Death on the Highway

Call it suicide or call it homicide, he was just a nice kid.

One of the last things that he did on Earth was call 911 and ask for help.

People in Chapel Hill are talking about the unexpected death of Courtland Smith, a premed biology major and fraternity president at UNC.

I would start with the story but since we still don’t know the rest of the story, I will stick with the facts as I know them from police reports that aren’t sealed and from the rivoting 15-minute 911 call Courtland made the morning of his death.

• Courtland was the DKE president at UNC.
• There was a party at his fraternity house Saturday night.
• His best friend saw him at 2:00 a.m. after the party. He reports that Courtland was “fine” at that time.
• About two hours later, Courtland placed the now famous 911 call.
• A female operator handled his call.
• Approximately 15 minutes later, Courtland was shot to death by a police officer on 1-85 southbound in Randolph County.

The questions outnumber the facts at this time. A video remains with sealed evidence. The medical examiner’s report has not been made public, nor has an e-mail Courtland wrote to his parents “that explains everything anyone would need to know” as Courtland told the 911 operator.

Because so much is unknown, the 911 call seems all the more important to our initial attempt to grieve this loss. The audio for the call can be accessed in the box with the story in the newspaper article.

Would I have listened to this call if I hadn’t watched Phone Booth last week? Maybe not. But Courtland's death would still have weighed on my mind as I worked with my premeds this week, talking with those students who are disappointed and feeling dejected about their low MCAT scores.

So many of my friends have sent their children to college for the first time this month. It’s every parent’s fear that their child will encounter danger or become severely ill while away at school.

The UNC campus has seen it’s share of tragedy recently. A few years ago, the student body president, Eve Carson, was shot to death at close range after being kidnapped and driven to an ATM machine to make her last withdrawal.

When Eve’s death was initially reported, there were holes of information big enough to drive a truck through. With Courtland’s death, the holes are even larger.

But what strikes me is the human interest. Sure, this is a human interest story, but that’s not what I mean. Somewhere in those last 15 minutes of his life, Courtland developed an interest in the female operator. He even asks her where she is from. And whether, as in Phone Booth, there was someone with a gun on Courtland’s “back pocket” or whether Courtland intended to fatally harm himself, he still cared about the operator and took an interest in her.

Call it homicide or call it suicide, he was just a nice kid.

One of the last things he did on Earth was call 911 . Our acoustic memory of Courtland is that of a young man who grew increasingly frustrated during his last cry for help.

Zombie Highways

Time was we worried about Chief Falling Rock when we took to the highways in my dad’s sedan. It was politically incorrect family slang for falling rock. On our family excursions along highways en route to the Smoky Mountains, the roadside signage warned of falling rock in the area. Chain link fence along the interstate heightened the sensation that a boulder could come sailing into the passenger window at any moment.

"Chief Falling Rock is after us," my dad would warn. A few years ago I took this acoustic memory and used it as the opener for a short story about a family portrait.

Times have changed a bit. Today there’s new terror on the roads. The News Hour with Jim Lehrer warned tonight of Zombie Highways. The story was about the Appalachian Development System gone too far in building a road to nowhere in north Birmingham. I saw some zombies on the interstate this summer, but the kind of zombies I saw were a little different than Jim’s.

If I had a quarter for every person talking on a cell phone while driving on the interstate, I could have made it to Austin and back without using my credit card once. Throw in a dollar for every mom (with kids in car seats) merging onto the highway while texting and I’ll make a contribution to your favorite charity.

We need laws to get people to quit taking undue risk.

How does that legislation get enacted? It seems soon after airbags began showing up in automobiles, I was witness to an autopsy at the Medical Examiner’s Office in Kentucky where a woman, under the height of 5’4’’, did not walk away from her accident because she suffered injuries when her airbag deployed on I-64. I don’t remember the exact role the ME’s office took in bringing about legislation to warn consumers that people under a certain height were at risk of airbag deployment injury, but I know there was some communication between Louisville and Frankfort on the issue.

There are plenty of people who argue government is too big, government does not need to take our freedoms away. If people made judicious use of capitalistic pleasures like phones with keyboards, maybe we wouldn’t need so many laws. Trouble is most people never want to think of safety until someone has hurt them.

While we’re in Mexico at the summit, we need to remember that we don’t want eighteen wheelers from Mexico on the interstate with the yellow HISD buses. Yes, let’s quit sending guns into Mexico for the drug cartels but no, we are not ready to allow Mexican trucks without brake inspections on US highways while my family is on the road.

Too much free trade and texting is bad for our safety on the roads. Darwin awards are for suicide, not homicide.

(This post was written last week and deemed too negative for the blog. Nonetheless, so many people have talked about dangerous road texting in the past four days that I felt compelled to post today.)

Taking the Time to Lay Down Some Tracks

I had a very pleasant morning with my son. I made chocolate chip pancakes. We watched a British show about training dogs. We walked our Lab and listened to the sounds of birds and cicadas along the way. We talked about mockingbirds. We paused to admire our favorite tree alongside the stream that flows into the one where James Taylor played as a boy.

Walking with a dog along a path takes me back to my grandfather’s retirement haven in Meade County on the Ohio River. He and I would start the day around five-thirty, sitting on stumps and drinking coffee under a large oak. Then we’d take his dog, a big ole slobbery shepherd mix, for a walk along trails with enough rabbits to keep Cesar showing off for hours. My grandfather pointed out the finer nuances of berry and tree identification along the way. By eight o’clock we’d be back at the house where my grandfather would scramble eggs and fry bacon. My Italian grandmother would still be sleeping when we spread her elderberry jam on our biscuits.

Now I can’t walk in the woods without remembering that mystical place where decades of river travel floated up from the steep banks to the house, on the notes from the Belle’s calliope.

The Pitch-Perfect Acoustic Legacy of a Parent

After a week of playing catch-up from an Austin pilgramage, I finally made it to the Muse Scripts box at the Carrboro post office. Nothing makes me happier than reaching into that box and pulling out a big ole glossy Texas Monthly. I dig that senior editor John Spong used to babysit my husband at the Westlake Oaks compound.

Ever play the game where you plop the magazine open and read only the article on that page? Nothing maintains the allure of an issue like taking it one randomly selected piece at a time. Maybe you can tell I was one of the kids that saved some candy for later.

This afternoon I dug into the magazine and up popped a photo of Roland Martin in a pinstripe suit and a lilac tie. It had been less than twenty-four hours since I returned from the Triangle Area Freelancers meeting so falling upon an article on being a multimedia journalist seemed fateful.

In the interview with Pamela Colloff, Roland Martin talks about Tiger Wood's father's remark, "'Even when I'm gone, Tiger will always hear my voice in his head at any moment in his life.'"

The legacy of what we tell our kids and what our parents told us is Texas size.

This week I traveled to the North Carolina Administrative Offices of the Courts and talked to parents about what they should tell their children about tobacco.

I told them about how tricky the topic of mortality can be for the younger set (9-11). By the way, that's the age of initiation for smoking, so if your youngin falls into that group, it's time to get your game on.

A friend recently shared the story with me about how her son, who is in the aforementioned age group, cut through a parental admonition about dying young with the eager anticipation of a premature death for a chance at early admission to heaven.

The day my mom told me she knew I had been smoking cigarettes, we were driving home in her light green clunker and my favorite song "Blinded by the Light" was on WKLO. (That keyboard intro still gives me chills.) My calliope came crashing down, alright. She gave me the usual, "Wait until your father comes home."

My father let me agonize in dreadful anticipation through most of the meal. His words were simple: "In our house we value our health first." Because I had a headache from the five or six cigarettes I'd smoked that afternoon, round one ended rather quickly.

What are you telling your children about tobacco? What are they saying? I'd love to hear.

I also want to hear what you remember your parents saying when you hear their voices in your head, on any topic.

Mama always told me not to look into the eyes of the sun.
But Mama, that's where the fun is...
Bruce Springsteen, "Blinded by the Light"

Songs I Heard on the Way Home

Got a good station on I-10 outside of Nawlens. How could I have forgotten these songs?

1.) My Baby Blue

2.)Hot Fun in the Summertime

3.) Devil with the Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly

4.) Band of Gold

5.) My Maria--the 1973 B.W. Stevenson version

I must add that BW (Buckwheat) Stevenson's song "Shambala" was covered by my fourth grade crush on his brother's electric guitar at our 4th grade talent show at St. Athanasius.

Sly & the Family Stone recorded "Hot Fun in the Summertime" in 1969. My sister had the Family Stone album with "Sing a Simple Song."

"Time is passing, I grow older, things are happening fast. All I have to hold onto is a simple song at last."- Stewart, Sylvester

Stupidly/Stupid

Oh, I just can't bite back my tongue (that's how Richard Thompson says it) any longer.
Yes, I like Obama. Full disclosure: I voted for him.
Today I watched with glee as he called a spade a spade. No matter how you slice it, the police in Cambridge acted stupidly. I've even blogged about racial profiling on this, my mostly apolitical blog.
And yet, when Obama starts to talk about folks going to a primary care doc with a sore throat and alluding to the public that they could fall prey to doctors who will yank the tonsils to make a buck, he's stupid. Primary care doctors don't even remove tonsils. That's done by an Ear Nose and Throat specialist. Was Obama winging it or did his adviser take the day off? Please, when you are trying to triumph yourself as the answer to our health care crisis, don't let that tongue get so loosey-goosey in areas where you have absolutely no content knowledge.
There, and now I feel better. And it was free--the insurance company ain't getting a penny off this.
But I'm not finished yet, while we're talking adverbs. If the police acted stupidly, how is it that the students in the audience today in Ohio were dressed "good." He said, "I didn't dress that good when I was your age." Wince.
Can we get the prompter back?

Magical Thinking

It’s seven o’clock Central Daylight Time on a Sunday night; I really would prefer to be at the Saxon Pub, but I’m headed East toward New Orleans on I-10 instead. Last Sunday a promise was thrown out to cover Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” tonight at the Saxon, but I’m missing that.

Even at 75 miles per hour, there are more songs than grasshoppers bombarding my windshield.

I just passed Opelousas and thought of the song “Sweet Relief” that mentions it. I recalled the young friend of mine that used to play guitar with me in Houston who was so fond of Maria McKee that he followed her all over Europe one year. Check out Maria’s cover of “Sweet Relief” on the tribute CD for Victoria Williams. Back when Victoria was diagnosed with MS, other musicians covered her songs on a benefit CD. My Cajun friends Barrow and Gregg used to play that CD at their apartment back in Houston.

And how could anyone drive through Louisiana and not think of the other Williams, Lucinda, headed back to the Crescent City?

Egrets dot the rice fields, and I hear Adam Carroll's song "Rice Birds." Scrappy just covered it last Sunday at the Saxon. You can hear Adam's version on YouTube.

Roadside billboards advertise boudins and cracklins. I remember being seven and believing Neil Diamond was singing about my grandmother Rose in "Cracklin Rosie."

When we are children we pass through a phase called magical thinking--Troy was just talking about this with Dano and me Saturday at lunch at Hyde Park. It’s about three parts ideas of reference (they teach you this is pathologic in med school) and ten parts hope. In Human Development classes, they say it’s just a stage, something you move beyond as you age.

As I age I realize what I cherish about music is that it tells me magical thinking is not a stage of development but a state of being that we can all check into when we want. I still believe. And hope, it’s still in my diet. Troy sang about finding it in so many places during his show at Antone’s Friday, and he mentioned at lunch how many people in Austin still have it. Check out an early version of his song on YouTube.

I’m preparing to cross the Mississippi—getting my camera ready to capture twilight on the surface of the water. I’m back at my grandfather’s farm on the river. I hear the calliope on the Belle of Louisville. I remember the song "Riverside." I think of all the wonder still to come.

And oh, the wonder…

Felt the lightening

and waited on the thunder.

Bob Seger, “Night Moves”