Some may find it odd that I consider Nashville up north, but when you live in swampy south Louisiana; most of the country is up north.
My buddy from high school had moved up to Nashville about a year ago and she was home visiting family, which is often referred to as your Momma and dem in this deepest part of the south. I rode back with her and another carload of girlfriends followed us up for a long girlfriend weekend. We declared it a make-up free trip; southern women often have issues about going out in public without their “face on”.
I over packed for cold weather. In Louisiana our seasons are crawfish and football and Tennessee actually has trees that turn beautiful shades of yellow and gold and red this time of year. As we toured the countryside and saw the fences made of stone, big red barns in the distance, and markers of civil war battles. It was easy to imagine the ghosts of those soldiers in those old rolling hills as we traveled through the landscape. Reminders of that war are still around us southerners in many different ways.
Maybe because we like history in the South, Nashville decided to build a Parthenon.
It reminded me of a trip I took with my family to Greece and saw the real thing. The colorful scarf in the bottom corner of the photo is of my mom’s head. She wore scarfs to keep her wig from blowing off. Why my mom wore a wig and why Nashville built a Parthenon is still a mystery to me.
This phallic symbol is next to Nashville’s Parthenon. The sign says it’s the founder of Nashville. This made all of us girls giggle with naughty thoughts and this was before we had our first drink of the day.
After this excursion it was time for bloody mary’s and salads. We said grace before taking our first sip. I think this may be a southern thing too. I never saw the ladies of Sex and the City say grace before they drank their cocktails.
We headed downtown to listen to music. We ended up in Tootsie’s Purple Orchid and listened to a band that was auditioning. I’m guessing 2:00 in the afternoon is not the best time slot. They were OK and it kinda made me think I was in the TV show Nashville. We sang along to Bobbie Mcgee with the line, “busted flat in Baton Rouge.”
I got this tea towel as a gift. My buddy said it reminded her of me. I love that fact that as southern women, we know what a tea towel is.
We had just driven to the small village of Leiper’s Fork not too far from Nashville when we received news that one of the girl’s father-in-law had passed away. I was there to see friends of mine and I was going to stay the night with them. The girlfriends rallied around their friend and immediately started the drive back to Baton Rouge. That’s how I ended up on the side of the road with my feet propped on my luggage drinking a beer waiting for a ride. My bag was pretty heavy. We had all traveled up with bottles of wine because that’s what polite southern women do when they visit friends. Is this not universal?
I was immediately befriended by another bunch of southern women on a girl’s weekend. I asked what college they went to because it was a football Saturday. I really don’t care about football, but conversation was much easier for us because none of us had gone to Alabama (another southern thing).
My friends that now live in Leiper’s Fork have embraced the country lifestyle. They knew everyone and their two boys are polite and always said yes ma’am or no sir. They called me Miss Connie; these terms of respect are still very much a part of southern life.
The following day I got a message that said my flight was slightly delayed. I told my friend to go ahead and take me to the airport. I could not eat anymore or drink anymore and I had nothing left to say. It was time to head back home to my deep south.
I was telling my sweetie about my southern observations and he pointed out that everyone I was with was from south Louisiana and so I couldn’t make these generalizations about the entire south.
Well bless my heart, I guess I’ll just have to go back and check it out again.
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Connie McLeod 