By

Jimmy Joe Meeker

I had no intention of venturing into Mount Juliet last week. After all, with the exception of a couple of routine police calls, nothing's happened in that city for a couple of months.

As far as I can tell, their city council's not certifiably crazy, they don't have a city property tax, and there's nothing there but a couple of fast food joints, some schools, and a place that cures country ham.

But first and foremost, they don't have liquor stores and where there is no liquor there is no me; however, as the man said, if it don't come to you, then you gotta go to it, so when that sadistic little fiend of an editor suggested I head west to see what County Commissioner Gilbert Graves had been up to lately, I packed a bottle of Wild Turkey 101, a couple of extra-hot barbecue sandwiches from James' and a pocket tape recorder, and put that savage, 5-speed, gas guzzling beast on the road and headed west.

I went down Hwy 70 and passed through the Forsaken Zone between Lebanon and Mount Juliet. On both sides were ramshackle little churches, run-down homes where eternal garage sales are held, a couple of house trailers, and several of those truly bizarre people who walk the sides of the road carrying huge, plastic garbage bags. There was a vague aroma of doom and madness in the air.

Just past a beer joint where my brother and I were almost killed in a knife fight two years ago because he insisted on going inside to see the "Naughty Nightie Contest", there loomed a sign the size of a large postage stamp that read: "Mount Juliet - The Only One In The World."

Underneath it, in smaller letters, someone (maybe me) had taken a rusty nail and etched, "Home of the Crazed Boar".

I pulled into a gas station/convenience store and spoke to a toothless girl behind the checkout counter.

"Do you know where I can find Gilbert Graves?" I asked.

"Huh," she answered.

She has a hearing deficiency, I reasoned. So I screamed, "DO YOU KNOW WHERE I CAN FIND GILBERT GRAVES?"

"He don't work here. And you don't have to shout, hon," she said.

"Nonsense," I replied. "This place is a dump. He'd fit right in."

"Nope. Sorry."

I studied her for moment and decided to try again.

"No, really," I said, "he's a county commissioner. He's from Mount Juliet and I have to find him."

"How come?"

"I just want to see him. I don't want to talk to him. I only want to see what he's doing. You know…I want to watch him hang out."

She squinted her ample, sloping brow in my direction and said, through a cold sore infested mouth, "Can't help you, hon. He really don't work here."

"Okay, the hell with it. Give me a cup half full of Coke with a lot of ice."

She understood this. I paid for my Coke, got back in the car, fixed a drink, and continued my quest.

Further on down the road, I stopped at a nursery. The tree kind, not the baby kind.

"Anybody in here know Gilbert Graves?" I asked as I burst through the door.

Several customers eyed me suspiciously and an old man wearing overalls came near and said, "I know him, but I ain't seen him for a while."

"You know where I can find him?" I asked.

"Probably out on the farm."

"Exactly where is his farm?"

"I don't know, son."

I thought about this for a second. "I guess I could follow the trail of taxpayer money and it'd take me right to it, wouldn't it?"

With this, the old man laughed hysterically and clapped me on the shoulder. "Now you're talking, son," he said, "now you're talking."

It was all too much for me to handle. I got into the car, turned left, and headed toward the big city of Memphis for a lost weekend.

If I couldn't track the crazed boar, at least I could listen to the blues.

No one here gets out alive.

XXX