Downtown pioneer P Smith is leaving town

When Davy Crockett left home after he lost his congressional seat to a one-legged crony of Andrew Jackson, he told his former friends and neighbors, “You go to hell. I’m going to Texas.” He was pretty bitter, and we know how that turned out.

Soon, downtown pioneer P Smith and her dog, Petey, will be headed for Texas, too, but not because she’s mad at anybody or looking for new battles to fight. One of the first of the new wave of downtown residents, she simply figures it’s time to turn the page. That belief was confirmed when she got a better-than-asking price, cash, no appraisal, offer for the Gay Street condo she’s called home since 1993.

P Smith and Petey (who has her own recliner)

She says the demands of downtown life are getting harder to meet. She’s tired, for example, of having to walk up the hill to the parking garage when she wants to go to the grocery store; tired of looking for a parking spot near enough to her front door to unload her groceries when she gets back (not to mention the worry of getting a parking ticket before she can return her car to the parking garage, which she pays a monthly fee to use). She loves her hometown, but it was hard to leave the Biloxi beach to come back to the condo this last time.

“I’m 82 years old now, and you reach a point, as life changes, you just need to change with it.”

The change will be substantial. The RV she and Petey have been traveling in is awaiting them in the Cajun RV Park, which they discovered when they were traveling from Texas to Florida and stopped for an overnight break on a beachfront in Biloxi, Mississippi. They made a lot of friends (something they’re exceptionally good at) and spent most of the fall and winter there. P has put down a deposit to repeat the experience next fall and plans to return after the summer people vacate. Meanwhile, she’s shipping whatever furniture she wants to keep to her son Solon’s house outside Houston, which will be her new, formal address. Then she and Petey will go wherever they take a notion to be. Her younger son Adam lives in the Houston area, too.

She’ll come back to Knoxville to visit. Why wouldn’t she? She’s made a lot of history here and has countless friends.

Smith – whose nickname, Patti, got shortened to a single initial after she opened her Tyson Street sign company, P Smith Signs and Displays – grew up in East Knox County and attended Carter elementary and high schools under the watchful eye of her mother, legendary restauranteur Helma Gilreath. P finished college, got married, had two sons, got divorced, taught school, became a certified track and field official, bought a farm, raised cattle and published a monthly community newspaper with the help of the late Loy Smith, who handed the County Chronicle over to her free of charge on the condition that she run “that other son of a bitch” out of business. She expanded the Chronicle’s reach, got a few scoops (quite a feat for a monthly publication) and had a real good time.

She eventually sold the farm and used the proceeds to buy the condo at 120 South Gay Street. Over the years that she’s lived there, the place has been an unofficial campaign headquarters for the late Danny Mayfield’s historic city council campaign, the home of the annual Blessing of the Pansies and a hub of untold other downtown social and political activities.

She bought into downtown living long before downtown addresses became trendy, even though the building she moved into was in rough shape. The first couple of floors of all the 100 block buildings are underground due to the street being “raised” a century ago, and P had to walk a wide plank over a deep cavern to get from the street to her front door.

“When I bought it in ’93, there was nothing here but rusted conduit and rotted boards. The floor looked like rotted concrete, it had so much dirt on it,” she said. “I had to build it out. There was broken glass, boarded-up buildings and drunks everywhere. People used to say, ‘Gollee, P, aren’t you afraid?’

“I’d tell them that I don’t hear half as good as I used to and don’t see half as well as I used to, so I guess I’m about half as scared as I ought to be. I knew I was going to live in the middle of the country or the middle of the city. I’d lived in the country pretty much all my life, so I decided to try the city out.”

She does remember the first time she was afraid.

“I was reading and all of a sudden had this absolute shot-through feeling of terror. Cognitively I understood – I was all locked in and nothing could get to me, but I knew there was something bad in the building. I was terror struck.

“Another time, somebody knocked on my door. It was a skinny little guy in a green T-shirt. I asked if I could help him. He put his hands together (as if praying) and bowed and looked at me. … I knew there was a big butcher knife laying at the end of the counter a few steps away, and I told him ‘I can’t help you,’ closed the door and locked it. Later, when I checked, nobody in the building had guests that night and nobody knew him or had any explanation for who he was. …”

Officer P, downtown Pooper Trooper

But most of her memories are good ones – the battles she fought and the friends she made. One of her earliest and most publicized campaigns was the anti-dog poop crusade that got her dubbed a “Pooper Trooper” by Channel 10 TV news anchor Robin Wilhoit.

As new neighbors moved in, P and her friend and neighbor Jo Mason grew increasingly aggravated by people who didn’t clean up behind their dogs. Their frustration drove P and Jo to head up a movement to force urban dog owners to be responsible for what their pets deposited on the city’s streets, sidewalks and grassy patches. They flagged the droppings of flagrant offenders and pressured the city to pass an ordinance requiring dog-walkers to pick up their crap rather than leaving it for their neighbors to step in.

In the end, they got their ordinance, but to P’s knowledge only one offender – a judge’s wife who reacted with an indignant “Do you know who I am” demand – has been issued a ticket (P consoles herself with the knowledge that a trolley full of tourists saw and applauded the exchange between the rookie cop and the dog owner).

It’s hard to know how to finish this still-unfolding tale, other than to tell a personal story about the time P and I went to Kansas City to watch the Lady Vols win the 1998 Final Four. I was writing stories for Metro Pulse, but P was doing as she pleased – which meant she was running wide open, making friends and living dangerously, as was her way. She found out about a riverboat gambling establishment across town and hired a cabdriver to take her there and bring her back to the hotel. I went to bed and was dead asleep when she burst through the door in the wee hours of the morning, turned on the light and started throwing wads of cash in the air.

She told me her friend the cab driver was going take her back again the next night and invited me to come along. I pulled the covers over my head and wondered if this crazy woman ever slept.

I still don’t know the answer to that question, and I expect that life won’t be anywhere near as interesting when she hits the road.

Betty Bean writes a Thursday opinion column for KnoxTNToday.com.