Partly cloudy this evening followed by mostly cloudy skies and a few showers after midnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%..
Partly cloudy this evening followed by mostly cloudy skies and a few showers after midnight. Low 58F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.
On July 5, the Tennessee Department of Tourist Development named the Spring Hill Chamber of Commerce an official destination marketing organization (DMO) for the city.
Franklin Tomorrow, which celebrated the 22nd anniversary of its founding as a community visioning and engagement organization earlier this year, has several events set over the next few months to finish out the year.
FRANKLIN – The Battle Ground Academy and Grace Christian Academy girls' soccer teams advanced to the Division II-A Middle Region championship with wins Thursday at BGA.
Just like last season, the Page High School girls’ soccer team hosted Murfreesboro Central Magnet for the District 11-AA championship.
A new vintage trolley hop-on, hop-off tour that will allow guests to experience Franklin and Leiper's Fork at their own pace, without a car, has launched from Gray Line Tennessee.
High Hopes Development Center is once again hosting its largest and longest-running fundraiser, the annual Hats Off to High Hopes, Thursday, Nov. 3, from 6-9 p.m. at Graystone Quarry.
A new vintage trolley hop-on, hop-off tour that will allow guests to experience Franklin and Leiper's Fork at their own pace, without a car, has launched from Gray Line Tennessee.
High Hopes Development Center is once again hosting its largest and longest-running fundraiser, the annual Hats Off to High Hopes, Thursday, Nov. 3, from 6-9 p.m. at Graystone Quarry.
Going off to college for the first time is a momentous occasion for a young man. And for their mothers as well.
Recently I was having a conversation with a friend of mine who works in education, and he mentioned a problem educators have been dealing with post-COVID: a lack of resiliency in students. Resiliency refers to the ability to recover or adjust to adversity or change.
William Carter is a retired longtime Franklin city employee and published author. He may be contacted at wcarterfranklin@aol.com.
William Carter is a retired longtime Franklin city employee and published author. He may be contacted at wcarterfranklin@aol.com.
There I am, all speckled with grass and sweaty on a Friday afternoon, waiting in line at the ATM in Publix and watching the world go by.
Well, there isn’t a line, actually, there’s just me waiting for the lady in front of the machine to finish her business and I figure she’s withdrawing all of her money then re-depositing it over and over again because she’s taking a really, really long time. She leans into the screen, peering at it, then mashes a few buttons and I can hear her cursing softly either at herself or at the machine and then she draws back a little bit and takes her glasses off and peers some more and then mashes buttons again and I kind of get caught up in the drama and find myself secretly cheering her on.
“I can help you, sir!” someone chirps, and I look over to see an attractive young lady behind the bank counter next to the ATM waving me over.
“No, thank you,” I tell her, “I’m fine. I don’t mind waiting.”
“Really!” she says. “Come on over! Chirp, chirp! Chirp, chirp chirp chirp chirp chirp!!”
I shake my head and point at the ATM and her eyes narrow a bit and her smile disappears and she looks sad and I feel the need to explain to her that sometimes I play a little game with myself and try to make it through an entire day with little or no contact with humans I’m not related to — OK, I do that every day because I really and truly have no social skills — but trying to make her feel better would require a substantial amount of human contact so I turn away and lean against the DVD rental machine and cross my arms and watch the older lady mash buttons some more.
I step away to see a very tired looking 20-something woman with a fat, sleeping baby draped in the crook of her left arm and dragging a filled shopping cart behind her. I nod in apology but she ignores me and begins poking at the touch-screen on the rental machine.
Ten feet away two boys, about 3 and 5 years old, are standing in front of a rack of shelves loaded with Halloween candy.
“Mom!” the oldest yells. “Mom! Mom!”
No”, the woman at the DVD machine mumbles without looking. “No. Behave.”
The oldest boy takes a package of neon-orange, marshmallow Halloween Peeps off of the shelf and starts licking the cellophane wrapper as the youngest looks on with the most worshipful gaze I have ever seen in my life. The boy then starts scratching at the wrapper, tears it open, and gives the box to the younger one, who immediately holds it to his face and begins licking the now exposed and helpless and more than likely terrified Peeps.
I was immediately transported back to a Saturday afternoon 55 or so years before when I stole a 5-cent, bubble-gum cigar from the Piggly-Wiggly on the weekly grocery-shopping trip with Mama and my many, many sisters.
The plan…perfect; my execution…flawless.
The only problem was my inability to resist the siren call of the bubble-gum cigar on the 10-mile ride home. Hunkered down in the very back of our robins-egg blue family station wagon with the faux wood-grain side panels, and hidden among the forest of brown, Piggly-Wiggly paper bags, I removed the cigar from my pocket, unwrapped it, and then shoved it in my mouth. Just then, the hideous visages of my two oldest sisters — framed by their equally hideous, matching Dutch boy hair-dos — popped up over the back seat, grinning evilly.
“Mama!” they cry gleefully at the sight of stolen pink bubble gum juice trickling from the corners of my mouth.
All I remember after that was the u-turn on Highway 280 and the ride back to the Piggly-Wiggly as my mortified mama smoldered and my sisters cackled and then my 5-year-old butt being marched through those sliding front doors and having to tearfully confess my crime in front of what seemed to me to be the entire population of Sumter County, then hitching and blubbering out an apology to the cashier and the struggling-not-to-smile store manager who kept wondering aloud when the police were going to arrive to hand-cuff me and take me off to jail before finally winking at my mother and deciding my apology and 5 cents for the bubble-gum cigar were justice enough.
“Mom! Look, Mom, look what Tyler did!”
Back in the present I see older boy grinning and pointing at the orange and marshmallow smeared face of his little brother and the opened box of saliva-soaked Peeps he held in his hands.
“Put those back!” the mother yells. “Right now! Put ’em back!”
“You’re kiddin’…right?” I say to the lady, nearly as mortified as my mama was 55 years ago.
The woman snarls something at me of the four-letter variety, snatches the open package from the shelf, throws it into her cart, and marches away.
But not before turning to me and flipping me off as both of the little boys laugh.
My…how times have changed.
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