Collectanea: A Collection of Writings by Allen Shoffner

By Allen Shoffner

This book is a collection of shorter books and other writings by the same author. Using a literary term, the book may be called a collectanea, or, using a common term, simply a potpouri of writings. The subjects of the writings are varied and mixed. The reader will find mysteries and unsolved homicides in High Stakes, the story about the dark side of professional gambling. The reader can read in The Money Changers about greed, cheating and fraud in the market place, including some of the sophisticated methods now used by predators to cheat others. The author has included in these stories a mix of satire and humor about some current social and political issues. Various sins are necessarily part of the subject matter of these stories. Sex is not a significant ingredient in the story mix, although it might have flavored or spiced up the other ingredients in the recipe.
The author has also included in this collection and shares with readers items of a personal nature, including letters written to his children while they were at school away from home and parables written primarily for children.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 19, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456722173

Allen Shoffner

Allen Shoffner is a graduate of Vanderbilt University School of Law, where he was a member of, and authored legal articles for, the Vanderbilt Law Review. He has authored various articles in legal publications and served six years on the Tennessee Law Revision Commission. In 2001 he researched, authored, and published a historical novel, The Authority, about the misuse and abuse of governmental power by the Tennessee Valley Authority. In 2007 he wrote and published In Sickness and In Health, A Love Story, a true story about tests of faith in struggling with the long-term illness of his wife. In 2008 he wrote and published A Bicentennial History of Shofner's Lutheran Church, the historic church on the waters of Thompon Creek in Bedford County, Tennessee. In 2011 he wrote and published Collectanea, a collection of his unpublished writings.

Book preview

Contents of Collectanea

PART I

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

EPILOGUE

PART II

Prologue

Chapter One

Chicago, November, 2009

Chapter 2

My Assignment

Chapter 3

Numbers

Chapter 4

The Report

Chapter 5

The Receptionist

Chapter 6

The Review

Chapter 7

Operation Back Room

Chapter 8

Roundup

Epilogue

PART III

Introductory Note

FROM PAW PAW’S PEN

Giving Thanks for Thanksgiving

Oh, Little Town of Wartrace, Tennessee

A Worm Becomes A Butterfly

The Door That Would Not Open

Following the Crowd

Our Home

A Special Christmas Message for All Children, Large and Small

Words About Words

The Parable of the Penguin

Paw Paw Conundrums

Plowing a Straight Row

Spidery Webs

Pete, the Pretty Proud Peacock

A Language Lesson

The Last Lesson

Introduction

Please allow me to introduce myself and the collection of my writings which follow. As an attorney with more than fifty years of active trial practice in court rooms and writing of legal documents, I have had the satisfaction of seeing much of what I have written published in briefs and law journals. I did this writing to make a living. Since my retirement as a practicing attorney, I have continued to write, not professionally as an attorney, but simply as an author, and I have had the satisfaction of seeing some of what I have written published in printed and bound books. I have done this writing for fun, or at least for its therapeutic value, and I hope that what I have written also has some entertainment value for readers. I realize, however, that what I have written may collect more dust than royalties.

I have authored several short stories and other writings which have not yet been published in book form. I have gathered some of these unpublished items and included them in this Collectanea. Some readers may ask why I have incurred the time and expense of putting these writings in a hard printed and bound book, especially at a time when most publishing is done digitally, such as on Amazon’s Kindle and other electronic reading gadgets. I would like to share respectfully my opinion with those readers: I believe that there is no substitute for a hard printed and bound book, which one can pick up, hold, and read without relying upon some kind of electronic transmission, and which the reader can pick up and hold again, or simply put on a library shelf when finished. We are now overwhelmed in every day life with gadgets, especially those digital gadgets which value speed and short term usefulness over long term value and use. Our language has been butchered and dumbed down to the lowest common denominator by the use of these gadgets, and texting seems to be limited only by the texter’s imagination.

The writings included in this Collectanea are listed in the Contents section. The first part is a short story entitled High Stakes about the mysteries and unsolved homicides associated with professional gambling. The second part is another short story entitled The Money Changers about greed, cheating, and fraud in the market place. The third part is entitled Parables and other writings from Paw Paw’s Pen. These writings include personal letters sent to my children when they were at school away from home and parables written primarily for my children and grandchildren, which I am sharing with readers.

Although the short stories are written using the first person, they are not intended to be autobiographical. The stories include a mix of satire and humor about some social and political issues, which may have some entertainment value for readers.

Allen Shoffner, August, 2010.

PART I

HIGH STAKES

missing image file

An Investigative Newspaper Reporter Becomes An Embedded Citizen Informant And Plays High Stakes Poker With Professional Gamblers Engaged In Gambling Racketeering. The Games End With Three Unsolved Homicides And One Suicide

A STORY BY

ALLEN SHOFFNER

HIGH STAKES

Samuel P. Scott Is An Investigative Reporter On Special Assignment For The Citizens’ Press. His Assignment Is To Investigate And Report On Corruption, Crime, And Addiction In Gambling. Some Of His Sources Are Mysterious, Contradictory, And Anonymous. Some Of His Investigation Is Undercover As An Embedded Citizen Informant. His Investigation Leads Him Into Personal Danger, Including High Stakes Games With Hardened Professional Gamblers. He Finds Gambling That Starts In Fun Ends In Murder And Suicide.

THIS IS A WORK OF FICTION. EVERYTHING WRITTEN IN THIS STORY, EXCEPT THE COPYRIGHT NOTICE, IS WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED AS FICTION. UNLESS THE CONTEXT OTHERWISE INDICATES, NO NAME OR CHARACTER IN THIS WORK IS INTENDED TO BE, OR REFER TO, ANY REAL PERSON, LIVING OF DEAD, OR TO ANY CORPORATION, BUSINESS, OR ORGANIZATION WHICH MAY HAVE BEEN IN EXISTENCE AT ANY TIME OR PLACE, AND THE USE OF THE SAME OR SIMILAR NAME AS A REAL PERSON OR ENTITY IS ENTIRELY ACCIDENTAL AND ANY BELIEF TO THE CONTRARY IS THE RESULT OF THE READER’S IMAGINATION. THIS STORY IS WRITTEN AND PUBLISHED AS AN ORIGINAL WORK OF LITERATURE. EXCEPT FOR REFERENCES TO SOURCES OR QUOTATIONS IDENTIFIED AS SUCH, THE USE IN THIS STORY OF ANY WORDS, TERMS, EXPRESSIONS, OR DESCRIPTIONS OF PERSONS OR ANY EVENTS THAT MY HAVE BEEN PREVIOUSLY USED IN ANY OTHER LITERARY WORK, IF ANY, IS ALSO ENTIRELY ACCIDENTAL AND ANY BELIEF TO THE CONTRARY IS THE RESULT OF THE READER’S IMAGINATION.

CONTENTS OF HIGH STAKES

HIGH STAKES

My First Job

My Assignment As Investigative Reporter

My Research

My Report

The Money Pit

My Editor’s Review

The Sheriff

The District Attorney General

Undercover

Crash Course, Poker 101

Set-up

The Game

The Law Review

The Briefing

The State Of Tennessee v. Various Defendants

Cold Calls

The Last Call

The Obituaries

Las Vegas

Cashing Out

Unsolved Mysteries

Epilogue

1

My First Job

My name is Samuel P. Scott. I am a reporter for THE CITIZENS’ PRESS. This is my first job, and I even get paid for it. I worked for the campus newspaper when I was a student at Middle Tennessee State University, but I didn’t get paid for that. I liked writing for the campus newspaper, so I decided that I would like to be a real, full time journalist. I enrolled in the Newspaper-Magazine courses offered in the MTSU School of Journalism. One of these courses was JOUR 309 Reporting, which was described in the academic program as Theory and practice of basic journalistic skills, including the gathering, evaluating and processing of news copy for the newspapers. This looked good to me and it even allowed students to submit classwork to the student newspaper. Another course appeared to be more professional: JOUR 444 Advanced Reporting for three credits: Advanced theory and practice in news reporting with emphasis on coverage of governmental affairs and other public affairs-related assignments, including an introduction to interpretive and investigative reporting techniques. The term, interpretive was not explained in the course description but was itself left for interpretation by the course professor in the class lectures. The term, investigative reporting techniques sounded like it might have been taken from a FBI or CIA manual, but I learned that these techniques did not necessarily require slithering around in shadows wearing a trench coat and dark colored glasses, and looking for drops. I did learn that in journalism the facts and the truth are not always the same. Students were reminded that people and events are not always what they appear to be, and that most of the time they are not. We were supposed to learn the difference between facts and spin. Judges and lawyers search for the truth through constitutional confrontation, cross-examination, and the rules of evidence. Police search for evidence with forensic science and lie detectors. Investigators sometimes claim to get the truth with truth serum, hypnosis, and other chemicals to open up the neurotransmitters of a deceptive brain. Physical and mental torture, with sophisticated psychological techniques, and bribery have been used to invent truth. Wine, women, and sex have been effectively used to loosen the brain and lips. We were told that some of these techniques should be avoided if we are to remain unsued, employed, and out of jail. A good reporter should depend, instead, upon logic, deductive reasoning, and common sense. One of my professors liked to use the example: A reporter finding a terrapin on top of a fence post may conclude as a fact that the terrapin must have had some help getting there. We also learned that interviews might be done on background, which meant that identity of the sources would remain confidential. Of course, we read about all of this and Deep Throat in Woodward and Bernstein’s All The President’s Men.

Students learned how to write as reporters, using the age old system of a pencil and a note pad. I found that my shorthand was really short. It was so short and cryptic that sometimes I would not remember the code after twenty-four hours and my confidential notes would disappear in a poof of smoke like Peter Graves’ secret assignment in Mission Impossible.

Students also learned about the lofty principles of the Freedom of the Press secured by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, and the more earthly principles of libel, privacy, obscenity, restrictions on print advertising, verifying confidential or anonymous sources, and even newspaper style, making news decisions, headline writing, photo editing, and outline writing.

And in JOUR 485 we studied about Ethics and Mass Communication. The material for this course referred to an overview of the cultural and philosophical basis of socially responsive mass media. I suppose that this meant that we were not supposed to make news but simply to report it. I was naive in believing then that an ethical and socially responsive media would surely not try to make or influence news. As my education in journalism continued, I would later lose some of my early innocent belief in journalism ethics.

I had an inquiring mind; I liked to ask questions; and I liked to write. I thought I had learned all I needed to know about journalism principles and ethics. So when I passed these journalism courses and graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in newspapers, I was ready to go out into the real world, get a real job, and get just the real facts, mam, as Sergeant Friday might say. I was ready to find who Deep Throat really is.

When I looked for my first job, the newspaper business was getting to be really big business. There was some cannibalism in the business, the big papers getting bigger, swallowing the smaller papers. The conservative Nashville Banner, which had been on financial life support with borrowed money and borrowed time, did not survive its terminal illness and died a natural death. The Tennessean continued its liberal editorial reputation when it became "A Gannett Newspaper." And later Gannett acquired many independent papers which it added to its newspaper network. In addition to the papers owned by Gannett, some remaining independent papers were part of the community newspapers "produced in alliance with The Tennessean. I wondered if these community newspapers were simply correspondent papers or sources of news for the metropolitan papers, or whether this arrangement also included financial and editorial relationships. This consolidation suggested a concentration of the power of the press with greater editorial, political and financial influence.

But what did I care about editorial, political, and financial media issues? The only financial issue I was interested in then was a job. My apartment rent was due and I was hungry.

I tried to impress the editors at the metro papers with my youth, energy, and obvious qualifications as a journalist and that I would some day scoop stories out of the underground like Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein and even write a book about it, making the newspaper as famous as the Washington Post. I had visions of sitting some day, not in a crowded and noisy newsroom, but instead around a long conference table, determining editorial policy and opinion, and maybe in the future even seeing my name on the masthead. However, the metro editors must not have had the same vision I had, because I was not offered a job. After a time, I was willing to take any newspaper job (except delivering the papers with which I had had some experience as a paper boy). I was even willing to do the obituaries, the classified advertising, copying, taking out the trash, anything for which I could be paid. With these adjustments in my expectations, I was able to get a job as a cub reporter with The Citizens’ Press, one of the few remaining independents.

The Citizens’ Press was founded before the Civil War and had resisted Northern aggression, mergers and acquisitions and proudly remained independent. Editorial opinions were rarely expressed in the paper, except on local community issues.

I only hoped that I would not be assigned to cover the Senior Citizens, City Hall, crime scenes, traffic accidents, and Saints forbid, the General Sessions Court with its unsavory sounds, sights, and smells. But I was.

As my seniority and experience at the paper increased, my assignments became more prestigious. However, I did not expect to receive the assignment handed to me next. I didn’t ask for it and I certainly did not then expect how this assignment and story would end.

2

My Assignment as Investigative Reporter

I became an investigative reporter this way:

Mr. Alexander Graham was the Managing Editor of The Citizens’ Press. He was, in fact, the only editor. The senior employees at the paper called him Alex, but I had not yet reached that level of familiarity. Mr. Graham was middle age, clean shaven, with reasonable remnants of thinning hair, and athletically trim. He didn’t wear the typical editor’s eyeshades, but he did wear bifocal rim glasses. He, like his glasses, was focused and he listened intently during conversation. He was a family man, with teenage children, attended church, and the Rotary Club. He had spent some combat time in Vietnam, but he did not talk about it. He had never discussed his personal political views with me, but I suspected that he had voted for Ronald Reagan and both Bushes. He did not seem to be a political activist. He seemed to be well organized and expected the newsroom to be the same. He brought his lunch, usually a piece of fruit, which he ate at his desk, except on Fridays when he ate at the Rotary Club. He drank lots of coffee. He didn’t have much time