If you’ve lived in Memphis for a while you will probably remember the Jade East murders which occurred on October 20, 1987. Jade East was a restaurant on Austin Peay next to the Post Office just north of Yale Road. Three men entered in broad daylight and killed 3 family members who owned and operated the restaurant along with a small jewelry business.

My first real job, if you don’t count being an usher at the Memphian, was working at Security (later Sunbelt) Couriers in downtown. A couple of nights a week I would drive to Grenada MS and back. It was an enjoyable and quiet trip and looking back on it I think I liked the solitude of the drive the most.

One of those nights as I returned home I noticed a car outside the house next door (see other Old Neighborhood posts for more stories) which was odd because there really wasn’t enough room to park in front without being in the intersection. Since the house was so close to our driveway it was easy to notice the person lying in bed with a bandage around his leg that was obviously bleeding. Not hearing about the murders at that time I didn’t think anything about it, remember it was a strange house. My girlfriend at the time called me and as we talked she told me about the robbery and shooting. The police at that time had no idea who had committed the crime and details were scarce. Not putting two and two together I went to bed.

The next morning as we were talking about the previous days events I thought that someone might need to check out that house. One of the guys knew someone on the police force and relayed the story to him. They went by the house later that day and by that time everyone was gone. It turns out they left shortly after I arrived home using the car that was parked outside.

All three were eventually captured and I believe the guy that lived next door was killed in jail. I couldn’t find anything on this tragedy because the CA archives only go back to 1990, I did find this petition by one of the defendants which outlines the events of the day along with his alleged grounds for a reversal of the life sentence. It was denied.

Our house was a duplex that my folks owned and we had only a few different people live there over the years. My cousin Karen and her family lived there for a while and I actually moved back to the side of the house for a brief time as I got older. The family that lived there the longest was The Beaudoins. They consisted of Kenneth and his mother, who’s name escapes me. I just called her Ms Beaudoin. Kenneth was a somewhat famous poet and the founder of the Poetry Society of Tennessee. He was the creator of the ‘eye poem’ which is the practice of using words and images cut out of magazines and pasted together in a collage poem.

He was eccentric before I knew what that term meant. They had pieces of wood with hundreds of arrowheads attached to them displayed over every inch of their walls. He was a prolific writer and in 1976 was named Poet Laureate of the River. His work was widely published in England, Wales, France, West Germany, Greece, Italy, India, Japan, New Zealand, Canada, and Australia. He dedicated at least one book to me when I was 13 or 14, I believe the title was Moon on Jefferson Street but I have long since misplaced it.

He ran an art gallery in Greenwich Village in the 40′s and worked for the Memphis Police Department in the Criminal Intelligence Division from 1950 until 1980. Both the University of Syracuse and University of Memphis house collections of his papers and manuscripts.

He passed away on March 19, 1995 of complications from diabetes, he was 81.

The next time your child does one of those projects for school that includes magazine cutouts glued to poster board, say a small thank you to Mr Beaudoin.

As I have mentioned in earlier posts when I was a child we lived next to a very lively house with something always going on. When I was young my bed was against a wall that had windows and looked out on our driveway. Across the driveway was this house. It was a small one car-wide driveway and the other house was just a few feet on the other side.

In the spring and early summer, especially back in the early 70′s, you could sleep with your windows open as long as you had screens to keep the mosquitoes out. One night, close to midnight, I was awaken by someone saying “son…son, wake up”. I remember even now that I thought it was a dream but after a few more “son, hey, wake up” I realized it wasn’t a dream. As soon as I opened my eyes I could see someone standing outside the window, but very close to the screen so all I saw was the outline of his face. We had a streetlight outside on the front of the house but it didn’t illuminate much on that side of the house.

Even before the shock of seeing someone at the window set in the man said “son, I’m a policeman and I need you to do something for me”. At this point I’m wishing it was a dream, was I ever confused.

He continued “I need you to go to your parents room and stay there until you hear us knock on your door…go now and please be quiet”.

Well I didn’t know what else to do and leaving him at the window sure sounded like a good idea. I slipped out of bed and went to my Mom’s room. Just before I started to wake her up I heard a couple of the loudest bangs I’d ever heard and lots of yelling. Of course that woke my Mom up and when she saw me I’m sure she was wondering what the heck was going on.

The yelling felt like it went on for quite a while, although it was probably just 15-20 seconds. Then squealing tires and more voices. As it turns out the police were raiding the house next door because of drugs. I was so small that it really didn’t make any sense why they were making all that racket for aspirin and cough syrup.

A couple of minutes later there was the knock on our door, it was the officer who asked me to leave the room. At first my Mom didn’t want me to go to the door but the officer asked several times to see me. It turned out he wanted to make sure that I wasn’t scared and thank me for listening to him. I’ve always respected police officers and I think this is one reason why, his insistence that I was OK and not scared was something he really didn’t have to do.

In the end we got new neighbors and I watched them closer than the others.

Next installment: The Falling Drums.

Actually I guess the post should be called the House That ‘Used’ To Be Next Door as it as since been torn down. The two story brick building that used to stand at 1292 Jefferson was many things while I lived next door. It was a realty company and then a set of apartments that had a wide range of humanity occupy it’s meager rooms. I only remember going inside one time in all those years and I don’t even remember why. I think something had fallen out one of the windows into our driveway and I returned it. Seems like it was an elderly lady, not sure.

There was no shortage of items that would fall out of the windows, including a large piece of metal that took a nice slice of the paint off of the black Ford Escort I used to drive. I don’t remember a person ever falling out but it wouldn’t have surprised me. The list of characters who lived in the house was nothing short of amazing. At one point a transvestite shot and killed his/her (who knows) lover. Took them 3 days to find the body. During one hot summer night a naked guy with shampoo in his hair was chased by an almost naked guy down the sidewalk with a butcher knife. Never a dull moment in the old neighborhood. Mom wouldn’t let me hang out on the front porch much after that. Not sure why, it was better than TV. Of course that was before the Kardashians.

Next episode: The Night of the Police Raid.