Nashville: The Mood (Part 10)

By Donald H. Carpenter

Is Nashville simply Music City? The capital of Tennessee? A state of mind? A sea of corruption? A world of happiness, ordinariness, hypocrisy, vicious gossip, and political skullduggery? Where politics, religion, sex, academics, and crime cross paths in such a way as to be almost indistinguishable? Enter a world of uninspiring public officials, soulful prostitutes, scheming professional classes, and tormented preachers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donald H. Carpenter
• Release date: Sep 7, 2020
• ISBN: 9781005743857

Donald H. Carpenter

Donald H. Carpenter is a former certified public accountant who is the author of six books: Dueling Voices, I Lost It At The Beginning, 101 Reasons NOT to Murder the Entire Saudi Royal Family, He Knew Where He Was Going (?), Man of a Million Fragments: The True Story of Clay Shaw, and LANNY. He is currently working on a fictional series about Nashville.

Book preview

NASHVILLE: THE MOOD

PART 10

by Donald H. Carpenter

Copyright ©2020 by Donald H. Carpenter

Smashwords Edition

All rights reserved. This book is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law.

Cover design by Charles Hooper

Printed in the United States of America

NASHVILLE: THE MOOD

PART 10

A Sunday night in Nashville, just after the first of the year. A slow persistent rain began late in the afternoon, continued throughout the rest of the day. Just after midnight, the rain turned to snow—soft, fluffy snow. The temperature began free falling, and soon plunged well below freezing, from a high of approximately sixty degrees early on Sunday. By the time daylight arrived close to seven o’clock on Monday, the water that still coated the streets from the earlier rain had begun to freeze. The snow covered the icy roads, masking a very dangerous situation beneath the white winter turf.

Police and other city officials notified media outlets of the various perils by sunrise, but the information didn’t filter out to all drivers. There was a sharp decrease in vehicular traffic on that Monday morning, because many parents had, in advance of an announcement of the school board, decided to keep their kids out of school. However, not all of the drivers out on the road that morning, though reduced in number, knew of the full extent of the dangers. Accordingly, accidents multiplied far out of proportion, and traffic generally became more hazardous even with the relatively light volume.

Many skipped work that day, making an instant judgment based on what they heard over the radio or television. Employers around the city were braced for a several-day wave of increased absences, and soon everyone knew that Nashville would be entering one of its special periods that occurred many winters, sometimes once, sometimes several times, where a severe combination of weather factors converged to create havoc around the city.

By the end of the day on Monday, the temperature had dropped to below twenty degrees, with a promise of between five and ten degrees the following morning. There had been no more snow, but the temperature had been below freezing the entire day, and the slushy road surfaces that developed throughout the city early on Monday morning had refrozen solid by late afternoon. Residents in their homes in most neighborhoods, particularly those situated some distance from a major thoroughfare, stayed put all day. Schools closed, although the announcement came a couple of hours later than most people expected. By that time, some kids had managed to get to school, and had to be sent home.

Most workers around the city stayed home, unless they were on emergency duty. But in the downtown area, there was a hard core group of attorneys, doctors, and others who gathered, as much for social company as for any professional reason. A mid-morning meeting, a nice lunch, and then an early departure could round out the day for many of them.

Attorney Douglas E. Johnson made it in that day; how could he have not? Johnson had almost died ten years earlier in one of the icy days that materialize during a bleak Nashville winter. He had started in to work early one morning, knowing full well the roads were icy, but ignoring the reality, and in an attempt to avoid hitting a dog that suddenly darted across the road, Johnson’s car had slid into a ditch. He was jolted, but essentially unhurt, but he had to wait at least an hour for someone to rescue him, so to speak. He had chosen to go in well before peak traffic, which was totally unnecessary on that particular day, and he had had to wait in order for the traffic to increase enough so that someone noticed him off to the side of the road. Early on, after an initial frustration, he had kept track of the number of cars that passed him by before anyone seemingly did anything to help. He had stopped when he passed fifty in his count.

A reporter from a television station in Buffalo, New York was visiting to get several Tennessee elected officials’ reactions to a New York politician who was thinking of declaring for a run for the presidency the following year. The idea had recently been floated, and the reporter was traveling around the country to get first reactions to the news. After being in Nashville for a few days, she stumbled upon the story of how Nashville dealt with its version of extreme inclement weather. The reporter noted the struggle the city went through with what seemed like a minor snowfall, and reported a piece that contrasted Nashville’s feeble snow-clearing effort with that of Buffalo’s. The reporter also noted that local media seemed inclined not to report the story in a negative way, but to run humorous pieces that depicted the city’s handling of the crisis as normal, even vigorous. But no one in Nashville saw her story when it was broadcast on the Buffalo TV station.

Everyone kept hoping that each new day would bring a major warming of temperatures, and the thaw that would have to result. However, what started out as one day turned into two, then three, then essentially the whole work week. It was only on Friday afternoon around three-thirty that temperatures rose above freezing for the first time since late Sunday. The streets, already thawing yet again from the daily traffic that rolled over them, now began to run with the water from the melting snow and ice, and soon one could have gotten the impression that a small flood could develop from the runoff, although it never happened.

In a way, the city had seemed at its bleakest during this week. Although most days following the initial snowfall had been sunny, with bright blue skies and bone jarring temperatures, the disruption to the normal routine and the increasing danger of daily traffic, due to the melting and refreezing of the roads, had exhausted everyone who had to get out into it, who had to deal with it. That included not only the commuters who managed to make it into work, but the various emergency responders and public officials who had to ensure the safety of the residents as best as possible.

Even those who mostly stayed at home were miserable by Friday afternoon. They felt claustrophobic, restless, anxious to do something, anything. At the first hint that the temperature had climbed into the high thirties, combined with the news that the overnight temperature would only be thirty-five degrees, people were emboldened to get out and drive around, often for no reason. Many of them took trips to the grocery stores, whether they needed anything or not; others simply drove around to see what the portion of the city near them looked like. The increase in traffic from those anxious to see what it looked like out there, along with those who were getting off from work, perhaps slightly earlier than normal, made the traffic flow thick, slow-moving, and drivers anxious and more than a little angry. There were a high number of fender benders that afternoon, and many found the situation a bit more complicated than they had imagined, making some wish they had never ventured out at all.

There was a gloominess that no amount of sunlight could fully penetrate. Even though the day was cloudless, and the four before it had been, it still seemed cloudy and downbeat. With the lack of evergreen trees, practically every tree up and down the roads seemed like stark, bizarre, angry skeletons, decayed to a dark color that menaced the drivers as they passed. Dead leaves, although cleaned out of this yard or that one, were still present up and down any road a driver chose. Things simply looked bleak. Even the number of brick homes with drab colors factored into the mix; in another locale, there might have been brightly painted wooden houses that counteracted the gloominess.

Crime didn’t take a pause, however. There were two shootouts at convenience stores, one in South Nashville and the other on the west side. Those two incidents alone resulted in three deaths, and five other gunshot wounds, all of which were major. Meanwhile, a shootout in a local neighborhood in North Nashville cost two lives.

It’s a little bit of steam accumulated around the end of the year, and apparently people are working it off in the near year, the chief of police was quoted as saying the following day. A week into the new year, crime was getting out in front.

An additional body was added to the murder count in mid-February when a corpse was discovered inside of a warehouse in North Nashville. The warehouse had been abandoned the previous year by a tile manufacturing company, and a company official had made a trip to the area to inspect the property. An elderly man, perhaps seventy-five years old, was the victim. He had lived in Nashville about five years. Prior to that, he had lived in various parts of the United States over his long life, including both California and Connecticut, and points in between. Although found in mid-February, due to a combination of factors that the police were not revealing his death was estimated as happening in early January, on the same approximate date as the other crimes already mentioned.

There was other bad news as well. Two manufacturing plants located on the perimeter of town announced that they were closing, with thirty-five hundred workers laid off. The economy had been booming pretty steadily since the 2008-09 recession, and home prices had risen through all those years, peaking a couple of years earlier. A new housing report brought the first indication of, not just a leveling off, but an actual decline in prices, in several years.

The mayor announced that he was running for re-election, a little later than normal, and Congressman Joe Caldwell soon followed suit in his bid to retain his congressional seat. Both veteran politicians, generally well-liked around the city, appeared to have no meaningful opposition at the moment. But close watchers of Congressman Caldwell knew that an opponent would materialize, even if very late in the game, and that the person would be an unknown prior to his or her emergence. Betting pools were already