{"id":6987,"date":"2014-05-23T00:00:08","date_gmt":"2014-05-23T04:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gadflyonline.com\/home\/?p=6987"},"modified":"2014-06-11T14:10:49","modified_gmt":"2014-06-11T18:10:49","slug":"meth-free-tennessee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/meth-free-tennessee\/","title":{"rendered":"Meth Free Tennessee"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Meth_585x585\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I love you more in Meth Free Tennessee<\/p>\n

as the night fell rough on the loping hills,<\/p>\n

rough as the hands of a mother<\/p>\n

who is always stuck with the dishes.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Her name, I recall, was Rose<\/p>\n

and the look in her eyes said I\u2019m tired,<\/p>\n

of the kids, and the heat, and the rain<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

They had too much<\/p>\n

of all of those<\/p>\n

in Meth Free Tennessee,<\/p>\n

in Knoxville on Green Street<\/p>\n

where most of the houses were blighted.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

If sorrow was sheetrock,<\/p>\n

this town would look like Rome,<\/p>\n

but instead the houses slumped<\/p>\n

like hopeless gargoyles drunk<\/p>\n

in the afternoon humidity.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sorrow is a lonely servant<\/p>\n

this I know that every mother knows,<\/p>\n

but Rose is a different story, Rose<\/p>\n

was thrown from the top of the stairs<\/p>\n

by the boy<\/p>\n

she didn\u2019t raise to be one of the monsters.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She couldn\u2019t afford to pay<\/p>\n

the bail money or the treatment fees<\/p>\n

only the pain of the pews on her knees<\/p>\n

each Sunday as she pleaded with God.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Nothing had been free in Meth Free Tennessee,<\/p>\n

Not for the past ten years,<\/p>\n

not the call collect she got<\/p>\n

each second Thursday of the month,<\/p>\n

and certainly not when the time came,<\/p>\n

as all the neighbors said it would,<\/p>\n

the funeral bills.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love you more in Meth Free Tennessee<\/p>\n

as the night fell rough on the loping hills,<\/p>\n

rough as the hands of a mother<\/p>\n

who is always stuck with the dishes.<\/p>\n

Her name, I recall, was Rose<\/p>\n

and the look in her eyes said I\u2019m tired…<\/p>\n

READ MORE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":197,"featured_media":7133,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,219,199,217],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6987"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/197"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6987"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6987\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7137,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6987\/revisions\/7137"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6987"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6987"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/gadflyonline.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6987"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}