The Athens of the South

Nashville is apparently known locally as "The Athens of the South".  Which is why, as the story goes,  it was decided to build a full-scale plaster replica of the Parthenon, of all things, at the Tennessee Centennial exposition of 1897.   Although it was only intended to last six months, the locals were so taken with the Parthenon that they didn't tear it down as planned.  And after 20 years, as it was falling into serious disrepair, they rebuilt it out of concrete.  It is claimed to be as historically accurate as possible, up to and including the giant gold-plated statue of Athena seen above.  Having visited this edifice, as well as that other iconic Nashville institution, The Grand Ole Opry, I can safely say that our trip has now reached the Apogee of Americana.

We arrived in Nashville at the end of a day which began with an 11-mile bike ride through Cades Cove, a beautiful scenic valley in the Smokies.  We had thought of this as little more than an invigorating shot of morning exercise lasting less than an hour, but that proved to be a slight miscalculation.  We are used to riding our ultra-lightweight skinny-tire road bikes, but for this trip we acquired a pair of cheap camp bikes which are much heavier and have fatter tires.  They are great for riding around camp and running short errands, but on the road, let's just say that they provide a much better aerobic workout.

Our friend Vaughan, an old colleague from the Berkeley math department, had recently moved to Vanderbilt, and bought a house in a gated community of Nashville called "Sugartree".   However, our GPS navigator doesn't understand about gated communities, and so it cleverly brought us to the back gate of Sugartree, which is for "residents only" as we discovered while sitting there waiting in vain for it to open.  GPS navigators, like almost all present-day technological marvels, are a two-edged sword.  Mainly because they don't possess that uniquely human quality we call common sense.  Or at least, not yet.  So it's usually a good idea to take their advice with a grain of salt.  This is harder to do in a totally unfamiliar city, especially when you're tired and have driven a few hundred miles in sweaty bike shorts.

We eventually found our way to the main gate, got to Vaughan's new house, showered, changed, and were picked up and taken out to dinner by John and Susan, the charming parents of our Oakland house-sitter Kim.   John is a colleague of Vaughan's at Vanderbilt, which is basically how Kim wound up house-sitting for us in Oakland, but that's another story altogether.  So, after a great dinner with our new friends, we fell into a deep night's sleep.  Which ended abruptly at 6:15 am when the non english-speaking workmen rang the front doorbell.  They had arrived to replace Vaughan's roof, which had been damaged in a recent hailstorm.  Having no luck getting back to sleep with the hammering on the roof, we arose to begin our day of Vanderbilt, Parthenon, and Grand Ole Opry.

After a tour of the Vanderbilt campus and the Parthenon, thanks to John, we had some mid-eastern takeout with Vaughan and departed for the main event, the Grand Ole Opry.  This takes place two or three nights a week in a modest 4,400 seat auditorium located on the outskirts of Nashville in a shopping mall.  Where else?  The show is broadcast live on the radio: WSM 650 AM  and now Sirius XM, making it the longest continuously running radio program ever.  There were a half-dozen or so different acts, and between each one a commercial for Bass Pro Shops, The Cracker Barrel, and so forth.

For my money, the show was completely stolen by "Little Jimmy Dickens", a 4' 11'' 91-year old who wore a black sequined cowboy suit and white boots, and claims to be related to Charles.  Jimmy's guitar strap has the word "Tater" sewn into it in large letters.  I could even read it from my distant nosebleed seat.  He opened with a number from "my most recent album, which was released in 1963" and closed with "Good Old Mountain Dew", which for some reason I actually knew.  In between, we were treated to some excellent stand-up:
     
"I went to the doctor the other day 'cause I couldn't hear a thing our of my left ear.  Well, the doc shines his little flashlight into my ear and says, "Jimmy," he says, "it's no wonder.  You've got a suppository in your ear."
"Well, thanks doc.  Now I know what happened to my hearing aid."

I suppose that joke also premiered in 1963, but I hadn't heard it before. It sent me into a giggling fit which I had to do silently because the next performance was underway.

Country music seems to be almost exclusively about Love, in particular Lost Love, Unfaithful Love, and Unrequited Love. In that, I suppose it's not that much different from the rest of popular music, except that you can often understand the lyrics, especially if you're good at southern accents.  To be a country music singer there seem to be at least two prerequisites:  you have to be Caucasian and speak with a pronounced southern accent.  In fact, as far as I could see the 4,400 audience members were entirely Caucasian.  But of course my knowledge of country music and its singers is virtually non-existent, so you must give these observations their due weight.  And in all honesty, I really enjoyed the show, especially Little Jimmy.

Perhaps the true high point of the evening occurred afterwards, when Vaughan and I went out in the Enterprise to buy a few supplies at the all-night supermarket.  There was a uniformed guard outside who kindly let me park in front while Vaughan went in.  Mike and I got to talking, and it turned out that he had just gotten an autograph from Travis somebody -- I forget the full name -- which he showed me, and allowed as to how he had also sung for Travis the country song he had recently written.  As Vaughan returned to the Enterprise, Mike volunteered to sing it for us as well, and so he did.  Sure enough, it was about Unrequited Love.  The perfect end to the perfect day.