Shortly after I started first grade, I started taking voice lessons from a teacher in town named Joe Kincaid. “Mr. Joe” had a lot of students that had success in talent shows at the Mid-South Fair in Memphis. My cousin Sammy was one of his success stories. Sammy lived next door to us, and we sang together around the house. We also sang together at church with my mom accompanying us. Several of Mr. Joe’s voice students were kids that were my mom’s piano students.
My mom was a piano teacher. In my earliest memories, there was a piano in our living room. I remember kids coming to our house in the afternoon to take lessons. My mom sat in a rocker next to the piano as her students played their weekly assignments. If they did well enough, they would get to take a star sticker out of the box on the piano and place it in their lesson book on the page with that song. The stars were like old stamps and had to be licked to get them to stick to the page. If someone did especially good on a song, they would get two stars. Our family has home movies of me when I was around 4 years old climbing onto the stool and picking around on the piano. I didn’t understand at the time that we had a silent movie camera, and no one would be able to hear me play. I didn’t want anyone to hear me play. I don’t know what my ability was at the time, but I do know that I was not shy about picking around on the piano.
“Wow! What a rip-off!” I heard this early during this year’s trip to Elvis Week. The lady that said it was having issues with the lockers located outside of the ticket office at the visitors’ center at Graceland. From what I heard them say, part of her issue was trying to use Canadian quarters to pay for a locker. Some of her Canadian quarters had become lodged in the locker. She was also complaining that you had to put more money in it every time you opened it. I don’t have any idea how much the lockers cost or how much change they had fed into them already. But their complaints were small compared to the ones from the lady I heard call it a rip-off last year. Losing some change to a locker was small compared to the complaints last year about the price of the tours and parking. But complaining about Graceland has become the number one spectator sport in Memphis during August.
We have a new employee at work. His name is Meet Patel. My co-worker Phil asked me today,
“Did you meet Meet? I know you were out of town when they had the meet and greet to meet Meet.”
I said, “I did meet Meet. But not at the meet and greet for Meet. I met meet when I went to meet Meet in Meet’s office. Have you met Meet?”
He said, “I have not met Meet. I missed the meet and greet to meet Meet. I still need to meet Meet.”
I replied, “Now I need to go see if Shonna Sharpe has met Meet. Shonna Sharpe needs to meet Meet. When she meets Meet, Shonna Sharpe needs to share about the shingles shot and the shingle shot sign-up sheet for the series of shingles shots.”
Later I told Phil, “It’s too bad that Bob’s Park and Eat has closed down. If it was still open we could meet Meet at Bob’s Park and Eat and eat a meat and 3.”
A few years ago, I served on a jury for my first and, to this point, only time. I had been in the pool of potential jurors before but had never even had my name called to screened out by the attorneys. This day felt different. I already knew that this was an attempted 2nd degree murder case. I think they pulled in all potential jurors that day, not just my part of the alphabet in anticipation of jurors not showing up and multiple potential rejections. I just had a feeling that my name would be called. I was not surprised when I heard my name. I was juror number 10. The judge and the attorneys started asking everyone about their backgrounds and opinions. I knew there was nothing that would disqualify me. With my background and the way I look, I would seem to everyone to be the ideal juror. My best chance would be if I knew one of the attorneys, which was not the case here. Several of the jurors were replaced but the challenges came to an end soon and we were allowed to contact people to let them know where we would be.
Back when my children were young, our family was driving through town one afternoon down a 4-lane street that had an extra turning lane in the middle. We were travelling southbound, and a police car was travelling north on the other side of the road. There was a bank with a drive-thru and an ATM on our side of the road. As we came up on to the bank, the police car came to a screeching stop in the turning lane immediately to our right. Out of precaution, we stopped too. We looked over at the bank and saw a man running from the far side of the building around the corner. He was holding a purse in one hand and a pistol. Chasing closely behind him was a lady. I assumed he had her purse. Not far behind him was a man that I assumed was her husband. When the purse snatcher saw the cops running toward him from the street, he dropped the purse and the gun, rand a few steps more, then fell to the ground. The lady ran and picked up her purse. The husband ran and picked up the gun, aiming it at the purse snatcher. I remember my son saying “WOW!” I first thought “WOW!” and then I thought, “Is he going to fire that gun?” I didn’t really want to be there. There were 2 cops in the car that stopped in front of us and another one came up from behind. One of the cops from the first car ran and grabbed the husband with the gun. The other cop had a nightstick and went after the purse snatcher. The road was clear in front of us and there was no reason to stick around so we left quickly. My son said it was neat to see that, but I was afraid of getting caught in the crossfire.
I don’t know if things like this happened at this branch of the bank, but it closed a short time after this incident. Today, it is a store that sells drive-thru beer and cigarettes.
My wife and I recently went on vacation to Ashville, North Carolina. On our way home, we planned to drop by and visit our daughter who lives in Waverly, Tennessee. Our daughter lives a little over an hour away from us. It had been a couple of weeks since we had seen her. We had talked about going with her to a new restaurant she had discovered in that area for some time. Stopping by to eat would be a good excuse stop and see her. The fact that it was just an excuse for visiting was made more obvious by the fact that the place we planned to eat was closed on that day, but we still stopped, finding another new local restaurant to try.
We recently took a vacation to Ashville, North Carolina. My sister had been there a few weeks before we went and recommended that we take a food tour. She said it was a fun way to experience a variety of local restaurants in a short period of time. My wife made arrangements for our food tour weeks before our trip.
At 9 PM on January 18, 2022, I went to put our trash on the road. My wife Andrea and I had been watching something on TV. During a break between shows, I planned to take care of the trash while Andrea got ready for bed and put on a Muumuu. I moved our trash can next to our mailbox at the street. I was walking back across yard to the house and came to a transition from yard to driveway. This was not a huge step, and I should have been able to make it with no problem at all. Instead of stepping over this transition spot and planting my left leg firmly on the drive, I stepped putting the ball of my foot on the drive and the heel in the grass. As I put weight on my foot, my ankle twisted, and I lost my balance. I started falling forward but I also instinctively stepped forward to try and catch my balance. I knew I was going to fall but I kept going forward even though I knew my legs would never get under my body enough to regain balance.
Because of my repeated various connections to Elvis, people are naturally interested in my reaction to the new Elvis movie. As a fan of the Elvis phenomenon as well as a fan of Baz Luhrmann films, I had high expectations for this film. It didn’t disappoint. I also continue to purchase movies that I like on Blu-ray and I am already planning to pick this one up. Its not a perfect film, but it’s really good and I highly recommend it to Elvis fans. I also think non-fans will enjoy it. If you’ve read this far, go and see the movie if you haven’t. You know you want to.