Any history of The Wilson County Advocate would have to be brief--this little experiment in political journalism only  lasted 38 months, which is probably a good thing.
    The chronology of events is, of course, from my point of view. Others involved in the enterprise would (and will) see it differently. Especially the lunatics. And there were a couple of them…
    Anyway, I was sitting at home one night minding my own business, content in my ignorance of Wilson County politics and the politics of the various cities within the county, when my old fraternity brother, Henry Clay Barry, called me.
    "I'm starting a newspaper! I've got a guy who's going to be the editor and he wants to meet you to see if you can write for it! We're on our way out now."
    When Henry Clay says he's going to do something, there's no need to try and talk him out of it. Anyone who's seen his castle, his vineyard, or his office building knows this, so I just shook my head, fixed a beaker of Wild Turkey and Coke, and plunked myself back down in the chair to await their arrival.
    I had no idea who this "editor" was but I assumed he was a professional, so I decided I should dig out several of my past efforts from different newspapers and magazines and keep them handy.
    Twenty minutes later when I opened the door, the guy who accompanied Henry Clay was wearing a grease-stained BP uniform and looked like he'd been crawling under cars all day. As it turns out, he had. His name was Ernie Chandler and he had just opened a service station on the bypass in Lebanon.
I ushered them in and they sat down, Henry Clay flicking ashes on the carpet and Ernie fidgeting around like Amanda Plummer on Dexedrine. I handed Ernie my articles and waited while he read them. At that time, I doubted whether he could actually read, but I swallowed my pride and let him decide if I was capable of writing for this new newspaper.
    To his credit, he nodded his head and said he could use me.  To be honest, I was a little put off that I had to prove myself to Ernie Chandler. After all, I was a published author and poet (with a Master of Arts degree in English Literature from MTSU and a Doctorate in Metaphysics purchased from the University of San Salvador) and I was letting a mechanic critique my work to see if I was worthy. But I took the whole episode in stride, figuring the newspaper would never get off the ground anyway.
    But, as I said, when Henry Clay says he's going to do something…
    So I contributed my first articles to The Wilson County Advocate and waited for the paper to hit the light of day. When I saw it, I was shocked.
    Grade school kids do a better job putting together a scrapbook. The thing looked like insane people wearing blindfolds had laid it out.
    The content was great.  Everything else stunk, but to give the devil his due, Ernie Chandler was the most tenacious news-gatherer and researcher I had ever seen. He was flat-out good at investigative reporting. Ernie claimed to be a retired Army Criminal Investigator and everything from a rear admiral to Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, but this "air of mystery" he wanted to keep about himself was okay by me as long as I wasn't expected to buy into it. But if there was dirt in Wilson County, Ernie knew exactly where it was. Ernie Chandler wasn't a great writer, but he could damn sure investigate. In fact, the only thing I can say about Ernie's writing is that it was better than Henry Clay's.
    I wasn't at all surprised by the quality of Henry Clay's writing. We'd gone through undergraduate school together at MTSU so I knew Henry Clay couldn't write. Henry's thing is thinking. He's a philosopher, an idea man, and the most eccentric character I know, but grammar and spelling aren't his strong points. Henry Clay once told me he had nothing but contempt for a man who could only spell a word one way and to Henry, punctuation only got in the way. He knew it should be there, but he didn't care where it ended up.
    But for some strange reason, I admire that...
    The work of our other writer, Alan Barry, made Henry Clay's writing look like it came from the pen of William Faulkner.  Alan is one of the nicest guys I know and extremely eloquent…until you put a piece of paper in front of him and stick a pen in his hand. Then his brains turn to mush.
    So there we were…the staff of The Wilson County Advocate. Open for business with one issue under our belts.
    Gradually, I was able to convince the others that we needed to improve the look and content of the paper, so I began to edit everyone's contributions and we hired some woman to lay it out for us on an Apple McIntosh. Time was a problem, though.  We all had real jobs (well, Henry Clay's an attorney--draw your own conclusion) and we were always operating on a close deadline.
    Anyway, none of the other writers would have their stuff ready for me to look at until Tuesday afternoon--and we went to press Tuesday evening. I had to edit everything and then sit with the woman who was doing the layout so I could proofread what she was typing. That meant in addition to writing my column during the week and writing news articles

under other names, I was spending a good 12 hours every Tuesday on the newspaper.
    By the way, there were never more than four writers at The Wilson County Advocate. I was Jimmy Joe Meeker, Bradford Whitewood, Sr., Jeff Noble, Ryan Cawley, and even myself once or twice. Ernie was himself, Edd Fleming, Chuck Hooper, and Walter Grey. Henry Clay wrote without a byline most of the time. Alan used his own name and "Bruce Dunn". Our Guest Editor, Jack Bowers, began contributing a page almost every week after the first few months and they required no editing at all. Jack was an exceptional editorialist--a real professional.
    Eventually, to take the burden off the rest of us, Henry Clay hired a guy named Stephen Marks from New York who wore a suit all the time and claimed to be a "real" reporter. He also claimed he was using us to build his resume. Oddly enough, he was serious. And he didn't last long.
    As far as I know, The Wilson County Advocate never made a dime in profit. When we began, we had advertisers coming out of our ears but as soon as we began stepping on toes (which was almost immediately), the would-be politicians started making phone calls to our advertisers.  Some of these thugs even went so far as to vandalize our boxes, especially in the Mt. Juliet area.  In less than a year we lost every account we had.  But we weren't in it for the money anyway, so as long as we made enough money selling the thing to cover printing costs, we were satisfied.
    Things rolled on until Ernie wrote a column condemning County Commissioner Joy Bishop and slipped it in at the last minute--after I had "put the paper to bed" on Tuesday night. Neither Henry Clay nor I saw the article until the paper was published the next day and personally, I didn't see that it was all that bad and it certainly wasn't slanderous. But Ms. Bishop's husband,  another lawyer in Lebanon, was displeased with Henry Clay for allowing the article to be published, to say the least. Not being privy to the conversation they had, I'd be crazy to claim there was a threat of death made if we published another word about Ms. Bishop, so you won't hear that from me.  But to my way of thinking, if you run for office, you take your lumps.  If you're slandered, you sue--freedom of the press doesn't protect a newspaper if it slanders anyone.
    I actually liked Joy Bishop and always thought she was one of the few county commissioners who actually believed she was doing the best thing for Wilson County, but unless you're a slobbering moron with the brain of a caveman, you don't threaten the publisher of a newspaper--even one like The Wilson County Advocate. I suggested we publish the details of this little incident on the front page, but Henry Clay was vehemently opposed to that idea and he won.
    He was infuriated that Ernie slipped this article in without our knowledge. Henry began to view Ernie as a liability and although I agreed that Ernie was going further and further "out there"…becoming less and less objective with his reporting and becoming more and more mad-dog mean, I still considered his investigating ability to be the backbone of our "cutting edge" journalism. But it seemed that Ernie was trying to self destruct--and piss off the entire world in the process.
    We held a meeting one afternoon and Henry bought both Ernie's and my interest in The Wilson County Advocate, paying each of us the handsome sum of $1.00. It was the first money I'd seen for all my work.
    As soon as Ernie left, Henry Clay and I formed a corporation--Yellow Press, Inc.--the sole function of which was to publish The Wilson County Advocate.
    With Ernie's departure, the news portion of the paper slowly changed--no more dirt, no more exposès, no more shit-stirring. Without Ernie's inside information and investigating, The Wilson County Advocate was less of a radical,  alternative news source and more of a waste of paper. It also became self-serving and as the new editor, that drove me crazy.
    A year later, because I just didn't have the time anymore, I quit as the editor of the paper but continued writing my Jimmy Joe Meeker columns, the News Briefs, and the Horoscopes.
    That lasted for 3 issues. With no one to edit or layout the rest of the paper, it died a peaceful death.
    Ernie Chandler went on to found an Internet site called "Action Lebanon" that savagely attacks politicians and private citizens alike and how the hell he keeps from being sued, I don't know. His web site uses some of the original pseudonyms (J.J. Meeker, Edd Fleming, etc.) and whoever's writing the "Meeker" columns makes reference to his "days at the Advocate", but none of the other original staff of The Wilson County Advocate, including me, has had any dealings with Ernie since 1992, so I have no idea of the identity of the new "J.J. Meeker".  I do know that he or she is a bit lacking in the "literary" department, but that's no crime in Wilson County or anywhere else in this country.
    Henry Clay and I have talked several times about resurrecting The Wilson County Advocate, either in print or on-line, but for now we've elected to leave it in the ground festering with the rest of the trash…
    And no one here gets out alive.