It used to be at times when I'm cold or sick or feeling a little blue, one of my best defense mechanisms would be to take my lunch at a marvelous buffet restaurant named Jenkins Country Buffet in East Ridge. It is located at 4122 Ringgold Road and I've told a bunch of people to go there. So just imagine the disappointment I felt Friday when I learned it was suddenly "off limits" for me.
The heavy realization that I may never go there again, or visit with the saints who have made Kingwood Pharmacy such a wonderful place, comes after the East Ridge City Council voted on Thursday night to install mobile and fixed traffic cameras. So, to be honest, I have to say that after I got so sick last year I made a self-promise to studiously avoid unkind people and I won't go to East Ridge anymore.
I would always start with the salad bar at Jenkins. It was huge and had the really good stuff, like grated hard-boiled eggs and real bacon and all kinds of good-tasting relishes, but Mayor Mike Steele, Larry Sewell and Tom Card swung at a three-to-two strike on a second and final reading Thursday and will soon install the hated devices in a terrible move I easily equate to the decline of Red Bank, a place I literally have not visited in at least two years, excluding going up Highway 27 to the farm. Goodness knows, I would never stop.
Until this week Red Bank was the only municipality outside of money-crazed Chattanooga that giggled over the camera's constant fleecing of the very people who live within its limits. Traffic cameras have now been banned in 14 states and the town of Signal Mountain nixed the stealthy, detested cameras by a unanimous vote just last month.
But the town where Jenkins Buffet Restaurant serves all those wonderful home-cooked vegetables has just gone in a completely different direction than any Christian person ever thought Mayor Steele would take it. Color me stupid because I held the belief they really wanted to vitalize the area.
Ironically, it is said Mayor Steele is a Sunday-morning preacher, but scholars I ask can find no instance in the Holy Bible where Godly men, who all aspire to "love your neighbor as yourself," would prey on their very neighbors with quietly clicking cameras in such an unkind way.
The fried chicken at Jenkins was always my best draw to the place, but the pork chops and meat loaf and baked chicken, with about four of five different kinds of beans ... aw, man! And now I won't go again, not even on a bet, because while the safety value of silent entrapment devices can absolutely not be proven, the evil lucre of the virtually certain promise the $50 fines will generate is the overwhelming reason the national public believes the cameras still exist in backward areas.
Larry Sewell, one of the commissioners who voted for the cameras, will always hold a place in my heart because we worked alongside one another at the newspaper for years, but he'll remember that I knew his daddy, too, and he sure wasn't raised this way. If he somehow overcomes this week's disappointing decision, and some way wiggles back into heaven's graces, I'll guarantee "Mr. Dewey" will kick him in the rump as soon as he enters the Pearly Gates. Larry can bet his daddy would be ashamed of him.
As I write, I remember what the chocolate pudding tasted like at Jenkins and that the banana pudding was so good and creamy. Gee, how many times, on the way to Atlanta, have I jumped off the Interstate to get a quick breakfast at Wally's. Now I can't do that anymore, either.
I promise I don't break laws when I drive. I don't speed or try to beat a light. They can pull me up on the screen at the East Ridge P.D. and they can't find a blemish, so help me, but every detective they've got can neither find where I have any dealings with unkind people or mix and mingle with people like that. Listen, those who embrace a "got cha" mentality will soon get "got," if history is any teacher, and that's why the city of Chattanooga's only salvation is to run the now-sitting City Council out on a quick rail in the next election.
It's true; I have no choice but to drive on the city of Chattanooga streets, but I keep thinking some judge, one who has a backbone for liberty and a zeal for the Constitution itself, will soon declare he just can't continue the camera scam because it simply isn't the right thing to do.
If we had just one judge with the courage the Mississippi governor showed this spring, or the governor of Montana did several months later, we'd end this flimflam game where some out-of-town carpetbaggers divvy up the ill-gotten loot and take their "cut" away where East Ridge and Red Bank citizens will never see a dime of it again. Safety programs? Puh-leeze!
Did you know that Jenkins even had soup when I'd go in there? I used to get about a half bowl because I was bad to "founder" at a restaurant like that, but now I simply won't drive in East Ridge. There is no reason I should. And isn't that sad in itself? There isn't one company today that draws traffic from other areas of the community anymore; at least not one where you can't get what you are looking for someplace else. Not even Holcomb's Garden Center can overcome the vile presence of a hidden camera.
The news story said a guy named William Whitson made the camera recommendation. He's the city manager and you'll remember he's now a dilly at treading water after surviving some "near-drownings," what with controversial lawyer fees and the like. But the deal is, William ain't got a vote in "The Home of the Pioneers." He just suffers the bad rap because he's not elected, either. That's what is called a "foil."
Face it, this whole thing is curiously the way East Ridge "has always been," according to old-timers, but now, with not enough firm-hearted revolutionaries any longer like Curtis Adams was when he first started out, the picture-taking fiasco was approved in a waltz on Thursday. Is that discouraging or what?
Thank goodness I can alter my course where I don't have go to East Ridge ever again, but, law, I'm gonna' miss eating lunch at Jenkins.
royexum@aol.com