Tears streaming down her face and passion oozing from her pores, Sandra Brown vents at a corporation she views as heartless.
“I really really hated it and felt violated. I am so mad and so angry and so hurt. I am sick of NES”
Brown blinks hard. Her eyes remain shut. A large tear wells under her eye lid. Like a dew drop clinging to a blade of grass, the single tear of frustration grows, its spherical shape remains smooth.
As she opens her eyes, red and sad, the tear drop overflows its molecular bounds. Pulled by gravity, the droplet races down her cheek. It follows a peregrine route of previous moisture clinging to her skin as it picks up speed. Like a child racing down a slip and slide on a wet summer day, the tear drop rolls to the curvature of her face and drops off into oblivion.
Brown is sniffeling and gathering her thoughts.
She is obviously distressed by the hideous Hackberry stump that now marks the front of her home like a pimple full of puss.
“When I pulled in, there were three men with chain saws standing in my yard. All that was left of my tree was a stump, and I said who gave you the right to cut down my tree?”
Her voice is trembling, snippets of anger oozing through her vocal cords.
“I am broken hearted,” she laments. “I just cried. I sobbed like a baby for 30 minutes. I was closer to it than I realized till it was gone.”
Brown tells me that she struggles her whole life to buy this modest home off Thompson Lane. She tells me that the tree was there when she buys the residence. The Hackberry is nestled between her driveway and the mailbox at the front of a tiny front lawn. She tells me that she could see the tree from her kitchen in the Fall, and it brought her comfort. She tells me how her grand kids played in the sprinkler in the summer beside the majestic old tree and it brought joy to her heart. She tells me that the tree provided privacy from neighbors and it was a place where squirrels shimmied up the tree trunk hustling nuts back and forth. She tells me the tree has been there for every single day of her 17 years as the property owner and each day it has served as a reminder of her life’s journey filled with adversity and accomplishments. Each night she says, the tree marked her return from work, telling her when to begin her turn into the driveway. She had used that tree as a navigational guide like Christopher Columbus used the North Star to sail to the edge of the flattened globe.
“I could turn into that driveway in my sleep,” she says. “I knew I was home.”
Now the tree is gone, replaced by a heinous stump that looks like a botched eco-abortion. The stump is a four foot in diameter, off yellow, gasp of life, that is now secured to the front lawn by deep roots that permanently anchor this eye sore for all to see.
I video tape the stump, amidst the quiet neighborhood of green grass and other thriving trees. It is ugly, and screams finality in an abrupt way. To Sandra Brown, this tree was once Filet Mignon, the main course on a small, but delectable front lawn. Now it is a 4 inch tall stump, like a grizzled piece of fat wedged between her molars that is uncomfortably painful, and a constant reminder that she is David versus the mighty electric company Goliath.
“STRONG POSSIBILITY GAS WILL RISE TO $4 DOLLARS” - abc news.com
“GAS PRICES HOLD, MAY EVEN GO DOWN A BIT” - The Tennessean.
“OIL EASES AS OPEC HINTS IT MAY BOOST PRODUCTION” - CNNMONEY.com.
Gas prices might rise.
Gas prices should level out.
Gas prices will go down a bit.
It’s all quite confusing.
Who can you trust?
What can you do?
You have to care, because, unfortunately, the price of gas affects you and everyone you will see today.
Petroleum is the common denominator of civilization. It is the life blood of industry, the lubricant that keeps the pistons of economy churning.
Gas runs your car, while emptying your wallet. The higher the price the more it costs to ship goods and services. High gas prices eventually mean cheese costs more at Publix. Nikes cost more at Sports Academy. Airline tickets and vacation get a ways and home heating all go up sucking dollars out of your bank account.
So when you get a headline that gas is going up or going down, it is BIG NEWS.
The problem is, the experts predict gas futures about as well as a fortune teller at the fair.
Gas prices are determined by supply and demand.
When supply is limited and demand is high, as is the current global market place, then price will shoot up.
That is what we are seeing now with prices surging toward 100 dollars a barrel.
Factors that affect this are many.
The war in the Middle East is a constant agitator of price fluctuation.
Political unrest in oil producing nations causes uncertainty and price spikes.
Hurricanes in the gulf disrupt supply lines and prices go up.
Cold winters in the North East mean heavy consumption so demand is high and prices escalate.
Some say big oil is behind it all, a kind of big business conspiracy theory. But Jim Lott who runs AAA in Nashville says big oil is at the mercy of the unpredictable spinning wheel of world events.
To some, there is a silver lining in all this gas gobbledy gook.
As prices at the pump swell, alternative energy becomes more attractive to a growing number of people who are willing to try Ethanol and buy Hybrid Cars and opt for solar power.
If enough people were to forgo gasoline, then by rule of supply and demand, the price at the pump would plummet because the demand would be so low.
Wouldn’t it be nice if your grand kids remember the day when gas prices were a nickle a gallon because nobody needed gas anymore?
All around me, like a blanket of audio, I hear the muted ding of human hearts, attached to probes, amplified through a hidden, seemingly ubiquitous speaker system.
Ding!
This sound of life fills the corridors of this sterile labyrinth of trauma.
Ding!
As I gaze around Vanderbilt Medical Center’s Emergency Department, I am also struck by the organization.
An array of patient charts hang on brightly colored walls. The charts are like grids, evenly divided by bold black lines. Each space of white filled with names and room numbers and medical information printed with brightly colored dry erase markers.
Evenly spaced along these walls are a series of patient rooms. Men and women recline in massive steel beds surrounded by tubes and machines and family members. Some of the patients are alert, watching TV, their medical condition a mystery to me. Other patients are unconscious, their present and future surrounded by question marks that seemingly float above them in sterile space.
And all the while, there is the sound of heart monitors.
Ding Ding Ding.
It seems most pronounced here. These medical outposts are Spartan, and visually communicate that this is a room of serious application. The entrance to each space is open, large enough for many people and large pieces of equipment to roll in and out. It reminds me of my garage, with a shower curtain attached to the entry way. When pulled across the space it offers a modicum of privacy.
Like conductors of this medical symphony, watching the charts and the patients from across the room, are the nurses. Wearing pastel colored scrubs these worker bees of emergency medicine sit at a command center in the middle of the massive room. They study charts and look at computer terminals evenly spaced on a long counter top. These pawns in the game of life are quick to flash you a smile that brings comfort and a sense of reassurance.
I am hanging out the window as the frigid blast of Canadian wind slaps me in the face.
My eyes are watering and the frost bite I picked up from a stint in Eastern Idaho as a one man band is beginning to flare up.
Al is behind the wheel, his pomegranate thick fingers gripping the wheel, as he whips the tiny SUV around these narrow lake roads.
I have the camera low to the asphalt. I can see leaves and road debris in the viewfinder as the back side of the tire rotates prominently on the tiny screen.
“It’s about a quarter mile,” Al says pulling the vehicle over in front of a fire hydrant on Noel Lane.
I jump out and begin video taping the orange and yellow fixture in the middle of a front lawn.
A neighborhood mutt eyes me suspiciously, as I hop back into the vehicle.
I walk into the Maury County Election office and I swear I can hear crickets chirping. The election administrator for the county tells me that Voter turnout was abysmal. Todd Baxter is a lively fellow, who takes his job seriously. Baxter’s job is to oversee elections in Columbia and
Maury County. He believes in the democratic process and believes that every vote counts. Baxter rolls his eyes as he begins to tell me about the most recent city election that he says saw just a 14% voter turn-out. “There were 17,000 registered voters,” he says. Only 2,600 people actually showed up. That’s a14% turnout,” he says disgustedly.
I am sad to report, that so far, nobody has been officially identified as the culprit.
Perhaps nobody ever will be.
I visited the dirt pile today (11-15-07) and it is still there.
The homeowner emailed me recently to say that the police are no longer investigating the case. Mt. Juliet Police confirm that is the case.
You’ll remember the dirt pile story where a Mt Juliet woman arrives home only to find a 7 foot wide, 5 foot high pile of dirt dumped on her front yard. The pile crushes her new sod, while taking up at least a 1/4 of her front yard.
The woman was horrified that someone would be so bold as to drive up to her home in the middle of the day and dump a load of dirt on her property.
At the time, I spoke with neighbors who claim they saw the dump truck that did it.
The neighbors even told me they knew who did it, but they couldn’t prove it.
But as we all know, thinking you know who did it and proving who did it are two different things.
Mt. Juliet Police can’t arrest people unless they have proof.
Below is a letter written to me from the home owner:
Thanks Andy, the police called me yesterday to say they dropped the investigation because lack of evidence that it was a crime. One neighbor told them they saw a dump truck with a “K” in the name dump the dirt, but the only company with a K denies delivery to my house. (the man neighbors suspect) denies it. The officer did say that some of his comments were suspicious but not enough to convict. Neighbors have reported seeing him frequently in the neighborhood.
When police conduct a day labor sting targeting undocumented workers who loiter in front of the Jack in the Box on Murfreesboro road, the men in blue call it a quality of life issue.
The officers share with me numerical data that indicates this is one of the busiest crime zones in the entire Hermitage precinct.
Would you want your wife or daughter to walk through this gauntlet of a dozen or more men to get a breakfast biscuit?, they ask me.
Because the answer to this question is often NO, many patrons bypass this restaurant for a morning biscuit. When you bypass this Jack in the Box because you might not feel comfortable, that means the business is losing money.
This is quality of life.
But it’s also quality of life for the men who stand in this cold parking lot 1,000’s of miles from their native lands, from their children and loved ones.
After these undocumented workers take off the cuffs and stuff their criminal trespassing citations into their back pockets, they begin the long walk back to the Jack in the Box. In broken English and sad puppy dog eyes, they tell me they stand on this corner to make money, to send back home. I watch as the men, in drab clothing and hats pulled low over their eyes, walk into a rising sun, only to merge back into the complicated financial and political landscape that is at the heart of this issue.
It is a chilly Thursday morning as the raid goes down. I watch as these men from Mexico and Guatemala push each other out of the way trying to squeeze into the back of a tiny Toyota Camry.
The officer behind the wheel is posing as a contractor. The men cram themselves into the car like mystery meat being shoved into a sausage. The officer drives the men around the corner, into the waiting arms of flex officers who begin checking identifications and criminal histories.
Officer Russ Ward is linebacker big. His shoulders are broad, like a barn. His are arms solid like IBM stock.
He is so big, that his hulking frame barely fits behind the wheel of the tiny Toyota Camry he is driving.
Wearing a wireless microphone, we can hear the Hermitage Sector cop pull into the parking lot behind the Mapco at the corner
of Murfreesboro Road and Thompson Place.
“Paint. Paint,” Ward says.
I watch as more than a dozen men run toward the undercover officer’s open window.
The words are like raw meat to a mountain lion. The scent of “Trabajo Y dinero” thick in the air.
“11 an hour,” Ward says as men push each other out of the way trying to get close to the tiny car.
“I need five,” he says.
By this time, Hispanic men with little or no documentation are in full sprint, lunging for his car doors.
I watch as four men pile into the back seat. Two more men climb into the passenger seat in the front. It looks like a clown car at the circus there are so many body parts sticking out.
“Six is good,” the officer says as the men manage to squeeze the 3 doors shut.
The car drives a few blocks down the street. From behind all you can see are hats and dark shadows and moving body parts.
The car is riding low as it moves toward the gauntlet of truth.
As I turn into the new subdivision in Mt. Juliet, just off of Lebanon Road, I see the mound.
It is five feet high and easily 7 feet wide.
As I draw closer to the brand new home, the mountain of dirt fills up my front windshield.
“Holy …!” I say, my words trailing off.
I park and get out of the news vehicle. I pop the trunk and grab my camera.
I begin shooting the mountain of dirt that literally stretches from the woman’s front stoop, across her front yard, spilling over onto the sidewalk. As is often the case, my arrival generates looky loo’s and inquisitive stares from neighbors.
The air is cold and the wind is blowing strongly. The sun is low in the autumn sky and the dirt mound is casting a long shadow across the front lawn mostly composed of sod. The sun is so brilliant all I see on my lens is a bunch of water spots that cast a film over the video like the dirt mound has the measels.
Why are there so many dots on my lens, I think to myself. I remember the storm from Wednesday night where I suddenly transform from soccer dad to live shot guy at the local soccer field.
I wipe my lens and refocus on the home in the Ravens Crossing sub division. It is elegant and modern. It has nice lines and is well maintained. It belongs to Pam Wood. Pam is away on business, so on this day, her cousin Madeline Erwin has agreed to do the interview.
“She came home from work late at night and she drives up and sees this dirt pile in her front yard. And she is sick. She is sick!” Erwin says, pushing her long brown bangs out of her face.
I ask who could do this and why.
The woman has her suspicions, but she admits they are just that.
“This is intimidation,” she says. “The person who I think did this is full of intimidation, and he has not been able to intimidate myself or my cousin.
She tells me that Mt. Juliet Police are aware of the pile as is the Wilson County District Attorney. I call the police who tell me that they are taking this vandalism seriously, but at this time, no one has surfaced as a definitive suspect.
“I am angry,” Erwin says, her words being swept away by a fierce gust of wind. “There is no reason for this. None at all!”
Next door Neighbor Barbara Manners joins the fray. Barbara is an older woman with white hair and glasses. She tells me that she saw the culprits, but she didn’t pay close enough attention to see a driver face or remember a company logo on either of the two trucks.
“The dump truck pulled up the street backed up quickly and dumped it quickly. It was all boom boom in five minutes. I was wondering why Pam had ordered all this dirt in her front yard.”
It turns out that Pam never ordered any dirt, and what Mrs. Manners had unknowingly witnessed is now considered a crime by the Mt. Juliet Police.
“it ruins the whole neighborhood”, she says as she turns from the $330,000 dollar home with the five foot high pile of dirt.
As a joke, there is a sign in the front yard. The sign reads: Free Dirt.
“To find some humor in the situation,” Erwin tells me.
If you have any leads, you are urged to contact the Mt. Juliet Police Dept.
In the meantime, the victims are getting estimates for removal of the dirt.
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The headlines are bold, and contradictory.
