From Fat Daddy’s” To The Parthenon”

IMG_0076.JPGOn July 24, Bob Solomon, Katie Rohner, and their
three children — Sammy (age 13), Phoebe (age 10), and Max (age 8) — started a three-week cross-country trip from their New Haven home to Berkeley, California, where they will spend the fall semester. This is an installment from their occasional journal:

A note to our friends at Lulu’s – throughout Virginia, we missed that jolt of strong coffee. When Bob reported this to Lulu, she accused us of taking her for granted. We replied that we USED to take her for granted.

One morning, near Tennessee, we got off the highway to get gas. The gas station was old and charming, with a small, very old cemetery across the street. There was nothing else around, and it really did have the feel of being in another time. To get back on the highway, we had to circle around to a different road, where we ran into a shopping plaza, with Ruby Tuesday’s, every fast food place you can imagine, and familiar big box stores. It was indistinguishable from North Haven, off Exit 9 on I‑91. (We did not regret seeing a Starbucks, however.)

Rolling into Tennessee from Virginia, the terrain continued to offer us pretty vistas of green grass and hills. Unfortunately, we had to skirt by Knoxville, which looked large and lively, and drove directly to Nashville. At lunchtime, now in Tennessee, we got off the highway to look for a local place for lunch. We expected to find stands selling fresh fruit and vegetables, but, like Virginia, saw very few stands. Those that we did see sold whole watermelons and raw corn, but little else. We followed signs for Jefferson City, but all we saw was strip malls, with the familiar McDonalds, Burger King, and other fast food places. Then in the middle of it all, in a particularly ugly strip mall, with smoke rising, was Fat Daddy’s.” The owner was incredibly friendly and the pulled pork was incredibly tender, the best we’ve ever had. The price for a pulled pork sandwich? $2.99.

IMG_0078.JPGSettled at the crossroads of three major interstate highways and serving as a gateway city for air and rail travel, Nashville is one of the fastest growing areas in the Upper South. The city is situated within 800 miles of 60 percent of the upper south population and thus is a bustling hub of industry, primarily transportation, health care (250 health care facilities), banking, publishing (not just music … Gideon Bibles are produced here), and, of course, music. Known as Music City, U.S.A.”, Nashville is synonymous with country music, home to both the Grand Ole Opry” and the Country Music Museum and Hall of Fame. But you don’t have to be a country music fan to love Nashville or partake in its music scene. Beginning at 10 a.m. and lasting through the night every day, you can enjoy country, blues, jazz, bluegrass, or rockabilly all along the main strip on Broadway in virtually every kind of conceivable venue. Kids are welcome in the bars before 6 p.m. and it’s truly an adventure to sit in an old honky-tonk, like the famous Tootsies”, with its sticky floors and walls riddled with carved initials, eating barbecue and listening to an up-and-coming musician honing his or her talent. We caught Stephen West one morning. He hailed from New Jersey, but sported a slight Tennessee accent after only two years in his newly adopted city. The spirit here is contagious.

Our first night we decided to take in a show next door to our hotel at the homey Troubadour Theater. It was a long-running tribute to Elvis Presley, wonderfully performed by Bristol, Connecticut native, John Beardsley. His wife, Darlene, took our tickets and told us she grew up in Waterbury. Small world. The Troubadour now serves as the venue for the Midnight Jamboree”, the second-oldest running radio show (after the Opry) where performers come to jam after playing the Grand Ole Opry. When the Opry was held at the Ryman Auditorium downtown, singers, like Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn and Hank Williams would walk over and sing at Ernie Tubb’s Record Shop, where the jamboree originated, and you can still feel the ghosts of those great singers when you walk into the shop today. And do go in — like our own Cutler’s, it’s one of the few independent record shops still thriving and it’s a pleasure to peruse the hundreds of titles for sale.

IMG_0093.JPGNormally, Nashville is hot and humid this time of year, but, naturally, we hit rain the first morning. Nevertheless, we hopped a trolley and took a tour of the city. Skirting the Cumberland River, we caught a glimpse of the Tennessee Titans’ battleground, LP Field, an exact replica of Athens’ Parthenon (Nashville’s sister city) settled in the middle of a beautiful park downtown, and music row, where all the big music publishing houses do business.

We had to see a show at the Grand Ole Opry while we were there and we were enthralled by the diverse music we heard there. We enjoyed cajun, bluegrass, rockabilly, country, corny jokes, and an energetic Charlie Daniels performing the crowd-favorite, Devil Went Down to Georgia” with a ten-minute sort of dueling guitar/fiddle riff in the middle of the song. The music may have been diverse, but the crowd was remarkably homogenous. People travel a long way to go to the Opry, but virtually everyone there was white.

The beautifully-rendered exhibits at the Country Music Hall of Fame were fascinating and we walked away with a deep appreciation for the roots of country music and bluegrass. The exhibits include plenty of glitz, but more music, and you can walk along watching and listening to historical footage of early recordings. Of course, you can also see one of Elvis’ favorite customized Cadillacs.

Nashville has acquired several other nicknames, including Nashvegas” for its glitz and neon; Athens of the South” due to the large numbers of post-secondary educational institutions in the area and the Parthenon just beyond the capital building; and, oddly enough, Little Kurdistan” since it is home to the largest population of Kurds in the U.S.

We left Nashville in the rain, headed for Memphis, much more Elvis, and a very different experience.

Bob Solomon’s previous travel diary entries:

Journey To Bethlehem
Reflections On Life Underground

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