Jackson’s Gap, Ala. — Manoy Creek is six feet lower than the summer pool depth at Lake Martin right now, exposing structures and branches we don’t see in warmer months. Attached to many of them are transparent green-brown globs that look like brains. I wondered if these might be sacs of fish eggs, but Dad said fish lay eggs on the bottom of the lake, not in weird blobs near the surface.
We took an opportunity to inspect one at close range on Thanksgiving morning when we hoisted a chair from underneath the dock, the furniture having been a victim…
A tragedy shows us what has changed — and what has not — about the community that raised us
Mt. Juliet, Tenn. — In 1983, my family moved from Stow, Ohio to the Clearview neighborhood in Mt. Juliet, Tenn. After several years of positions involving lots of travel and frequent moves, Dad had found a nice engineering job with good benefits and leadership potential in nearby Nashville, where the commercial construction business seemed promising. He even got a company car. Dad, who had grown up poor in inner-city Birmingham, had always talked wistfully of Mom’s “Father Knows Best” upbringing in suburbia. Raising his kids in Mt. Juliet felt like a great plan.
My brother and I, like the roughly…
