Tim Murphy

Reporter

Tim Murphy is a reporter in MoJo's DC bureau. Last summer he logged 22,000 miles while blogging about his cross-country road trip for Mother Jones. His writing has been featured in Slate and the Washington Monthly. Email him with tips and insights at tmurphy [at] motherjones [dot] com.

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The View From My Windshield: Southern Strategy

—By Tim Murphy

| Wed Jul. 21, 2010 8:43 AM PDT

Wheels of Progress: Greenville, South Carolina espite its namesake's anti-Catholic rhetoric, and the school's longstanding ban on interracial dating, generations of conservative politicians made Bob Jones University a can't-miss spot to speak to the base (Photo: Tim Murphy). Values: Greenville, South Carolina—Despite its namesake's anti-Catholic rhetoric, and the school's longstanding ban on interracial dating (which came to an end in 2000), generations of conservative politicians, from Reagan to George W. Bush, traveled to Bob Jones University to pander to the far right (Photo: Tim Murphy).

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Overheard in Murfreesboro: Voting

—By Tim Murphy

| Tue Jul. 20, 2010 9:10 PM PDT

Primary Season: Congressional races get all the ink, but thousands of people will vote for people like Pam Hurst in the Tennessee primary. Will they find out who she is first? (Photo: Tim Murphy) Primary Season: Congressional races get all the ink, but thousands of people will vote for people like Pam Hurst in the Tennessee primary—whether or not they know who she is (Photo: Tim Murphy).We left Murfreesboro, Tennessee a few days ago, but since it's stuck with me, and since I've had some down time for the first time this trip, I thought I'd put up this stray bit of overheard wisdom. To set the scene: Murfreesboro is a small-sized city with an old-fashioned downtown square centered around the county courthouse. With the retirement of long-time congressman Bart Gordon, a Democrat, the upcoming Republican primary has taken on an added significance this year; the inside of the City Cafe is cluttered with literature for the various candidates lining up to replace him. In the corner by the window, five elderly women are studying up on the races not just for Congress, but down-ballot positions as well.

"Oh, he's very niiiice," says woman #1. Then she drops her voice: "He talked for quite a while." They talk it over and agree not to let the latter become the enemy of the former. Moving on, now: "This here means they're independent," says friend #2. She's referring to, I think, the box that says "independent." "They don't go either way, really," explains woman #3.

And now they plunge into the unexplored places: county clerk, register of deeds, jailer. "I don't even know who this is," says woman #3, perplexed.

"Oh, that doesn't matter," says friend #2. "You just check one and keep on going."

A Sense of Where We Are: Going South

—By Tim Murphy

| Tue Jul. 20, 2010 10:02 AM PDT

View Westward Expansion in a larger map

Don't Mention the War

—By Tim Murphy

| Mon Jul. 19, 2010 4:36 PM PDT

Global Warming: Whether it's climate change you fear, or just the fiery inferno of hell, things are looking a little bleak here on Earth. This message comes from a chuch in Brownsville, Kentucky (Photo: Tim Murphy)Greenville, South Carolina—Greenville, with its revived downtown, Yankee transplants, and bevy of public art, is very much a New South city, but if you walk for a bit off Main Street you can still find a little touch of Dixie. I stopped by the Museum & Library of Confederate History, a Sons of Confederate Veterans-operated facility, which, since its inception 15 years ago has swelled from a one-room exhibit in the side room of a downtown funeral home, to a building of its own with plans to expand yet again. It's a small operation, specializing in genealogical research and antique sidearms. For $25, a woman calling herself "the research muse" will track down government records to help you find out "what your great grandfather did during the war."

Even in South Carolina, where students study up on "the war between the states," the museum's historical narrative can be a bit jarring: secession, a commonly accepted concept by people like Thomas Jefferson, was necessitated by burdensome taxation (just like the Revolution!); slavery was, if anything, just a side issue.

"Most people are astounded by some of the information I share," explains Webster Jones, the museum's director. "About three years ago we had Upstate high school history teachers up at the museum and we put together a little folder. And my question for them was: How many slaves did Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation actually free? And they were studying that over, and I said 'Zero.' And their faces"—here, Webster contorts his face to express disbelief. Then he explains: "What it did was inject slavery into the war."

How to Hop a Freight Train and Not Get Caught

—By Tim Murphy

| Sun Jul. 18, 2010 10:47 AM PDT

Outside Ocoee, Tennessee—My notes from Nashville are sparse and somewhat illegible: If I'm reading them right, the city was populated mostly by roving ensembles of high school musicians, and thirty-something males wearing boat shoes and white shorts; I suspect there's more to it than that. Our stay was brief—we checked out our first minor league baseball game of the trip ($7 beer night! Go Sounds Go!) and then fled east—but one notable story did come out of it: My friend Alex met a man, in the restroom of a downtown hotel, who said he was "hopping freights" from Los Angeles to Boston.

He was dressed in green from head to toe, and wore scruffy blonde facial hair and a thick layer of accumulated sediment and grease on his face that his PR firm might have called "earth tones" or "special-ops chic," but which Alex said made him look "like he was tinged green." He hadn't showered in ages. The man explained to Alex that all underground freight-hoppers (they're a rather tight-knit community) have a guidebook, which they circulate to anyone who's really serious about the craft. Bound together and passed around like an old-school 'zine, it explains which cars you can and can't jump on, when and where to do it, and, most importantly, how to evade the guards. He was in Nashville only by accident; he thought he'd hopped a train to Philadelphia, and now he was in a bit of a pickle. He needed to be in upstate New York in time for blueberry season, when, he said, a farmer had promised him $2,000 if he worked for two months—which sounds like a pretty bad deal, actually, but when you're re-living the Great Depression, I suppose you're not really in a position to pick your price.

Alex, weaned on Woody Guthrie, pretty much lost it at that point, and when he tells the story I just imagine him like Elmer Fudd in one of those old cartoons, who, upon receiving a blow to the head from a massive anvil or bundle of carrots or something, literally sees stars, gets all cross-eyed, and falls straight back to the floor.