ktron | count on cookeville...

angie was telling me about this last night... last friday, someone found a woman's burning body in a field near baxter. turns out it was a physicist from oak ridge; her son's being charged. (the news story indicates he's probably a fellow TTU grad... wonder if this'll make the year's alumni newsletter...) sad, yet i can't help thinking...

really, cookeville's a very nice, very safe little college town in tennessee. i never heard of much run-of-the-mill murder or violence, rarely even a mugging.

but if it's bizarre and/or grisly, it could happen there... politicians killing their opponents, drug-crazed kids knocking off an old woman to steal a one-dollar bill, a husband slaying his wife, himself, and their child in her divorce lawyer's office... even the story about the dog getting killed when cops mistakenly chased down its owner's car had a cookeville connection...

i always used to walk home at night, safe in the knowledge that the sorts of criminals who prey on single women walking through poorly lit parking lots just wouldn't fit in.

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There was a large article about the guy in the Knoxville News Sentinel today. It was on the front page. The dude was beyond crazy.

cookeville isn't quite the cozy little crime free college town it appears to be. you see a lot of seedy underbelly working at waffle house. the drug culture here is huge, and the crime rate is either rising or i just hear a lot more news about it than i used to. a few months ago a man that lives down the street from us on woodland was robbed at gunpoint in the middle of the night. then there was that kid that was shot and killed last year. a lady i worked with died the other night, probably in her sleep, from a drug overdose of some kind (probably). two brothers at a house on dixie got in an argument a few weeks ago and one pulled a gun and was beating his brother with it - the fight was over something like trying to beat their mother with a frying pan or something. that's not even counting the dog shooting or anything tech related, like campus rape or the fires in the dorms a few years back. or the murders in montery a while back. or the body that some guy found hacked to bits and left near some hiking trail around here - that was some time ago, but no one really seems to have heard about it. things feel like they have definitely changed in cookeville in the years since i've been here. or like i said, maybe i'm just more aware of these things now. but i definitely feel squeamish leaving the house unlocked, even for a few minutes, or leaving my car in the drive and unlocked. i didn't feel that was about this town a few years ago.it's hard to think that the big bad of the outside world is creeping in here, but it is. and there's no denying it. not with the story of some crazy schizo guy on the front page of the paper - a short reprieve from meth labs being the leading story.

yeah, i suppose using the oracle as the primary local news source does tend to lead to a false sense of security... unless it's really creepy, nobody on campus really bothers to mention it. well-said.

actually, its always been there. Jared can tell me stories about people who've been shot and killed there or people who've been busted for drugs. Even my car got broken into when we lived in Cookeville, and our apartment too. So, its always been like that, just... you're finally seeing it ;)

Niquie

count on cookeville...

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