Back in September I drove with a group of friends from Minneapolis to Nashville for a five-day vacation. As usual, I took my Olympus XA with me to photograph.
Camera: Olympus XA
Lens: Standard Olympus F-Zuiko 35mm 1:2.8
Film: Kodak Portra 400 & 800
The morning of the second day we took a lazy morning, going to the grocery store to get supplies for food and snacks, getting ready, and finally leaving the BnB by 1pm. I am definitely a morning person and it would seem that my friends are not – I would have been ready to go by 10am at the latest, but what can you do. I spent most of the morning drinking coffee and writing in my journal and thankful that I didn’t yet have to be in the heat of the day you could feel rising through the glass panes in the kitchen.
We started our sightseeing in Nashville by going to the Tennessee State Museum, near the capital downtown. Across the lot is an indoor/outdoor farmers market and restaurant booths, and we decided to walk through that before going to the museum. Even though it was early September and very hot there were pumpkins and gourds out for sale, charmingly arranged. A nursery was at the back and I could have spent hours there browsing. I ended up getting some postcards to send there, and then we finally went over to the museum.
I really enjoyed the Tennessee State Museum. I was surprised how far back the history museum went, not just to colonization and the start of the state as a state, but farther, to the forming of the continents from Rodesia (which I thought was supposed to be called Pangea?) and the geological history which formed the topology and plant and animal life that populates the state. It truly made me wish we weren’t staying just in Nashville; that if I had the time I would like to go out hiking in the state and spend a few days camping in the hills or in the river valley. The museum also had an extensive history of the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement, which I realized is told very differently from how it is told back home in Minnesota. The history was very focused on the act of war itself – the battles and sacrifices people made in fighting on both sides of the war. It’s not to say that the impact of slavery and the state’s resistance to the Civil Rights movement were unmentioned, but among the focus on battles and heroism and military service, the story became a little lost. However, I had never seen real slave artifacts before in person (the chains that go around the neck and feet, and a KKK costume) and I’m thankful that those items were there just because of how disturbing they are. But I guess it just wasn’t told the way that I wasn’t used to hearing it. I thought a lot about this and we would talk about it over lunch. It’s difficult to describe the difference, and I’m afraid I’m doing a poor job here. But that’s the impression that I got – the history is told different when you’re on the ‘wrong’ side. Then again, back home, our engagement with the war and history with it was next-to-nothing – no battles took place in Minnesota related to the civil war (that I’m aware of) and we were a far-north farming and hunting region, not really a state or much of a a series of cities at all. So how should I know the right way to tell the story of a dividing American war?
I was surprised by myself in the museum to be mostly interested in the history side of things, rather than the music city side. We breezed through those sections and then ended with a look out on the city from the second-floor balcony. It was late in the afternoon and we were hungry, so we went to a barbecue place downtown and got a late lunch. I’m not much of a foodie myself, but the wings I had were delicious. There wouldn’t be enough time to do the Country Music Hall of Fame that afternoon, so instead we visited the Johnny Cash Museum right off of Broadway. The museum was very tight and crowded, and I’ve never been much of a Cash fan but it was interesting to look at and listen to none-the-less. I like seeing all the gold records on the wall, another image that would become synonymous with Nashville to me, since it wouldn’t be the first place to see such a display. Afterwards, we walked some time through the Broadway area, where it was still daylight and the sound was everywhere and loud, and very drunk people were wandering the streets already. I’ve never seen such a variety of party buses in my life, and all of them full. The street itself is a chaos of music and noise and light, even during the day the neons are bright and flashing and people are hanging out of the windows of the multi-story honky-tonk bars and yelling. We would be going out there later in the night, and I was already anxious about it.
We took a way down in to the Gulch area from there and looked at the murals and art, and since it was hot and the sun was starting to set, we made our way back to the BnB to have drinks and get ready for a night out. I will be honest, I don’t remember much about going out that night. I drank a lot more than intended. But I’ll do my best.
The Broadway area is even more chaotic at night. As we were entering later, when it was dark and about the time a young person would start hitting the bars, herds and herds of Boomers were walking the other direction, already almost toppling over. I saw more people than I’ve ever seen falling down drunk that night, and at least two people actually passed out on the sidewalk. Not my scene, and such a huge crowd. We walked up and down and picked some bars, and I felt compelled to immediately drink as much as possible so that I could stop feeling anxious and start having fun. To that end, I was successful. Once I blurred everything out enough to ignore the debauchery going on around me, then it got better. Which is a kind of disturbing observation to be making now that it’s been some time. Every bar has a live band, and we were certain that there are attractive people hired to dance in the door and lure people in. The music was good but I’m not in to country all that much so I recognized only a handful of it. I know we drunkenly tried to request Trampled by Turtles but nobody knew who they were and we laughed at that. I cannot say this enough – we drank a lot. I do love to dance and I know I did a lot of that towards the end of the night. Altogether my impression was this: had a good time, never doing it again.
I don’t know what time or how late we got back to the BnB, but I know I slept eventually and in the morning had the worst hangover I’ve had since college. I would be taking my hungover self all over that day and trying my best to keep it together.
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