Travels with Pauline: More of Nashville, health mecca of Tennessee

One needs to wash one’s tea bag before making tea with it. At least that is what a small Chinese woman (the kitchen assistant at Belle Meade Best Western) told me at breakfast. She actually stopped me in the process of making tea to take me in the kitchen area, discard the water I’d just poured over my tea bag so that I could refill using my now clean tea bag. Amazing! I’ve gone 70 years without knowing that. Of course it would have tasted much better in a china teacup. So far all we've seen is polystyrene, yuk.

While that was interesting and a bit amusing, it was not the most exciting happening of the early morning; that fell to Kathie who set the fire alarm going when ironing in the room. Flashing lights and loud beeps accompanied us to the breakfast area. No one turned a hair, and the beeping continued as I learned about washing tea bags and we tried to diagnose what was on offer for breakfast.

Maxine started to spoon out what she thought was porridge into her bowl before someone pointed out it was sausage gravy. We looked on open-mouthed as large men lashed their biscuits with great dollops of the beige sludge.

The lights were still flashing when we came downstairs for our tour bus an hour later. This time a fire alarm expert was coming in to fix it, claimed he smelt smoke, as we did. We were glad to be getting out of there.

According to Steve our Grayline bus driver, Nashville is a ‘4-Hooter town.’ In the same breath he told us Nashville was the ‘Buckle of the Bible Belt.’ The mind boggles.

Steve settled into a running commentary about the history of Nashville, a river town with a population of half a million. The main industry is HEALTH. Judging by the large medical establishments in the place we believed him. The whole population must be as sick as dogs to support those conglomerates, or made to feel that way at least.

What a disillusionment, here we were thinking that music was the driving force behind the city but it comes second, followed by tourism. We saw the Parthenon, modelled on the original to such a fine degree that when the original Parthenon in Greece was being spruced up they came to Nashville and copied the plans!

We saw Loretta Lynn’s 2 homes and where Sarah Conner aka Minnie Pearl used to live. The music industry is a $6 billion industry, I dread to think what the health industry generates. Haven’t they heard of health promotion? Maybe if more people washed their tea bags and stopped eating sausage gravy they might get better.

painting of Ryman Auditorium

We passed Elvis’s favourite RCA recording studio and various independent recording studios, only from the outside unfortunately. We did go inside the Ryman Auditorium however.
It was once a church filled with pews of people listening to the gospel. The space has great acoustics; those preachers must have frightened the devil right out of there. Then after various ups and down it became a mecca for performers of all kinds from Ballet companies to Johnny Cash and the Carter family. The old bill posters made fascinating reading.

The most intriguing place however was the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum.

From old film footage of the pioneers of country music (English and Irish fiddlers) to the gospel and blues influences of black slaves I could understand the roots of Dolly Parton’s urge to write about the hardships and longings of life (her scribbled jottings of Jolene are on display) and Elvis’s unique blending of country, blues and gospel into rock ‘n’ roll.

Histories of the likes of Tammy Wynette and Loretta Lynn are depicted in detail, but I didn’t see much about current country singers. We were especially taken with the Silver Dollar Car (not Elvis’s) with it’s fake bull horns on the front and pistols for door handles etc.

Johnny Cash & June Carter's clothes

You’d have thought I’d have left there with some country ditty running around in my head but no; for some reason I have bars of “Killing me Softly” as a constant companion throughout the whole time in the USA, could not get rid of it.

We left there with the 'hooter-lovin’ Steve pointing out Roy Orbison’s building from where the family continues to run their business. We didn’t get to see the current Grand Ole Opry because it is still recovering from the floods of a few months ago, and backstage tours did not seem to be available. Performances have resumed but we didn’t attend any, we were too knackered in the evenings.

We returned to the hotel about one thirty to find it still in one piece and no fire bells ringing. At a place near Calhoun’s (of the great steak from the night before) we availed ourselves of their chicken wrap special, a bargain at 4.95. Then onto something completely different.

The Pacific Northwest glass artist Dale Chihuly was exhibiting his pieces in the gardens of Cheekwood Manor, only 3 miles from out hotel. I’ll let the photos do the talking.