One day back in 1965, I was a junior in high school and definitely a new rock and roll boy. Then one day I was riding with my dad to the store and a song came on the radio called, ” Make The World Go Away”. I was astonished at that pure voice and the easiness of the song. I was an Eddy Arnold fan for life. I never gave up on rock and roll until the 80’s when it turned trashy with all the lyrics. I was a country music fan that loved the old standards.

When rock and roll was hot, Eddy’s music took a slide. Just like all country music. Isn’t it something, when rock and roll turned hard, when it turned to rap, when it was trash, the old rock and roll artists turned to country. Amazing that I was allowed to see that.

Today, Eddy Arnold would have been 90 years old. Last week, on May 8th, he passed away. His wife of 64 years, Sally Gayhart Arnold passed away last March after having hip replacement surgery.

There are too many awards to talk about and too many accomplishments by Eddy Arnold to put in this blog. I just wanted to say that he was important to some of us from a time gone by. He gave us music that could never ever be duplicated by another. Last month I was sitting at the computer and I played several of his songs and thought about his career and the impact that his music had with me.

When I was a DJ and worked many years at a country music radio station, I attended a seminar in Nashville where Mr. Arnold was on the panel . I had a chance to sit with him, shake his hand and talk. He was a real human being, not a person who put himself above all the rest. I felt I was sitting and talking with a friend that I had known for years. He made everyone feel like that when he came in contact with them. Eddy Arnold was, and always will be, an AMERICAN ICON.

We will all miss you Eddy….

Tom Madison

I was reading a blog from Valery the other day about Accessibility. She happens to own www.canesgalore.com and I ask all of you to check out her Blog at www.Vallytle.com…. The disabled of this world are no longer a small number of people. I have real bad knees and will have knee replacement surgery at some time soon. Soon, being, in a few years. My cane means the world to me.

As Valery says in her blog, “Sometimes the world has to adapt to them.” Instead of the reverse. Everyone at some point has a disability happen to them. Then they seem to understand how important, accessibility is. I know that at some point in the last 3 years I had enough pain to limit walking all together. I had to learn how to walk all over again. If it wasn’t for mobility aids, I wouldn’t have made it.

Walking again with the help of a cane is like me being a new man. I can get around and enjoy life. Now that I have said this, why can’t we as a society have better ways for our disabled to navigate. Streets, Elevators, Buildings, Restrooms, Hotel Rooms, Stores, all of these and many more are in need of consideration for improvement to help our disabled.

If you own a business or design houses or businesses, please take the disabled into consideration. All of us deserve it and lives will be easier.

Thank You

Tom Madison

We have such a beautiful lake at our fingertips. I was on Pickwick lake last weekend with my friend Walt and as we stopped in some shallow water to fish, I noticed beer cans on the bottom of the lake. What kind of inconsiderate person would do this. Hardin County and McNairy County are beautiful counties to live in. Why do we trash them? There are waste barrels at all boat ramps! Whether or not your a tourist or a local, it’s obvious that we have a small concern about the litter that we toss into our waterways. God made this beautiful lake and shoreline for us to recreate and release some stress from our daily routine. To make our home beautiful, it takes everyone to help. Please don’t toss your cans and bottles into the lake. Please don’t toss wrappers into the water as you cruise the waterways. Yes, we do have signs that say you will be fined if you litter and we even post the amount you will be fined if your caught. There isn’t enough police, sheriffs, park rangers or anyone of authority to catch all you litterbugs. Its going to take law abiding citizens to turn these people in. Get a license plate number if you can or a boat registration. Turn your information into a law enforcement officer. They may not be able to fine the guilty parties but they can give them a stern warning. At least they will know that we won’t put up with that stuff in our Pickwick Dam area. Sure we want this tourist income but if this precious lake becomes a garbage dump, those tourists will go elsewhere. It will cause a strain to everyone that depends on the tourism to boost our economy. To all of you ….please have fun in God’s playground…and keep the playground clean.

My wife and I took a ride through the Shiloh Battlefield. As we stopped and looked at the monuments and drove by the battlefields, it was noticeable to me that the other visitors were in awe of the surroundings. It is a grim feeling to me to know that thousands died where I was walking. That there were many soldiers from both sides that spilled their blood. To say that two groups of Americans fought with hatred in their eyes saddened me to tears. It was a gray and very cool day that we made this visit and as you stood and read the plaque that stood in front of, “The Bloody Pond”, you could almost hear the screams and cries of men in battle. The Civil War was a war between Americans. I can’t get over that thought. Why weren’t we engaged in total diplomacy so we didn’t cause the death of so many of our citizens. I know that circumstances were different indeed. It still seems that we would have worked out differences so this Land of Liberty was kept whole. The bloodshed, the total destruction of entire cities, the cruelty, makes my skin crawl. Politicians, diplomats and powerful newspaper professionals helped to create a war that should have never happened. All of these people fought with words instead of creating or continuing to create a strong United States. While they bickered back and forth, hundreds of thousands of men who were taken away from their families, perished in battle. As we drove out of Shiloh, it was quiet in the van. The thought of what was witnessed made us both sit and think that this could happen again. Our elected officials need to put their total efforts in providing peace to a nation. We can never allow this to ever happen again. I know its the history of a great country, but it still embarasses me that we as Americans, citizens of these United States, fought each other with so much hatred, death and destruction.

It was back in 1963, at a ballpark in Washington D.C. that Mickey Mantle hit a baseball 565ft. This swat of the bat caused a baseball to travel towards a sign and bounce off that and then go out of the ball park. It then ended up in a back yard of a dwelling behind the ball park. Clearly it was one of the biggest moments in sports. News traveled everywhere about that swing of the bat. I was a Yankee fan all of my life. Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Roger Maris, Bobby Richardson, Moose Skowrun and others were my heroes. They left a moment in my life that left its mark on what heroes are to people of all walks of life. Now there are Math professors and Physics professors that have stated, that giant swat of the bat did not create as long as home run it initially was told. They say that there is no way that it could have happened. Why do we listen to this? Why don’t these professors take their math and physics and figure out how to create jobs, lower gas prices, fix the economy, or something of some use to help America. Instead, we work on destroying the dreams of hundreds of thousands of people who have heroes. Heroes like Mickey Mantle who hit that long home run without steroids. The world needs heroes of all occupation. I have a grandson who is 3 years old and needs a hero or two. I will not allow a group of professors to destroy that moment in history and my memory of a baseball icon. I realize that this is a far cry from Pickwick Livin’ but I’ll bet that there are a few folks who agree that heroes were important in their lives too. Tom “Topcat” Madison

I just filled my gas tank and it came to $67.89 and I thought about getting a bicycle. What better way to destroy an economy by putting us in a recession and charging this much for gasoline. There’s other things that make up this depressed money situation. The war is costing us billions. It will take us many years to leave there if we started today. Two of our candidates suggest that we leave now. The other says we would stay there and police the problems but slowly bring our military home. In any sense, we have a money- eating machine across the big pond that’s costing the United States, you and I, a fortune. When you drive through the neighborhood, how many for sale signs do you see? There’s enough of them to wish I would have gotten in to metal signs for a living. These people can’t afford there payments. At first it’s just a for sale sign then they add the foreclosure attachment to the sign in weeks ahead. People are losing there ever-living life savings because they can’t make payments. This is a recession. The other day the news guy said that it was now official, we were in a recession. Are you kidding? Like it took somebody to tell us it was official. Families are working multiple jobs. Both husbands and wives are working two jobs to make the payments on those bills. I was reading in a local newspaper about Americans are not getting enough recreation. There is no way that we can go out and have fun and afford it. We are lucky enough to get the energy to take care of the upkeep on our homes so they’ll be attractive enough to sell to someone at a price of substantial loss. The answer to me is clear. We need to get the price of oil down. The fact is that oil is abundant in the U.S. and the powers to be won’t drill for it. More oil, less money per barrel and we start paying fuel costs that are in a respectful range. With cheaper fuel costs, prices go down, and slowly we get our economy in a position to navigate debt. Leave Iraq and take the billions of dollars we waste there and put it towards drilling for oil on our land. Take some of the money and help bail out the housing crisis. Take the money and use it right here for Homeland Security. Protect ourselves, in this country from terrorism instead of giving away billions upon billions of dollars to foreign countries that hate us anyway. Doesn’t make sense to me at all. I do know that the recession took a period of time to get here and it will take a bit of time to get us back in line. It will take a new leader. A patriot, not a politician to do it. Greedy politicians are the cause of a lot of these fuel problems. Do it for America, not for fattening up personal bank accounts of these greedy people we elected into office. Well, I think I’ve said my piece and I feel better. Can I borrow ten dollars from you so I can get my bicycle out of the pawn shop? I can’t afford to buy gas. Besides, the 10 bucks will only buy 3 gallons. Enough said!!!!!

I was taking a Wednesday afternoon off from everything and decided to take some pictures. It relaxes me and I get to to put some nice pictures in the magazine. I was sitting at the park in Pickwick and a brown pickup truck pulled up to a trash barrel. I was sitting at a picnic table and I watched as the driver threw from his truck a sack. He missed the container, but it didn’t matter to him. He took off spinning his wheels and his radio blaring out some rock song. The man was laughing while he was talking on the cell phone. If there is one thing that really makes me sick, it’s littering. What a moron I thought, as I strolled over to put the sack in the trash can. Then I saw the sack moved. It was kind of scary. I had no idea what was inside this bag. I waited for a second and then out popped this head of the cutest little puppy. He or she was brown with these white markings on the face. The tail was also brown with white rings. I looked in the bag and out walked two more really cute puppies. I couldn’t believe that this idiot would just toss away like trash these three pups that were creatures of God. I knew that I would have to take care of them until I could find them a shelter. A man and his son were just finishing up a days fishing and his boy saw the pups and came over to see them. His father, a nice man in his fifties, asked me about them. I told him that they were just left there by a man in a pickup truck. I told him that I was taking them to a shelter for safe keeping. He said that this type of thing happens all the time. People from the city take the puppies and drive them to the country and leave them. Problem is solved. There should be a law against this. What kind of people would do this to another living creature. These pups had no chance at all of making it out alive. If it wasn’t for me , these pups would have died for sure. This nice man and his son told me that they live on a farm near Adamsville and that they would take care of the pups. Now these little dogs have a home and will be loved forever. This is one chance in a thousand that these discarded animals are in good hands. Pups, kittens, or whatever, this should never happen. If you ever see something like this happen please get a license number off the vehicle plate. Turn it over to the sheriff or police. Maybe, just maybe, they will at least mention to the individual that there are other ways to handle a situation like that. If you have animals that you cannot take care of, please contact the nearest Humane Society for help. These are good people and will go the distance to find them a great home. Tom