Since February is the month when we are reminded about love, I thought it would be appropriate to discuss love and how love had shaped me over the years (and possibly how it has shaped you over the years) here in Murfreesboro. We can go back in time and experience the things that made you feel good, the things I loved and love to do growing up.

According to the dictionary definition, love is an intense feeling of deep affection or a great interest and pleasure in something (for example, a love for football).

We also have biblical definitions like the one that comes from Corinthians 13: “For love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, does not boast, it is not proud.” And there’s the passage from Mark 12:31: “Love your neighbor as yourself. There’s no other commandment greater than these.”

Then on a secular note there are many quotes about love that I find intriguing, for example:

“What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us.”
— Helen Keller

“Love takes off the mask we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within.”
— James Baldwin

“Love isn’t something you find. Love is something that finds you.” — Loretta Young

You may have some favorite quotes of your own. We all have our own experiences with love.

I know many of you remember your first love, or maybe, like me, you seem to forget. I can remember in my youth going to Campus School. I love my classmates who today are still some of my closest friends. I love my teachers. I love my experiences on all of the field trips we would take, for example to the children’s theater in Nashville. (However I did not like the characters that came out into the audience; I thought that was a little over the top as a third- or fourth-grader.) I also loved going with my class to Huntsville, Alabama, to the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

We all knew we were getting close when we saw that rocket near the Interstate, which unfortunately may be taken down soon. I love the G-force machine where we all stood up on what looked like a carnival ride. This is probably fifth or sixth grade and I thought you sat down on most carnival rides. This G-force machine ride spun around and around and gave us the experience of what it felt like going off into space. The ride came to a complete halt when someone threw up their breakfast, including Hi-C, all over some of the students. Luckily, I was not infringed upon.

One other thing I loved to do growing up was getting to go to LBL—Land Between the Lakes, near Dover, Tennessee—my first experience of camping and being with all my friends.

I don’t remember this, but I’ve been told I wanted to call home for my mom to come get me. Ha ha. Reportedly, there’s always one in the group that does this at LBL. Going to LBL was like a rite of passage that meant I could do things on my own. I remember getting to canoe with Mr. Alsbrooks, our gym teacher, and one of the chaperones.

I began my love of history while at Campus School. In the early ’70s man had just landed on the moon a few years prior, and I vaguely remember Neil Armstrong walking on the moon on TV in 1969. I remember going outside one night, looking up at the moon and thinking how cool it is that somebody walked on the moon. (By the way, “Walking on the Moon” would later become a hit by my favorite group, The Police.) With all this adventure taking place around the world I began to love the explorers in history.

Well, in Ms. Moser’s fifth-grade class the students got to pick an explorer to dress up like and be for the day. I chose Hernando de Soto.

Really it was because he founded Memphis and explored the Mississippi River, and I was a huge Elvis fan, having just seen Elvis in concert at Murphy Center.

So, back to the story, I let my mother know I needed help in preparing to be Hernando de Soto. So, on a Sunday night I had her use mascara to draw me a mustache and a little goatee. She also made me a really cool conquistador helmet like the ones you saw in the movies. The front, back and sides of the helmet flipped up, and she had covered it with aluminum foil to give it a shiny look. I also had my great-grandmother’s black cape tied around my neck to complete the costume. Nanny had worn it in the late 1800s.

So Monday comes and I’m so excited I could barely sleep the night before. As Mother dropped me and David, my little brother, off at school I was in full regalia. I had some cool boots, pants, a shirt, mustache, goatee and conquistador helmet, and I am ready to close the deal as Hernando de Soto. I knew this was going to be cool, and naturally all the little girls were going to be thinking the same thing. I opened up Ms. Moser’s classroom door—in the basement of Campus School on the left as soon as you walked in from the Lytle Street entrance—and I made my grand entrance.

As soon as I started to walk into class, the teacher, along with the other 26 students, looked at me. Ms. Moser looked at me and said “Bill, what are you doing?” and I said “Ms. Moser, I’m Hernando de Soto who founded Memphis and the Mississippi River.” She looked me dead in the eye with her still blue eyes and said “Bill you were supposed to dress up like him next Tuesday.” You could hear a pin drop followed by a few laughs coming from my classmates. My heart stopped for a few seconds, but for the whole day I was Hernando de Soto. I had done my part, it just so happened it was the wrong day. To this day I have friends who call me Hernando.

Another thing I loved was going on a trip to New England while in the seventh grade at Central Middle School. I remember there being two or three bus loads full of seventh graders from Central. The year was 1979 and I got to experience my first Broadway play, Sweeney Todd, and got to see the final four of the NIT basketball tournament at Madison Square Garden. My favorite part of the trip was getting to go see the World Trade Center in New York City.

I remember the elevator being huge and it took a couple minutes for us to make our way up to the 110th floor at the top. I remember looking down at the taxicabs and they were like little yellow dots. We had lunch at the Windows on the World, which was on the 106th floor of the north tower.

We also got to go see Mount Vernon, George Washington’s home; Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home; the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, the Capitol in D.C., and we got to see where the Boston Tea Party took place and where Paul Revere hung out in Boston.

A lot of my love of history came from that trip. It was a lot for a 13-year-old kid to take in. One of the things I remember most, though, is that we stayed at the Piccadilly Hotel in New York City and some of the Ohio State cheerleaders stayed there as well, so as a 13-year-old getting to meet these hot chicks, that was pretty cool, too.

In 1980 I started high school at Riverdale here in Murfreesboro. Some of the things I loved to do were going to the party tree on Sulphur Springs Road and Elam’s Mansion off of Elam Road.

My high school fraternity, Phi Sigma Chi, would have kangaroo court inside the old pre-Civil War home that had been abandoned for years. I remember one weekend night going out to the house with a group, and as we went inside the house we heard “mooooooo.” There were cows inside.

Besides Elam’s Mill Mansion, as far as the places we loved to go gather with friends and park with our dates, was Tiger Hill, which is behind the Walmart on County Farm Road. There was a lookout tower on top of Tiger Hill that some people would climb up to get a better view of everything. You could see downtown Murfreesboro with all the lights. We also used to go hang out at the Bill Wilson Bridge on Betty Ford Road near Lascassas.

I remember we would park our cars on the side of the road and we would cautiously walk down under the bridge. Someone would start a campfire, which we thought was cool, and it would keep us warm as well. You knew a party was going on from all the smoke that bellowed out from under the bridge. It’s a wonder we didn’t burn the bridge down.

One last place we loved to go was on the land owned by Sarah Huey King at the corner of Greenland Drive and South Rutherford Boulevard. That home was a huge white home with a red roof. There was a gravel road that ran next to her property that had pine trees going up and down the side of the driveway, and there was a little cabin in the back. Today this area is called Kingdom Square and Scotland Chase. Along with Family Billiards and the car wash, these were a few of the places we loved to hang out.

Also in high school we loved to go to dances, either at one of the high schools, the country club, or at the Ag Center, where Adams Tennis Complex is today, off Old Fort Parkway. It was always less awkward to me when I had a date because if I had gone stag I felt like such a spaz. By the way, did I mention my nickname was “Spaz” in high school? Paul Arnette coined Spaz for me from the Bill Murray movie Meatballs. I always thought it was the way I acted with lots of energy.

Paul also gave John “Jughead” Jones his nickname along with one of my Italian friends John “Gonzo” Garavelli because of the resemblance of his nose to Gonzo the Muppet’s nose. (Gonzo had family in the mafia.)

These are just a few things I loved about growing up here in Murfreesboro in the ’70s and ’80s when Murfreesboro had maybe 30,000 residents. I hope y’all have a wonderful Valentine’s Day. Go out and do something nice for somebody.

And if no one has told you they love you, I do.