Nowhere to Run
To the Editor:
John Branston's October 30th article featuring attorney Charles Perkins' rhetorical comments about Memphis being "not clean, not quiet, and not safe" is another broadside aimed at the city of Memphis by these new-town advocates, who have basically written Memphis off as the hub of the Mid-South.
Well, there is plenty of life and viability in this city, and trying to hype those would-be new towns by making outrageous statements about Memphis' problems will not diminish its power and influence in this region.
When Charles Perkins graduated from high school in 1954, my family and I first settled here. Of course, Memphis was a different city then (as was the entire country) compared to 1997. The country has changed dramatically in over 40 years.
It seems Mr. Perkins and his new-towns ilk would have us believe that once these new towns are incorporated, somehow the clock will be turned back to some sort of mythical 1950s American community where families are strong, the streets are quiet and safe, and crime is almost nonexistent. This myth that refuses to die was not reality in 1954 and it sure is not reality in 1997.
When Southaven, Mississippi, first became a viable community decades ago, its supporters stated that crime would never be a problem there. Now crime is a fact of life there as it is in most American communities.
The hard fact these new community advocates have to face is that they cannot run away from society's problems. Crime, race, environmental disasters, drugs, and weakened families are all social problems that people have to grapple with no matter where they live. These new communities (if they are incorporated) will be a microcosm of the same society they seem to be trying to run away from.
Randy Norwood
Memphis
You're Only a Neighborhood
To the Editor:
It is amazing how the would-be bosses of the toy towns persist in the illusion that their neighborhoods are totally separate from Memphis. Tom Jeannette, in his viewpoint editorial titled "Just Leave Us Alone," (October 30th issue) brags about how his proposed town in the Hickory Hill neighborhood would be larger than Johnson City and Jackson and almost as big as Murfreesboro. However, these cities are long established and have their own economic bases. Hickory Hill is simply a Memphis neighborhood even though outside the city limits. It was created by Memphis and would be the small rural community it used to be without the economic base and the infrastructure paid for by the citizens of Memphis. Incorporating it and calling it by another name will not change that fact.
If Memphis were to truly leave it alone, then none of its citizens would shop at Hickory Ridge Mall or any of its other retailers. Also, most of its citizens would quit their Memphis jobs and seek employment in the town of "Nonconnah." Of course this is unrealistic, but so is the idea of not having this area contribute its fair share to the Memphis community.
H. D. Thompson
e-mail (Memphis)
Strange Bedfellows
To the Editor:
A few comments seem appropriate with regard to Jackson Baker's Politics column in the October 30th issue. I am appalled at what the Ford machine did to Gale Jones Carson in her race for Shelby County Democratic Chairman. She was stabbed in the back because she was not part of the "inner circle." It seems like a return to backroom politics and the days of Mr. Crump.
Gale has a debt in blood to pay to those who did that to her. She ought to run against Ford herself for Congress. Politics makes strange bedfellows. Given the fact that the North Memphis group was completely shut out, perhaps an East Memphis-North Memphis coalition could limit the influence of the guys who hang out at Ford funeral home. The bottom line is that Gale needs to turn lemon into lemonade and keep on running.
Arnold Weiner
Memphis
Lower the Flag
To the Editor,
Karl Marx and Charles Darwin would have both loved to study the decline of the rebel flag at Ole Miss. The disuse of the flag will happen along social levels and levels of aptitude: Class Struggle meets Natural Selection!
Stick-ban or no stick-ban, the Confederate battle jack is not going to leave Vaught-Hemingway Stadium overnight. That's an easy prediction. What's not an easy prediction is whether it will leave the stadium gracefully, like a retiring coach, or shamefully, like an ejected, drunken fan. The last of the flag wavers will be the tone-deaf, the semi-literate, and the eternal followers -- in short, the folks who have nothing better to cling to.
There are other examples of this trend. Fraternity men at the university can look to their own membership for an illustration. Do y'all ever notice how the guys who barely made it into your chapters seem to wear their letters four or five days a week?
The same trend will prove true with use of the flag. Yesterday, the well-bred sons and daughters of the Delta "Episcopacy" brandished the flag. Today, such behavior is more prominent among status-craving children of store keepers and insurance salesmen -- the ones who affect wealth with a little help from Land's End and a second mortgage on their parents' homes. They will abandon the flag the instant they fear their social advancement is threatened.
Ultimately, the last people to bear the flag will be the same ones who wave or wear them at stock car races and professional wrestling events. These are the ones who proudly cling to their Southern heritage, ignorant of the fact that their Confederate ancestors were irregulars -- soldiers who deserted back to their hollows and swamps as soon as their battalions ran out of food or sunshine.
Gary Bridgman
e-mail (Oxford, MS)
The Memphis Flyer encourages reader response. Send mail to: Letters to the Editor, POB 687, Memphis, TN 38101. Or call Back Talk at 575-9405. Or send us e-mail at memflyer@aol.com. All responses must include name, address, and daytime phone number. Letters should be no longer than 250 words.