I Walk The Line

After ten days, it was time for Kathy and me to go our separate ways – Kathy back to her real life and me to mine. Miko was especially sad – her doggie buddies were gone and she had nobody to keep her amused except for me. Poor doggie.

I headed a little farther west and put down temporary roots in Nashville. Most of the sights I wanted to see were in downtown Nashville so I decided to stay at the Tennessee Fairgrounds. There were two sections where RVs could stay – one was in an enclosed fence with very tight quarters. It was so tight looking, I think if everybody put their slides out, the slides might be touching. For some reason, this is where the fancy RVs were staying. Since fancy is not a word I would use to describe myself, I decided to stay in the “Other” section. There were only a couple of other campers there and they all had more eclectic tastes in camping gear.

My fellow campers - scenic, eh?

I think I found out why there were only a couple of campers in this area. Around noon, everyday, the Nashville Sheriff's Mobile Booking Unit (MBU) rolled in and set up camp for twelve hours. Nashville has found that it is much more cost effective to have their street officers come to the mobile unit to get their perps booked than to travel all the way downtown. The officers get back onto the streets much quicker. I was a little nervous in the beginning when I first saw the truck and went over to talk to the 'Men In Brown'. I asked them if I needed to be worried about camping there. The sheriff guy said that it shouldn't be a problem – all the bad guys knew that they were there and would stay away. I found that comforting and settled in and watched the show. A squad car (or sometimes an unmarked car) would drive up to the mobile booking unit. They would get the offender(who was in handcuffs) out of the car and bring them over to the MBU. They would search them outside for contraband and then bring them inside. I found this really interesting – I had never seen this happen in real life.  They take them inside the MBU where they had cells and computers and everything needed to get these guys started on the road to incarceration. When they had enough guys brought in, they would load them all into another van and bring them downtown to the big jail.

One badass truck, One super nice sheriff guy

All ready to watch the night's action

I did go to Stone River National Battlefield - yes, another Civil War Battlefield which is located about a half hour south of Nashville.  80,000 people fought in the battle, 24,000 were killed or wounded.  Nuff said.

Soldiers would hide behind these little rocks and when they got routed (not much cover) and ran, many broke ankles

I was going to really immerse myself in the Nashville music museums. I was going to skip the Country Museum Hall of Fame because I had seen it several years before but on my agenda was the Johnny Cash Museum, the Patsy Cline Museum, the George Jones Museum, the Musician's Hall of Fame (covers all genres of music), the Barbara Mandrell mansion and Andrew Jackson's Hermitage. I went downtown to work my plan and was immediately overwhelmed by, dare I say, tourists. It was like going to DisneyWorld – crowds and crowds of people with fanny packs and kids in tow. Maybe I had been out in the woods too long but it was a little bit of sensory overload. So I ended up doing just one museum, but I think I picked the very best one – or at least one near and dear to my heart.

Johnny Cash – the Man In Black. This man had a presence that was not to be denied. The museum was really well done – it told his life facts, it had artifacts from both Johnny and June Carter. There was some interactive exhibits. There was one where you could remix a song – make the drums louder or the background singers more background. Johnny is one of the few artists who have had their music recorded on almost every type of recording media that we have had. There was an exhibit where you could listen to the same song on 78s, 33s, cassette tape, compact disc and mp3. There is a huge difference between the different medias. I found the 78 version was noticeably richer and more vibrant than say the CD version. There were displays and audio adventures where you could progress from Johnny's career in the fifties up through the 2000s. A movie theater showed clips of a lot of his acting performances on TV shows and in the movies. He was in everything from Columbo to Little House on the Prairie to Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. There was another room that had clips of his singing performances. Just before the exit, there was his music video of the song 'Hurt'. If you haven't seen this video, please go look it up on YouTube. It is a powerful song.

Crowds, Crowds, Crowds

JR Cash was Vice President of his senior class

The Gold Records

The Albums

The 45s

There is a busy intersection in Nashville smack in the dab of the tourist area where all traffic stops in all directions and then you can walk diagonally across the street.  I did it several times just because it was so cool