Kirk Talley
Oct 25, 2005
"Who's Speaking?" the voice on the
phone said. It always kinda irked me when the caller would ask that as soon as I
said "hello." I answered with "well, whom were you calling?" (I made the mistake
once of answering that question with my name only to find out the lady had
called the wrong number and then was so excited that Kirk Talley was on the
phone with her, I couldn't get her off the phone, so I have learned my lesson)
"Well I was calling Kirk Talley, is this him?" I answered with a yes, wondering
all the time, who this lady was and how long this story would take. My plane was
about to leave!
"Do you own a house on Landmark Drive in Morristown?" My heart sank! More
problems. . . . Here it comes. . . . Ruin my day. . . . "Yes, ma'am I do." "Do
you know that the front door has been beaten in and its been open for the last
10 days?" I think I replied with "say that again." "You don't even know what
happened up here, do you?" With a knot in my stomach, I said "no I don't." She
preceded to tell me that she lived across the street from a house that I have
and that the renters of that house had been busted for dealing drugs ten days
ago. She painted the picture as I listened with my mouth hanging open in
disbelief. She explained how the police had staked the place out, and had beaten
the front door down in a raid and hauled my renters and their guests to jail. No
one had bothered to call me and tell me the door was beaten in and open for
every cat, dog, field mice in the neighborhood. But she was nice enough to call
so I assured her that I didn't know anything about what had happened, but I
would get someone to go fix the door temporarily until I got back to Tennessee.
I made a call and got a guy to go close the door and temporarily fix the door so
that animals couldn't get in.
I arrived home on Monday and went directly to Morristown to check it out. When I
opened the front door, the stench hit me. Now let me say that I have a very weak
stomach. So when I opened the door, immediately I started gagging. Evidently the
renters had been cooking when the police raided the house and they had left the
food out in pots and on the counter for over 10 days. Trust me when I say----not
a pretty sight (or smell). From the front porch, I took a deep breath, held my
nose and ran thru the kitchen to the living room and then upstairs and
downstairs to raise windows and try to access the damages. By the time I got
back to the kitchen, I was sick as a dog! I ran out of the house and slammed the
door and gagged as the stench was not attached to my clothes.
Quickly I called a friend of mine who has done some cleaning for me in the past.
She said she would take care of it! Hallelujah. She started the horrible task on
Tuesday morning, honestly I don't know how she did it, but by Tuesday evening,
there were 9 bags of garbage just out of the kitchen!
Tuesday night I decided that if those bags of garbage was sitting on the street
waiting for the garbage man, Dogs would be in them, and then it would be a
bigger mess. So I knew I had to get those bags of garbage off the street. I
called a friend of mine, who's Dad has a pick up truck. He said he would even go
help me get the garbage. (I didn't tell him what all the garbage consisted of.)
We arrived about 9 pm and the garbage was on the front porch instead of the
street. I jumped out and could immediately smell that same horrible odor that I
had smelled the day before. Yes, once again I started gagging. I took a deep
breath and quickly slung two bags up in the back of the truck. Another deep
breath-two more bags.....I made it until the last two bags. As I picked those
two bags up, it hit me. These were the worst two. They were heavy with decayed
food, maggots, a soup like mixture of "repulsive stuff." As I picked the bags
up, I could feel me starting to lose it. I made it as far as the edge of the
porch, then I had to drop them and hurl! I told my friend waiting in the truck,
"You will have to get those two." He jumped out of the truck and slung the last
two bags in the back. By the time he got back to the front of the truck, he two
was gagging and heaving. We quickly pulled out and started down the street. We
kept gagging! We could still smell that stench. Quickly we realized that the big
bag had burst and we had that soup all over us! We were dying! We pulled into
the gas station on the corner and ran into the Men's room to try and wash what
we could off of us. Once we were in the service station in the light, we
realized that we were covered in that stuff! There was no way, we could ride the
34 miles to the trash dumpster. My friend (who wishes to remain anonymous will
refer to him as AF for anonymous Friend) ran back and bought some trash bags.
While he was in the service station, I found two painters masks in the cab of
his dads truck. I quickly put one of those on and handed him one when he jumped
in the cab. He quickly said, "Let's get rid of this stuff " so he started taking
his clothes off and stuffing them in the garbage bag. My sweat pants were
covered in the stuff, so I yanked them off and took my sweatshirt off and
crammed them down in the garbage bag and took off down the four lane highway.
"Whatever you do, don't speed. If you get caught driving in your shorts, hauling
garbage from a drug bust, You will be in the paper again, and it won't be good"
We started to laugh. The more we laughed, the more we gagged and heaved! For 15
minutes we laughed and cried and heaved and gagged. Just as we got into
Jefferson City, I looked up and there was a bus up ahead. OH NO.......it was
Greater Visions bus! Here we are in painters masks, in our boxer shorts hauling
garbage from a drug bust and Greater Vision will be beside us at the next red
light! AF yelled in a panic "whatever you do, don't stop by that bus! Run the
light if you have to but don't stop at the red light!" I just floored it and
went through the yellow light, not having to completely stop beside the Greater
Vision bus. We laughed all the way to the dumpster behind my office. Again as we
unloaded the bags, there was a lot more laughing, gagging, and throwing up. Once
it was all out of the back of the truck, there was a lot of the soupy mess still
in the back so we headed to the car wash on further down the highway. So at
10:30 pm, I was up in the back of this truck in my boxer shorts with a painters
mask around my nose with a water gun in my hand and who passes?????? Greater
Vision! AF and I just lost it! We laughed until we cried. I laughed so hard I
didn't have a voice left! By the time we got back to his house, we were
exhausted. AF's wife met us downstairs with Lysol and Fabreeze. We then had to
clean the inside of the truck up.
Moral of this story? No idea! Perhaps I should have screened the renters better,
perhaps I should have just lit a match to the place. . . perhaps I needed to
laugh. I just wish I could have done it without having to throw up so many
times.
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Don't forget the trip to the Cumberland County Playhouse to see The Sanders
Family Christmas Show on November 26th. Your reservations has to be secured by
November 10th. Call Dot at the office 865 933 2100 to get your name on the list.
Also, this weekend I will be in Martinsville Indiana, and McMinnville,
Tennessee. Check out the details on the website
www.kirktalley.com
Something special coming up. Nov 19th in Eddyville, KY, special guests will be
Allison Speer, so we will be doing "Oh Lamb Of Calvary" that night. Plan on
being with us!
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OK, I got to get out of here. Dot's wanting me to take some garbage out to the
dumpster!
HOLDING MY NOSE,
Kapt Kirk
PS I am amazed so many of the Krew members have yet to get a copy of the new
project "Live at the River - My Story, My Song" Someone sent me this
yesterday....this is what Jeff Steele had to say about it in his newsletter.
"...while we were in Knoxville at the date at David's Abbey Carpet, Kirk
Talley's business manager came up to me and asked, "Are you Jeff?" After
determining that she was not with the IRS I replied I was and she told me that
she had a copy of Kirk's brand new CD and he wanted her to bring me one of them.
I was there the night Kirk recorded the "live" project and was thrilled to
receive one of the early copies of the project. We listened to it on the way
home and even though we were there when it was recorded and KNEW it was going to
be great, it was better than THAT! I remember talking to Kirk when we got home
that week and I told him I was blessed and encouraged by the evening we spent at
the taping and that he had never sounded better and was writing some of the best
material I had ever heard from him. I THOUGHT I had heard all the material that
night but the next day they recorded a few more that I didn't get to hear. One
of them was a duet he did with Allison Speer that was one of the greatest
performances I have ever heard in all the years that I have listened to gospel
music. It put me in mind to those great Sandy Patty duets of the'70s and early
'80s with Larnelle Harris. That song alone is worth the price of the CD or
video. I very seldom recommend projects to others because everybody pretty much
knows what they like to listen to and watch BUT this project is special. I want
to recommend it to everybody. If you need an old fashioned re-baptism of grace
and mercy and restoration along with great music, worship and praise then you
need this project for your library. You can (I am sure by now) order off Kirk's
website and I repeat....it's a super project! His very honest testimony is
included in a CD that accompanies this project. Everyone should hear it. It is
honest (brutally so at some points) and encouraging. Thanks Kirk for the early
copy..I appreciate it." So now - all you Krew members - call the office and
order your copy! 865-933-2100
