Just got in from Nashville. Music City. Capital of Tennessee. Home of the Predators (now that I’m a hackey mam I know this), the Grand Ole Opry and the Country Music Hall of Fame.
I hadn’t been to the “Athens of the South” since 1990, when I attended a conference at the Opryland hotel. I didn’t see a thing then and didn’t see a thing today. Correction: I saw meeting rooms both times.
Nashville is on my husband’s bucket list. He wants to see the Ernest Tubb Record Shop. I’ve been walking the floor over someone wanting to go such a long way to buy records. Tripadvisor lists 113 things to see and do there–including the record shop.
Today I was within arm’s reach of Music Row; I passed the sign on my way to the airport. As with Elvis’ birthplace in Tupelo, I took a mental picture at 35 miles per hour.
Finally, this afternoon I managed to hear some budding country artists as they strummed and sang and sought to make it big—from the C concourse at Nashville International. I imagined Ernest Tubb getting his start right there across from Auntie Anne’s Pretzels.
So, I bring you no good stories from Nashville today–though I do have one from 1990. As I was riding to the Opryland with a colleague from Brooklyn, New York, she recounted how she had called the hotel the day before. She asked the operator, “Do you have a gym there?” The operator said, “Honey, we have thirty-five hundred people in this hotel. You’re gonna have to give me a last name.”
Word Nymph 