Tennessee!

After spending the night in Bowling Green, KY, we passed into Tennessee today. Tennessee, the volunteer state! (Still don’t know what that’s about.)

We were originally going to do a bit of a drive-by in Nashville – take a picture in front of the Grand Ole Opry and zoom onward to Memphis – but I discovered online this morning that the biggest flea market in Tennessee was happening in the Nashville fairgrounds this weekend. I love me a good flea market, so although Joiner warned me that it probably wasn’t much of one, I insisted we at least stop by.

It cost $3 to park the car, and for the first 20 minutes, I thought Joiner was right and that $3 had been wasted. It was hot, and although the first vendors were, interestingly enough, Korean, there wasn’t much to catch the eye in the first several stalls.

But there’s rarely a flea market that doesn’t have something worth $5 to buy, and this was no exception. I mean, it was the biggest flea market in Tennessee. The trick was to go inside, where it was air-conditioned to the max, and where, among the usual treasure/junk, we found:

• Hematite jewelry (me a ring, Joiner a bracelet) that supposedly relieves stress and improves circulation. Joiner swears that she hasn’t had any tooth pain all day, and after a few days of getting on each other’s nerves, we were markedly more relaxed today.
• A man who makes all manner of items from old silverware – magnifying glass handles, hair clips, key rings, necklaces, belts, rings. I’d never seen anything like it, and although it was kinda hokey, it was also kinda cool.
• A cast iron kettle with a lid inscribed with a “T,” which Joiner bought for (I think) a steal -- $13. In beautiful condition, and as heavy as an elephant.
• Mac Davis, an older gentleman selling awesome antiques like leather bags for machine gun ammunition dating back to WWI, phonographs, and a little ashtray from the Anchor Motel in Nashville, which must date back to at least the 1960s, since the phone number on the ashtray started with a name and had only 5 digits.

I kind of fell in love with that ashtray, which was too much at $10, but the seller wouldn’t lower the price, so I started talking with him. Turns out Mac, a tall man who sported a neatly trimmed white beard, cornflower blue eyes, a worn but clean dark blue button-down workshirt and jeans, grew up in Nashville. When I asked him about the ashtray, he asked if I smoked, and I admitted that I sometimes did. He shook his head and said, “I haven’t smoked since 1959. I made a bet for $2 that I’d stop smoking, and I did, and the other guy didn’t. He’s dead now.”

I made some sort of face, murmured, “Oh, wow,” to which he responded: “Well, actually, he didn’t die from smoking. He got hit by lightning. That’s how he died.” Hee!

Mac, who must be in his 80s, worked at the Ford plant for 31 years, where he made a bet with three co-workers to stop smoking. “Two of us did it – stopped smoking. One fellow came in the next day and he kind of sheepishly handed over the $2. And the other one, he didn’t stop, but he never paid the money either!”

I asked him how he liked the changes in Nashville that he’d seen, and he said, “Well, it’s mostly been for the worse. Too many people!” Mac and his wife live out in the country now, but homes keep getting built around them, and he lamented the poor credit practices that allowed people to buy homes without adequate leverage. “Living through the Depression, I get worried about that,” he said.

“One thing I will say is better, though,” he allowed, “is that in the old days, we used to burn coal for electricity. You’d walk out of here, and you couldn’t see those hills out the door. A breeze would come by and sweep the coal dust away for a few minutes, but then it’d be back. And you couldn’t walk outside for more than a few minutes without coal dust getting up your nose.”

I must have chatted with Mac for at least 10 minutes about the items in his stall, about Nashville, about odds and ends. He was retired now, and just did some collecting and selling, and he’d “met a lot of nice people, never had a bad check from anyone doing this.” He didn’t know anything about the ashtray, only that he’d picked it up because he liked collecting things that had Nashville referenced on them, and that the Anchor Motel had been somewhere near Centennial Park. Did I know where that was? he asked. No, I said, we were just passing through town.

“So you don’t live here or go to school here?”

“No, we’re just passing through.”

“Where are you headed next?”

“Memphis.”

He shook his head. “They shoot people in Memphis.”

I pointed out that he had just told me that someone had been shot close by the fairgrounds in Nashville.

“Yes, but there’s a shooting every day in Memphis! Move to Nashville!”

I thought about asking again for a discount on the ashtray, but I had had such a lovely time talking with Mac that I just forked over the $10. I like to think he would have given me one if I’d asked. As it was, the last thing he said to me, with a smile, as I shook his hand was: “I’m here every weekend. You come back some time! You should move to Tennessee!”

People! They are just so charming.

We left the flea market about $70 lighter and had lunch at Mrs. Winner’s, a KFC-type place with what Joiner said were extremely good sweet tea, biscuits and fried chicken. They were good, but I think I lack the ability to really appreciate southern food. It’s just so greasy and heavy. I took two Peptobismol pills (bought at Wall Drug on the advice of the free spirited cashier, who told us to buy it when we told her what we’d eaten for lunch at Wall Drug) as a preventitive measure, and we moved on from Nashville down to Memphis in the Behemoth, which is the name of the Mustang. Okay, not really, but I think of it as a behemoth, because it feels so big and growls so loud when you rev it.

Memphis! We walked down Beale Street, which is very, very similar to Bourbon Street in New Orleans – sticky, stinky and touristy, with beer stands on every block. I did, however, see the musical note (like the stars on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood) for Robert Johnson, which was pretty cool.


















Next, Joiner found us the best Comfort Inn in the world: for about $80, we have a view of the Mississippi, Mud Island, and the Memphis pyramid (will have to investigate that tomorrow, but it’s highly weird). We watched the sun set behind the river while making some phone calls, and then set out for dinner.














Again, Joiner found us a can’t-be-beat dinner place: Corky’s. Memphis’ favorite BBQ place, it delivered one of the most perfect meals I have ever eaten: chewy, creamy warm rolls, the freshest cole slaw I’ve ever tasted, sweet baked beans, and outstanding wet and dry ribs. Damn. I told the waitress that it was a perfect meal, and she said, “It’s even better with banana bread puddin’, baby.” We were far too stuffed, though, so instead we went over to the cabinet with Corky’s paraphernalia, and I bought far too much, egged on by the tall, amused black man manning the front desk, who Joiner later pointed out was the original pitmaster of Corky’s. The pitmaster of Corky’s sold me t-shirts! That’s pretty freakin’ awesome.

Sigh. What a lovely day. (Wait. Is that the hematite talking?)

Tomorrow: "I'm going to Graceland, Graceland, Memphis Tennessee, I'm going to Graceland!"