By

Jimmy Joe Meeker

The City Council didn't meet last week. They were all at the Fairgrounds for the grand opening of Fiddler's Grove and the car giveaway.

There is a nasty conspiracy in the wind. Methinks I have been had. The Council knows I wait for their meetings so I don't have to work too hard to come up with a column.

But, they were busy last Tuesday. There is a certain luxury in serving the public and that luxury entails the ability to shirk your responsibilities and head for a rinky-dink little mock frontier village instead of doing what the citizens expect from a City Council.

But you know something? If the Council went to Fiddler's Grove every Tuesday for the next six months, we wouldn't notice any difference.

We'd still live in a city more traffic lights and stop signs than there are in the entire country of Brazil.

We'd still have to look at the slum properties right across from Cumberland University. We'd still have to bribe the garbageman to take away the big stuff, and we'd still have to drive into Nashville or Murfreesboro to go to a real mall.

Barking dogs would still keep us up at night, there'd still be at least one drug-related killing the projects each week, and it would still take a half hour to get around the square if you were unlucky enough to get behind a big truck.

I was talking to my source in city government last Tuesday morning about the cancellation of the Council meeting.

"Are you kidding?" he said. "Tuesday's the night they give away the car!"

I thought about this for a minute. "So what?" I replied. "They all have cars."

"That's not the point. Everybody who's anybody goes to the fair on car give-away night. Besides, they feed the politicians for free."

"So, they're going for a free meal?"

He looked at me through an alcoholic haze and said, "Why not? You'd fly to Alabama for a free meal."

I hit the obscene, beady-eyed swine over the head with a sand-filled sock but he only laughed hysterically and started to run away.

"You filthy animal", I called after him. "I need something for my column!"

He looked back over his shoulder, blood streaming down into his face, and shouted back, "Nobody cares about the City Council! Make something up!"

Then he tripped over a hump in the sidewalk and I left him, bloody and weeping in front of City Hall.

And I should have taken his advice, but it seems that every time I make something up about the City Council, people believe it. When I tell the truth, they think I've made it up.

No one here gets out alive.

XXX