LISTENING TO STORIES THE BONES TELL

Way back around 1971 I took an anthropology class at the University of Tennessee taught by Dr. William  M. Bass, who had just arrived at the university that same year.  Dr. Bass oversaw the development of the discipline at UT Knoxville, which culminated with the creation of the Forensic Anthropology Center within the Department of Anthropology, and many resources for students, researchers, and law enforcement agencies.

 

Dr. Bass began to see the need for a "body farm" back in 1977, after making a self-admitted 112 year mistake in judging the age of the decomposing body of Col. Shy, a Confederate soldier who had died in 1864, from a wound on the battle field just 12 miles from his home near Franklin, TN.

"I got the age, sex, race, height and weight right but I was off on the time of death by 113 years."

The body was discovered sitting up outside a cast-iron coffin, after vandals cracked the coffin in order to steal his sword.  Confederate Colonels were always buried with their swords, or at least that was the general custom, however Col. Shy's family removed his uniform and military accoutrements, and buried him instead in his black suit.  

Since Dr. Bass found pink connective tissue on the skeleton's femur, he could only assume, with the knowledge of the day, that the body was much fresher than 113 years old!  However, the arsenic embalming and the closed atmosphere of the iron casket preserved the soft tissue much longer than was then known.  

The grave marker specifically stated the death was in 1864, so Bass knew he needed to go back to the drawing board, and create a "body farm" in order to study decomposition.  Without the facility that Dr. Bass pioneered, law enforcement investigations would be gravely (no pun intended) hampered.

Since those days, Dr. Bass and John Jefferson have collaborated on several books under the pen name "Jefferson Bass".  Naturally, Dr. Bass contributes his expertise to solving the plots John Jefferson creates in their fictional books.

Tonight, in the Harriman High School Auditorium, I again sat, listened, and was taught by Dr. Bass again.  He is just as humorous and sharp as he was all those years ago.  Judy and I were thoroughly entertained!

We sat mesmerized by his stories of drug deals gone bad, and, of course, the tale of Col. Shy.  One slide depicted his use of superimposition to match skulls with photos of the living, another how to tell if a body has been burnt or simply decayed, or if a skull was cracked by heat or from bullet energy.  All so very fascinating!  

Should this brilliant innovator ever come to a venue near you...you must go...sit, listen, be taught, and completely entertained.  

STORMY SATURDAY FOR FOOTBALL IN TENNESSEE

If you started watching the University of Tennessee and Oregon football game held in Knoxville Saturday, you know that there was a 70 minute game delay due to lightning.  That same storm rumbled across my backyard some 30 minutes prior to that delay, raining down some heavy drops that quickly turned into torrents down my drive-way.

I grabbed my camera and took a few shots and discovered a shivering hummingbird sitting on the feeder.

Lightning flickered across the sky and leaves and limbs came tumbling down from the trees.  There's always something to pick up or blow off my drive, but storms give me even more work.  It's the price you pay living under a canopy of Beech, Oak, and Hickory trees.  

From our second story screened-porch, it makes you feel like you're living in a tree house.  We love it, but we duck every time a storm comes through, or the Hickory turns loose of another nut!  They hit the aluminum roof like a rock and roll loudly off to the ground.

This latest rain gives us hope for a beautiful autumn leaf show, but it has been dry at the key time for turning the colors brilliant.  Up until the past three weeks, our place has been like a tropical jungle; all rich and lush with green grass and foliage.  Recently we noticed the usual August brown moving through the trees and across the grass.  However, there is still hope.

I'm still hopeful for Tennessee football too, although it will have to wait another fall to happen.  Today's game went as I expected it, even if I did go into the game thinking we might see some surprises.  We did...lots of young players, with a young coach, with lots of potential.  Next year my friends!

Yes, I'm mindful of what fall usually depicts - the end of life for another season.  With my current situation (see previous post), it does make me stop and reflect, and think about things to come.

HANGIN’ WITH MY PARTNER

Corey and I hit Wild Wings in Knoxville today to watch Tennessee play Georgia…great game! We finally put a balanced attack together and came up with 45 big points!

Our team is young with a new coach, but as the games tick by the experience comes. Everyone had better get what they can of us this season, because the VOLS are coming on strong. Corey predicts a championship in 2011! Let’s hope he is right.

The Wild Wings Café was packed, with extra tables set up everywhere there was space. There were plenty of TV screens to watch, at almost any angle, but we sat on the front row at a “high-top” looking directly at the big projected screen on stage. Terrific seats, great food (a 25 piece sampler platter), good tea and Fat Tire, and an enthusiastic crowd of folks dressed in “Big Orange”.

Check out the huge draft of beer, complete with tap, that some tables ordered! With a plastic bag of ice floating on top, there was plenty of cold beer for the entire game.

I was on a high when I got home, but my mom had called telling us that my Uncle Tom is not expected to leave the Florence, AL hospital. He has cancer on one kidney and on his liver, and the prognosis is not good. Mom is very upset because she is 83 years old and about to lose another sibling. Since Tom is 10 years younger than mom makes it especially hard too. Her age makes it difficult to travel and stay away from home for long periods, so I’m not sure what she will decide to do.

Anyway, whatever she decides about going or waiting, I’m here for her.

All in all, a good day with my son is what I’ll remember. Knowing that time takes us all too soon, there is just too much time between the good times, but my partner makes them memorable when they do come around. It’s days like today that I will remember when my time comes.

LET’S GO ON A ‘VENTURE PAPAW!

It has been a long time since Katie Bug and I have had a ‘venture. When she was five, and until about ten, years old, she and I would hop in my truck and just head out without any real sense of where we were going. We would just come to a road and she would say, “Whur’s zat road go Papaw?”

I would turn onto the road and say, “I don’t know, but let’s find out!”

It was a wonderful time in her early life, and I’m thankful I got to enjoy it with just the two of us, and she often asked, “Let’s go on a ‘venture Papaw!”

So we would drive a few hours out on the back roads of the county, or end up out in the Catoosa Wildlife Reserve. Sometimes we never stopped, but other times we would have a little picnic on a rock or off the tailgate. I have many pictures of us hiking and of her down by some creek, and these are memories that will sustain me when she leaves for school and/or gets married.

She talks a lot about going to school these days and is pushing hard in school, evidenced by the fact she is complaining now that her chemistry teacher can’t teach! Her freshman year was a disappointment, even to her it seems, but this year she has focus. She hasn’t stopping thinking about boys; she keeps the text messages flying to around six or more guys. She is a bit of a “player”, and I’m so thankful she is smart enough to do that first! However, she seems determined now to do well and make something of herself.

By the way, her peers, and even a couple teachers, have dubbed her the fastest “texter” they know. I’m witness to that every time she is around – using one thumb she can clickie-clack a message out and flip the phone shut without even looking down!

She talks most often about the medical field and even forensics, and the latter is what caught my attention the other day when our local “Live at Five” promoted a new exhibit at the Frank McClung Museum, which is part of the University of Tennessee campus.

Most of you, if you read mysteries and books about forensic investigations, know who William Jefferson Bass, or Dr. Bass, is. Dr. Bass was my professor when I took a series of anthropology classes back in my college days (’71-’72).

I decided then that this was ‘’venture’ material and planned to take Katie and Judy this past Saturday.

The Thursday night before, Katie and I sat in my computer room and talked straight for over an hour and a half. She was wondering about college and the effort she would have to expend in studying something as involved as medicine. I went through what college classes are like, what is involved in getting classes, majors and minors, what it’s like to commute to college rather than live on campus, etc. We looked up curriculums, requirements, and prerequisites for certain majors and career fields. We even watched some of the online video clips about the “Body Farm”.

I did not tell her my plans, and she did not know where we were going until we walked up to the front of the museum and she saw the huge poster/banner about the exhibit inside! What a wonderful thing to see her eyes light up with anticipation!

Inside she did not rush from exhibit to exhibit, but instead took time to read the information provided for each. You could tell she was fascinated by the photos of bodies in different stages of decay, skulls perforated by .22 and .45. caliber rounds, and even one by a shotgun!

She poured over the differences in ethnic and gender skeletal remains, and the full skeletons of a fetus and small children at different ages.

McClung Museum has other exhibits as well, and we toured them all. She and Judy also enjoyed the Egyptian, the early Tennessee Indian life, the development of mankind exhibit, the Chinese dynasties, and several other rooms before leaving. However, before leaving, we bought her two autographed copies of Dr. Bass’ books. If they stimulate her to push forward, then they were well worth the cost.

Judy has read about him for years, mostly through the Patricia Cornwell mysteries, and she too is fascinated by this body of work.

Outside, we walked the central portion of the UT Campus, where I showed her the traditional statues – “The Torchbearer” which symbolizes "the spirit of University youth and its ideal of service" and, of course, “Europa on the Bull”. I explained what I remembered of where certain classes are conducted and the hectic, almost frantic, walk between classes from the “humanities” to math or science classes on “The Hill!” And yes, I showed her the College of Communications (pictured above) and I explained the other traditions of my alma mater!

After over three hours on campus, we were famished and we headed for her favorite meal at “Wild Wings!” A friend, “He’s just a friend I hang out with,” she tells us, Zack met us and together we sucked down tea, water, and thirty-three wings, bathed in different sauces.

Unfortunately, the two friends didn’t get to sit and leisurely enjoy their meal…Tracy (Katie’s mom) called and wanted to pick them up for a hockey game on the other side of Knoxville. We requested a “to go box” and they were off, leaving Judy and I to clean up what was left, which is no problem for us!

It was a very special day that Katie gave us! She even turned off her cell for over three hours! Now that’s what I call giving a day up for Granny and Papaw.

Thank you Katie…and I pray you reach all your goals and dreams!

HOW I KILLED PAPA JOHN

So, I stood on a hillside overlooking a four-lane state highway and with a distant view of Interstate 40, which steeply slopes its way off Walden Ridge into and out of the Cardiff Valley that runs from Harriman to Rockwood, Tennessee, saying my last goodbyes. As I walked away from the grave, I thought of my dad saying, “When I die, I want to be buried beside the road so I can watch the traffic go by.”

I looked up and surveyed the landscape, and said, “Well dad, you can see it all from here!” That was the first time I really cried over the loss of my father.

It was only a couple of months later, at least in my mind, that my mom met and married John Sweeney, a short bald headed man that was born in Scotland and raised in Ireland. John and I had a few problems in the beginning because we were both so head strong, I suppose.

I must add here that John was only my mom’s second husband. She married Bill Lindsey after John died, and Bill is the gentleman I wrote “What’s It’s like to Die” (Chapter 123) about. Since Bill died, my brother and I often refer to mom as “the black widow,” having put three gentlemen in the ground!

First off, and I apologize to any of you from New Jersey, I have yet to meet anyone from that state I like, and John was not the first. John and I went head-to-head lots of times. He knew I did not like the fact that he and mom married so soon (at least in my mind) after my dad passed away. There was also the fact that he had a heavy Scottish accent and was Catholic!

The New Jersey thing started at the University of Tennessee, which I attended between the years of 1969 and 1972. I was back from Vietnam and very pro-American, as you can imagine, and that’s a state that I have yet to out grow!

In several of my Communications classes was a very hairy guy from New Jersey, and he was a very “in your face”, knew everything, kind of guy who always started arguments in class discussions about class assigned projects. I passed a rally one day where the “hippies” of the day were sitting or lying around on the ground listening to someone speaking through a megaphone. I recognized the speaker as the guy from New Jersey. I half listened to what was being said and it did not take me twenty steps to understand that we disagreed.

This guy was one of the leaders of the SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) organization on the UT campus.

Most of the shouting and ranting was about the war that still raged in Southeast Asia. It burned me to the core for people to be protesting and attempting to shut down my classes as a means to show their displeasure with the United States government.

One day I stood in a large open window in Ayers Hall, across from the Administration Building, and watched this guy standing, no he was blocking, the door into the public building while screaming, what to me was communistic, or at least, anti-American slurs through his megaphone.

The crowd faced away from me, listening to him, and chanting and jumping up and down in unison to his blaring cadence. Suddenly, I noticed the Campus Police lining up downhill from the Ad Building and I grew anxious and anticipated a dramatic encounter right in front of my eyes.

I grew so angry inside that my feelings began to swell and grow into a choking lump in my throat, but I held on, and just watched the police advance. Then the crowd hushed, and someone shouted “Just shoot them all!” The crowd turned and looked toward the window I was standing in and I suddenly realized that it had been me that shouted!

It came out before I even knew it and just when the crowd quieted and turned their attentions to the police effort. I had no idea that would be the instant my brain would choose to shout out its deep seated feelings!

A hot flush filled my face and I backed up into the shadows and waited to be arrested or attacked by irate protestors - neither happened.

I have met several people over the years from New Jersey and every time, while I attempt to give them benefit of the doubt, they do or say something to reinforce those college day opinions. It is just some arrogance instilled at birth there!

Meanwhile, back on the subject of John Sweeney, I suppose the Catholic part bothered me some as well.

I remember I finished the fourth grade in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. On the first day of school, mom took me by the hand and lead me into what she thought was the public school.

As we walked up a large winding staircase, with marble steps, we both began noticing the statues inset in the corners of Mother Mary and other saints. Even before we met any Nuns, mom looked at me and said, “Let’s get out of here!”

I do not know, but possibly that, plus a childhood friend who cursed constantly except on Sundays, set the stage for my early mistrust of the Catholic institution. Whatever it was, I did not like the fact that my little Baptist momma was marrying a Ca-thol-ic, as my brother and I often broke it down!

As it turned out, I grew to love the old funny talking man, and had I known about my own Scottish heritage back then, I might have gotten past his immigration to New Jersey, and we may have gotten on much quicker.

Today, I have an extended family of step-brothers and sisters through this relationship. Michael, the youngest, is now the priest at the parish my mom still attends in Harriman. I call him, “My brother the Father!”

I grew to like Papa John as being part of my family, and Corey, who first dubbed him “Papa John,” also loved the old dude, and they often spent time riding around town together. Too bad I killed him with a hamburger though!

John was seriously injured years earlier by getting into 440 volts at the steel mill where he worked before the medical retirement. He survived the encounter with the extreme voltage, but it left his heart muscles weakened.

One evening, several years after marrying mom, he stuffed himself with two of my grilled burgers, and some of my wife’s potato salad and baked beans! Later that night he woke up having a heart attack.

I really felt bad about the incident and begged him to forgive me the next day. He told me, sitting on the side of the hospital bed that it was not my fault, and the doctor reinforced that by stating it was just a matter of time anyway.

I went to work the following day, thinking the best of thoughts for John, but I got a call about midday – John had had another heart attack and died.

I was always thankful I got to speak to him and discuss the hamburger incident. My mind is at ease.

However, when I tell you I make a “killer burger” believe me – it’s true!

SPRING IS RETURNING – SLOWLY

Four of us (2 Dragons and 2 Knights) walked along the Sequoia Hills section of the Knoxville Dogwood Arts Trail today. The frost we have had the past three nights had burnt some of the flowers that were there a week ago, but there was still plenty to see. The homes along this area down near the beginnings of the Tennessee River are beautiful. Some have been there for years, some are new, and some are being renovated.

If you are somebody in Knoxville, you would probably want to live along this street, or at least on one of the nearby streets. Old money lives not too far from this area, and unless you are of “old money” you probably will not find anything available.

Not far up stream from here is the “downtown” area of Knoxville, Tennessee, and the marina where the “VOL Navy” anchors and parties during UT football games in the fall.

Running through the center of Sequoia Hills street is a running/walking path, and right in the center is an old Indian Burial Mound. There are also two or three little parks and other grassy areas near the river. You can find people playing Frisbee, running with their dogs, or just laying in the grass most days.

After a good loop walk, down Sequoia and then back down by the river, we left, went to the Riverside Tavern and had a wonderful lunch. It was a good day – a good day to be retired.

See more about the wonderful lunch we had, go over to Mushy’s Cookings.

WHERE THEY’VE GONE

There is that day that occurs at the end of each summer, when a cool breeze slices the summer heat sending a slow crawling chill over your flesh, and pushes a painted leaf cheerfully rattling across your path. It is the unmistakable omen of the pending changes to come. It is a day that reminds me once a year of things that I could have changed but didn’t and things I did change but shouldn’t have. (Huh...maybe I'll use this opening paragraph in my next book.)

Regardless of the changes made or not, the fall of life is upon me. Sixty years now, where’d they go (to quote a Bob Seger song)?

Twenty years now

Where’d they go?

Twenty years

I don’t know

Sit and I wonder sometimes

Where they’ve gone

And sometimes late at night

When I’m bathed in the firelight

The moon comes callin’ a ghostly white

And I recall

I know quite well where they went; I just didn’t take note of their passing as closely as I should have. Oh, as a child I held on to summer bliss as hard as I could trying to hold back the inevitable day school would begin again, but all the while longing to be grown up and own a fast car and have a nice girl.

I spent my adolescence wishing school would end so I could own a fast car so I could have a beautiful girl; never noticing that some of the greatest days of my life were “slip sliding away”.

I passed my early manhood and the prime of my health wishing my time in the Air Force and in Vietnam would end so I could own a fast car and get a beautiful girl. I never realized the historical significance of the experience until twenty years later. I took few significant photos and even fewer names. It was an experience of a life time; one you would never want to do again but one you would not trade for brand new fast car.

I spent my twenties playing house and wishing I had made other choices; wishing I had bought the Shelby instead of the plain 302 automatic, the 396 instead of the 350, the Hurst instead of the plain 442, asking someone to marry me instead of accepting an offer.

Nonetheless, I have arrived where I am through more divine intervention than personal judgment. If things had been left to me, I’d probably be living in some rundown trailer park with a fat old “used to be” blonde with no ambition, and no hopes of ever retiring.

I sit and wonder sometime about what would have been had just one decision in life had been different.

What if had married that little blonde that adored me and that I treated like dirt? There would have been no higher education, no higher ambition, but who really knows, maybe I would have still had the fastest old primered hot-rod with four of the slickest tires in the park!

More than anything I wanted to get a job in “big time” advertising in Atlanta. Once I was intrigued by Doyle Dane Bernbach, on a field trip sponsored by the College of Communications at the University of Tennessee. It was 1972, just prior to graduation, and DDB had the Coca-Cola account and was running at the top of the AD game after hitting the country with the '60s Coke anthem: "I'd like to teach the world to sing/in perfect harmony . . . “! A group of us on mock interviews visited the brain trust hard at work in a large open room on the second floor of a downtown Atlanta building. They were just young kids, really, not much older than me at the time. I envied them and the freedom of creation they seemed to have. Their work seemed to consist of sitting around playing with little things colored Coke red and white waiting for the next big idea to be born.

What if I had been free to pursue a job like that in “the big time”? I say free, because my wife at the time would not hear of leaving her family and moving to a “big” town, and maybe down deep inside I didn’t want to leave either. After all, I had just returned from Vietnam where I vowed never to leave home again.

Truthfully, I’d probably have been a workaholic (or something that ended in “aholic”) with more than 3 broken marriages and children from all 3 that never got to see their father. I would have loved the big time, even worshiped it, and there’s probably a Clio (http://www.clioawards.com/home/) or two that would have almost been mine, but I’ll never know and divine intervention probably saved a lot of people heartache; and particularly me.

In my heart-of-hearts I know it would not have been the best move for me. I heard the horror stories of accounts lost and accounts swapped and how advertising folks moved from agency to agency following the accounts. I would probably have been miserable and insecure if I’m really honest with myself. However, I would have had the fastest car in the parking garage!

So, anyway, like I said, I have arrived at 60 having been married to 3 pretty gals, got 2 beautiful granddaughters, 1 pretty daughter, 1 handsome son, and having had at least 6 fast cars (including 3 Mustangs, a 442, and a Trans Am). So, I know where the years went “And I recall”, and it’s been a ball. I’ve had it all and it ain’t over yet – actually, I am contemplating another fast car soon! After all, like the blog title says, I AM A CHILD OF THE SIXTIES!