Our Lady of Guadalupe: Tennessee’s first Hispanic Parish
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Zoo Trainers: A Multimedia Presentation
Wolf River Conservancy: Preserving a West Tennessee Wilderness
Wild About Downtown: Wildlife can thrive even in the concrete jungle
Wild About Downtown
From the MEMPHIS DOWNTOWNER, March, 2009
by Devin Greaney
TOC: They live among us, these creatures of the wild, and for the most part, they tolerate our presence pretty well.
It’s a cold, drizzly January day on a nice residential street in Memphis. The rain picks up, becomes a torrent, and people take cover. When the rain calms, they step outside and are greeted by … snakes — thousands of them — which appear to have fallen from the sky. People look around with disbelief at the tangled snakes slithering around. One man gathers some up in a bottle for future proof of an unexplainable event.
Weird Texas Tornados
TEXAS TORNADO WEIRDNESS
From June, 2001 WEIRD TEXAS magazine.
Something about the weather has always fascinated me. Perhaps it is intriguing because so much of what makes different parts of the world, well, different, has to do with weather and climate. But when it comes to the study of weather and climate weather seems to be the one that is most dramatic.
So what is the difference between the two? Someone in a geography class of mine said it best “climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.” In Texas some of the weather we have experienced has been … 13 1/2 inches of snow one day in San Antonio (Jan 1985). On a clear August day, in the 1880’s , ice cold water rushed down the Concho River killing numerous people. It was later discovered that a distant hailstorm was to blame. Lake Whitney experienced a heat storm with 80 to 100 mph winds that reached 140 degrees scorching cotton fields on June 15, 1960.
I have lived in Texas eleven years and I will never forget one day in the Spring of 1991 watching constant flashing of a Gulf Coast thunderstorm passing just south of Houston. Another time marble sized hail pounded down and bounced off ground in a storm that left Central Texas looking like it was hit with a snowstorm. I’ve seen unusually wet springs ended with an even more unusually dry summer. But one thing I have not seen is a tornado. Few weather events inspire more fear awe and curiosity than the powerful tornado — especially by those who experience the storms. This state is no stranger to tornadoes and the curious events that have taken place in and around them.
“All tornado phenomena can be explained — there is nothing that is mystical about them,” according to Al Moller at the National Weather Service office in Fort Worth. Explained maybe, but strange nonetheless. Here is a short list of what Texans have experienced… a 30,000 pound piece of machinery was moved during a Pampa tornado. Twin tornadoes hit Austin in 1922 and witnesses reported seeing the stream bed of the Colorado River as the tornado passed over near Deep Eddy Pool. A graduation invitation was imbedded in a 2 x 4 during the Hale Center twister of 1965. Scientists believe the force of the wind was so strong it pulled the wood grains apart allowing the paper to penetrate the wood.
In Ballinger in April 1967, a barbecue grill was lifted into the air moved two blocks away, and set down with the meat still cooking. In the “I would believe it if I saw” it department .. a rare October tornado in Farmersville was reported to have shucked 10 acres of corn without damaging any kernels. A man at Lake Texoma was thrown into the water, then the same tornado threw him a barrel which kept him from drowning.
A 1942 tornado stopped a clock on the tower at Crowell at 8:40 PM. A call to the Foard County Courthouse in 2001 confirmed the clock is in a crate in the basement and reads 8:40 PM.
Here’s one for strange coincidences in the little town of Lazbuddie in the Panhandle. In May 1991 five funnels touched down at once. Even more dramatic was four years later where six twisters touched down in Lazbuddie.
Down the road from Lazbuddie in Amarillo, KVII TV Channel 7 and the big Texan Restaurant have teamed up to bring interested Texans “The Texas Tornado Museum.” Newspaper headlines, photographs, twisted barbed wire and a six pack of Cokes with tops popped off by the low air pressure of a 1995 storm in Pampa are some of the exhibits.
Tornado legends have been a part of Texas lore for as long as there have been Texans. To encourage growth the Waco Chamber of Commerce wrote in 1951 about “an old Indian legend” that stated Waco was protected from tornadoes by hills to the west. Two years later the city was burying 114 of its residents from the last single American tornado to take more than 100 lives. The Dallas Daily Herald gave an account of the May 4, 1856 tornado in Cedar Hill which read .. “The strife of the fiends is on the battling clouds. The glare of hell is in the sulfurous lighting. This is no earthly storm.” A little more descriptive than you would hear on THE WEATHER CHANNEL, don’t you think?
Speaking like a true Texan, German immigrant Mr. Markowitz was quoted by THE DALLAS NEWS after a 1894 tornado. “I was coming from supper and ven I got to the sqvare I hear the doggondest roaring I ever see. I stopped and looked arund to see vat the matter was. I see that ting coming. It looked too me like a t’ousand steam engined was a’ puffing fire and smoke. I looked at that ting for a second an then I say ‘Markowitz your time ‘as come.”
As the West was settled, some suspected the laying of rails and plowing of fields somehow contributed to the likelihood of twisters. Change “plowing of fields and laying of rail” to “cutting down rain forests and driving cars” and you see the discussion of man’s influence on climate is nothing new.
Today much is known about the structure of storms through radar, physics and storm chasers like Martin Lisus. “I’ve seen a lot of strange people in and around Texas tornadoes,” he said. Once I drove past a group of people crowded on the Wilbarger County Courthouse steps pointing skyward at a tornadic storm as sirens blared. Police stood by too. Nobody was interested in taking cover.” He even saw people near Tahoka sitting in lawn chairs along the highway watching a June 13, 1992 storm — as Lisus was rushing to escape.
A few people have even gotten closer than even the most devoted chaser would dare and joined the exclusive “we flew in a tornado and lived” club. The massive Rocksprings tornado of 1927 destroyed the home of a 6-year-old girl. She was sucked up, set down and found alive, standing on the side of a road, 3 miles away. Ironically, no major tornadoes have hit in or around Rocksprings before or since. Then in 1947, in the midst of a raging tornado a man in Glazier went to the front door of his home and was immediately pulled out of the house. His friend went to investigate and was likewise yanked from the laws of gravity by the raging wind. The two were let down away from the house, unhurt due to the strong air currents going into the tornado, which eased them down gently. The two crawled back to the house against the wind to find the home destroyed. Among the rubble was a couch, and on it sat the rest of the family unharmed. In the May 3, 1947 tornado in McKinney, Roy Hall actually looked up into the funnel His description sounded like a near death experience (which it kind of actually was, given the fact he was inside a tornado!) with a long tunnel and light at the end. Hall said the interior was lit by a bluish white light, which revealed a smooth tunnel about 200 yards high.
The serenity described by Mr. Hall is in stark contrast to the fierceness Samuel Barricklow discovered. A photo taken by Barricklow after the Jarrell tornado of 1997 shows an engine block in a field with piece of radiator hose and worm gear still attached. The F 5 monster that killed 27 appears to have picked up and completely obliterated the vehicle leaving no other sign of the car. Other pictures of the same tornado as it passed through Cedar Park are just as unforgettable. From less than a football field away a man photographed the Albertson’s Supermarket as the roof was being torn apart. A few minutes later a home video recorded a nearly invisible funnel tearing up roofs and blowing windows out of a home.
The Red River area is prime tornado country and if a wailing tornado siren is music to your ears then head out that wan in May, the month most likely to spawn twisters in Texas. Actually the Houston area records more tornadoes than anywhere else in Texas, partly because there are more people to record them. Not all of Texas is tornado country.
Love the state but phobic of tornadoes? A county by county listing in the Tornado Project Online shows that in Edwards, Kimble, Irion and Sutton and Menard counties between San Angelo and the Mexican border, only 5 tornadoes have touched down since 1950. Not many people live in the area, but a smart Realtor with that information could turn Sonora into the state’s next boomtown. As for major metropolitan areas, El Paso County has had just a handful of twisters in the last fifty years.
Can a tornado pluck the feathers off a chicken with no harm to the bird? This phenomenon is explainable but still weird. We all have mechanisms for dealing with danger. Birds, when attacked by a predator can release there feathers. It doesn’t do much for tornado attacks, but a barnyard carnivore gets a mouth full of feathers rather than poultry.
SOURCES: The Tornado Project Online, ISSAC’S STORM by Erik Larson and TORNADO: TEXAS DEMON IN THE WIND by Dudley Lynch
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Vegetarians in Memphis: They exist in the Pork Barbeque Capitol?
Valenza Pasta: A touch of Italy in Midtown Memphis
Only in Memphis: Interesting spots to visit
Memphis Icons
Only in Memphis
from September, 2007 MEMPHIS DOWNTOWNER
by Devin Greaney and Terre Gorham
Travel writers are asked to avoid the word “unique.” It is toooo cliche. But we’ll break that little rule and find some different, one-of-a-kind — you know, <> — places that make Memphis exclusively Memphis. Yes, we have the Mississippi River. But so do a lot of cities in the Central U.S. We have parks. Ditto for the rest of the country. But some things do come together to make something unique — and uniquely Memphis.
The Ubiquitous GPS: High Tech Tool or Big Brother?
PS
By Devin Greaney. Published in MONITORING TIMES MAGAZINE. August, 2004
Do you know where you are? Do others? Do you want them to know? Twelve thousand miles above earth everyone has access to, or perhaps you could say being watched, by twenty four Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites that orbit the planet sending and receiving signals. A GPS receiver is usually about the size of a fat cellphone and keeps constant communication with the satellites showing an individual’s speed, altitude, route and location. Some can show the closest Walmart and Red Lobster, others have a radio transmitter to pinpoint other GPS users, while others just emphasize location. Recently GPS has become a technology that is integrating itself in many areas of daily life.
THE TREASURE HUNT
Geocaching is a new sport that puts a modern twist on a good old fashioned treasure hunt and GPS is what makes it possible.
Here is how it works. Someone hides a container with items in a location and marks the coordinates in latitude and longitude with a GPS. Items are placed in the container and the hunter can take what he or she wishes but geocahing etiquette says one is expected to put in other items. Several websites have a list of geocaches including one at N 32.46.32 , W 97.49.306. It is the equivalent of X marks the spot. This reporter plugged in the coordinates to this Austin, Texas geocache into a Garmin E-Trek Venture that can be purchased at electronic or outdoors shops for $175.00 to $200.
The starting point is 14.2 miles away from the cache so an arrow on the navigation menu pointed towards the site. The arrow points to the location like a compass needle to magnetic north. First it is up Mopac, then US Highway 183. Turning on Anderson Mill, the indicator pointed down Randy Road and pointed to a dead end. The device read .52 miles away. Leaving the car, the indicator pointed down a trail. A few feet later, the trail ended. Herein lies the difficulty because a location may be 1 mile away, but unless you are a bird, it may require taking three miles of road to get to there. Such was the case here. On some GPS devices a map is built into the display otherwise it helps to have a map on the journey. Drawing arrows on a city map pointed to Trail Head Park. The closer one gets to the park the GPS counts down first by miles, then by fractions of miles and then by feet until the location is reached. And there it was – a rock with more coordinates.
These coordinates led a quarter mile to the east. All this to find a hidden metal case, and no it does not contain gold. Walking towards the site, the GPS pointed suddenly off the trail. There were plenty of places to hide the container. More on that later.
THE HIKER
Campground SE 1 at the Southeast Rim in Big Bend National Park, Texas is a 6.28 mile hike from the trail head and amenities. The nearest city, Presido, Texas, is 68.29 miles away.
With a back pack and an over 1,800 foot altitude gain, anyone completing the trek has left civilization. Trees, mountains and a view that makes the grueling journey worthwhile show a country that has changed little since man first walked in those mountains thousands of years ago.
Despite leaving the twenty first century behind, the visitor still has not left the influence of the information age. The Garmin Legend on this excursion went beyond location to provide information that come in handy for the outdoor adventurer. Sunrise and sunset times for any location and any day help plan the hike. There is even a way to find the best times for fishing based on the times and how they relate to the angle of the sun. Such are questions answered by the technology and device between periods of enjoying the simple beauty of the great outdoors.
HEY, TAXI.!
“There is no way else to do it,” said American Yellow Checker Cab dispatcher Nicole Sage “I can’t imagine dispatching with out it,” she said looking over her screen with color coded arrows and numbers next to them. This weekday afternoon there were one hundred thirteen taxis running the streets of Greater Austin and all were in Sage’s eyesight.
For the last six years, according to radio shop manager Joe Tower, GPS has assisted the dispatch office when a customer calls to ask the status of a cab, assisting them when they need help finding someone or if there is trouble, pinpointing the location. Automatic Vehicle Locating it is called, (AVL) means the dispatcher can find a cab and quickly.
A click of the mouse showed cab 170 was headed south on US Highway 183 near Techni Center. It was color coded pink showing that it was on it’s way to pick up a passenger and the arrows that represented the taxi showed the direction of travel. The TaxiTrack program was taking a snapshot of the fleet’s status every forty five to sixty seconds, but it could be set to update in shorter intervals. The system was added, according to Tower, because “It makes it better for the customer and makes us a better service provider.”
“I love it,” said driver Joe Hickey as he waited at Sixth and Brazos. He remembered some two and a half years earlier when an intoxicated man who was “six (foot) six (inches tall), two hundred fifty pounds and all muscle” he said, became belligerent in his cab. Hickey hit an alarm that told dispatch where he was and within five minutes Hickey had fifteen other cabs showing up “to protect my ass,” he said, followed by the Austin Police Department who removed the passenger.
TEE TIME
Since it opened in May 2001, golfers at Star Ranch in Hutto, TX have had help from outer space.
Golf carts heading up and down the course have a touch screen monitor that provides continuos feedback to and from satellites. Where is the next hole? Where is the center? What is the depth of the green? When did the game start? How much time has elapsed? All can be answered with the Parview system. A similar system can be ordered by subscription and fed into a golfers personal GPS for other courses.
Distance is what determines what kind of club the golfer uses. The device measures in yards the distance from the cart to the hole. Golf pro Victor Villarreal, from Star Ranch says the feature attracts golfers. “They enjoy it and don’t mind paying what they pay to come out and get this instrument,” he said. The United States Golfing Association tournaments does not permit the use of GPS in its tournaments at this time, but individual tournaments often do allow its use, according to Villareal.
Golfers are not the only ones who get information on the course from the system. Back at the clubhouse a terminal shows where the golf carts are located. It alerts the clubhouse if the carts are driving where they are not supposed to be. During our visit two golf carts were driving well off the path looking for their ball. Villarreal said the club house received an alert before he asked them to return to the cart path. If golfers are moving a little too slowly and holding up traffic, the clubhouse sends a message “Please maintain the pace of players with the group in front,” is a polite message that pops up on the screen.
IN FLIGHT
Gary Wilson of Round Rock was in the pilot’s lounge at the Taylor Municipal Airport discussing his traveling companion, a Garmin 295. As a pilot he sees GPS as a great way to get from here to there. Navigation for pilots is especially critical where there are no roads or trails, sometimes only clouds. Distance, speed, altitude and direction mean more when one can not stop to ask directions.
Before GPS, the Loran system used radio frequencies from points across the country to guide the pilot. Traveling from city A to city F required flying towards the radio transmitter for city B, C, D and E first, even though the direct line between the origin and destination could be shorter. Plus, the Loran signal may not be available at certain locations. But a GPS shows a direct line (known to pilots as a vector) from the two airports. It saves fuel and time, weather it is a two seat Cessna flying from one town to the next or a Boeing 747 on the New York to London route.
Currently the navigation is just for the pilot or flight crew. The device does not transmit back to air traffic control. Radios refereed to as transponders transmit location, speed and flight information to air traffic control so the controllers can space the aircraft in a safe manner . Many airports are adding, or have added, a GPS approach to assist pilots not only in finding the airport, but also in landing in poor visibility. Current technology has a much higher price tag and is generally used by major airlines and airports. Navigation with the technology “Is just boneheaded. You can’t get lost. Extremely safe, too,” Wilson said.
A CALL FOR HELP
In 1759 British clock maker John Harrison developed the chronometer which provided a practical way to find longitude that measured distances east and west along with latitude that measured north and south. Longitude and latitude provides the basis for GPS navigation.
John Harrison and his chronometer was probably the furthest thing from the mind of a guest at a hotel on North Walton Walker in Dallas this Monday morning when the guest started having breathing problems. An employee called 911. At Dallas Fire dispatch, the call was taken, logged in by a dispatcher and Mr. Harrison’s scientific breakthrough assisted humanity once again.
The Dallas Fire dispatch system constantly monitors all of its vehicles and what they doing (on a call, at the station, moving, stationary, ect) and the computer assisted dispatch system automatically estimated the travel time of area units and assigned the closest ones. In this case it was engine 30 and rescue 35.
In the world of public safety, it is important to keep an eye on the fleet. On the big screens in the Dallas City Hall, fire dispatchers can look get a quick overview of the fire stations and the smaller screens show the units color coded. When the firefighters are called, the image changes. The dots turn into an icon of a fire truck (the type that would have been running Dallas streets in the 1930’s) on the road, the screen blinks about every fifteen seconds and the little fire tuck moves a bit further down the road to the patient’s location.
It is somewhat entertaining to watch. Dallas Police also are also equipped with GPS. Captain David Kinney, Captain of fire dispatch, remembered a traffic accident at a clover-leaf intersection. Fire units found the wreck so they were able to direct police to the exact location. Lieutenant John Kincaid, acting Section Chief in charge of communications, remembered a large fire at an old mansion with several responders. The commander on the scene could call dispatch find the location of the different engines. Another time someone stole an ambulance. There was no hiding from the authorities.
The dispatcher now is there to “baby-sit the system to be sure it is operating correctly,” Kincaid said. “We have to deal with the exceptions,” he said. In case of a system failure “we have to fall back on a certain manual level of dispatch,” Kincaid added. As older dispatchers who remembered the pre automated days leave, newer ones are there to take their place. “As dispatchers leave, experience goes with them. You can train them but you can’t give them experience,” according to Kincaid.
CHASING THE WIND
Those who travel as part of their jobs find the GPS an asset finding addresses, places to eat and lodging. The Garmin Streetpilot is one that along with the MapSource software has maps down to the street level and points of interest designed for someone in unfamiliar territory. A bit larger, more expensive (retails about $1000) and more detailed than some of the others, this is designed for the car or in some cases the boat. But for Jeff Draper of Cedar Park, his traveling needs are bit different.
Draper is the founder and team leader of Texas Severe Storms Intercept, a group of storm chasers who no longer need to drive through Tornado Alley while trying to interpret the map book spread across their laps.
Draper founded the group in 1993 and had a GPS as one of his chase partners since about 2000. “It’s helpful when we get off the beaten path where we are not familiar,” he said. This is something almost everyone can relate to at one time or another, but with a tornado thrown into the equation, GPS seems almost a necessity for any chase vehicle for safety as well as convenience. “The biggest thing is to pick your escape route. If it (the tornado) gets too close, you have your way out,” he said.
THE DARK SIDE
So GPS can give someone his or her location in all areas be they in Midtown Manhattan or Antarctica . It can help find hidden objects. The technology can follow someone at work or at play on the ground, on the water or in the air and give access to government agencies. Is its versatility also a danger?
Imagine a science fiction movie set in the future with a warm, fuzzy advertisement showing a cute, smiling child wearing a tracking device while mom has a bigger smile knowing her daughter is safe and secure in case a kidnaper decides to prey on her. .
Or instead of imagining, just look at http://www.digitalangel.com, from Applied Digital Solutions. World Net Daily reported in May of 2003 the company announced they had successfully tested an implantable GPS device for humans. Is it a life saving device to watch children who may get lost or an elderly relative who may become suddenly ill? Or is it a high tech version of the number tattoo used by the Nazis to track concentration camp inmates?
John Schwartz of THE NEW YORK TIMES in the December 29, 2003 issue listed several incidents of the use of GPS that may make privacy advocates feel a bit uncomfortable. Federal Authorities demanded a company attach a wiretap to a car GPS transmitter already installed in a vehicle, but the courts refused to issue the warrant. A man in Wisconsin was arrested after installing a GPS transmitter in his ex-girlfriends car to stalk her. A rental car company fined a customer $150 for speeding, thanks to information provided to the company by a GPS device. Progressive Insurance has tested the use of GPS in cars to monitor usage and adjust car insurance rates based on the data. In February, 2004, the judge in the Laci Peterson murder trail in California permitted records from the GPS system in her husband’s SUV to be used by the prosecution.
In a free society with or without GPS there is always a balancing act between protection and freedom. Everyone wants a police officer in the area if they are followed in a dark parking lot by a suspicious character. But even the most careful and honest driver with no warrants or criminal record becomes nervous seeing a police car directly in the rear view mirror. Even a police officer from a large city expressed reluctance to this reporter about having GPS installed in her patrol car. She said her city was considering GPS and had tried it in a few vehicles. She said it would be the same as having a supervisor riding with her at all times.
There is something to be said besides “paranoid” about those who think such data gathering will become commonplace. Early Social Security cards had printed on the front that the social security number was to be used for Social Security information only. That line is long gone from the card but today it could say something like “For applying for a credit card, loan, cell phone, bank account, job, college class, driver’s license, making an investment, claiming a deduction on federal income tax and social security purposes only.” Will GPS data be so used in the future?
But GPS is not the end all of privacy. GPS devices can not do everything. In places out of the range of satellites such as tunnels or buildings the devices do not transmit. Much of the use of GPS is voluntary and the public will have to decide at this point how much security and privacy it wants.
Back to that geocache…. After walking in the dark with a flashlight over boulders, through junipers and live oak trees, down into ferns, vines and a creek, there was not a sign of the box anywhere. It will stay hidden for now.
Transportation and Memphis
ransportation: Getting Here, There, and Beyond
by Devin Greaney From MEMPHIS DOWNTOWNER, August, 2007.
Those of us working at the FedEx hub the week before Christmas 1989 remember it being especially brutal. An intense cold front hit the morning of December 15, and for all but one hour, the temperature stayed below freezing until Christmas Day. With temperatures dropping to minus 4 and high winds, wind chills were in the negative 30s. Nature added ice on the streets and tarmac to the equation.
The merger the previous August with Tiger International meant more freight than planes to carry it. Night employees also worked in the day, and day employees also worked at night to manage the record volume. On Friday night, a computer malfunction kept most packages from being sorted, meaning the peak season of ’89 would last yet another day.
MEMPHIS INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
Saturday afternoon, hundreds of employees — most of us unscheduled — helped sort the hundreds of thousands of packages so they could get under trees and into stockings by Christmas Eve. It seemed everything that would fly or drive — from vans to jumbo jets — found its way into Memphis, was loaded, then headed off for a rare Sunday delivery day.
But there was little whining as we loaded flight 652, the Boeing 727 to Salt Lake City and Boise. The prevailing attitude was, “Santa is depending on us!”
What we were not thinking about was that we were part of a tradition in the city dating back to when Memphians were the ones the nation relied on to get whatever was needed from here to there.
Memphis, like most early cities, was founded on a river. Canoes were the first form of transportation, but as Memphis became Memphis, flatboats headed down river from ports north. Shipping became more sophisticated as the city grew, and in no time, we became a major port city where cotton was the largest source of activity down at the cobblestones.
An old path was used for foot and horse traffic, and when rail came to Memphis in 1852, part of the path was used for rail as well. It seemed to make sense at the time, but today’s Memphians curse the decision as they sit in traffic on that old path — now known as Poplar Avenue — waiting for the train to finish crossing Perkins.
By the Civil War, transportation and Memphis were defiantly linked. The city now had rails heading east, northeast, south, and west. The Union Navy clashed with the Confederate Navy, sending all but one of the South’s defending fleet to the bottom of the Mississippi and Memphis into Federal hands. Forts sprang up along the Memphis Charleston (now Southern) Railroad to protect this vital resource, according to West Tennessee Historical Society Papers (1987).
The war ended, but not Memphis’s place as a transportation center. Cotton harvests every year came in and out of Memphis — still today the largest spot cotton market in the world — as did horses, mules, and passengers. The Lee Line of riverboats was based out of Memphis, and the Lee home is still there in Victorian Village with a tall tower so Captain James Lee could see the river and catch a glimpse of his fleet.
Rail was becoming as much a part of Memphis as riverboats. Rails from the Mississippi Delta brought in timber from the rich forests, making Memphis the hardwood capital of America.
At the Poplar Street Station in 1900, conductor Jonathan Luther “Casey” Jones left on his fateful journey to become a legend of story and song, sacrificing his life to save his passengers. In 1912 and 1914, Union Station and Central Station were built about a block away from each other, creating the first boon in the South Main historic district.
Perhaps the first distribution center in Memphis opened with great fanfare in August 1927. Sears began much like today’s amazon.com — mostly mail order with very few retail outlets. But Memphis received one of only nine Sears distribution centers in the country — as well as 1,000 jobs. And when Sears president Gen. R. E. Wood talked about Memphis’s “distributing center” in a 1930 newspaper article, was he foretelling the city’s future as America’s Distribution Center?
World War II brought us the Memphis Defense Depot on Airways, a center for military supplies. Millington was also to change Memphis in those years. Park Field was an army flight training center in World War I when the military was just discovering aviation. By World War II, Park Field had been transferred to the Navy and was on its way to becoming the largest inland naval base in the world.
But it was a Marine who made Memphis a true transportation center — first of the U.S., then of the world.
Frederick Wallace Smith’s idea for an overnight package distribution service came from his days as an undergraduate at Yale. Today, it is a $35 billion global transportation, business services, and logistics company that handles more than 6.5 million shipments each business day and is directly responsible for the growth — even the existence — of many industries in Memphis.
Sears, the U.S. Military, and FedEx realized an important attribute Memphis has beyond rail, river, and road: geography. Memphis is within a day’s drive of Atlanta, St. Louis, Chicago, Houston, and Dallas. We are far enough south to — for the most part — keep our transportation underpinnings out of winter’s way.
In December 1981, the city began advertising itself with a new catch phrase: Memphis: America’s Distribution Center. The hope was that every time a CEO spoke the words “new distribution center,” Memphis would immediately come to mind. Now, medical supplies, shoes, cell phones, chemicals, agricultural products, and more move through the city.
And passengers, too, are important shipments in and out of Memphis. In 1949, Atlanta-based Southern Airways made its first-ever flight — destination Memphis. Southern merged and became Republic Airways in 1979, and Republic began adding flights out of Memphis.
In April 1983 we became a hub city with 82 departures per day. Republic was bought by Northwest, and now 223 flights per day are typical out of Memphis International. A two-mile-long runway means a jumbo jet can fill up, have enough distance to take off, and literally make it to China without having to stop on the way.
It’s 3:09 am. Do you know where your
packages are?
Today, Memphis is home to the largest cargo airport in the world. We have the third largest rail center in the nation, thanks to a recent expansion by CN railroad. Our river makes us the fourth largest inland port, something that may be forgotten in the days of air and interstates. Indeed, history shows that when it comes to Memphis and transportation, we give it wings.
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