I was sports editor at The Leaf-Chronicle in Clarksville, Tennessee, and covered all the games involving local Austin Peay State University. The two Nashville sportswriters traveled, like the Pros from Dover, together. They were great fellas. But Larry looks a lot older than he did in 1978. Joe's dead (murdered by the greed-driven collapse of the Banner.)

Larry and I swapped Caldwell tales -- Joe and I sat across from each other on the news copy desk after we were hired by the last newspaper that used to cover Nashville, The Tennessean.  One 1 or 2 a.m., after Joe and I went through proofs of the second edition of that newspaper, which some of you may remember, I told him I'd finish up, and he walked to the parking lot.

He went home and had a fatal heart attack. Cause unknown, but surely heartache contributed.

Larry and I shared our feelings on the editors at that paper, and found that our opinions pretty much matched. I'll leave it at that.  You can read my book, mentioned above, for a dose of the truth. 

During what I told my wife was our expensive winter vacation at the Sheraton, I was able to post updates and thoughts on Facebook, and one of my friends told me not to be hard on Freddie. Every other municipality had the same problems, my friend said.

Yeah, but Freddie is mayor of the city that gives its name to one of the most stupid TV shows on the network schedule. He is supposed to be a leader, follow the Boy Scout "Be Prepared" mantra, and he shouldn't have to make excuses for NES. That isn't his fault.

So, even if the weather casters had warned us for seeming weeks that catastrophe was coming, it somehow caught leaders by surprise.  Freddie didn't cause it, but he's got to answer for it. And maybe read some old Banners from 1994.

There's plenty of blame to go around, but, as Dylan said: "Even the president of the United States sometimes must have to stand naked."

That, in literal interpretation, is pretty disgusting.

Fourteen years after he died, Scott "Badger" Shelton remains among my closest friends, most of whom -- like The Lone Ranger and John Lennon -- have died... A love story for the ages & aged

Bill Shelton has been dead a long time. His son, Scott (actually William Scott) died 14 years ago today.

Bill became my friend shortly after I moved to Clarksville, Tennessee, in 1974, to work for The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper.

I actually remained in Clarksville too long, but when I did finally get the torturous personal roadblocks out of my way, I left. Ran for my life, really. Seldom go back.

But I do time-travel there, and in my deranged head I visit with my friends, mostly dead folks, and we talk about our time together.

Actually, today’s ramble is supposed to be about Scott, who was among my best friends. He rode with me and my brother, Eric, and Rob Dollar when we went to meet The Lone Ranger, forming deep relationships with Clayton Moore that lasted until the masked man's final adios. "Hi-yo, Silver, away!"

Scott’s role, though, was as a facilitator to lawlessness, a condition to which I am dangerously prone. Scott got so excited that he leaned over my shoulder and pleaded, loudly, for me to run for the state line when Kentucky law was on my tail and the sanctuary of Tennessee was just a few miles away.

“He can’t follow us into Tennessee, Flap!” Scott said. “He doesn’t have the authority.” 

“Flap,” is short for “Flapjacks,” a nickname and pseudonym in which I threw caution to the wind, drank too much alcohol and coffee, smoked too much, adopted stray humans and animals, fought for the First Amendment and against Korporate Amerikan tyranny and contributed mightily to charity.  

We met up with The Lone Ranger in 1983 at the fairgrounds, or whatever they call it in Hoptown, where Rob, aka “Death,” still lives in virtual anonymity, even though he was the editor of the newspaper there for decades and also was deputy mayor. 

He took that latter duty so seriously that he and Mayor Rich Liebe (aka "Da Mayor") and Rob would go so far as even empty trash cans if the public works guys missed a house.

They did it on horseback, too. Nah. That’s something of a lie. Well, it’s purely a lie. They did, however, go out and collect the trash if a citizen called and said public works had skipped their home, their street, their trailer park.  The duo even had to pick up trash at the Insane Asylum one evening. (The "mental hospital" is near the edge of town and is not far from the house where Lonnie Lankford first told me about the Little Green Men who attacked his family out in nearby Kelly, Kentucky. There's a book -- "Monkeys Don't Wear Silver Suits" --about Lonnie and that alien invasion. Rob and I wrote it. We spent a lot of miles driving Da Mayor's official Cadillac in pursuit of interviews for that book.) 

On those garbage collection runs, Rich, who is a car connoisseur, was driving that huge, shit-colored Cadillac, and he’d pull up to any still-full garbage can. He and Rob would leap from the car, grab the cans or can – any that public works had skipped – and they’d empty them into his trunk. Sometimes they emptied them in the back seat, which was especially stupid, considering it was pure Corinthian leather and the garbage – consisting of banana skins, Alpo cans, fetuses, soft onions, watermelon rinds, chicken bones and old tea bags (if they were in the wealthy part of town) – was baked in the 98-degree Hoptown sun.

Since they wore their suits and ties when serving the public, they often had to brush the maggots from their clothes before going to City Council meetings. “Those are the real maggots there,” Rob and Rich agreed. Probably wasn’t an attitude good for their political futures, which basically ended with two giant thuds. And I was the only one who cared.

Occasionally, Rob and Da Mayor would fill in for the fire department and take the smaller of the two tankers out of the firehouse to extinguish grass fires along Fort Campbell Boulevard. I rode with them once, and it was fun. I did burn my right pinky toe, though.

Now, Rob is unemployed (what we like to call “retired”) and Rich roars around Hoptown in a 1962 Corvette convertible, always hollering to strangers: “God Bless you extra good.”  Or something like that. He’s one of the nicest people I’ve ever met, and he always pays when we go out to eat. He was the nicest mayor of the dozens I've known as a journalist. He's even nicer than “Wild Turkey,” who is dead and who I may visit later.

Well, Rob and Rich remain alive at this writing. This really is supposed to be about Scott, who was only 57 … 14 years ago, when that fucking cancer took him.

“At least I lived long enough to see The Lone Ranger,” he would tell me during our frequent calls in the last few years of his life, even before he was dealt the news that cancer was going to kill him.

Afterward, too. And in the years since he died. We still converse.

We had many great adventures together. Scott was weak-kneed when we met and befriended The Lone Ranger. From left: Rob "Death" Dollar, Scott "Badger" Shelton, Clayton "Mr. Lone Ranger"Moore and Tim"Flapjacks" Ghianni. My big brother, Eric, who liked to visit with his "free spirit" of a little brother, took this picture. Like Scott and Mr. Lone Ranger, he's dead, too. And that makes me sad. That perpetual melancholy is why I write shit like this.

  I started out this little stream of mind-snot by talking about the Sheltons, Bill and Little Bill (remember, his full name was “William Scott Shelton,” even though that was a fact he kept secret. I believe he finally told his wife, Elise, when he was on his deathbed. But she won’t confirm that. Unfortunately, I have unconfirmed reports that she often referred to him as “Little Willy.”)

In Clarksville, he was just “Scott,” a radio journalist who almost died of a stroke when I had Jimmy in the Morning play The Beatles’ “Helter Skelter” during a 5-9 a.m. shift at WJZM-AM.  I was there as a close friend of Scott’s and an admirer of Jimmy – who drank too much and became an HVAC repairman in later years.  He was every bit as good as the deejays on the big stations, but he never got his big break.  He didn’t wear socks, and never was in public without a gold neck chain and sunglasses. Even when he was passed out, drunk, at a place called Camelot.

Jimmy also would buy me and Rob an endless stream of scotch when we ran into him and Chief Sheriff’s Deputy Eddy Patterson at Camelot. Jimmy would lift his head from the tabletop and wave at bar owner Buford Thaxton, who personally would deliver the huge tankards of scotch to us.  Rob and I went there every Sunday morning, just after midnight, after I inspected the "first run" and gave the OK for the presses to roll. Buford would close the doors at 2, but allow me, Rob, Jimmy, local cops and usually our pal Jerry “Chuckles” Manley to stick around until 3. He didn’t sell liquor after 2, by law, but he gave it to us as sort of a customer-appreciation gesture.

Jimmy’s dead too. I really liked him. Because I was a journalist and the front-page columnist and associate editor at the newspaper, I often was rambling around Clarksville pre-dawn (we had to be at work by 5 or some fucking hour on weekdays).  Since Scott was my pal – although as noted earlier, he later became “Badger News Brother,” as dubbed by head News Brothers Tim “Flapjacks” Ghianni and Robert “Death” Dollar. (Actually, I mostly call him “Rob,” but he is "Robert" to the family, his mom, sisters, nephew, great-nephew, cats Columbo and Bob, all of whom he cares for in Hoptown).

Other than having two sons and a wonderful wife and career as a radio newsman and later a public relations specialist for a power company, being a News Brother was the most important thing in Little Willy’s life.

News Brothers and fan club members gather outside the church in which we'd served as Scott's honorary pallbearers. Rob "Death" Dollar, David "Teach" Ross, Dennis "Danny" Adkins, Frankie "Wuhm" White, Rich "Da Mayor" Liebe and the beloved and disturbed Tim "Flapjacks" Ghianni (from left.) 

Circling back a paragraph or two, I often would wander up the stairs and into the WJZM studios, above a furniture store and a bordello, and visit with Scott, who did all the news breaks, and Jimmy in the Morning. More than once, I would appear as a guest either on a news break (I did radio news in college when I was sober or not) or spinning stacks of wax with Jimmy.

Jimmy turned over a three-hour block to me one day, just for me to talk about The Beatles and to play their recordings. Both of the radio men were shocked when I slipped the 45 rpm version of “Helter Skelter” – aka “Charlie’s Theme” -- on the turntable. The Beatles’ song that laid the foundation for heavy metal rock is truly disturbing to the naive.

“Well will you, won't you want me to make you?
I'm coming down fast, but don't let me break you….”

I believe they broke the record after jerking it off the turntable. "I may be your lover, but I ain’t no dancer," I reminded them.

Scott, who was a deeply religious Beatles worshiper while also a Methodist, only liked the Fab Four’s “Moptops” era.  Kind of made me sick, but he was my pal, so I forgave him with a simple “Love, love me do…,” which I’d sing while sliding down the banister from the radio station and to the door to Madison Street.  

It was during that famous Beatles broadcast that Jimmy asked me if I liked any of the younger acts that were on the radio in the late 1970s or early 1980s.  All I could come up with were Springsteen and Petty and the Heartbreakers, and he told me he was not looking for even-then “oldies” acts. So, I told him that most of what he played each morning was shit. I pronounced it “sh-eye-t,” so sponsors like Don’s Donuts and Wilson’s Catfish House wouldn’t pull their sponsorships. They paid for their commercials by delivering crullers and fried filets to Scott and Jimmy.

Since I was working basically for free at The Leaf-Chronicle, it was great to be able to drop in on Scott and Jimmy and grab a handful of catfish filets for me to share with my long-dead-now friend, Skipper, a retired carny and sailor (if you believed his tales. Veracity is only important for some preachers and women who maintain they are virgins, so I made up stories of my own to tell him. None of mine were as good as his "the day I served spaghetti to Al Capone.") Skipper liked to sit with me on the bench in front of The Royal York Hotel and Flophouse, especially when it was hot outside. Boy was it hot.  That run-down former luxury hotel was halfway between WJZM and the newspaper. And, according to its neon sign, it was “Fireproof.”

But this is supposed to be about Scott, who died 14 years ago today. He should not have done that. Most of my real friends are dead, so I can’t talk with them too often. It was unfair that Scott, who was my biggest cheerleader (other than my friend Rob, brother Eric and The Lone Ranger and Brooks Robinson) when it came to my writing, died so young at 57.  I was his favorite writer and he was sure I’d be able to make it as a freelancer after I got butt-fucked by one of our sick nation’s largest newspaper chains. Those “newspaper” execs had made the decision that old men who knew where the stories were, had sources in government and on both sides of the law and who knew how to navigate Nashville streets no longer were needed. They went for young kids who could type press releases and kiss korporate ass – sometimes French-style -- instead. Now newspapers are dead. (I should note that in that “cheerleader” clause above, Rob’s all that’s left.)

Well, as I noted earlier, this is supposed to be about Scott, who I really miss. He was a yellow-dog Democrat, so I’d love to hear his take on the Emperor and his new clothes. I’ve never been to Greenland, anyway, and I stay out of political commentary here, though I am disturbed … on many levels. It's just the condition my condition is in.

Me, Brooks Robinson, Scott and Rob Dollar look for and finally discover a baseball on a chilly day. 

One day I was sitting in my office here in my Nashville house and I called PR man Scott at the power company serving rural Clarksville,  and I was told he was out for a long lunch. I called him back a couple hours later.

“I’ve been driving around town pulling ‘Bush for President’ signs out of people’s yards,” he said. I drove up to Clarksville the next day, and we emptied out his trunk and burned the pile of signs in the wishing well on Public Square. My friend, the previously mentioned Mayor Ted “Wild Turkey” Crozier came out of his office and poured vodka on the fire.

Actually, most of this is true, except Mayor Ted never would waste vodka like that. I loved that crazy fucker, who wore a “Tim Ghianni for Mayor” lapel button when he went out to greet Senator John Glenn at Outlaw Field. “Johnny Boy,” as Rob and I addressed the first American to orbit the Earth, was in town for a fund-raiser as he was exploring a presidential run.  Truly, and there is Zapruder-like film to prove this, Secret Service agents reached for their shoulder holsters when Rob, me, Jerry “Chuckles” Manley and John “Street” Staed ran onto the runway to greet Johnny Boy.

But this is about Scott today. Because he died 14 years ago and with that zapped away a guy I loved and who I considered to be among a special band of derelicts who didn’t mind hanging around with me.

I actually knew his dad, Bill, before I met Scott. Clarksville then was a truly special place. The Leaf-Chronicle was a really excellent newspaper. Course now it’s a worthless piece of shit. But back then, we put out a great paper, sometimes even being named “Best in the South” in contests.

Clarksville lifers like Bill Shelton and my late pal the motorcycle-riding meter-reading cop Russ Herndon viewed the paper as theirs. Nobody views online “news’’ sites so personally. I had become well-known in Clarksville for my sportswriting and then, for years, as featured front-page columnist and associate editor.

If Bill had a complaint or, more often, a good idea he wanted to share, not just about or for me, but for the newspaper staff as a whole, he would wander up into the newsroom and plop down in the visitor’s chair by my desk. I’d generally take the opportunity to lean back and fire up a Merit 100.

“Tim, you are a smart guy, don’t you realize that you can’t beat those things? They’ll kill you if you don’t quit,” he’d tell me often.

When I finally did quit in January 2000, snuffing out my last cigarette in the ashtray near my charcoal grill in the middle of my Nashville yard, I thought of Bill. Long dead, but I figured he was smiling.

Anyway, it was somewhere in those long and drawling conversations that he admitted he had a son who would be named “Badger News Brother” by the time he died.

Scott was still away at the University of Tennessee – where he was known for taking off his shirt at football games and flashing his perky nipples – studying to eventually take over for Huntley and Brinkley, both long dead by now and perhaps even by then – as TV/broadcasting’s best journalist.

Bill -- whose middle name was "Hardy," keeping son William Scott Shelton from being a "Jr." -- often told me I’d probably like his son, but asked me to not lead him astray, something I always enjoyed doing, when he graduated and returned to Clarksville.

In short order we were friends. He also befriended my News Brothers pals “Chuckles” and “Death.”  Chuckles is still alive, by the way, unlike most of my friends. But he forgets stuff, like where he been. (The previous sentence is not poor grammar; it's just the way I talk when I'm enjoying hijinks with my News Brothers, living and dead.)

Positively Third Street: The News Brothers, Chuckles, Death and Badger, follow dear old Flapjacks across Third Street in Clarksville, Tennessee.That is Skipper in the background. Boy was it hot that day.

Eventually, “Badger” was there for many of my adventures. I don’t think he drank much and liked to stay home and cuddle his still-extraordinary wife Elise, so he missed about three-quarters of the free time when I was with Chuckles and Death.

But he was there when The Lone Ranger came to Hoptown. Let’s get back to the story here about me stepping on the gas and trying to get away from a state trooper who simply desired to give me a speeding ticket as I drove – with my brother Eric and Scott in my old Duster, with the bad brakes – from Hopkinsville, Kentucky, to Clarksville, Tennessee, back in the winter of '83.

As soon as I saw the blue lights in my rearview mirror, it increased my paranoia. I said “Fuck me,” but instead, Scott urged me to speed up and “run for the Kentucky-Tennessee state line.”

It was quite a chase for a few miles, as Trooper Rudy pulled up alongside me and pointed his pistol at me. He signaled for me to pull over.

“You can outrun him, Flap!” urged Badger.

Most of that is true, except the pistol and the race for the border. And Trooper Rudy even told me later that he “might have made a mistake. Sometimes radar is wrong.”

Of course, he told me that after I had served as my own counsel and went to Christian County, Kentucky, court in Hoptown to fight the ticket.

“Whatcha in here, for, kid?” said more than one of the father rapers, mother fuckers and murderers on the docket that day.  I had been erroneously assigned to a circuit court day reserved for real criminals. I sat there with really bad guys. Like most people they liked me, a lot.

“I was arrested when I was running for the state line after I saw The Lone Ranger,” I told them. That seemed to satisfy them.

They all applauded from the holding cell at the back of the courtroom after I concluded my defense and rested my case.

That didn’t affect the judge’s decision though, even my sterling cross-examination of Trooper Rudy – he said “He did it, your honor” and pointed his pistol at me in the courtroom – fell flat.

So I paid the $50 or $100 plus court costs – a week’s salary from the slimy bastards for whom I worked.

But this is supposed to be about Scott, who has been dead 14 years by now.

But he was there -- with Rob, Danny and Tennessee Williams (an admittedly off-kilter fellow who did not write plays and used an ax to protest "Reaganomics" in a bank lobby) -- when I nearly fell off the roof of the newspaper building and smashed thin as a flapjack on Commerce Street three floors below. We were making a movie, but that’s a long and tawdry tale of greed and corruption and the long-dead Tony Durr and The Big Guy, and complete with gunfights and police chases.

"Badger" was there, I think, at my Clarksville Bicentennial party that ended up with me and Rob doing laps in a five-foot-long kiddy pool. Chuckles didn’t dive in because he couldn’t figure out what we were doing or where we been.

Badger was there when we – me, him and Rob – became best friends with Hall of Fame Third Baseman Brooks Robinson.  Brooks, who played four-corner catch with us that day, became a great admirer of The News Brothers, especially Scott, who told Brooks “you are a lot Whiter than Henry Aaron but not as White as Whitey Ford.”  Brooks agreed and gave Scott his ball-glove. None of this was racist, just fact from observation, which you'd expect from journalist like Scott. I had developed a friendship with Henry Aaron, and even he agreed he was not as White as Whitey Ford. 

Mostly, as I note above, Scott – “Badger News Brother,” William Scott, Little Willy – Shelton was a great friend, a confidante. A true pal.

The last time I saw him alive, The News Brothers were in his basement/Beatles room, drinking coffee and lighting farts. Elise served us chocolate cake and pretended not to be offended by our aroma.  She also made sure Little Willy’s tank always was filled with oxygen – his life-sustenance late in his mortal struggle –  and was operating OK. I think the aroma of the farts threw her off a bit.

Scott was gleeful as we – Chuckles, Rob, Scott and Jim “Flash” Lindgren tried to do a “Beatles Abbey Road walk” across the room. I kept getting lost. And Chuckles couldn’t figure out where he been then, either. He was positive it wasn't Third Street, though.

Unfortunately, through the glee of fine Brotherhood, I could see the tombstones in Badger’s eyes. He wasn’t going to give up easily. He was too ornery for that.

Yet, as we all left, I hugged Scott long – but not too hard, because I reckoned his frail bones, likely brittle from his mortal war -- might break. I told him “I’ll see you again soon.” Neither of us believed that.

He died a month or two later. 

That really pissed me off.

When I think of Scott, I usually get sad, cause he’s gone. Today, I’m pretty happy. Not ‘cause he’s dead, but because we had a lot of fun with The Lone Ranger, Jimmy in the Morning, “Chuckles,” “Death” and Brooks Robinson.  And I always have loved his wife and boys.

I wish I could celebrate his 72^nd birthday next month, maybe let him spin some of The Beatles' early pop music he loved so much.  I’m more for the later stuff, but Scott, who is dead, could choose whatever he wanted to play. "Turn me on, dead man," as John Lennon once said on "The So-Called White Album," which Scott despised.  

"I don't know why they had to change like that," he said. I told him people always change, right up til they die.  He wasn't given the opportunity to keep changing.

Regardless, he loved The Beatles almost as much as I do.

As our Scouse-spewing heroes told us “All You Need Is Love,” and that love, at least, lives on when I think of Scott.

Then again, John, Paul, George and Ringo also told us about “yellow, matter custard dripping from a dead dog’s eye,” and that became the phrase we’d yell at each other if we were walking on opposite sides of Third Street. Or if one of us was dead and the other sitting alone at his computer listening to “Anthology 4” and thinking about “those thrilling days of yesteryear” as the announcer said before Clayton Moore and Silver tore across the TV screen with Jay Silverheels and Scout close behind.

 But unlike The Lone Ranger, Scott won’t ride again. There aren't reruns in real life. And death. 

Today, to quote the Eggman, “See how they smile like pigs in a sty, see how they snied....I’m crying...."

"Goo goo g'joob," Badger. You were, in highest News Brothers' praise, a damn nice guy. 

The last night at Badger's house: Rob "Death" Dollar, Scott "Badger" Shelton and Ricky "Dumbo" Moore (front row), David "Teach" Ross, Jerry "Chuckles" Manley, Tim "Flapjacks" Ghianni and Jim "Flash" Lindgren. This was photographed in Badger's recreation room. Harold "The Stranger" Lynch would have been there, but he already was dead.

It really doesn't 'sound reasonable' ... but Max's beloved Hoosiers win the college football crown, while he and Merrily serve as heavenly hosts with beer and fried crappie for St. Pete, etc.

 If Max Moss was right, and there is a God, then I'll bet he showed up to work late today after spending the night downing Sterling beer with Max after Indiana University won the national college football championship Monday night.

Max, a lifelong Hoosiers devotee and proud alum, died in October of 2020, always thinking that only his Hoosiers basketball team, especially with asshole coach Bob Knight beating up players and throwing chairs, would find sports success.

Now the Hoosier football team, which barely held off a feisty Miami squad, are the kings of Bloomington, Indiana. I'd say kings of the world, but I don't have that authority. Anyway, as soon as the game clock ticked down, I thought of Max, who was my journalism mentor, my biggest fan and also one of my best friends from the last three-quarters of a century. I figure Max, Clarence, St. Pete, Gabriel and The Big Boss all watched the game together. Max chain-smoked during the game -- he already died of cancer, so what's the matter with few smokes in heaven? can't kill you twice -- and kept on making sure everybody had a Sterling beer. Or, he also had his beloved 7 and 7s on ice as backups. Max also likely passed out victory cigars to the guys, while his wife, Merrily, made sure everyone had drinks and she fried up crappie for the guys.

Former IU football coach Lee Corso, who is not dead yet, also was allowed to attend, since his health is bad and it kept him away from GameDay Monday night. He was just a guest of Max and God at this point, but he was watching the game and picking out his furniture for the future.

It was a great game and also an example of how things have changed in the NIL and portal era, since Coach Cignetti dumped the squad that was at IU when he got there two years ago and he went out, cash in hand and furiously chewing gum and glowering, and bought or recruited the best talent he could find. I do wonder what type of NIL money it takes to make a guy move from Berkeley, California, to Bloomington, Indiana?

Max Moss spent the evening watching his Hoosiers win the national football crown

I should also mention that here, on the ground of the U.S. (off the coast of Greenland), our dear "young" News Brother Jim "Flash" Lindgren and his red-hot wife Brenda Myers (who was my intern back in my sports writing days at the old Leaf-Chronicle and whose father, the late Forrest Myers, who likely nursed a 7 and 7 while sitting with Max) also are IU alums. Like idiots, they majored in journalism, which is a dead profession. Rob Dollar and I told you that was coming in our best-selling obituary to newspapering, "When Newspapers Mattered: The News Brothers and their Shades of Glory" available on amazon. He and I both were run out of journalism, finding out too late, that God had put a time limit on newspapering. Rob was jerked out of the newsroom with a bright, red noose on his throat. I was dragged to the curb by a team of Korporate horses' asses.

I'm sure there was wild, X-rated fun in the Flash Household. Or perhaps they spent the evening watching the game with their fellow Indianapolis Swedes (they are part of a group of Swedish descendants who get together frequently and play with each others' pickled herring.)

Just joking. I love the Flashes.

But Monday night was for Max. He sucked hard on a Winston red and threw the butt toward earth when the game ended.

I do mention that he had great company, but one of his friends, Bob Knight, wasn't watching the game with the angelic sports enthusiasts and their Big Boss.

When Knight died, he tried to make it through the portal and go to heaven, but no one wanted him and he went straight to hell.

By the way, I really do miss Max. He was like a big brother and he taught me many things about journalism, including the art of chain-smoking while stalking the sidelines with a camera in one hand and a scorebook in the other.

So, when you hit your knees tonight, I want you to pray that Max is enjoying this historic moment in sports.

Newspapers are dead, as 'paper' and people mean nothing to Korporate assholes; Atlanta's historic daily slaughtered at age 157

In looking for something new and of value to News Brothers and our apostles today, I was looking online for a good story about the Atlanta Journal-Constitution ending its 157-year print history and going fully digital January 1. Interesting, slight attention was paid to the human cost, not just in the newsroom, but in the pressroom and other things associated with putting out a newspaper.

I did find many stories justifying this mad butchery of an American institution, but most of them were behind paywalls.

I sure enjoyed a good Saturday night, waiting for my cohorts, to finish their stories so I could oversee Sunday's newspaper. NewsPAPERS are dead, you know, unless you had your head up your ass.

I admit to being old and in the way. And, at 74, most of my life has gone by. But my life, and it was my whole adult life, was dedicated to print journalism. You know, the kind of thing where you would print Aunt Bessie's obit, Uncle Elmo holding up a giant catfish, in-depth stories about the county commission, Little League ball scores, full-scale coverage of cops and courts, movie theater times, TV listings and maybe a nationally awarded columnist writing tales of real folks.

That kind of newspaper is dead now. Oh, there are a few print publications, like The Leaf-Chronicle, where you can read the latest press releases from Fort Campbell and the Chamber of Commerce honors on the front page.

Of course, getting rid of people who loved real print journalism was part of the motivation for sticking a flaming poker up my ass 18 years ago at The Tennessean.

You guys and gals -- even those who deserted journalism to go into public relations -- all loved old-fashioned newspapers. And now you are all fucked.

No going back, as my best pal, Colonel Dollar laments.

I have one request of the korporate amerikan assholes who killed print publications. Since there no longer are pages of paper filling up with ink as they roll through the presses, I wish those bastards would stop calling them "digital newspapers." There's no fucking paper involved in these soulless and cold on-line distributors of drivel.

Fuck them all.

Now I can get on with my day.

Love, Flapjacks

P.S. -- As an aside, I know that most of you have neither purchased nor read the book Colonel Dollar and I wrote that celebrated newspapering while forecasting the korporate assassination of the industry. "When Newspapers Mattered: The News Brothers and their Shades of Glory" remains available on amazon. Some assholes, who still had "newspaper" jobs, attacked me for writing something so pessimistic about their "profession." Most of them have since lost their jobs and are rotting in PR offices or on their front porches asking "Why?" through their tears and rotted teeth. We answer that question. By the way, when it was published, I gave a copy to Karen Brown, then top dog at Poynter Institute, which then was the most-respected newspaper think tank. She thanked me for the book and said Rob and I were "very brave" for taking on Korporate Amerika. I continue to pay for my stance and my beliefs. I know we have lost. And I can't believe most of you assholes haven't even read the book.

Photo by (I believe) Toby Tobler or Larry McCormack or the then-late W..J. Souza: Leaf-Chronicle Associate Editor Tim Ghianni waits for the last story for the front page of a Sunday morning newsPAPER. It could have been about a murder, a zoning issue, a sex scandal or an escaped monkey. Oh, meanwhile, he was waiting for Foston's or McReynolds-Nave and other funeral homes to drop off obituary information for free publication, sometimes taking up a page and a half, of the newsPAPER for free as a service to the community. If I needed more space to get all the obits in, I'd talk with Glover Williams and Ronnie Kendrick, and we'd go up a couple of pages, filling any excess up with a house ad if necessary. Meanwhile, across the newsroom, Jerry Manley designs the front page after one last edit, Rob Dollar checks in with the cop shop for information about a deadly wreck or a prostitution sting and Larry Schmidt and Ricky G. Moore work on the agate page to make sure bowling and Little League scores get in the newspaper.

Schmidt grabs a smoke, reads the scores, and begins his two-finger typing speed to grind out a local golf story for the jump page of the sports section. 1 a.m. beer or flapjacks await.

'Silver Hammer' would bet the farm on his Indiana Hoosiers as they humiliate Crimson Tide, head for NCAA football championship game

 No one would have been made happier by Indiana University's outright humiliation of Alabama on New Year's Day than my good pal and mentor Max Moss, aka "The Silver Hammer," as I christened him during the years spent together in Clarksville at what was the oldest newspaper in Tennessee, founded 1808. It's now the oddest paper in Tennessee and ditched all journalism credibility so as not to feel bad about being a piece of shit. That's an aside from an old man who learned from Max how to use a scale wheel and pica pole ("just jam it up Washer's ass and then twist," he advised me on my first day at the L-C.) That's not true, but I like it, so from now on it will be true history.

Clarksville Leaf-Chronicle Managing Editor Max Moss tells copy desk chief Jim Monday to tear up the front page and "fer chrissakes do it right this time, fat man." Jim, also the religion editor, told Max to "fuck off."  This photo is from the early 1980s. 

Max also taught me how to handle scorebooks and how to count "heds" aka headlines, an art that now is lost in the techno age where heads are made to fit but not necessarily made to make sense by the computer and its "operator" (formerly known as "copy editors"). He also taught me how to use a 35 mm and a 4-by-4 camera and how to soup film in the deep tank, print it wet on the enlarger, develop it long enough for the image to hold to the camera room. And, regrettably, how to smoke like a fiend. I quit for a year by September 12, 1974, when I went to work at the L-C. From the first day, it was apparent that I was the only person who had heard the tales of cigarette smoking being bad for you. Even fat old Jim Monday (guy on right) smoked back then and he was a burrhead with no beard and liked to spend free time at Trice's Landing or speaking in tongues at his Assembly of Cronar Church on Fort Campbell Boulevard. I kept in touch with Jim, as I really did like him despite all the true or false weird tales, until just after he died. I used to call him and say: "So, how're you doing, Fat Boy?"

Anyway, Max was my mentor, so when he offered me a smoke, I grabbed one of his Winston Reds. I began my typical obsessive behavior and smoked up to three packs a day until I quit at the turn of this century.

All of this is good-natured joking. But completely true.

I do remember that when I was associate editor, Max was managing editor, and I was in charge of Sunday's newspaper. Max would come in around 10 a.m. or so to review the opinion pages and to visit with me. One day, The News Brothers were filming our "Mission: Impossible" scene. It was just Rob and me in the scene. Jim Lindgren or Jerry Manley was holding the Super 8 mm movie camera I'd stolen from my Dad for filming. The scene focused on instructions/threats from The Big Guy, our publisher. In M-I fashion, the instructions had to be burned. Which we did, over a waste can. Rob burned his hand as well. Another scene involved our murder of "Newspaperman" Wendell Wilson. We all ganged up on Wendell (he was just the eyes in this scene, filmed from his viewpoint at his desk.) When I see it now, I marvel at the hatred in our eyes and how vicious our punches when we mimed hitting down at Wendell (I think it was Larry McCormack who was lying on the floor by Wendell's desk and filming "up" at us. I never felt as alive as I did when we killed Wendell. If it wasn't Larry filming it may have been the late, even then, W.J. Souza, but I doubt it.)

During these filmings -- we filmed on Saturday mornings and went to work at noon on Saturdays -- Max sat quietly in his glass-lined office, looking and smiling at the group of rascals.

Then he came out of his office and told me he needed to talk with me a minute. I had to close the door behind me. I thought he was angry. Nope. "Just make sure the fellas don't destroy the building," or something just like that, he said. I don't think killing Wendell bothered him, but he had feared that Rob and I would burn down 200 Commerce Street. Figuratively we did, of course, beginning our life's journeys that ended with us being labeled "unfit" for newspapers.

I could go on and on and I have, recollecting Max's influence on my life. The biggest thing he taught me was how to be an honorable journalist. He also told me I was the best writer he'd ever known (I remain proud of that, course I don't know who he knew). And he took me into his family, as every Saturday night we'd buy Whoppers with cheese and frostees and go out to the Moss Compound near the post. We'd sit there eating and watching Archie Bunker and Mary Tyler Moore, then wash it all down with a cold Sterling and head back downtown for the remaining 5 or 6 hours until the paper came off the presses.

Now, as I did mention at the top, he would be (and may be, as he was a devout believer in heaven) very proud after his Hoosiers took the Crimson Tide down, stealing their jockstraps and dignity on the way.

Max was a proud IU grad, and usually his Hoosier football sucked, but his pal Bob Knight continually bullied his way to basketball success. I thought Knight, who I knew, was a bigger asshole than Wendell Wilson, but Max forgave him. "That's just Knight being Knight," he'd shrug of the violent actions of the booger-faced asshole who coached the basketball team.

This all leads me back to the reason I posted this in the first place: I don't know what the Hoosiers will do as the football playoffs continue, but Max would have been so delighted. Hell, he probably is, as I note earlier. He probably fired up one of those Winston Reds (God allows smoking, as it can't harm you if you are dead, and asked Glover Williams for a can of Sterling, as the Hoosiers rolled. "Sounds reasonable, eh pardner," he'd say as Glover offers him a menthol cigarette as a change of pace.

I am hoping for continued success for Hoosiers football if only because it gives me the opportunity to recall, in 100 percent factual fashion, my relationship with "The Silver Hammer."

I still love you, old friend. I'm sorry you couldn't convince me it was fun to sit in a boat all day for one or two eight-ounce fish. Of course, it was fun to smoke out there on Lake Barkley, suck on a cold Sterling and laugh.