It was nearly three years ago when Patti Smith (“P” to everyone who ever met her) said one last farewell to the condo on the 100 block of Gay Street where she’d lived for twenty seven-years. Her send-off was, in vintage P fashion, not your ordinary send-off. There was a sermon (of sorts), flowers (her famous Pansies), lots of friends, and stories. Always with the stories.
Stories and adventures have defined P’s life, from her early years growing up in Strawberry Plains to her twenty-seven years on Gay Street. To bump into P on the street during her years downtown was to hear a story. Followed by a story. And another one. Pretty soon drinks and stories flowed and intermingled, one funny tale or surprising twist to her life following another.
It’s impossible to encapsulate P’s 84 years in an article, let alone a paragraph or two. She was born at home in Strawberry Plains in 1940. She earned a BS from UT in 1963 and her M.S. in 1976. She taught in public schools and at the community college level. She operated a farm on her own while wrangling twenty-five head of cattle, along with two boys and two dogs. She traveled to all fifty states and to three other continents, including a stint on a cultural foray into Russia. She owned a small business, which operated in the Old City in 1983. Sounds impressive. It’s hardly a fraction of the story.
It’s the odd adventures that mark P. It’s buying a travel trailer and hitting the road for adventure — in her eighties. It’s driving for Uber to meet interesting people — in her eighties. It’s presiding over the Blessing of the Pansies, a non-denominational, non-sectarian, mishmash of ceremony and hilarity. It’s her work as a USATF Masters Track and Field official. It’s her stories of busting a judge’s wife for not picking up her dog’s poop, re-painting downtown road stripes to meet her standards, yelling at hoodlums on the street as they tore down an awning on the 100 block in the 1990s. She made noise downtown when it needed to be made.
And now, you can read it all in her new book.
In a typically circuitous answer, when I asked P what prompted her to write a book, she said, “Well, what happened was, COVID hit. I was retired and driving for Uber . . . since I was so old, I thought it might be dangerous for me, so I quit driving for Uber and also I was a Track and Field official and that all got shut down.” Never one to stand still, when a friend suggested she write down her stories, she thought it made sense. She realized that her sons knew very little about certain parts of her life, or of their grandmother’s life.
“I wrote about six stories and then I thought, ‘You old fool. What makes you think anybody wants to read anything you write down? People are just going to make fun of you. So, I quit.” She packed the stories away for about four years until stumbling on them in a box this past April and deciding she needed to get rid of them or finish the book. “Now I was doing it for myself.” She said the memories started to flow. By October the work was complete.
In July she reached out to her old friend Jody Dyer whose Crippled Beagle Publishing has now published the book. “I said ‘I’m writing these stories, and I wanted to find out how to make myself a book.’ And that’s how I started.” P learned as she went, shaping her writing, but leaving it in her own voice. She said she wanted it to read like she talks. She said the hard part wasn’t writing, it was the revision.
Expect to laugh out loud as you navigate the pages. Expect to be surprised by the Knoxville that existed in the not-so-distant past. You’ll find small tales of obscure denizens of the city, as well as tales of well-known people about town. P is beloved of mayors (Madeline Rogero will join her at Earth to Old City on Friday) and has been the bane of politicians. (Think parking tickets.) She’s the package.
P said the act of writing brought up many memories and she hopes it will inspire readers to remember and explore their own past and learn about a past that maybe preceded their own. Of her time downtown, particularly her “neighborhood” on the 100 block, P speaks fondly, even of the bleak years of the 1990s. She was the only resident in her building, and she thinks there was one other couple on the western side of the block. But she loved it.
“Progress is great, but that neighborhood was so wonderful . . . we could live a real peaceable life. We had neighbors, we had friends. Now it’s more big city, with people moving in and out . . . We had such a good group. Now everybody’s moved away.” She said, “People ask me if I miss living downtown and I say, ‘Yeah, I’ll probably always miss it. I was part of Camelot.”
You can meet P and buy a copy of her book at several planned events around downtown. This Friday, December 6, from 3:00 pm to 6:00 pm she’ll be at Earth to Old City. At 7:00 pm she’ll be at Addison’s Bookstore where she will do a brief reading for the Knoxville Writer’s Guild. Saturday morning she’ll be in the Carter Community at Stormer’s Hardware, next to the old Helma’s location from 10:00 – 12:00. (Helma was her mother, and the restaurant was ultimately bought by the Natours who later brought us Pete’s.) She’ll end her day from 2:00 pm to 5:00 pm. She’s come back downtown and be stationed at Mast General Store.
The book should be available soon at Union Avenue Books and perhaps a few other places. For now, you can buy it directly from P (see below) or you can order it online through Amazon.