Tennessee

The lord allowed me to drink some more
He said what I am searching for are
The answers to all which are in front of me
The ultimate truth started to get blurry
For some strange reason it had to be
It was all a dream about Tennessee
-"Tennessee," Arrested Development


I landed abruptly (literally) in Nashville at 1pm. The pilot apologized for the near crash landing, making a joke of it: "it wasn't my fault, or the plane's fault...it was the asphalt!" to which the passengers responded with big laughter and applause. I wondered how the audience could be so easy, given the nature of the situation and the lame-ness of the joke. Then I quickly remembered that 90% of the plane's passengers were en route to a country music festival.

I was a day early for a different festival ("rock n' roll," a genre whose fans have a much better sense of humor) and, being early, had some time to kill. Actually, I had A LOT of time to kill: it was 1pm and my ride to the hotel (an hour west) would not be arriving until midnight. I made my way downtown and found a cab driver smoking a cigarette up against his hood. Maybe he'd take me there on the cheap - he didn't seem too preoccupied. He calmly appraised the job at $180. Luckily, the whole conversation was overheard by a woman at the laundromat next door. We struck up a conversation and I told her that "$75 would be one thing but $180 is out of the question." She tossed down her Soap Opera Digest: "$75? Hell, I'LL drive you there MYSELF for that!"

10 minutes later I was sitting shotgun in her 2-seat 1979 Datsun. My bag was in the trunk beside three overstuffed laundry bags. She explained that she just needed to make one quick stop (uh-oh) to "get the money from the mexicans living in my old condemned house" (oh my god). She was right, it wasn't too far off course, and it was definitely condemned. For some reason I was relieved that the aforementioned Mexicans weren't home when we arrived. She, however, was not. She scribbled a note, blabbering about how she "don't speak mexican," stuck it to the chain link fence, watered some dead plants out front, and came back to the car.

I was curious about the history of the house so I asked her. She had previously lived there with a guy who she met "backstage at a show" (what show was it? david allen coe. was the guy in the band? no he was a roadie.) He divorced her after she blew a hole through the sofa that was meant for him. She couldn't believe that I had never shot a gun before (not even a rifle? no, not even a rifle.)

Her son, on the other hand, had "an entire arsenal of guns." She described him as, "learning disabled and left-handed on top of that." He was a 25-year-old father of two, with a wife who "just sits around on her ever-widening ass." She told me that he had been kicked out of every school he ever went to and that he was a sort of "idiot savant carpenter." I told her I thought vocational skills were more important now than ever. She agreed. I told her that Jesus was a carpenter. She said that she had lived in Nashville for 30 years, except for an 18-month stint in Chicago. "Because I've lived somewhere else," she explained, "my Nashville pride is more legit than all those folks who haven't ever left." I wondered if she was referring to the Prodigal Son after hearing my Jesus comment, but I think it was just a coincidence.

The car was swarming with flies, even with both windows down on the highway for over an hour. Everything smelled like oil. It was like driving a small red boat down the highway.

When she dropped me off at the Manchester Ramada, she jotted down her name and number in case I needed anything whatsoever. It was from the same notebook she wrote to the Mexicans on. I noticed she was left-handed. From the lobby I heard her speed off, back to the east, to Nashville, where white people eat Mexican food.

I thought of the plane's erratic landing, and the look the woman beside me had on her face. She was already three bloody marys deep and the book came flying out of her hand. It was by Erica Jong. Earlier, at 35,000 feet, she had told me she recently moved from Tampa Bay to Boston. I had asked her if she felt conflicted during the Magic-Celtics series. Or during the Red Sox-Rays series. She answered assuredly, "the Lord gives equal strength to all the different players."