Memories of Watts Bar Resort

It’s snowing again. I am not a fan of snow. It hinders one’s mobility in a car or on foot, and then there’s the cold. It makes these old joints ache and, well, it’s just too freaking cold. So what did I start doing? I’m remembering summer days from my youth. Specifically, vacations at Pete Smith’s Watts Bar Resort, in eastern Tennessee.

Thomas Wolfe wrote the novel You Can’t Go Home Again, and perhaps there are many things in this world that are best left to our memories, and not updated with current realities. My family’s favorite vacation spot from the 1960’s and early-‘70’s is probably one of those things. Several years ago I was on my way back from visiting my daughter and her new family in Cleveland, Tennessee. I was heading north on Interstate-75, and had seen the sign on my way down pointing to Watts Bar Dam, a few miles to the west on Highway 68. It was a beautiful, clear, sunny day, and I had plenty of time. I decided to make a small detour, exited the freeway, and headed west.

Watts Bar Dam is one of a series of hydroelectric dams built on the Tennessee River by the Tennessee Valley Authority, or TVA, during the ‘30’s and ‘40’s as a means of flood control and to provide electric power to an underdeveloped portion of the country. It also provided much needed construction jobs during the Great Depression. A small village of cabins were built for use by the workers, and were unused in 1950, when an entrepreneur named Pete Smith entered into a long-term lease with the TVA, and renovated the cabins for use as Pete Smith’s Watts Bar Dam Resort.

Pete and his wife Sally operated the place from April through October each year, then spent the off season traveling around the world. Must have been a pretty nice life. The Game Room in the Gift Shop/Restaurant building featured mounted skulls with horns from Antelopes and Thomson’s Gazelles that Pete (or someone) had shot on safari in Africa, with little brass plaques to identify the origins. My brothers and I found them fascinating. The gift shop was full of unusual little keepsakes from around the world. I’m sure there are a few items purchased there that are still around the house someplace.

From a modern entertainment perspective, the place was pretty boring when you think about it. Originally, they offered horseback riding, and Rick, Gary and I took several rides through the woods in the hot June air, swatting mosquitoes and horseflies. Once or twice was all it took before the luster wore off of that activity. In the later years, the stables closed, a victim of apathy and rising liability insurance.  The lake was a much better choice for recreation. Dad would rent a little aluminum fishing boat with a small outboard motor for the week, and we boys would use it for fishing or just cruising around (without parental supervision). For kids too young for a driver’s license, anything with a motor is cool. The entire family also usually rented a pontoon boat for a day, and took a picnic lunch prepared by the restaurant, cruising all over Watts Bar Lake, and occasionally stopping to fish or just lie in the sun.

Much of our time was spent by the pool, which was located beside the restaurant. You could get lunch, a sundae, or lemonade served by waitresses poolside in the afternoons. It was thrill for us kids to be able to sign for our own food, just like an adult. I remember a cute little lifeguard that worked there one year. Rick was running beside the pool, and she called out: “Don’t run. Don’t run around the pool.” Her melodious voice with a thick southern accent extended the simple seven-word warning into a much longer and sweeter sounding request. We began running around the pool just to hear her voice. For weeks afterwards that summer, and even years later, we would mimic her to each other, warning: “Don’t ruuunnn around the ppoooll!” I can still hear her in my head.

Pete and his wife Sally kept the grounds immaculate. Sally and Pete’s sister looked after the flowers, which were everywhere, while Pete drove around in the mornings directing the large crew of migrant workers in their mowing and trimming, which was a non-stop chore. Fresh-cut flowers graced the dining room tables, and huge areas of plantings were visible from every window.  The workers were Mexican, and mostly the same crew came up every year and lived on-site beside the guests. The term “illegal alien” had not yet come into vogue, and we never thought much about the workers, but we always waved and smiled at them, and they did the same. Katy oversaw the kitchen. She had a prosthetic leg, and a sarcastic wit. She liked to tease me, since I was the youngest, but she made up for it when we would make a late evening run up to the snack bar for a tin roof sundae or a banana split. If Katy made it, I could count on extra whip cream.

The restaurant was one of the reasons that kept my family coming back year after year. There was a mural on the wall leading into the dining room that had a map showing the resort in relation to major population centers around the country. It also showed travel times, based on an average speed of 35 MPH. Even in the mid-'60's I couldn't imagine travelling at an average speed of 35. The food was always good, and the service was excellent. Breakfast included fresh squeezed orange juice, and typical fare like eggs, French toast, and old fashioned buckwheat cakes. Grits were available but they didn’t expect us Yankees to order them (Pete and Sally were both from Michigan originally, I think), although I seem to remember Gary taking a liking to grits at some point (Years later, I remember him ordering them on a drive we took to Florida).  Fresh biscuits were made twice daily, and the old ones were torn up and put in the bird feeders just outside the dining room windows. We would watch the procession of blue jays, cardinals and mockingbirds fly in and out, leaving each time with a big piece of biscuit clenched in their beaks. Lunch was big burgers, club sandwiches or chef salads, usually eaten poolside. Alternatively you could get a box lunch to take out on the boat with you. The menu changed nightly, rotating among various dishes of southern specialties. Each dinner included soup, and a salad chosen from a tray containing various Jell-O salads, fruit cups and cole slaw. The entrée and sides came next, and then a large tray of pies, cakes and cobblers was circulated at the end of each meal. Although we were never that big on eating desserts in restaurants as a family, that convention usually gave way to tempting choices, like my favorite coconut cream pie, every evening at Watts Bar.

The dam itself was an attraction. You could take guided tours that started in the art deco styled lobby and then led down via elevator to the generator area of the dam. Facts and figures were reeled off while wide-eyed boys like my brothers and I stared at the huge dynamos. Another attraction for boys like us was the cars around the resort. Pete drove an older Mercedes sedan when we first started going there, or one of several Checker sedans that he kept on site. He liked the bulletproof reliability of the Checkers, which were once the standard taxicab in the U.S., but he really liked Mercedes-Benz autos. His wife drove a black 190SL roadster with red leather interior, with its convertible top usually down. Pete told us several stories of his wife’s 100-MPH speeding tickets once we got to know him.

In 1968 or 1969, Pete got a Mercedes 300SEL, with the 4.5 liter V-8, Mercedes’ top-of-the-line sedan at the time (other than their limos). He stopped to talk with us while we were walking back to our cabin from dinner, and he was heading up to check up on things after one of his frequent Scotch breaks back at his house at the end of the lane. He was much more talkative in the evenings, and you could almost read from the red glow coming off of his nose. He had picked the car up at the factory in Germany, then drove it around Europe with Sally, before ending the trip in Portugal, where he planned to have it shipped back to the States. He was watching a big Mercedes (he thought it was his) being loaded by crane onto the ship. Just then a horn sounded. A general dock strike had been called, and the crane operator simply abandoned his job, allowing the car to slip into the harbor with a huge splash. Pete was crazed as he raced to over to where the cars were stored, and was relieved to find his car was still on the ground, and in one piece. He loaded his wife and luggage back into the car, and headed for Spain and a safe return for both the big Mercedes and the Smiths.

Pete was usually dressed the same every day. He wore loose, loudly patterned Hawaiian shirts, cotton shorts, and the most unusual shoes. They were called “Happy Toes” and consisted of a flat rubber sole, squared at the back and round at toes, with canvas wrapping your foot. There was no tongue, and the shoe had thick laces that cut into the top of your foot if you wore them all day. We usually picked up a new pair every year in the gift shop. I’ve searched on-line, but can’t find them anywhere, as if they’ve vanished from human consciousness. They didn’t offer much arch support, but they were comfortable and carefree, much like Watt’s Bar Resort. I once saw Pete wearing long pants when he was coming back from a trip into town and couldn't figure what was wrong until someone mentioned that it was the first time they had seen him without his trademark shorts.

Over time, we became friends with the Smiths and their crew, learning their history, and sharing stories. They cried with us when we returned the summer after Rick died. When Gary drove down in his Mercedes roadster, a powder blue 280SL in 1971, I thought Pete would be more interested in it, but it was Sally who really checked out the car when he arrived a few days after Mom, Dad and I had already checked in. Maybe Pete was worried that Sally wanted to upgrade, but he was happy to provide a hose and water so that Gary could wash it as soon as he got there.          

We used the resort as a starting or stopping point from other trips, too. In 1967, Mom took my brothers and I sightseeing in Washington, DC, before meeting Dad at the Knoxville Airport for our trip to Watt’s Bar. The Arab-Israeli War had just broken out, and we were in a traffic jam on Pennsylvania Avenue, caught between protesting Arabs on one side of the street, and pro-Israeli demonstrators on the other side. Our Ford LTD had an after-market A/C unit that caused the car to overheat in traffic, and as Mom reached down to shut it off, she tail-ended a Corvair driven by a Capitol Guard on his way to work. He was a nice guy who took pity on my diminutive mother and her brood of three boys trapped in the middle of an international dispute. He was also glad to find out that we were well insured. One year we stopped to see Cumberland Falls, and another year, the entire family finally succumbed to the “See Rock City” ads painted on barns that grew more frequent the closer you got to the resort. Rock City was a tourist trap located atop Lookout Mountain outside of Chattanooga. Dad and I toured the Jack Daniels Distillery in central Tennessee once, when the rest of the family just wanted to go home.
   
Perhaps I should have left it at the memories, but I’m a curious sort sometimes, so I headed back toward our old favorite vacation spot after my visit with Andrea. The road toward the dam was vaguely familiar, although I think we only came in that way once or twice. The Interstate hadn’t been completed when we first starting going there, and we approached from the west, through the little town of Spring City. The first major change that I noticed were the cooling towers for the nuclear plant that had been added down river from the dam. That was new to me, and looking much like Three Mile Island’s cooling towers, they didn’t inspire a glad-to-be-here feeling. Crossing the bridge over the dam, I came to the entry to the facility, where our tours used to start. It was now enclosed with high chain-link fence topped with razor wire. Signs were posted telling one in no uncertain terms that visitors were not welcome. I suppose in this age of terrorism the last thing you want is a group of strangers roaming around the bowels of your hydroelectric dam, next to your nuclear power facility. I drove on, and was almost past the old Gift Shop/Restaurant when I realized that it was there. The landscaping, once a well-tended lush delight was now overgrown, with huge bushes nearly hiding the building. Turning down the lanes toward the cabins, it appeared that the pool was either filled-in, or at least abandoned. The place now catered to hard-core fishermen, who apparently prefer to stay on top of the water, in a boat. The cabins, once painted bright white, were now a sickly looking light brown. Moss grew on roofs. Bushes were too big, lawns were patchy and brown. I took a few pictures with my phone’s camera, turned around, and headed home.

Memories are sometimes best left undisturbed. Doing further research for this post, I learned that this entire section of the waterway had been polluted by a fly ash spill from a coal-fired power plant up river in 2008. The resort had closed, been abandoned, and eventually bulldozed. A sad ending to place that generated such happy experiences. The world was a better place with people like Pete and Sally Smith running a first class business that allowed families to find a way to unwind and enjoy spending time with each other. A world where youngsters could learn firsthand about amazing technologies that they were only vaguely aware of before is a better place than one that hides behind razor wire and keeps everyone away. Things are bound to change, and not always for the better. I am, however, happy to have had the experience. As Bob Hope always sang at the end of each performance: “Thanks for the memories.”

   

Christmas Memories and Stuff

As Christmas approached, my coworker shared her giddy delights in the bargains she had found in stores, how her gift list was nearing completion, and now she only needed a few big boxes to ship this or that. She runs one of America’s new “blended families” with her mate. Two teenage boys belong to him and one teenage boy came with her, but they’ve managed to put it all together and somehow make it work. As she bounced around the store bubbling with ecstatic energy, her enthusiasm was almost contagious. Then everything changed. Someone broke into her family’s apartment and stole a bunch of their possessions. Thieves made off with their X-Box and all of their video game cartridges, apparently as much of a loss to the husband as it was to the boys. They also took her jewelry. The day after it happened the local paper ran a story about a series of similar break-ins that currently plagues our area. In our hard economic times, jewelry and video games don’t even need to be “fenced,” that is, turned into cash by some shady middleman. One can get cash for used games at the video game store, no questions asked, and people selling gold for cash is an everyday occurrence, with a convenient choice of outlets nearby.

Everything changed for her in the blink of an eye. She became depressed, moping around the store, not doing her work, and managing to tell any customer who would listen of her travails. Along with their sympathy, a few of them actually gave her money. One of them brought in a jar for donations, with his contribution already in the bottom of the container. Her mood briefly elevated at this outpouring of generosity, until her cashier informed her that they could both lose their jobs for trying to solicit personal donations from their customers. I feel bad for her, but I have a broader perspective tempered by time and experience. She may have lost a bunch of “stuff,” but that’s all it was, just things. At least all of her kids came home from school safe that day. Many families in Connecticut weren’t as lucky, and I tend to focus all of my sympathy on such losses that can never be replaced.

When I was a kid growing up in the ‘60’s, we had a traditional American family. Dad operated his own prosperous small business and my mom helped out at the store while managing to care for three rambunctious boys. Christmas at our house was a time of overflowing abundance. I remember getting up long before sunrise and creeping out to the living room to witness a floor packed with so many brightly wrapped packages that there was scarcely room to walk. I recently found out that my dad’s friend, who managed a little toy store (in the days when small retail outlets could still thrive), used to let my parents come in after the store closed to buy our toys. It must have been near nirvana for my dad, who absolutely hates crowds. Christmas morning, we would sit on the floor and tear open package after package, tallying our take and piling our gifts in our own little mountains.

But all too soon the flow of boxes stopped and the rush subsided. Someone usually asked, in all innocence, “Is that all?” I’m surprised our parents never boxed us up and shipped us to the North Pole. My brother Gary would quickly take his stash back to his room where he had already cleared space in his closets and drawers for his planned acquisitions, his little idiosyncrasy that has become a memory still shared with amusement. Rick and I would tend to enjoy our newfound bounty in the living room, secretly peering beneath the tree in hopes of discovering some small forgotten box that may have been overlooked.

Christmas changed forever for my family in 1969. That October, my oldest brother Rick was killed in a car crash. As the holiday approached, mom got out the boxes of decorations, determined to provide some holiday joy for her diminished family. I’ll never forget her expression when she came into my room holding one of the red felt Christmas stockings that she had made years before for each of us. Our names were sewn on the front of each of them in white felt. The one she carried said “Rick.” I wanted to tell her that it would be all right, but I couldn’t lie. All I could do was to cry with her. Just as I still do now whenever I think about that day. Not every Christmas memory is good, but they are all important. We didn’t hang Rick’s stocking that year, or for years after. But we carried on as best we could.

As I got older, my joy of acquisition was replaced by the joy of giving. I used to relish finding the right gifts for my family and friends, especially after I had a good job making lots of money. I usually put off shopping until the last minute, but I power-shopped with a ferocious intensity, usually with success. One of my favorite memories of the time was rushing out to a department store right after work in my suit and tie, trench coat flapping in my own wake, to purchase one of the new shipment of Teddy Ruxpin animatronic teddy bears for my young niece. It was the “must-have” toy of the season, and I just had to get it for her. I remember getting dressed up and taking Andrea, Sherry and Erica out to dinner at Benders then to the Palace for a live performance of "The Nutcracker." I'll never forget the look of intense joy on Paul's face when we gave him and Jennifer a computer for Christmas. Watching the latest Disney video with Jenny on Christmas Eve morning became an all too short-lived tradition that still makes me smile when I remember. It was also around this time that I started my own little tradition of buying cool Christmas gifts for myself. I gave myself some really nice stuff. One year, I won $1500 in the state lottery right before Christmas. I took my winnings in cash, and spent them in less than an hour on expensive presents for mom and dad (oh yeah, and one for me, too).

Things changed as things always do. I had a family of my own, and then I didn’t. Lots of my stuff was lost during my divorce, including a great deal of things I had acquired prior to my marriage. But what I lost was just “stuff,” and I got on with my life. Believe me, I would much rather see my daughter and her boys at Christmas than get another new sweater (and I like sweaters). My income was drastically reduced, but I still tried to find the most appropriate gift that I could afford for each recipient. After my brother Gary passed-away in 2008, we made a decision in my family: no more gifts. The presents just didn’t seem to matter anymore, but we still gathered to share a delicious dinner and recall memories. One of our best holidays happened last year, when my nephew brought several bottles of his homemade wine, and we shared stories much longer into the night than in years past.

Now, when harried shoppers ask me, “Are you done with your Christmas shopping yet?” I smugly smile and assure them that yes I am done. I don’t have to do any shopping. It’s just stuff anyway, and most stuff doesn’t matter in the long run. Something always happens to it, or we grow bored with it. I know it is trite to say that the holidays are about family, not the presents, but we never seem to realize that until too late.

So my Christmas wish for you all is for health and happiness. Don’t worry about the things, because they really aren’t all that important. If you’ve experienced a loss of stuff, well that’s too bad. You’ll get over it. If you’ve experienced the loss of a loved one in your life, I offer my heartfelt condolences, with the knowledge that while your life may never be the same, you must remember to get on with it as best you can. Those who we have loved and lost would not want us to dwell on the sorrow, but instead remember the good times that we shared, even if they were all too brief.

This year, for the first time in many years, there are three red felt stockings hanging from my mother’s fireplace mantle. They are a little faded, having survived for over half a century, but they still look pretty good. They won’t be bulging with holiday goodies come Christmas morning. They are however already filled with that most important of holiday gifts: memories.

Wishing you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

Saving Our Children

Yesterday, as news of yet another horrific tragedy involving a deranged gunman and a school full of innocent kids unfolded, my coworker John told me of the conversation he just had outside the store with a student heading home from our local high school. John said that it seems that each generation is more screwed up than the previous one, and his (John is in his mid-30s) is the worst one yet. Seems he was trying to place some blame for the shooting on the shoulders of his contemporaries. The student disagreed with him, stating that it was his own generation that was truly messed up. I didn’t comment at the time, but I didn’t really agree with either of them. Every generation since the dawn of time has bemoaned the fate of the younger generation, wondering: what went wrong with the kids?

“Why can’t they be like we were,

Perfect in every way?

What’s the matter with kids today?”

Lyrics from: “Kids”, Bye-Bye Birdie

Back in 1974, as I was finishing high school (yes, it was a long time ago), I took an English course about how to write a research paper. We could choose any current topic of interest, and since recreational drug use was one of the big issues of the time, I wrote about the methadone maintenance program. Methadone was used to treat heroin addiction, by substituting a drug that didn’t get you high for one that got you very high. Turns out the program wasn’t really that successful, since (surprise!) most heroin addicts really wanted to get high more than anything. I came across one author’s view that the real problem with the failure of treatment programs wasn’t that America had a “drug culture” (a small subset of our overall culture). The problem was that America itself, in its entirety, is a drug culture. We thought then and probably think so even more today, that we can cure anything with the right pill (or right drug of whatever form). Our large multi-national pharmaceutical companies have been advertising their glorious triumphs over diseases, both real and imagined, for years. Why would we think it wasn’t so?

“One pill makes you larger

And one pill makes you small

And the ones that mother gives you

Don't do anything at all”

Lyrics from: “White Rabbit”, Jefferson Airplane

The same situation exists with guns. America does not have a “gun culture”; America is a gun culture. We grew up with guns. But unlike our ancestors, who required weapons to put food on our table and protect them from their hostile environment, we have come to think of guns as the great equalizer. When bad people attack us or try to take what is ours, what else can be done but to fight back? And how can the weak triumph over the strong? Use a gun.

“God created man, Samuel Colt made them equal”

-Anonymous

Our media has been overwhelmed with gun use for generations. Dime novels of the Old West, movies, television, and video games have all featured the use of guns as a prominent deciding factor. I used to play point-of-view shooter video games when they first came out. In such games, you start out with a pistol, then work your way up through the levels, acquiring more powerful and more effective guns as you progress. If you run out of ammo, you revert to a knife. You rarely last long against the forces of evil with just a knife. I’ve played more advanced versions, on better systems, over the years. The level of carnage has increased, as have the graphical displays of blood and gore. At some point, I lost interest. I’m really a peace-loving guy at heart.

So now you’re thinking that I’m about to propose radical gun control as the solution to our problem, right? Well, here’s another little surprising bit of information: I am a gun owner. I used to hunt a little, but never really enjoyed tramping through the woods in inclement weather. Besides, being out there with all of those other people with guns is a bit worrisome. Once the beer companies came out with 30-packs of beer in camouflaged cartons, I was pretty sure it was time to stay clear. I also liked to target shoot when I was younger. My brothers and I would go out in the woods of my grandfather’s “farm” (it was a hobby farm; he wasn’t really a farmer) where there was an old garbage dump and shoot up cans and bottles with our .22 rifles and BB-guns. Astonishingly, there were no firearm-related injuries. I suppose we should thank the Boy Scouts and the YMCA for good training, but we were generally just careful.

I have a good friend who is also a careful gun owner (at least I think he still owns guns). When he was a youngster playing in the woods with friends and guns, his buddy thought it would be cool to scare him by shooting into the water of the creek that he was crossing, so he did. Guess he didn’t know that bullets can ricochet off of water, which one did, and gut-shot my friend. He was given the last rites in the hospital and had emergency surgery by a doctor called off of the golf course. His amazingly strong constitution pulled him through, although he is missing significant portions of his intestines. Years later, he was lifting weights in his apartment bedroom at Ohio State. One of the neighbor girls came over to show his roommate the cute little pistol that her father had purchased for her to use for protection. His roommate pointed the gun at the wall and, perhaps unaware that it was still loaded, fired a round that went straight through the wall. Luckily, my friend was bent over, putting his barbells on the floor. When he stood up, he looked directly through the tiny new hole in the wall. A second earlier or later and his head would have been in the way of the errant bullet. He lost his cool in the heat of the moment, instructing his dumbfounded roomie in the proper use of human fists as a weapon. You can be perfectly careful about the guns you own, but always remember that there are idiots everywhere.

Therein lies the problem with ownership of weapons for self-protection: they rarely do their job as intended. I know that there are dozens of stories where a homeowner has saved their own life by using a firearm against an attacker, but the cold, hard statistics tell us that we are much more likely to harm ourselves or a loved one with a gun in the home. The perpetrator of the latest school shootings (*) reportedly borrowed his mother’s guns to do the shooting. His mother was among the first victim of her own guns. Tougher laws about purchasing weapons would not have worked in this case, because the gunman stole the ones he used. (*Do you realize how many school shootings there have been since Columbine? Answer: According to ABC News, there have been 31 school shootings since the Columbine shooting in 1999).

Of course we’ve all heard that “guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” To be fair to guns, today’s paper had a story from China about a man attacking a school full of youngsters with a knife. He injured 22 before being subdued, according to Chinese news sources. The sources also reported that no one was fatally injured. So yes, guns are more deadly, especially in mass-killing events.

Personally, this kind of mass-killing just makes me sick. Would we be safer with strict controls on guns, especially assault-type weapons and handguns? Yes, we probably would. Are we likely to see any type of government action to control such weapons? Probably not. I would gladly surrender my guns if I knew that everyone else would do the same. I’ve been robbed at gunpoint twice in my life, and if I had been armed in either situation I likely wouldn’t have had a chance to pull a gun to defend myself. If I had, it would have probably cost my life. Given the proliferation of firearms in our culture, it is likely that a gun control law would not remove all guns from the market. We once had a law banning the sale of assault weapons and large capacity handguns, but it was repealed. I don’t know if it did any good, but it probably didn’t kill anyone either. In recent months, I have seen several full-page and multi-page ads in the local paper that feature a vast variety of deadly assault weapons. These are not weapons used by hunters. The sole purpose of this category of gun is the efficient killing of a large number of human beings. It is a sad commentary on our society that we continue to acquire such weapons. Perhaps we should recruit the owners to stand guard at the doors of schools. They really should do something positive with them, don’t you think? Although it might just traumatize the kids more than they are already experiencing by just showing up at school.

We probably should do something as a culture in order to protect our loved ones, especially our children. But what is the proper course of action? Someone posted a message that more violence has taken place since God was banned from school. They wanted to put Him back in the classroom. Too bad that the world has been fighting over who has the best idea of god for thousands of years, blowing themselves and others to bits in the process. However, I think an increase in education about moral issues and philosophy is probably a good idea. In fact, better education in general might help. Then again, maybe we should just succumb to the desires of the wealthiest among us, and ban public education all together. Instead we could re-institute child labor. The kids could be worked so hard (and for very small wages) that they would be too tired and too poor to buy guns and shoot each other.

There are lots of ideas out there about what to do, but most of them won’t work. Not until we reach a certain level of cultural enlightenment at least. What ideas do you have? Care to share them? The only thing that I know for certain is that if we do nothing, this will happen again.

Suspension of Reality

My local paper featured a provocative story on the front page this morning, prominently displayed above the fold. The article was headlined “Hoover teacher writes erotic novel.” The subheading was “Back in classroom after suspension.” Needless to say, as a graduate of North Canton’s Hoover High School, I was intrigued. I love books, and I like reading as well as writing, but I’m not a fan of censorship. I sped through the story, and then read it again.

Seems the teacher in question authored an erotic novel titled Schooled, under the pen name Deena Bright. Her students, thankfully possessing naturally curious minds, found out about it somehow. Then the parents found out and some of the more outraged ones brought the matter to the attention of the Board of Education. The paper states that the superintendent showed the teacher’s personnel file the newspaper reporter, showing evidence that he had conducted an investigation into allegations of school-related misconduct in November. The teacher in question was placed on paid administrative leave for three weeks during the investigation. As a result of the investigation, she was suspended for five days without pay.

Parents were apparently in an uproar, not specifically about the graphic sexual nature of the book, but because the protagonist is a school teacher who has relations with fellow teachers and former students. The teacher’s union president got involved, and put the beleaguered English teacher in contact with the union’s lawyers, but he speculated that she didn’t like the advice they gave her. Seems they wanted her to resign. He said he was surprised to see her back at school. Such is the typical reaction to this type of situation in North Canton. Make it go away and we’ll never speak of it again. Personally, I’m glad she is back in school.

In the acknowledgment section of her book, the author wrote the following note: “Dear My School District: I love my teaching job. I love raising my kids here, being a part of this close-knit and outstanding community. I am proud to be here, honored and humbled to be a part of this district. Please don’t fire me! I’ve never slept with a student, not even remotely close. I love my students: they’re my kids, nothing more. We teach our students to dream big, work hard, and it will all pay off in the end. This was my ‘dream big.’ I do work hard every day, inspiring the future of America, but they have in turn inspired me to reach my goals.”

This morning, before turning my attention to The Canton Repository, I finished reading David Baldacci’s latest thriller, The Forgotten. The story deals with the modern-day slave trade and includes several murders, not to mention sex between the protagonist, an Army NCO, and a senior officer in the U.S. Army (which I believe is a violation of conduct, if not illegal). Not once while reading this book did I think that Baldacci was engaged in the slave trade or was contemplating murder. I never thought that James Patterson, John Grisham or even Agatha Christie was more likely to be a potential murderer than anyone else in our society. Their only “crime” is to have an extraordinarily gifted imagination, a necessity when it comes to writing fiction. We should be willing to make the same leap of logic when it comes to the author of Schooled. It is not her blueprint for planned debauchery; it is the realization of her dream to become a published author.

The unpaid suspension that the would-be author received was not because of her book. She was suspended because she had used a school computer for “social networking of a personal nature.” If everyone in the United States were placed under suspension at the same time for accessing a social network at work, our economy would grind to a halt, because so many people would be at home. I’m willing to bet that it has happened before at Hoover High, and has happened since. It will no doubt happen again. The only real crime that I see anywhere in this situation was when the school superintendent showed the reporter the teacher’s personnel file. Isn’t that a violation of the teacher’s right to privacy?

Stay in school and fight for your rights, “Ms. Bright.” At least until you get a decent publishing contract. You have accomplished what your fellow teachers have been trying to do since the dawn of public education: you got a student to read a book.

“Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.”

- Christopher Morley (1890 - 1957)