Patti Smith Come Again Nate Powell

When Davy Crockett left home afterwards he lost his congressional seat to a one-legged crony of Andrew Jackson, he told his sometime friends and neighbors, "You go to hell. I'm going to Texas." He was pretty bitter, and we know how that turned out.

Soon, downtown pioneer P Smith and her dog, Petey, will exist headed for Texas, besides, but not because she's mad at anybody or looking for new battles to fight. One of the first of the new moving ridge of downtown residents, she simply figures information technology'southward time to plow the page. That belief was confirmed when she got a better-than-asking cost, cash, no appraisal, offer for the Gay Street condo she's called abode since 1993.

P Smith and Petey (who has her ain recliner)

She says the demands of downtown life are getting harder to meet. She'south tired, for instance, of having to walk up the hill to the parking garage when she wants to go to the grocery store; tired of looking for a parking spot nearly plenty to her forepart door to unload her groceries when she gets dorsum (not to mention the worry of getting a parking ticket before she tin render her automobile to the parking garage, which she pays a monthly fee to use). She loves her hometown, only it was hard to leave the Biloxi beach to come back to the condo this last time.

"I'm 82 years old now, and you reach a indicate, as life changes, yous just demand to change with it."

The modify will be substantial. The RV she and Petey have been traveling in is pending them in the Cajun RV Park, which they discovered when they were traveling from Texas to Florida and stopped for an overnight break on a beachfront in Biloxi, Mississippi. They fabricated a lot of friends (something they're exceptionally skilful at) and spent most of the fall and winter there. P has put downwardly a deposit to repeat the experience next fall and plans to return after the summer people vacate. Meanwhile, she'southward shipping any piece of furniture she wants to keep to her son Solon'southward house outside Houston, which volition be her new, formal address. Then she and Petey will become wherever they take a notion to be. Her younger son Adam lives in the Houston area, too.

She'll come dorsum to Knoxville to visit. Why wouldn't she? She'south made a lot of history hither and has countless friends.

Smith – whose nickname, Patti, got shortened to a single initial later she opened her Tyson Street sign company, P Smith Signs and Displays – grew up in East Knox County and attended Carter uncomplicated and high schools under the watchful heart of her mother, legendary restauranteur Helma Gilreath. P finished college, got married, had two sons, got divorced, taught school, became a certified runway and field official, bought a subcontract, raised cattle and published a monthly community paper with the help of the tardily Loy Smith, who handed the County Chronicle over to her free of charge on the status that she run "that other son of a bitch" out of business organization. She expanded the Chronicle's attain, got a few scoops (quite a feat for a monthly publication) and had a real proficient time.

She eventually sold the subcontract and used the proceeds to buy the condo at 120 South Gay Street. Over the years that she'south lived at that place, the place has been an unofficial campaign headquarters for the late Danny Mayfield's historic city council campaign, the home of the annual Blessing of the Pansies and a hub of untold other downtown social and political activities.

She bought into downtown living long before downtown addresses became trendy, even though the building she moved into was in crude shape. The first couple of floors of all the 100 cake buildings are hugger-mugger due to the street being "raised" a century ago, and P had to walk a wide plank over a deep cave to become from the street to her forepart door.

"When I bought information technology in '93, at that place was nothing hither but rusted conduit and rotted boards. The floor looked like rotted concrete, it had and so much dirt on it," she said. "I had to build information technology out. There was cleaved glass, boarded-upwardly buildings and drunks everywhere. People used to say, 'Gollee, P, aren't you afraid?'

"I'd tell them that I don't hear one-half as proficient every bit I used to and don't encounter half as well as I used to, so I guess I'k nearly half as scared equally I ought to be. I knew I was going to live in the middle of the country or the middle of the city. I'd lived in the country pretty much all my life, so I decided to try the urban center out."

She does remember the first time she was afraid.

"I was reading and suddenly had this absolute shot-through feeling of terror. Cognitively I understood – I was all locked in and null could become to me, but I knew at that place was something bad in the building. I was terror struck.

"Another time, somebody knocked on my door. It was a skinny lilliputian guy in a green T-shirt. I asked if I could help him. He put his easily together (as if praying) and bowed and looked at me. … I knew in that location was a big butcher knife laying at the stop of the counter a few steps away, and I told him 'I can't assistance you,' closed the door and locked it. Afterwards, when I checked, nobody in the edifice had guests that night and nobody knew him or had whatever explanation for who he was. …"

Officeholder P, downtown Pooper Trooper

Only about of her memories are skilful ones – the battles she fought and the friends she fabricated. 1 of her earliest and most publicized campaigns was the anti-canis familiaris poop crusade that got her dubbed a "Pooper Trooper" by Channel 10 TV news anchor Robin Wilhoit.

As new neighbors moved in, P and her friend and neighbor Jo Mason grew increasingly aggravated by people who didn't clean upward backside their dogs. Their frustration drove P and Jo to head up a movement to force urban dog owners to be responsible for what their pets deposited on the city'south streets, sidewalks and grassy patches. They flagged the droppings of flagrant offenders and pressured the city to pass an ordinance requiring domestic dog-walkers to pick up their crap rather than leaving it for their neighbors to step in.

In the end, they got their ordinance, but to P'due south knowledge only one offender – a estimate's wife who reacted with an indignant "Practice you know who I am" demand – has been issued a ticket (P consoles herself with the knowledge that a trolley full of tourists saw and applauded the exchange between the rookie cop and the domestic dog possessor).

It'southward hard to know how to terminate this still-unfolding tale, other than to tell a personal story about the fourth dimension P and I went to Kansas City to watch the Lady Vols win the 1998 Final 4. I was writing stories for Metro Pulse, but P was doing equally she pleased – which meant she was running wide open, making friends and living dangerously, as was her fashion. She found out nigh a riverboat gambling establishment across town and hired a cabdriver to take her there and bring her back to the hotel. I went to bed and was dead asleep when she burst through the door in the wee hours of the morning, turned on the light and started throwing wads of cash in the air.

She told me her friend the cab driver was going have her back again the next night and invited me to come along. I pulled the covers over my head and wondered if this crazy woman ever slept.

I all the same don't know the answer to that question, and I expect that life won't be anywhere near as interesting when she hits the road.

Betty Bean  writes a Thursday opinion column for KnoxTNToday.com.

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Source: https://www.knoxtntoday.com/downtown-pioneer-p-smith-is-leaving-town/

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