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CURLING CRAZE
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KARNS/HARDIN VALLEY
Vol. 5, No. 2 • January 10, 2011 • www.ShopperNewsNow.com • 10512 Lexington Drive, Suite 500 37932 • 218-WEST (9378)
Keeping roads in shape By Joe Rector A drive along Ball Camp Pike from the soccer and softball fields in the community park to the intersection at Middlebrook Pike is a jarring experience. It’s the same in areas all around the county. Winter brings out the worst in roads to the dismay of motorists. Jim Snowden, deputy director for Knox County Engineering and Public Works, said that cold weather not only causes the deterioration of road surfaces, but also hinders repairs. Asphalts plants are opened sporadically during the cold weather months, using the time to perform maintenance on site. The hot mix that they produce is unavailable on a regular basis. Crews patch holes with a cold mix, but it isn’t as strong and doesn’t bond as well as hot mix. “Cold mix is what we typically use during this time of year. At best, it’s a temporary fix for problems” Snowden said. Compounding the difficulty of keeping up with filling in holes is the size of the job and the number of people available to do it. Knox
“The economy has been rough on our department like it’s been on families and businesses. We’re One strip of Ball Camp Pike is like pinching pennies to get the most a washboard and slated for resurfor our dollars,” he said. facing. Photo by Joe Rector An impending problem is the increasing price of oil. Those higher prices impact the costs for asphalt and put an additional drain on the department’s budget. The problem along the stretch of Ball Camp Pike will be addressed in the next couple of weeks if the weather allows. Snowden said a 2-inch resurfacing will be applied. That will help until construction of the right-of-way for the new Schaad Road begins. Snowden encouraged citizens to contact them about pothole problems. He asked that they not assume the department is already aware of them. The contact number is 215-5800. In the meantime, Knox County motorists will continue to be patient and to dodge rough places County has 2,000 miles of roads, partment’s budget as well. Salting ones. According to Snowden, pav- on roads. With the average cost of and 80 employees with the depart- roads eats away at the $2.3 million ing one mile of road surface costs front-end alignment running $30 ment are divided into 12 crews that budget, as well as the road surface approximately $100,000. Every to $70, slower speeds might be the must complete a variety of jobs. itself. The money used on that task dime spent to fill holes takes away best defense against cold weather Winter weather hits the de- takes away from more important from paving projects. potholes.
Hard times and tragedy take toll on local builder By Betty Bean Most days but Sunday, Roy Anderson is down on Broadway sitting in his green 1971 Chevy C-10 pickup truck in the old Fountain City Kroger parking lot, loaded down with firewood for sale. He’s got red oak, white oak and hickory plus bundles of cedar kindling. Frequently one of his 10 children is riding shotgun. He knows he could make more money if he’d find a spot out toward Farragut, but the Chevy only gets about 11 miles to the gallon, so he stays closer to his home in Corryton and does the best he can. He’s waiting for spring when he, his son Roy Jr. and his friend Randy Harwell will be opening up “Our Father’s Garden,” a landscaping supply, lawn maintenance, remodeling and construction business on Cunningham Road in Halls, at the site of the old Munsey’s Lawn Care. A pewter ornament that his wife, Sylvia, gave him hangs from his rearview mirror. It says, “I love you all dearly. Now don’t shed a tear. I’m spending my Christmas with Jesus this year. In loving memory, Samuel Anderson, 2006-2010.” The little pendant commemorates their youngest son who died of neuroblastoma – a vicious form of cancer – on Nov. 4. Not that Roy needs reminders. The boy is never far from his mind. Just over three years ago, Roy Anderson was a licensed Realtor, a general contractor and a successful builder/developer who had built and sold 19 houses and started Shiloh Gardens, a subdivision on Pedigo Road. He’d built his family a house that they only owed $21,000 on (and that was for the land) and he drove a big F-350 King Ranch
Roy Anderson and his daughter, Bethany, sell firewood in the old Kroger parking lot in Fountain City. Photo by Ruth White dually that pulled a skid-steer loader. Samuel really liked that truck. The doctors at Children’s Hospital discovered Samuel’s tumor Aug. 31, 2007, and flew him to Vanderbilt for treatment. He was desperately ill from the beginning and spent more than 70 days on life support that year. His stomach swelled up like he’d swallowed a basketball and most of his vital organs, including his eyes, were compromised. Roy and Sylvia never left his side. “Down in Nashville they gave us a Ronald McDonald room about a quarter mile from the hospital. Might as well have been 1,500 miles away. We appreciated it, but we couldn’t be that far away from him, so we let somebody else use it. Every day they were telling us he wouldn’t
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live till tomorrow. The tumor didn’t shrink, he had breathing difficulties and they had to intubate him. But in January 2008, he went into remission, although with neuroblastoma, there’s really no remission. They just call it ‘No Evidence of Disease – NED.’ So we went back to work. “I was working as a trim carpenter and cabinet maker and I built our house debt-free as the Lord gave me the money. We cut down trees on our property for lumber and every time I got paid, if I had any extra money, I’d put it in the house. I also built my daddy a house on the property.” Roy had nearly finished a couple of houses in Shiloh Gardens when the bottom fell out of the market. He mortgaged the family home for
$280,000 and used the money to pay the interest on his business debts and for living expenses. Finally, the Andersons walked away from their home and his dad let them have the house Roy had built for him. Roy got a loan on his truck to pay off the interest on a construction note, but things kept going south on him and on April 3, 2009, the repo guys pulled up to take the truck. “That’s the one thing that bothered Samuel the most. He’d say, ‘Daddy, when are they going to bring back our truck?’ I told him that wasn’t going to happen and he’d say ‘We’ll get another truck, daddy. I got money, Daddy.’ He got a Social Security check from where he’d been sick and he wanted to give it to me, but that money was just to be used for him.” Roy filed for bankruptcy in September, about the time Samuel’s cancer came back. “A week before he passed away, I’d saved up $1,400 but the guy was wanting $3,000 for this truck. Samuel had money in the bank that people had given him out of compassion, and he said, ‘Mommy, give Daddy some of my money so he can go buy that truck.’ When we got home from church on Wednesday night my wife said, ‘Why don’t you just go ahead and buy that truck,’ and handed me money from Samuel’s account,” Roy said. The next day he and two of his other children, Joshua and Hannah, went to Sevier County to get the truck. They were on their way back when his mother-in-law called and said that Samuel had quit breathing “I told her to turn his oxygen rate up and she said she already had. ‘He’s gone, Roy.’ My wife was
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crying, saying, ‘I’ve killed him. I killed him. He asked for a drink of water and he stopped breathing.’ I told her she didn’t kill him. How many times had she given her children a drink of water? “I didn’t even want the truck then, wanted to take it back. But she told me the Lord didn’t want me to be there because he knew that Josh and Hannah and I wouldn’t have been able to handle watching Samuel pass away. She told me not to throw the truck away, just fix it up.” So he kept the old green truck and got it into working order. He kind of wished it were blue because that was the color of Tommy the Tank Engine, Samuel’s favorite cartoon. One day he was working on the passenger side door and noticed something odd in the door jam – a strip of bright blue, which he realized was the truck’s original color. Restoring it is high on Roy’s to-do list. And he wants to make something very clear: “We’re born again and we’re trusting in the Lord and we realize that there’s trials and tribulations that everybody has to go through. This isn’t an accident that we’ve lost our business and our son. We know that we’ll see him again. We loved him as much as you could love anybody, so when we had to let him go back to the Lord, we gave him all we could. “We’ve got clothes, groceries, a place to stay and TennCare’s paying for our medical, so our needs are all met. We’d love to have your business, but we don’t need a handout. And we’re just thankful that God picked us to be Samuel’s parents out of all the billions of people to choose from.”
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