Nashville

My mother-in-law recently turned 80. She’s a young 80 who, within the past couple of years, became a widow. It’s been hard but I think she’s adjusted relatively well. Things like that do, however, have a tendency to change one’s perspective. She seems to have a greater appreciation for doing things while health allows. As such, she’s keen on ticking things off her bucket list. Initially she was thinking about some sort of family cruise. Of course the pandemic put the kibosh on any idea of traveling in a confined space with hundreds of strangers. I’ve never been on a cruise but I have an idea of what it’s about. I have taken massive ferries which contained a swimming pool, casino and restaurants which are technically not cruises but provide a similar confined space with people you may or may not choose to hang out with. Either way, this is certainly not the time.

Plan B ended up being Opryland, located just outside Nashville. I’ve driven across the US a couple times but I don’t recall ever traveling through Nashville. So this was new territory for me. Our trip went due south, beginning in southern Indiana, through Louisville, across Kentucky and down into Tennessee. The farther east you get in the US, the easier it is to travel through multiple states in a half day.

My brother-in-law had been there before with his family and that’s where the idea generated. I think a lot of it had to do with the huge water park that is attached to it. Having spent most of my adult life outside the US, I still find myself getting blown away by the size of this sort of American attraction. Though I should say that other countries are now not only imitating these things but in some cases surpassing them. It’s all quite fascinating though it’s not the sort of thing that is a draw for me generally speaking.

Opryland is a bit like a gigantic cruise ship that doesn’t go anywhere. Rated as the 29^th largest hotel in the world (almost 2,900 rooms), the facility is actually an accumulation of disparate buildings that have been absorbed beneath a single superstructure, much like a football stadium roof. The enclosure allows the whole place to be climate controlled and teeming with tropical plants. Rather than being hot and muggy as this part of the country is, certainly this time of year, it was actually cool and the temperature remains constant year-round.

The facility contains several overpriced restaurants, gift shops, a couple of swimming pools, a spa/gym, etc. It contains a waterway which winds through the various buildings and hosts a cheesy little tour boat. It’s adjacent to, and in many ways dwarfs, the famous Grand Ole Opry which is wedged between Opryland and a large shopping mall. I suppose I never really imagined what the setting of the Opry would be like but if I had, it wouldn’t have been the smallish, nondescript theater overtaken by a massive sea of commercialism. Possibly naïve of me. 

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While the hotel obviously has lots of offer, I was more interested in Nashville itself, the heart of which was about 14 miles away according to Google. Out of reach for an early morning jog, we opted to devote an afternoon for lunch and a walk around the city.  It's not enough but I'll take what I can get. 

We started off with lunch at Puckett’s, a Tennessee institution which for me lived up to its billing. We had a variety of the area favorites, including fried catfish for me with a local beer. I don't think I could eat southern food often but it's great once in a while.

gotta love my daughter's expression

Afterwards we walked around the city. We were a relatively large group (12), so the walk was moderate in length and duration. Nonetheless, we were able to see quite a bit before returning to our hotel. It’s a city that deserves far more time but that will need to be for another trip, one that will hopefully include Memphis as well.

Downtown Presbyterian Church built in the mid-1800s

One thing we did get to visit was the state capitol. I like history and this state has a history I know little about. The grounds of the capitol are located on a high point and provide a decent view of the city. The capitol building itself is rather simple but nonetheless well done. One thing that stands out is the plethora of controversial statues in the Nashville area. I'm all for protecting history, including the aspects of history that aren't very flattering. I suppose it's the way these things are presented that matters. For example, statues of wretched humans should not be located in a place of honor. However, at the same time I don't suggest necessarily that we destroy art we don't agree with. The earlier blog post of the visit to the Minnesota state capitol is an example of preserving the art but framing it in such a way that we learn from the atrocities of the past.

Last May, in the aftermath of the George Floyd attack, several Tennessee statues were subjected to mobs that desecrated and/or removed them. Ideally you don't want mobs making decisions about how to manage public property. But with a very conservative state legislature, I guess these people (likely in the minority) figured that a good fit of rage was the swiftest way to achieve justice. One such target was the statue of Edward Carmack. After reading about the guy, it's rather stunning anyone thought he deserved a statue to begin with, let alone place it prominently in front of the capitol building. Carmack was a politician in the early 1900s who wrote editorials lambasting the writings of prominent Tennessee civil rights journalist Ida B. Wells. He never really accomplished anything and there was nothing really noteworthy about the guy except that he was fatally shot in 1908 by a political rival. Makes you wonder if the rival wasn't more fitting of commemoration.

Tennessee state capitol with base of Carmack statue in the center of the photo

 

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The next day was more or less dedicated to the water park. To be honest, I have relatively little experience with such things. They existed when I was a kid but I don’t remember ever going to one and they were certainly not at the scale of what exists today. There’s no doubt that it was entertaining, particularly for the kids. It was a mix of indoor and outdoor attractions, many employing a combination of water, height and gravity making it inadvisable to have lunch in the hour or so prior to taking part.

You can’t swim with a Covid mask and I frequently wondered how an airborne virus does in these types of environments. The place was teeming with people of all ages in a red, heavily anti-vax state. Coming from a continent where about 1% of the population was vaccinated, the virus was constantly on the forefront of my mind, even though I was already fully vaccinated. I generally kept my distance from people, to the extent that I could.

One thing you get used to as a parent is making decisions that you probably wouldn’t make if you didn’t have kids. Opyland would fit into this category for me. For me, it's a bit like Dubai in the sense that it's a monstrous man-made attraction devoid of nature. But watching my girls embrace the whole experience made it all more than worthwhile.

Kiran attacking the wave