After rising from the sofa yesterday morning I took off for Nashville, where my two sons and one daughter in law live. I drove slowly so that I could hear as much of the Alabama game on the radio as I could before getting out of range in Tennessee. I wasn't moving slowly enough, so I stopped at Cracker Barrel at the
Athens exit and ordered pancakes with maple syrup, eggs and bacon. Sugar slows me down, more accurately puts me to sleep, so the maple syrup on top of the white flour cakes really over-did the job. Thank goodness for caffeine to even things out.
I heard the first half of the game before the rolling hills of south Tennessee blocked the propaganda being beamed in from its southern neighbor. That was enough. Roll Tide.
I drove straight in to Nashville, to the Vanderbilt campus, where Vann lives. Correction, I did not drive straight to where Vann lives. I should have gone straight at that intersection, but his apartment building was right there on my left, so I turned. And so did the police officer that was behind me. Ironically, this was in the same area I was driving in a few weeks ago when I posted about the one-way sign. Unfortunately this time there was a sign, but I didn't see it, it did not pulsate like the one-way sign. And it said, according to the police officer,
"NO LEFT TURN".
The blue light came on. I think he was worried that I might floorboard it in the Prius and try to get away, with a burst of low voltage, but I did not. The officer was very professional and friendly. I told him that the building we were stopped beside with his blue light flashing was where my son lived and was about to come meet me any second. He laughed and said, "Well that's gonna be kinda funny, isn't it." He wasn't being a smart aleck, he was just saying what I was thinking too. It took a while to check my license, apparently everyone back in Alabama was at a football game. He came back to the car window and we talked awhile about where I was from. He advised me that the license check might have gone a lot faster if I had not chosen to wear my University of Alabama shirt to the Vanderbilt campus on the first game day of the season. Vann was on the sidewalk by now and waved. The officer laughed and told me to observe the signs. I wonder if he meant this sign or the One Way sign. I think he meant all of them. He was a nice guy.
Vann is a gracious fellow and did not overly enjoy the moment of his dad being stopped by the police. Instead we drove, carefully and obeying the traffic control devices, to "Noshville", a local eatery, where we talked and he ate lunch. I was not hungry, still being full of Mama's Pancake Platter, but I had a chocolate milkshake just to be sociable. It was a real soda fountain milkshake, the kind that is served in a thick parfait glass with whip cream and a cherry, with the extra in the metal milk shake machine container on the side.
Vann caught me up on his classes, He is taking eighteen hours so he can finish up this semester. He reminded me of me a few years ago, talking about his professors who professed to be communist, or strained to be eccentric, and the unsettling thought that one's future lies in how one feels on the day the LSAT is given. Things have changed though. In one class he is required to tweet. If we tweeted in class we would have been in trouble, or possibly taken to the infirmary, possibly Bryce's. From there I took Vann back to campus to where the pre-game party had commenced. Vandy's game with Elon was at night, so it was going to be a long party. He disappeared into a crowd of young girls in sun dresses, looking older than the last time I saw him.
The rest of the day was spent with Benjamin and Kate. We went to the American Folk Festival, which was in Nashville this year. I really thought it was going to be mostly exhibits of regional visual arts, and there were a few, like a man who carved figurines out of peach pits. He had created a whole baseball park with fans in the stands and the teams on the field. And there was a woman who created collages out of old discarded metal. But it was mostly music venues .All kinds of music. It seemed that we timed our walk around the park perfectly to miss whatever act was just finishing or coming up next, but we heard and saw bits and pieces of several. And a flea circus. It was a great, albeit painfully hot afternoon at Bicentennial Park. As we left we visited the farmer's market which is next to the park. If I lived in Nashville I would visit that place at least once a week.
This is not a post that takes a turn at the end and makes a point.
Except that I am a very blessed man.
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