True Blue returns and visualizing a dream matchup

In this week’s installment of Outside the Loop, we will check into the return of a popular piece of art in Germantown and also recall the shooting of the Tennessee Highway Patrol offices on Summer Avenue — a location inside Bartlett, but barely. We also have a new alderman in Arlington.

And wait until you see the main event in this column.

Finally, if you are reading all this for the first time today, I remind you that all of these items made their first appearances in last week’s Outside the Loop columns that appear on Tuesdays and Thursdays online at commercialappeal.com.

They are supposed to post about 11 a.m., if I make deadline. Otherwise, the goal is to get online in time for people to read it during their lunch hour.

I usually make that one.

GERMANTOWN CITY HALL

The return of a fan favorite: In conjunction with the opening of the Germantown Charity Horse Show last week, a well-known piece of art returned to the busy corner of Farmington Boulevard and Germantown Road. Welcome back, True Blue. The bronze-looking horse statue with a young rider astride was absent from the City Hall property on the northeast corner of the busy cross streets for several years. The city was renovating the corner with things like a water garden and a new sign designating the building as City Hall. The statue, by artist Ann Moore of Arlington, was put out to pasture, so to speak.

“We sorta made light of it, saying, ‘The horse is in the barn right now. She’s at pasture or resting,’” Mayor Mike Palazzolo told Germantown reporter Jane Roberts.

Truth is, the statue was in storage at City Hall. As Roberts reported last Tuesday, officials tried to determine the best place to put the statue after the renovation work, and the result was placing the sculpture back near its previous location on the corner.

Thousands of drivers pass that corner daily, and I’ll bet there is a good percentage of folks who feel a bit of comfort in the statue’s return.

ON THE EDGE OF BARTLETT

Scary night: Someone decided recently to rattle off about 20 shots into the front of the Tennessee Highway Patrol’s post on Summer near Elmore Road.

A trooper and two dispatchers in the building at the time of the June 5 shooting about 8:45 p.m. were not injured.

Lt. Cary Hopkins, the THP public information officer, said: “The rounds were in a tight group as if the suspect(s) stopped their vehicle in the middle of the road, stepped out of the vehicle, and intentionally fired the rounds into the police station.”

Out on the eastbound lanes of Summer in front of the headquarters, investigators found 14 AK-47 shell casings.

Bartlett police were called because the station is just inside the suburb’s city limits. In fact, the border is so close, the firing