My Girl Left Me, My Truck Broke Down, and My Dog Died

Welcome to Nashville, home of country music!

’Cause I’m turnin’ 50 this week, I wanted t’ git outta C0lumbus to avoid any damn birthday parties. Mark ’n me ain’t never been to Memphis, so we thought we’d just take ourselves a road trip ’n see what we think. An’ Memphis is ’bout half way ’tween m’brother ’n sister-in-law’s place (They’s Mike and Carol. We ain’t seen her in a coon’s age.), so they’s meetin’ us there.

Okay, enough of the accent. Trying to get the apostrophes to go the right way is giving me a headache.

So anyway, Mark thought that we might not find enough to do in Memphis for a week, so he suggested we stop in Nashville for two nights. Sounded good to me. We dropped our Elvis off at our friend, Matt’s, and started our pilgrimage to the home of the original Elvis.

Today was pretty much just driving. It rained the whole way. No, I mean really. The whole way. Sometimes so hard we could barely see the trucks in front of us. Fortunately, shortly after we got here it stopped, but unfortunately, it was so ugly out that I only took two outside photos—one of the view outside our VRBO rental (which is nicer than it looks; we’ve been watching barges go up and down the river) and one looking up Broadway, which is the main entertainment street in Nashville.

Once we got into our condo, we just rested a bit. Here’s where we’re staying.

Once we’d unfolded from the drive, we drove around downtown to get our bearings. (Who am I kidding? For Mark to get his bearings.) I was a little disturbed when we came across a young man beating the heck out of a middle-aged man in the middle of a public square. We weren’t in any position to help the victim, but other people were and tried to intervene. I saw a man filming the attack on his phone and a woman on her phone—I hope calling the police. We went on to dinner at Rock Bottom Brewery, but I couldn’t stop wondering what had happened. With some effort, though, I let it go, and we walked a little after dinner (which is when I took the photo on Braoadway) and had some ice cream. On a side street, I heard some guy telling someone (us?) that he is the original Zodiac killer, and I just thought, another person with a mental-health issue turned loose on the street. Turns out, it was the guy who was beating on the other guy. Not, perhaps, the best introduction to a new city.

Tomorrow, we plan to do some sight seeing. I hope to have more photos then—and not to see either the attacker or victim again.