My friend David Hemphill died earlier this week. For years, David worked as part of the crew that traveled with Alabama.
I first met him three decades ago at Cumberland Youth Foundation, where I spent every day of summer and where he was a lifeguard. My job was to try to get away with stuff, and his job was to catch me and come up with wicked ways to punish me and the other kids who broke the rules.
One of his favorites was to make us get in a push-up position on the concrete deck around the pool and hold it for five or 10 minutes. It always seemed pretty simple and inane to a bunch of 10-year-olds. David knew the push-up part was simple; it was the sun that would get us. That concrete was hot, and once the water from the pool had dried off us, he would belly-laugh watching us hop around on all fours trying to keep two appendages off the concrete-turned-frying pan.
A few years ago, while sitting around a turkey fryer with friends, David uttered one of my favorite lines of all time when a buddy asked to bum a cigarette.
“Why, did you leave yours in the machine again?” he said.
In recent years, David painted houses and called his business Hoss Caulkright. He once painted my parents’ three-story house on a hill, and as he and my father stood contemplating the best way to paint the highest part of the house, which naturally was on the side with the steepest slope, David said, “I know what to do. Sell it.”
“I lived with David for seven years when we worked with Alabama,” said Joe “Dixie” Fuller. “We had a lot of laughs, and it hurts my heart to know he’s gone.”
That’s how I feel.
* It was worth noting during the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera’s tribute to Hollywood last week that two of the selections had direct local connections. George S. Clinton, of course, composed and conducted the “Shagadelic Suite” from the Austin Powers soundtracks.
Also, “The Theme From Memoirs of a Geisha” was from the movie that was based on Arthur Golden’s best-selling book. Clinton and Golden are from here. Both pieces are internationally known works.
I have to confess to being surprised at the age of the audience for this show. I expected it to be younger. Much, much, much younger.
* Local author Shane Berryhill has signed with Kickstart Productions Inc. to develop the first and second books in his Adventures of Chance Fortune series, “Chance Fortune and the Outlaws” and “Chance Fortune in the Shadow Zone” for the movies, according to a news release. Berryhill has been contracted to write the screenplay.
Chance Fortune is a normal boy in most respects who manages to find his way into an academy for superheroes using a false identity, his wits and a strong will.
* Last week, the folks at Riverbend erroneously announced that Rodney Atkins would open for Little Big Town. It's the other way around.
Barry Courter is associate features editor, entertainment editor and books editor for the Times Free Press. He started his journalism career at the Chattanooga News-Free Press in 1987. He covers primarily entertainment and events for fyiWeekend and edits the Sunday books page. Born in Lafayette, Ind., Barry has lived in Chattanooga since 1968. He graduated from Notre Dame High School and the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with a degree in broadcast journalism. He previously ...
