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Browsing Tag: #tennessee
My news feed is chock full of support, up to the minute info on where to help out, what needs still need met, and blessings from afar. I have a friend who is frantically planting trees and brainstorming ways to get them out when it’s time. I have friends planning agendas for the months to come to keep victim’s needs met. If you are told a certain place needs volunteers and you get there only to be turned away, I beg you to be persistent. Things change constantly. You should be able to look for yourself and see what needs done. Take out the trash. Put a bottle of water in somebody’s hand if they look a little parched. (You’ll probably need to open it for them. If they’ve been working with their hands, they will appreciate the gesture. Trust me on this one.) I believe we’re all doing the best we can and our adrenaline is wearing out and it’s just plain exhausting. Give them a prayer if you can. It’s impossible to have a plan for something of this caliber. If your news feed is filled with people bickering, complaining, and bitterness then perhaps you should reevaluate your friends. And if you can do nothing else~if you can’t find the willpower to pray~please spread the word that the county, the National Park, and the city of Pigeon Forge…
I have lots of things to say about yesterday. I plan to open a blog today to get it all out of me, & will share the link as soon as I have it. For now, it will have to be enough for me to say that the outpouring of generosity from ALL OVER AMERICA is something special. I moved chicken cages with a local friend, Donna Parton, a teenager from Georgia, & two guys from Knoxville. One of them had a broken arm but he was still helping. I moved hay that was donated by a man from Jamestown with one of my old co-workers. His wife has manned the fairgrounds tirelessly since the county made the decision to open it to displaced animals. Thank you David Majors for answering my tears & pleading with a MUCH NEEDED fork machine. And Gary was a welcome sight. Thank you Co-op. It’s good to know people in the right places. Thank you Leanne Anke for taking the evacuated horses back to their home on your day off. Thanks to the businesses who are donating their people, their products, & their dollars towards this catastrophic incident. Food City had sent a tractor trailer full yesterday, Borden Dairy another, & I didn’t catch the names of several others in & out. I spoke with a gentleman at the Rescue Squad that Lisega (the new factory on Dumplin Valley Road in Kodak) had sent on their…
Every night I’ve tried to post a little update. I didn’t get to it last night. I was answering the 200+ comments from my last post that evidently went viral. It seems that people all over are hungry for information, & y’all seem to like to hear me tell it because then you know they aren’t alone in your thoughts & observations. Last night brought me another dose of guilt, as I remembered friends in Gatlinburg that I have neglected to check on & now it’s so late it’s embarrassing. I returned some pillowcases to Belk before I went to the library’s Christmas party. I feel like I understand a little bit of why soldiers returning from war are sometimes disgusted when they get stateside. The excess is appalling. I figured my stupid expenditure for frilly pillowcases would better be used elsewhere right now. I felt guilty for going to the Christmas party. I felt shame for enjoying it. I’m telling you, being thisclose to tragedy is a humbling experience. I’ll get another dose of that today, as I go where the Good Lord & Lorie Yount send me. I’m starting at the fairgrounds. I had big plans for cleaning, decorating my tree, & finishing my book today. These were things I mistakenly believed I needed to do. I was wrong. They were things I WANTED to do. There was…
This was the Facebook post that finally convinced me once and for all that I needed a blog. It had 1,617 likes/loves/sad/astounded emojis, over a hundred comments, and 1,331 shares. Totally by telling it like it is. What’s going on in Sevier County, you want to know? You REALLY want to know? Well, the fires aren’t out, unfortunately. They tell me that they keep popping back up from where it was so hot for so long. The fire travels underground, through root growth. Also, when we’ve suffered a drought for the last few months, four inches of rain in two days isn’t hardly enough. It’s better…but it ain’t over. And there are new problems concerning the ashes & rubble now washing into drainage ditches & storm drains clogging the whole system. But that’s less of an evil than what whipped through Monday night. The news isn’t telling it all. Maybe they’re afraid we’re too fragile. But we know. The absolute generosity & outpouring of volunteers in the Volunteer State is truly mind boggling. Every morning & night I give Facebook a quick scroll & I’m astounded by what I see. The compassion & the prayers & the overall messages of “Where can I help today? Who needs what where? Does anybody need a shower & bed?” while I just…
What a day. The county burns on. Certainly humbled me to see the county banding together & helping in any way they can. I drove by the Rescue Squad going home & there were hordes of people donating loads of products. I understand chapstick, Tylenol or equivalent, & shampoo are among the most needed items this evening. There has never been a fire like this & helicopters were back & forth overhead all day, & sirens were a constant as additional crews blasted in from neighboring counties & states, lights & sirens blaring all the way here & through town. I didn’t know what I would wake to this morning but it was a somber mood, a tang of smoke lingering in the air, & alerts on my phone to “staff off” so more emergency calls could go through. It puts life in perspective & I felt guilty sleeping last night, selfish for eating, & anxious being at my regular job. It’s just a sickening feeling. I thank the friends who have checked on me & my community. I haven’t lost anything personally, but plenty of people I know were displaced & everyone was scared. Hopefully we’ll learn from this time & prepare for future disasters. Thank you most of all for the prayers. This fire will be over when God says so. It has been a miracle that no more casualties have been found. Let the rain come. May…
I worked at dispatch less than two years, but I can bet you a dollar to a doughnut they would be praying for rain harder than anybody in this county. I say would be because they ain’t got time to pray. They’re calming screaming homeowners, they’re communicating with fire command, they’re ignoring the constantly ringing black phone that the media relentlessly calls, & they’re probably cussing firemen that aren’t answering their radio transmissions. They’re desperate to go pee, they’re tethered to their console, & somebody is manning the white board and tracking new blazes. They’re probably being very short with each other, relaying only the most pertinent information to one another so they don’t miss a single word on their radios. There’s probably other shit going down too, you know, the usual mix of heart attacks, difficulty breathing, car wrecks, seizures, diabetic emergencies, & people fighting in Kodak. Oh, & all the punks that call 911 for the heck of it and hang up. And this has been going on for DAYS. They probably don’t know what time it is & just wish it would end. Rain cannot get here quick enough. Firemen live for this, don’t let them tell you different. But I’d say they’re getting sick of it by now. Many of them aren’t paid, they…
Home is a relative term. If you’re in your hometown and someone asks where you live, you will perhaps give them specific directions. Say I see you at Food City in Seymour, I would tell you I live behind the high school. If I’m in Knoxville, home is Seymour. If I’m in Atlanta, home is Knoxville. If I’m in Asheville, or Savannah, or Charleston, I might care to explain I’m from a small town near Dollywood. People from away are always fascinated that I’m from the same county as Dolly Parton. If I’m on the West Coast, home is simply “Tennessee”. If I were to travel to Ireland, “home” would be the United States. I’m arrogant, but not so much that I would expect them to point out the South on a map of the world. And if aliens abduct me, planet Earth would be close enough for me. So if you move away from where you’re born, but leave behind your family to cleave to your beloved, of perhaps to just a new life, then you hopefully have two homes. Hence the phrase, “Going home for Christmas,” the same as going home after a long day at the office. Home is where the heart is. For years, home was where my horse was, because my heart was my horse. I’ve been home…
Day 20: Put your music player on shuffle & write the first three songs that play & what your initial thought is First one was “Kiss” by Prince, which I love. Reminds me of Pretty Woman, just like it does everybody else. She’s in the bathtub, with bubbles up to her ears, which are covered by headphones. She resembles a mermaid with all that wild red hair, & is singing her off-key heart out. #2 was “Me & God” by Josh Turner. I listened a moment, but it’s not my favorite, so I went on & got “Some Sweet Day” by Ray Ball, so I suppose I cheated, but hey, this is my story, amiright? #3 was “Loved By You” by Jewel, whom I consider a genius. I love just about everything she’s ever sung or written. She published a book of poetry several years ago & I have it. She recently came out with another one, which I have not yet acquired. She’s great. If y’all have never really listened to anything by her, give her a try. It’s been a fine music morning so far. I had it on 94.9’s Throwback on my way in & heard several good ones (Push It, Jessie’s Girl, Moulan Rouge, & When I Come Around). Yesterday is a different story. Perhaps y’all were wondering what the picture of the goat trail had to do with music. Well, I didn’t listen…
I have a friend who is married to a farmer. They are raising their boys among the cows & corn. The boys have calves they bottle feed & sell, they have horses they check fences astride. They enjoy the day to day life of being outside, helping their daddy tend to the newly born, the ailing, the healthy. One day, I was disheartened to read on Facebook about how one of their sons was being ridiculed at school. A schoolmate called him poor because he lives on a farm. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Trust me, farmers aren’t poor. They meet struggle every day of their life. They are up against it at least fifty percent of the time. Imagine if your livelihood was dependent upon the weather. If it doesn’t rain one day & the sun shine the next, you might be looking for a job in town. And then when hay is ready to cut to feed the cows all winter, you pray for three straight days hot & clear. To get your hay to grow, it must be fertilized. Fertilizer runs around $500 a ton. One ton will fertilize roughly seven acres. If your fields yield well, seven acres of hay will produce maybe 100 rolls of hay. A cow will eat half a roll a day in the wintertime if their pasture is thin. You figure four months of winter, which is 120 days. If you have thirty cows, that…
For years, I mistakingly believed that “working a double” meant twelve hours. This naïve opinion stemmed from my early retail experience in Pigeon Forge, where the stores were open 9-9. So if I worked open to close, that was “a double”. When I went to work for 911 dispatch, I learned that was not the case. While 12 hours of demanding tourists is enough to kill anybody, it barely holds a flame to spending 16 hours in a 20×20 room with three people tethered to three computers each and a radio system the size of a refrigerator. You don’t get a 30 minute lunch break reprieve in another room, you eat right there at your console with your headset attached. You can go to the bathroom, but you better make it snappy. And that’s the 8 hour days. You don’t work sixteens every day, just the days when weather catches you & your coworkers unaware. Because if you knew a big snowstorm was coming and you didn’t think you could get back, then the county would put you up for the night in some luxury accommodations–the Landmark Inn. It wasn’t the Four Seasons, but it was close to work. And if you got stuck at home, well, the Rescue Squad would be sent to retrieve you. IF they got time, that is. The county has a limited few that are…
