While another area in Knoxville rallies together to be heard by St. Mary’s, the neighborhoods around Lakeshore sit silently. They silently watched, year after year, while the buildings deteriorated as the state reduced Lakeshore’s budget. They said nothing when Lakeshore was forced to sell some of their valuable property to Parks & Rec. They are remaining quiet as all of the cottages and buildings on the soccer field side of Lakeshore’s Orchard Road are claimed for the soccer teams’ parking needs. The majority of the SPMI population at Lakeshore has been tossed aside by their families and the state is quietly taking away their front and back yard. This time, they have taken the consumers’ chapel away from them. The Lakeshore family needs that chapel far more than the Hummer driving soccer moms need additional parking. How many of those soccer parents have ever spent an hour in that chapel with the Lakeshore consumers? I’m seriously guessing that the answer is none. How many soccer games are the Lakeshore consumers welcome to attend? There may be a few kind hearts on that field, but I still doubt if the majority would allow it. Lakeshore’s chapel needs to be open. The consumers, doctors, nurses and volunteers need that chapel. The chapel would never turn away any of the soccer families. Unlock the chapel doors and let it serve the entire Lakeshore community, athletic families and health families alike.

If Turkey Creek had been designed to be walkable, they would not have the hordes of spoiled, thug wanna-be teenagers take over the property for drag races late at night. I am a Turkey Creek fan. I love to go there and people watch. I have just never understood why it wasn’t designed more intelligently. People should park their cars and walk everywhere in the complex. The people who approved the strip malls on either side of a highway design deserve to have the late night races all over their landscaped retail world.

I want to say kids will be kids. I want to say live and let live. I just can’t. This bothers me as a parent. The idea of unsupervised drag racing makes my mom alarms flash and ring. I don’t deny that my worry is fueled by the presence of two permit holders in our house. The awareness that all of my children’s peers are also permit holders has me dreaming of a large empty parking lot converted into an obstacle course for safe learning. My teens and their friends probably dream of joining in the late night races at Turkey Creek. I am acutely aware that we shun teens and deny them places to interact. I just don’t think that nitrous cars are a good way to socialize and impress. Turkey Creek needs to tear up that drag strip and replace it with a row of small shops and SIDEWALKS.

From the descriptions I’m hearing, not only did a fireman get injured, the florist and the building on either side of it, including the hardware store that Doug frequents, are destroyed. I suspected the smoke damage went to the stores connected beyond that. Butler & Bailey probably lost all the food to smoke, but I think they’ll come back stronger. We need Butler & Bailey. We are located halfway between the Pellissippi Kroger and the campus Kroger. If Doug runs to Kroger for just one or two things, he is gone for an hour. Food **itty is closer, but if Doug runs there for one or two things, he is gone an hour and a half. Half an hour to get frustrated at Food **itty and an hour to go to Kroger. It is easier and calmer to make the trip to and from Butler & Bailey in 15 minutes. The people in there are nice and genuinely happy. Thanks to Evan’s antics with the mini-cart, they know us by name. I don’t care if Mr. Bailey changes the store’s name to Phoenix. I just want this grocery store to stick around.

A long road trip with five children means lots of books to read. McKay’s has always been one of our favorite places to visit. Since they changed locations, we go less often. Yes, it’s easier to get in and out of the parking lot and there is a lot more parking space, but the experience is just not the same. It feels like they scooted the bookcases far apart instead of adding more books. They pay less for books and refuse more books than they ever did at their old location. The employees have lost their flavor and gone bland. The thing that bothers me the most is the behavior of the customers. In the old location, people were elbow to elbow in the aisles. Strangers discussed books, authors, parenting and politics. It was a calm, happy place to go for books. Now, people don’t make eye contact. It has lost its’ community. I still go to McKay’s a few times a year, but I used to go once a week. I’m sure McKay’s doesn’t notice the change. I feel it though.

When the stress level in the house reached 11 this morning, Doug and I needed either time alone or time apart. Since time alone never happens, I packed up Amy, picked up Granny and headed down to MagPies for the June tasting. We sipped our free milk and ate free mini-cupcakes that were described as:
Strawberry Basket - Vanilla butter cake swirled with strawberry-orange puree, topped with a light orange buttercream
Ginger Peach - Gingery cake studded with crystallized ginger topped with peach frosting
Devils Food - Moist chocolate cake filled with creamy vanilla goo topped with a smear of ganache

Everyone in Knoxville should have made the time to be there today. It was delicious. My favorite was the ‘Strawberry Basket’ which was like dipping a fresh strawberry in orange cream. The ‘Ginger Peach’ was good, but my least favorite of the three. Amy thought the ‘Devil’s Food’ was “really good brown cake with icing on top AND in the middle.” I would describe it as a Ding Dong for grown-ups. MagPies will have another tasting in July. The flavors are going to be: Lemon Blueberry, Black Forest and Banana Split. Who wants to meet me there?

One night this week, a mosquito viciously attacked me on the bottom of my foot. It woke me up enough to know I had an itch, but not enough to think clearly. I tried scratching with my non-afflicted foot, but apparently my toenails are too short to be useful. I rubbed the foot on the edge of the bed, but despite the fact that our bed is sharp enough to cause Noah to need stitches in the distant past, it wasn’t sharp enough to ease the itch. I finally took my fingernails and scratched the skin off my foot. When the itch became a burning sting of pain, I ceased scratching and rubbed my abused foot on the sheets until I drifted back into a deep sleep. I blame Oak Ridge for my foot’s discomfort. Everyone knows Oak Ridge has secret laboratories with misunderstood geniuses in lab coats conducting top secret experiments. The evil scientists must produce some sort of mutant mosquitoes. I suspect the giant bugs in Peter Jackson’s version of King Kong were all from Oak Ridge labs. I think we should get an Oak Ridge ????????bat that was modified by the good scientists and let it live in our house to eat all the mosquitoes. Then again, maybe it would be easier to just put malaria netting over our beds so we can survive the East TN summers.

I grew up going to Memphis in May concerts. I went to the free ones on the riverfront and I went to the ticketed events on Mud Island. I drove myself or rode with friends, but I was unsupervised and underage. The events on the river were casual and the police presence was very low key. People wore shorts and t-shirts or they ran around in swimsuits. Everyone sat on blankets and brought a cooler. There was a lot of underage drinking on Mud Island and a slightly smaller amount among the people who brought their own coolers. The music was louder than the people, but everyone was able to talk without screaming. There were food vendors everywhere, even walking through the crowds. The entire area smelled like bbq. The worst part of the events was that you ALWAYS got a sunburn.

We stumbled into the Sundown in the City area last week just to peek at the party. The crowds wandering in and out of the gated area seemed sober and happy. The gates were not to control crowds or charge admission, they were just a controlled way to search what was being brought into the area. This was a ‘buy it from us,’ not a ‘bring a cooler’ event. Once you made it into the gated area, the crowds were absolutely elbow to elbow. It was a giant moshpit, except in moshpits every single person isn’t dangling a cigarette from their fingers. I wonder how many burns were treated in the first aid area that evening. I felt under dressed in my jeans and tank top. Women were wearing heels and going clubbing dresses. Breastfeeding women show less skin than the teenage girls at Sundown. The elbow to elbow conditions worked well for conversations, because talking involved putting your lips to someone’s ear and screaming. It was so loud that the music was almost indistinguishable from the roar of the mass of people screaming at each other. I didn’t have the courage to shove my way down the sidewalk in search of a restaurant that wasn’t elbow to elbow. We ended up going to Cumberland for food. The worst part of the event was that we took our children. The best part was that we learned not to allow our teenagers to attend.

I love going to see movies at the drive-in. It is a much more relaxed, social environment than a regular movie theater. Everyone arrives early to set-up camps. Chairs, blankets, coolers and toys are organized while adults mingle with their neighbors for the evening. Children control the area between the screen and the cars. Girls perform unison cartwheels and handstands while boys throw footballs and tackle each other. Small children giggle and run freely under the watchful eyes of every person there. The back rows are avoided by everyone except the teenagers. The equipment is not modern and the food is not for careful dieters, but nobody cares. For that frozen moment in time, it is a happy car town.

The doomsday clock is counting down toward the end of the Midtown Drive-In in Harriman, Tennessee. In less than 5 years, the theater will be put out of business by the hospital that is being built next door. Hospitals have bright lights that glow all night. The only lighting that drive-ins need are the sparkling stars in the sky over your head. Last weekend, we even had a shooting star to enhance the atmosphere. Sometimes in life, you only recognize in retrospect the moments that were sweet and priceless. Every time we spend an evening at the drive-in, we smile at each other and know that this IS one of the good times. This summer, spend one evening at the drive-in with your family. In the blink of an eye, the drive-ins will be gone and your children will be grown.

We have found one place that is perfect for small children in downtown Knoxville. The lovely Summer at Vs suggested we take our crowd to the Knoxville Pearl to satisfy the “I’m hungry” gamers. I suspect the target audience is college students who think jammies are real clothes, but my children thought it was “awesome.” Sarah created odd blends of different cereals while Amy ate only the cereals that I never buy. I am chocolate’s number one fan, but I will not buy “chocolate” cereal. Evan just made himself at home. The 60’s modern furnishings, the groovy murals and the console television playing cartoons made even the geezers in our group feel like it was Saturday morning again. Just don’t go to the Pearl on Saturday mornings. They open around the time when college students start their day and stay open for anyone who wants to get a head start on breakfast after they leave the downtown pubs.