The first beef of 2006

In looking back at 2006, this morning’s post will look back at number 75 on the countdown of the 100 events, things, sayings, trends, and people who made 2006 a year to remember.

For those that don’t know, I work as a volunteer on the weekends through the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center and the local chapter of Food Not Bombs, which is something that I have done for the last two years.

And on Saturday afternoons, we all head down to Court Square (before that it was Confederate Park) to serve the hundreds of homeless people in the Downtown area.

But at the beginning of the year, there was one disgruntled Downtown resident who went by the name of Paul that lived in one of the buildings that overlooked Court Square and criticized our group through a formal complaint by the Shelby County Department.

In so many words, it seemed as though as he didn’t want a bunch of twentysomethings to serve food in order to give the homeless people something in their stomach in his Downtown.

Which sounded to me as a large pile of hogwash and baloney because if the city could focus more on helping cure the city’s ills (especially when it comes to the homeless) instead of beautifying the Downtown area and bringing tourists to the city, then there would be no room for anybody to criticize the way that our group helped the homeless.

For the first three weeks of the year, there were numerous hearings, inspections by the Health Department, and angry emails from everyone in the FNB Memphis group on Yahoo.

As the year went on, not much was heard from that guy who made the complaint, who I believe went on to bigger and better things and into the night.

A boy and his hat

In continuing with the top 100 events of the year, the blog will look back at number 90, which is a tale of a boy and his University of Memphis hat.

Listen my children and ye shall hear a tale.

A tale of a boy and his dingy University of Memphis hat, a hat that has been part of his head since the first Clinton adminstration.

And how his own ways will not let him depart from his beloved hat.

This is the story of Dr. Adam Hite, who happens to be a pastor at a Myspace church that I run (no, we’re not playing God at all, which a disclaimer for those Holy Rollers that misunderstand what the purpose of the Myspace church is).

During the beginning part of the year, Dr. Hite and his hat were just like peas and carrots (borrowing a page from Forrest Gump), and if you look through some of the pictures that this guy’s been in (a few of them that I took), you will see a Linus-like attachment with him and his hat.

One time during the summer, his attachment proved almost fatal.

During a trip to Little Rock with his then-band, While I Breathe, I Hope, he ended up losing his hat and almost his life, according to his bullentin post on Myspace a few days later.

When I found out about his near-death experience, I sent him a note about what he thought of the pearly gates when he almost died trying to save his beloved hat.

The last time that I saw Dr. Hite, it was a couple of weeks before I left for Nashville on October 21st when he came to serve with us in Downtown Memphis.

And probably for the first time in the short time that I have known him, he didn’t have the raggedy hat on his head.

I’m sure when he gets married, instead of burying the hat and taking a giant plunge into the married life, he’s going to probably preserve that hat for his children as a family heirloom.

That’s a thought.