Roadkill on the road to progress - First "Yikes!"

This is the first Yikes! I had published, seven or eight years ago. Given Knoxville's current road work blitz, it seemed appropriate to reprint.

Construction Zone

Are we but roadkill on the road to progress?

by Scott McNutt

Today I'd like to use this space to talk about something positive in Knoxville; a something that touches Knoxvillians' lives in an intimate way, but a something whose touch is often unfairly castigated. I am referring, of course, to road construction.

I know what you're thinking: "Are you always an idiot, or did you take special stupid pills this morning?" But think what road construction really means for you, the average driver. Sure, it means waiting in long lines of traffic, missing your dinner and little Tiffany's piano recital. True, it means enduring moronic drive-time traffic reporters blathering about "fender benders" while making inane banter with the disc jockeys. Maybe it means leaning on the horn when some self-serving jerk zips around the line of law-abiding drivers that you've been patiently waiting in for the last 37 minutes.

Yes, it may even mean yanking your car out of that line of traffic and trying to chase after the thoughtless jerk, only to be cut off by someone else, leaving you cursing and shaking your fist and futilely shooting a bird at his receding taillights.

Sure, it means all that, and all I can say about it is that I only do it in emergencies or when I just can't take any more of the DJ's drive-time chatter. So don't take these things so personally, average driver. In fact, in such situations, don't pay attention to fellow drivers like me at all. Instead, contemplate, with pride, what road construction delays mean for you.

That's right: "with pride." Road construction signifies progress. And progress means the economy is booming. And a booming economy means that you, personally, must be getting richer. So, let's say you're stuck in traffic again, waiting for the rolling road blocks to let you loose on I-75. Now let's say that I, not being stupid enough to sit there with you, zoom past you on the shoulder. Rather than cursing me for not being as stupid as you, why not count the money that's rolling into your bank account instead?

Don't think I haven't hadthe same experience. Last summer, I enjoyed all this progress first-hand. For a while, every major thoroughfare between West and North Knoxville was under construction. That's right: So much "progress" was being made on the main roads between Pellissippi Parkway and Clinton Highway that I could make no progress at all between my home and office. What had been a routine 15-minute commute became a snail-paced, hour-long nightmare. But did I whine about it? Heck no! I thought proudly of our percolating economy and drove back roads like I was starring in a remake of White Line Fever. Sometimes I even made the trip in less than 15 minutes. Of course, a few of the nearby woodland creatures may not have survived the experience.

Which brings up another benefit of road construction: pest control. Think about all those annoying creatures that used to ravage your pitiful attempts at gardening. You don't have to worry about them messing with you anymore! Nor do you have to be bothered with the temptation to take home some cute, furry, orphaned bunny that you would have named "Thumper." Nope! All such critters are now spread over the pavement like cheez-whiz on a cracker, appetizers for the scavenger set.

The most important benefit of road construction, though, is that it discourages people, meaning you, average driver, from going anywhere at all in your car. For instance, one day last year, I tried to go to South Knoxville from downtown via the Gay Street Bridge. I couldn't, of course: the Gay Street Bridge was closed. So I didn't go; in fact, I realized that nobody ever needs to go South Knoxville. I mean, what's there? They tore down the Chapman Highway Drive-In years ago, so what's the attraction now? Besides, for all I know, you really can't go to South Knoxville anymore. It's probably one big road construction site by now.

Which is what I think our goal should be: more road construction. Lots more. Forget the Riverfront, forget the Smokies' stadium, forget the World's Fair site (I mean those of you who haven't already), forget all that piddly stuff. And quit looking at the Turkey Creek construction project as another instance of development run amuck. It is, but that's not the point. The point is that Knoxville has a grand opportunity to mark its spot in the history books. If we all work together, Knoxville could become the first city ever in the history of the world to have every one of its roads under construction at the same time. (Babylon came close in 986 B.C., but one overzealous road crew foreman named "Fred" kept getting his crew to finish on time and under budget. The city council had him drawn and quartered, but by then the other crews had finished too.)

Think of it: All the interstates and all the major thoroughfares would have bulldozers crawling over them. All the main roads, boulevards, avenues, etc., would have road crews furiously tearing up the asphalt then racing off, leaving behind only "road closed" signs. All the little courts, points, loops, traces, and every way everywhere would have crews standing around leaning on their shovels, blocking traffic. Nobody would go anywhere.

What an achievement! Remember, because road construction equals progress equals a booming economy, we would all be rich, even though we wouldn't be able to drive to the mall to spend our new-found wealth. We could even write a book about the experience. We'd call it Roadkill on the Road to Progress: Cities Who Love Road Construction Projects and the Road Construction Projects Who Hate Them. Then, all 160,000+ of us Knoxvillians would be invited to appear on Oprah. Of course, we couldn't all fit on the set, so Oprah would have to do a live, remote broadcast from Knoxville. If she didn't get stuck in the traffic, that is.

Earlier Toxic Fumes: Underdeveloper and proud of it!

This is the latest Toxic Fumes column The Hellbender Press has run (written under the pseudonym Robin Goodfellow). The Hellbender can be read at http://www.hellbenderpress.com/.  

Underdeveloper and proud of it!

by Robin Goodfellow  

 Disclaimer: The following column contains wildly abusive language, full of gross stereotyping, sweeping insinuations and blanket condemnations of a certain species of occupation. Which is not to say it's wrong.

Why did God invent utilities? To give developers something besides the weather to blame for project delays. Curious, isn't it? Despite having to build everything they've ever built in the rain, no developer has ever developed a project schedule that realistically accounts for weather delays. Any time there's a dry spell, "unexpected utilities problems" serve as a good scapegoat. For certain, the one thing that will not be blamed for delays is the developer.

Ever hear the story of the First Developer? It appears to be Biblical in origin, first appearing in "Numbers" as an allegory involving a poodle. The First Developer appeared when early Hebrews were ready to move out of the dank, smelly caves they were living in and settle down as urbanites. Tribal, shepherding folk, they were accustomed to holding their possessions in common, so they decided to pool their resources and create the first publicly funded housing development.

There were those who argued that the smelly old caves held a certain primitive charm and that their adaptive reuse should be the tribe's next project. This is how historic preservationists were born.

The low bidder who got the project kept pushing back and pushing back the completion date, until everybody was utterly fed up and called for a review of the project ledgers. The First Developer sent his accountant over to meet with the tribal elders while workers finished up his stupendous luxury yacht, the funding for which had been a subject of intense speculation among his neighbors.

At the very moment the tribal elders announced that the books, and therefore the developer's goose, were cooked, the mother of all downpours hit, and the whole project and almost everyone on Earth was destroyed in a great flood. The developer's ark was completed just in time to allow survival to this day of "the weather" as the best excuse for project delays.

Humankind has constructed things in all weather for untold centuries. Yet, from all this experience developers have had working in the elements, they seem unable to recognize natural forces' effect on their work, and the effect of their work on nature. Is it too much to ask them to acknowledge that runoff from their construction sites pollutes nearby streams? That denuding great swaths of land of vegetation increases erosion and flooding and destroys fragile wildlife habitat? Then again, these are men incapable of grasping the concept that it rains in the rainy season.

This, of course, is why developers are not trusted to take care of such details themselves. Instead, laws minimizing environmental impact are promulgated by government, and standards for meeting these laws are formalized in contracts concluded between the public's governmental representatives and the developers. Thus are the public's interests safeguarded. Still, writing a standard into a contract is one thing, enforcing it is another. The devil is in the details. Why did the devil build hell from scratch? Because he was scared to sign a contract with a developer.

Besides the difficulty in ensuring that developers abide by environmental standards, do their work in a timely manner, and fulfill the terms of their contracts, another problem with them is, simply, getting a worthwhile result. A much-ballyhooed standard for development bandied about in downtown Knoxville states, approximately, that the removal of any existing structure is acceptable, as long as what replaces it is better.

Even under this nebulous standard, can the Turkey Creek development be called an improvement over its previous state? Are Market Square and Krutch Park better now than before? Will the Knox County Farmer's Market be better as a Target? Will TVA's riverfront property be better in the loving care of private developers?

Does a tree grow in Brooklyn? No, because some damn developer bulldozed it down to build something ugly and shoddy. Use developers if you must, but watch them like hawks, and wash your hands afterward.

Disclaimer: The preceding column was prejudiced, uncharitable, mean-spirited and just plain nasty. It was exaggerated to the point of caricature. Plus, it ignored the many public projects in which the developers' work is timely, cost-conscious, and satisfactory overall. It was an expression of the frustration inherent in all public projects, where all interestswill be disappointed in some respects, and the people who do the work, the developers, always get blamed, often unjustly. Which is not to say it was wrong.

Old Yikes!: Urban Removal

This is one of my early Yikes! columns (circa 1998) that never made it on line. With the James Agee Park in Fort Sanders having recently been much in the news, this might be relevant to those who can remember the Fort's latest last stand.

 

Urban Removal

The James Agee Memorial Big Gaping Maw That Once Was Fort Sanders

by Scott McNutt

The community-spirited, historically and aesthetically minded Hysteric Fort Sanders Neighborhood Association has lost the battle it's been waging against Just Pancake It, AKA the money-grubbing, Weasel Developers. How did it happen? Heck if I know.

The outcome may have been determined simply by someone inducing "Bulldog" Ashe to roll over. If this is what occurred, I assume the Association tried reasoning with him, while the Weasels cannily went to the heart of the matter and scratched him behind the ears, patted his tummy, and gave him little bacon treats. Unfortunately, with the lure of a $5,000 bacon-flavored tidbit, the Weasels have now made the Association roll over and play dead, too.

That may sound unaesthetic, but let's be realistic: Who did Fort Sanders have on its side? Concerned citizens, activists, historians, artists, musicians, poets, small children, pets, kudzu…pretty much everybody except City Hall, right?

Now, who did the Weasels have on their side? Money. So who was City Hall inevitably going to side with? Right, we're back to rubbing Trader Vic's tummy again. And as repulsive as that may sound to you, Weasels have no compunctions. You can't really blame the Association for drawing the inescapable, obvious conclusion, dropping its compunctions, and offering up its belly, too.

Strangely, despite this obvious surrender and the evidence of a big, dirty, gaping, barren spot on 11th Street that used to be a row of beautiful homes, the Association is still making noises like "bring the neighborhood together" and "promote unity," as if it truly can't see what's going on. Maybe it's difficult for an organization so devoted to the preservation of the past to recognize that it has no future.

Wake up and smell the construction, people. Fort Sanders is already too far gone, hemorrhaging from a dozen mortal wounds. The buzzards and weasels are now simply stripping chunks of meat off the neighborhood's dying carcass. For you good citizens who want to preserve the Fort Sanders neighborhood, I havea "modest proposal": Forget it.

Follow the Association's example and go with the flow. Cease your pointless struggle against urban renewal and put the Fort out of its misery with a single, swift, killing stroke. In other words, stomp the sucker flat. Rip the neighborhood up by its foundations, tear down every last priceless piece of Victorian architecture, and embrace our cookie-cutter condominium destiny.

Everyone who loves Fort Sanders, pitch in! Destroy something precious and vital today! Where once was the most diverse, fun, and convenient neighborhood in the city, just trash everything and leave a huge, vacant, yawning chasm. And when I say "everything," I am, of course, excluding all UT and Fort Sanders hospital property, and all parking meters.

Now, I have some suggestions about what use we might make of the Big Hole That Used To Be Fort Sanders. But first, to make it sound more prestigious, I propose that we append a phrase to the front of Knoxville's Big Pit O' Damnation. The phrase is "The James Agee Memorial --" plus whatever we happen to call The Big Gaping Maw That Was Once Fort Sanders And Is Now The Gateway To Hell. I suggest this particular phrase because Agee was such a good sport when his childhood home in Fort Sanders was torn down for an apartment complex back in the sixties. Of course, this may be explained by his being dead when it happened.

My first suggestion for how to use The James Agee Memorial Big Black Hole Sucking The Life Essence Out Of Knoxville is to turn it into a landfill. What could be more natural? After all, we have no use for this unique historical neighborhood, but we always need more dumps. Besides, given the treatment the neighborhood gets every fall from the influx of Vol lemmings and every day from the absentee landlords, you'll have to admit that Fort Sanders already pretty much is a dump. And think how convenient (and symbolic) a landfill at the center of the city would be!

Another possible use for The James Agee Memorial Scarred, Pitted, Ruined Landscape That Prisoners Of War Should Be Shot And Dumped In is to turn it over to its original owners, meaning the Cherokees. They could build a casino on the site and call it The James Agee Memorial Big Teepee By The Tennessee River Casino Resort.

In this venture, I vow that I would do my share. Because I am part Cherokee, I personally guarantee that I will assumejoint ownership of the club and reap vast profits while ignoring the plight of the poor Knoxvillians who gamble their life savings away in my casino.

My last idea for the use of The James Agee Profusely Bleeding Hole Shot Straight Through The Heart Of Knoxville is to just leave it as is. I think having an enormous, raw, devastated, muddy space where Fort Sanders once was would precisely symbolize the hole in the soul of our city.

In a ghoulish, slow-down-as-you-pass-a-car-wreck sort of way, it would attract tourists from far and wide who would want to see what could happen in their own cities, given the right amount of mental myopia from their local officials. Of course, to accommodate the constant flow of visitors to The James Agee Memorial Big Ol' Hole In The Center Of The City, we'd have to build a parking lot where Sequoyah Hills is now. Maybe we could put in a cell phone transmission tower while we're at it.

Old New Column: Toxic Fumes, The Litterati

A few months back, I started writing a humor column for East Tennessee's Environmental Journal, The Hellbender Press (http://www.hellbenderpress.com/), under the pseudonym Robin Goodfellow. Here's the first one.

The Litterati

We have met the litterbug, and he is squashing us

By Robin Goodfellow

Litter is a problem, and we are all party to it. Some of us may be litter-littles while others are litter-lottas, but we all contribute. We are all litterati.

Part of our problem may be natural. After all, we are animals, and many animals don’t clean up after themselves. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stepped barefoot into my backyard only to yank my foot back, yipping in pain and surprise, the shard of a half-eaten walnut shell imbedded in my foot, deposited by a squirrel indifferent to the concept of "litter."

I’ve stepped into much worse remnants as well, such as leftovers from predatory repasts and the inevitable excretions that are their consequence. All sorts of animals leave their trash in my yard. Why should I, no less an animal, care where I leave my litter?

Our problem is also cultural. We are so conditioned to living with trash, we scarcely see it. On a recent walk through downtown Knoxville, I made an effort to see my environment. And I saw. I saw legions of gum wrappers dancing on the wind, tree planters that could have been ashtrays for all the cigarette butts choking them, curbs overflowing with discarded fast-food containers, plastic soda bottles, chips bags, and other detritus, dog turds sprouting on every greensward. On seemingly every street corner were metal bins the size of freight trucks, whose sole function is as repositories for our larger litter – toilets for the waste pouring forth from downtown’s "revitalization."

What I saw was that we, as a culture, accept litter large and small, actual and symbolic, as a part of life. We must. How else could that repulsive, that hideous, that grotesque bulk, the Knoxville Convention Center, come to be squatting on a prime piece of downtown real estate, plopped there like the bowel movement of a fantastical, cubist elephant?

Yes, the rubbish of our lifestyles sums to more than literal litter. If we have garages crammed with unused, but somehow "necessary," junk (as I do), we are litterati. If we have cars dribbling fluids and belching fumes (as I do), weare litterati. If we advertise on the billboard eyesores that clot our landscape, that is litter. If we purchase goods from those advertisers (as I do), we are litterati. I am casting no stones. I’m as litterati as the next gal.

But our cultural failings as a whole are even grander. What makes us a litterati society is reckless, wasteful, exorbitant consumption. And virtually all of us partake. Almost all of us, indulging our lifestyles, buy into some aspect of our consumerist society. We concede small points or large in our desire for "more" or "easier" or "faster," making us as culpable for the resultant destruction to our environment as the litterattiest.

So, if we stood by while taxpayer money built that cathedral of false profits, the Knoxville Convention Center, we are litterati. If we concede without protest when an arctic wildlife preserve is drilled for oil, we are litterati. If we turn blind eyes (and pinched noses) to relaxed emissions standards for coal-fired plants, we are litterati.

Because, you see, we know better. True, we are animals like other animals. But we are unlike them as well, aren’t we? Whether from divine revelation to the spirit or rational examination leading to mind’s enlightenment, humans should know better than to exhaust and foul their environment. Yet, no "Homo sapiens," no wise human beings, are we. "Bestia quod plus sapere debet,"* that’s humankind: The animal that ought to know better.

And as long as we know better but act worse, we will be litterati.

*Thanks to Maria at "Ask an Expert" (http://www.allexperts.com) for help with the Latin translation.