News

This week on the Behind the Headlines Radio Roundtable, Host Eric Barnes, publisher of the Memphis Daily News, and Bill Dries, Senior Reporter for the Memphis Daily News, discuss Memphis Mayor A.C. Wharton's proposal to a skeptical Memphis City Council for a property tax increase.

Richard and Lisa Howorth opened Square Books in 1979 with $10,000 they had saved up and $10,000 they borrowed from a bank. The couple rented an upstairs space in a building Richard’s aunt owned on the town square in Oxford, Miss. It didn’t even have visibility from the street.

“We painted on the risers of the stairs the categories of the store—mysteries, cookbooks, so forth and so on—so that if people did happen to stop and look through the glass door they would see that it was probably a bookstore,” Richard Howorth said.

Abe Fortas may be the only Supreme Court Justice whose first career was in a dance band. The son of Jewish immigrants from England, Fortas grew up on Pontotoc Street in downtown Memphis. His father encouraged him to play the violin, and, by thirteen, he was playing in a dance band called “the Blue Medley Boys.”

The young sensation, nicknamed “Fiddlin' Abe,” earned enough to supplement his college scholarship at Southwestern University, today's Rhodes College. His passion for music and the arts remained with him throughout his life.

It’s gotten quite popular in the last few years to select dirty names for start-up businesses. There’s Dirty Dick’s Crab House, Fat Bastard Burrito, but none tops the new burger joint in Chattanooga.

Its name is Sofa - King - Juicy - Burger. If you say the name real fast, it only takes a couple times to figure out the intent of the owner. Despite, that is, the fact that he says there’s a large sofa in the joint.

Elmwood Cemetery, founded in 1852, is the oldest active cemetery in Memphis. Fifty citizens put up $500 each to purchase and develop a 40-acre parcel of land. Another 40 acres were added later.

The name Elmwood was selected by a drawing from a list of proposed names. Elm trees had to be planted afterwards.