In November 1983, The Tullahoma News published a front page article about me. With the headline “Smithson Plans Mayoral Race.” In the summer of 2020, The News profiled me included my own words that most of my life I had the status of unemployed, impoverished and chronically mentally ill, disabled, sometimes homeless person. It was also the summer of 2020 that on my friend Jon Gray’s cable program “Insight” I stated that I was the most committed candidate in the mayor’s race. In fact, I had been committed to the state hospital three times. My mother’s comment on the page one article of The News in 1983 was that I was the laughing stock of the county, but I still have hope when I recall the words God spoke to Job in Robert Frost’s “Masque of Reason” that society can never think things out. They have to see them acted by actors, devoted actors at a sacrifice, the best actors I can lay my hands on.

Karl Smithson

Tullahoma