LIKE IT IS : Losing to Memphis a miserable development
Posted on Tuesday, May 13, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/adg/Sports/225614/
Because of basketball and football games between the University of Arkansas and Memphis University, your trusty scribe has probably been lost in Memphis more than the average person.
Fortunately, I’m not one of those stubborn, egotistical guys who refuses to ask for directions. If I’m lost for two or three hours, I have no problem pulling into a gas station or convenience store and getting help.
But last Saturday, there was no getting lost, just a sense of loss.
Memphis is a typical city in the sense that its residents feel it is OK for them to criticize their home town, but no one else.
We were there to find my daughter an apartment. She has a year of residency left to finish her advanced degree in audiology and was offered several positions at Veterans Administration hospitals around the country, including San Diego and Augusta, Ga., but she chose Memphis.
In the months leading up to his death, my dad spent many weeks in the VA hospitals in both Little Rock and North Little Rock, and the experience left Whitney with a strong desire to dedicate her career to working with veterans.
What does this have to do with sports ? Well, the only person she has known for a long time who lives in Memphis is Jonathon Nelson, who was MVP of the state soccer tournament his senior season at Pulaski Academy.
He is now a third-year law student at Memphis and has become a certified Tiger faithful.
That’s about it for sports today.
While it would be easy to conjure up another column on the Tigers falling apart in the final 2: 11 of the national championship game against Kansas, or even the 11-10 record the Razorbacks have against Memphis in basketball or the 2-3 in football, this is really more a rare personal column.
I guess I do about five of these a year, or approximately. 02 of my yearly total.
So this is not about John Calipari wanting to play the Razorbacks at Alltel Arena, or the history of the Hogs vs. the Tigers.
It isn’t about how the Tigers were a bright spot in a city that is enduring the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., although not enough can be written about that.
It really isn’t about my daughter, Whitney, either.
After all, it took only about two hours to find her the right apartment, but that was after driving by one that looked great in the ads, but to be totally honest, having a bail bonds office right across the street has never been a selling point for an overprotective dad.
Also, it is not about Memphis, the city that calls itself the home of the blues but could just as easily claim barbecue champion of the free world.
However, sitting in Westy’s, a small restaurant between uptown and Mud Island, my daughter asked the waiter where he lived, and he said uptown.
“Is it dangerous ?” she asked innocently.
Without pause, the young man said: “It is Memphis.”
Not what any overprotective dad wants to hear even from a resident who has the personal right to say that.
The truth is, you can get in trouble in any city in the world if you want.
While a friend was once robbed at gunpoint just one block after leaving Beale Street, for the most part you only get in trouble anywhere if you are not aware of your surroundings.
So no, this is not about sports, as I said earlier, it is about a sense of my loss to Memphis.
Sitting in the office of the large apartment complex as my daughter filled out the paperwork for the nice, ground-level apartment, it hit me hard she was moving on.
Three years ago, Whitney graduated from Ouachita Baptist and started the audiology program at UAMS Medical School and UALR.
She has been my full-time roommate since, and a Razorback maniac the entire time.
We have grown from a total father-daughter relationship to 90 percent best friends, 10 percent parent-child.
I know it is time for her to blossom, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it and that has nothing to do with Memphis, unless she becomes a Tigers fan.