The Old, the Dead and the Hot as Blue Blazes: Day 3

If possible, the next morning was even hotter, as though Nashville gave up even pretending to fight the heat and just gave into the scorching inferno that swamped everything.  We decided to start the day on a high note by going to, um, the cemetery.  Call me morbid, but I love cemeteries.  I love the various shapes of headstones and the pithy sayings that play tribute to those who've passed - like the one pictured here - and the statuary that graces the particularly old ones, like the Nashville City Cemetery.  Our first challenge was to find the cemetery.  Funny, but the addresses for those sorts of things are not to be found in the visitor's guide.  We actually had to call the visitor's bureau to get an address for Mathilda, and even though the woman was very polite, I wondered if she thought us a bit bizarre.

Mom and I trudged through the mid-morning light, growing more clear and hot by the moment, while Dad trolled around in the van, stopping periodically to read his book.  I took 50 or 60 shots before I succumbed to the heat, thinking that I knew exactly how the Wicked Witch of the West felt as she melted.  My cheeks were blazing, the sweat rolling out of every pore, and any semblance of makeup I might've put on that morning was pooling somewhere along my collarbone.


The twenty-minute ride across town gave Mom and me time to return to an acceptable temperature below the blood-boiling point, so that we didn't collapse immediately on the lawn of the Belmont Mansion when we arrived.  Although it would've been a nice place to collapse, because Adelicia Hayes Franklin Acklen Cheatam liked statuary...a lot.  So we would've been in good company among gods and goddesses and some very sweet looking sleeping lions. Adelicia, often referred to as Tennessee's real Steel Magnolia, was a charming, pistol-toting millionairess who hollered "we want pre-nups" long before Kanye penned "Golddigger."  She married well the first time to a man roughly 30 years her senior and held onto her wealth through two more husbands and died, as all women dream of doing, while shopping in New York City. 

With one old home and a morning with the dead behind us, we left the Nashville city limits bound for The Hermitage, home of President Andrew Jackson and his wife Rachel who had no children but managed to have many people in their house over the years also named Andrew and Rachel.  It would really make historic house tours a lot easier if someone was just willing to go out on a limb with "Jeremy" and "Samantha."  I digress.

By the time we pulled into the parking lot at The Hermitage, it was truly hotter than the blue blazes.  The sun charmed serpents from the asphalt, and they wavered upwards coating us in incendiary heat.  We were told at the ticket window that I couldn't take in my camera bag because it might snag the old wallpaper.  So I trudged back across the parking lot, tossed my camera bag in the van and stashed my camera body and two lens in my purse, which made it weigh approximately 27 pounds.

Once inside, we watched a short film on Andrew Jackson, and I gotta say - that guy hired a good PR firm posthumously.  Reading between the lines, it sounds like the he was a bit of a jerk.  Granted, he lived a rough life, serving in the Revolutionary War at 13 and emerging from the conflict an orphan whose other siblings didn't survive the battle.  And while it's amazing that a man from such mean beginnings rose to the highest office in the country, the short film glossed over the early years of his marriage to Rachel when she was (OOPS!) married to two people at once.  It did, however, note the raucous nature of his inaugural ball which got so out of hand, he had to be escorted out the back of the White House by security.  Party in the U.S.A., indeed.

The museum held some interesting relics, including replicas of the garments worn by Rachel and Andrew to the ball held in New Orleans to celebrate victory in the War of 1812.  For the record, they were essentially Jack Sprat and his wife.  Andrew was 6'1" and weighed about 130 lbs., while Rachel stood just over 5' and weighed in around the same as her husband.

While contemplating that skinny men no longer give fat women a second glance, we made our way from the museum to the house.  The thick air barely moved as we cut through it, and within seconds sweat was omnipresent.   We waited outside for the next scheduled tour and chatted with the poor fellow robed in 18th century garb clear up to his neck.  It made me hotter just looking at him.

Once inside where the fine folks of The Hermitage thought well of keeping things all 1836-style except for the addition of A/C (thank heavens), we were treated to some very special Greek-themed wallpaper which was all the rage in Nashville, apparently, because it was at Belmont, too.  Also notable was that Andrew Jackson died at home in his bedroom that's pretty much just as he left it.  Except for the bedding which deteriorated and had to be replaced.  Thankfully, in 1998, the company that made the original was still in business and had the original order.  Kind of made me feel better about all the things I keep in case they come in handy a century or so later.

Like I noted with Belle Meade, it's the random little trivia facts that stick in my brain.  Like The Hermitage's smokehouse processed about 25,000 pounds of pork each year.  That's a whole lotta pig.  Also, while in office, President Jackson read 15 newspapers and kept them in giant leatherbound volumes.  The only other sitting president to read the newspaper so prolifically was JFK, an accomplished speed-reader.

All too soon it seemed, we were back outside again.  The disappointment was somewhat offset by the beauty of the gardens.  Apparently, Andrew hired a hoity-toity British landscape artist to create a classic English garden behind The Hermitage for his lady love.  It was here that Rachel and he are entombed.  She died just prior to his inauguration.  It's said he walked out to the monument every evening at sunset as long as he could do so.

At this point, with the headphones and digital recorder from the audio tour feeling like they weighed 10 pounds and my purse with the two camera lens weighing three times that, I could've happily departed from The Hermitage.  But Dad wanted to take the trek through the woods to get a better view of the farm land and the remains of the slave quarters, plus the added bonus of emerging from said woods into the backyard of the original Hermitage log cabin.  Oh joy.

Despite my protestations, there were a few very good things about this 2-mile path:
1) It ran alongside the creek fed by the spring whose water stayed at a constant 58 degrees.  Yes, I did dip my toes in presidential waters.
2) It was a wild experience in which we encountered this very brave rabbit who was totally unconcerned by our presence and a more cautious wild turkey
3) No one else was as stupid as us to want to plow through the woods with a 100-plus heat index, so we were blissfully alone

By the time we wended our way along the path, had close encounters of the animal-kind and sweated darn near every ounce of moisture left in our bodies, my plunge into the presidential crick was a distant memory.  So was my patience.  So was my enjoyment.  So was my desire to read all the little tiny signs inside the original Hermitage.  While Dad carried on with his headphones on listening to all manner of educational musings, I removed my headphones and digital recorder and threw them in the grass.  My purse hit the ground next and then my camera.  I took off the necklace I'd been wearing.  I was hot.  I was hot. IwashotomigoshIwashot.  Mom laughed at me while Dad continued his exploration of the archaeological findings and I continued my disenchantment with history, audio tours, presidents and the month of July.  "Dad," I said.  "It's a log cabin.  It's hot.  Let's go." 

As we trekked back to the museum - do you notice how much walking is involved in this blazing hot day??? - I contemplated how it must've looked then: wild with just the beginnings of civilization carved out.  This is me - hot and contemplative.

Dinner that evening was at Margot, a local-to-table restaurant with a rotating menu.  The homemade bread was to die for, and for dinner I had this refreshing red snapper in a corn salsa.  Mom, Dad and I split two desserts: a cherry clafloutis and chocolate mousse.  I could've had a gallon of the mousse.  And if I weren't trying to maintain what little dignity I had left with my sweaty hair plastered to my head and my makeup melted away, I would've licked the inside of the bowl.

We let Mathilda take us back to Carole's Yellow Cottage one more time.  One more time, we arrived crusted in salt, smelling slightly like yesterday's dirty socks and so desperate for a shower, we would've hosed off in the backyard.  And yet, we couldn't have possibly had more fun spending quality time with the old, the dead, and...well, let's be honest...I could've done without the hot as blue blazes.

The Old, The Dead and The Hot as Blue Blazes: Day 1

As a general rule, we Harps are not intrepid travelers.  Not a one of us has a passport, and the most exotic locations any of us has traveled is...Montana?  But every once in a great while, we load up the minivan and head to uncharted territory like...Nashville?

Mom, Dad and I headed northward on Thursday for a little escape from routine but certainly not from the heat because it pursued us clear across state lines.  We tootled down the snaking black asphalt, high up into the Georgia hills where we made our first stop just beyond where we lived when I was born.  Ostensibly, we were getting ice for the cooler.  But we left the grocery store with a four-piece pack of deli fried chicken that originated from the renowned operation of the Grand Poobah of Poultry himself, my dad.  It was our first taste of the of the kind of high life you live only on vacation: fried chicken enjoyed in classic Southern style on the blacktop parking lot of a Food Lion just over the Tennessee border.  That's how we roll, folks.

On our way again and trading the Peach State for the Tennessee hill country, Dad attempted to chart the location of old Highway 41 running alongside I-75 and pointed out from time to time locations of note.  For example, the overpass under which he picked up a hitchhiker in a sleet storm who sold him the Gibson Les Pauls off his back for bus fare - a tale in such long-standing that I half expected a bronzed thumb to be marking the site.  After much reminiscing about "Old 41," we exited onto that hallowed highway and continued our way upstate as Mom and Dad argued over whether Mom remembered the scenery - he said she did, and she said she didn't.

And soon our wild adventure made its second stop in Murfreesboro, home of Middle Tennessee State University, institution of matriculation for both of my parents and the blossoming beginning of their 40-plus year companionship.  This resulted in a lot of conjecturing about where they first met (was it the library?) and which dorm Mom lived in while they were dating (Felder?) and the revelation that they were in a cemetery when they first "got serious" about the topic of marriage.  Not to mention the story about Dad watching rich kids in a convertible drive through leaf piles one fall to the annoyance of him and his friend who solved the problem with a well placed concrete block in one pile of leaves.  In the (few) years since graduation, Murfreesboro has changed a fair piece, leading to a great deal of confusion over where local dives and hangouts were or would be if they were still standing.  And for the record, the City Cafe and Pastime Billards were, in fact, still in business.  Guess Dad left them well fortified.

Back on the highway, we pulled out Mathilda, a.k.a. my Garmin, and directed her to Carole's Yellow Cottage, where we would be staying.  Plans were to meet our gracious hostess around 5 o'clock.  Nascent travelers that we are, we forgot to account for the central time rollback and arrived at the house with a pink door(!) just ahead of the appointed time...Eastern Standard Time.  Did I mention the heat?  Well, we bravely parked the minivan, stashed Mathilda in the console and took a (sweltering, oppressive, sweaty) stroll around the block, admiring the historic homes and trying not to stand too close to one another.  When we finished our loop with 15 minutes to spare, we did the wise thing and parked it on the stoop hoping the wind didn't blow our fresh scents toward each other.

It wasn't too long before our hostess arrived to show us to our accommodations, which were made all the more wonderful by two sweet letters - A and C.  With all our treasures toted in and the perspiration dried from our brows (however briefly), we headed back out to continue our adventure with some local eats at the Rose Pepper.  Hello, fish tacos and delicious sangria.

Sated with libations and provisions, we let Mathilda direct us to Cheekwood Botanical Garden to view the exhibit by glass artist Dale Chihuly.  There's something about sangria that makes you say, "90 plus degrees outside?  Bah!  Staying indoors is for sissies!"  We trekked through the park after dark to view a dozen or so glass installations throughout the gardens.  I snapped pictures alongside others - and secretly scoffed at their iPhone attempts.  Until about halfway through when my camera bag was threatening to smother me with its non-breathable polyester surface, and then I wondered if the iPhone photogs were scoffing at me with my sweat-drenched shirt and ruddy cheeks, my hair stuck to my forehead and neck.  By the time we reached the car again, we were all in a state beyond sweaty in which we had become humidity itself.  I might've heard among Mathilda's instructions to turn right and exit left to "for the love of all that is decent, take a bath."

Perhaps this would be the dirtiest and sweatiest and most disgusting we would be.  Or not.  Day two's adventures include equal amounts if not more of sweat, plus horse breeding, cannon fire and desserts so good you'll need to repent afterward.

Cat Lady Chic

I am a Wikipedia junkie. I'm prone to time-warping through what I refer to as "Wikipedia rabbit holes." It usually starts with a headline on Yahoo! news. Take, for instance, Saturday's featured Yahoo nugget on child star survivors. It mentioned Drew Barrymore, who was recently featured in the HBO film Grey Gardens. Her performance in the film is garnering acclaim from critics, so I went to IMDB to see the details, and I discovered that Grey Gardens chronicles the sensational story of the riches-to-rags branch of the Bouvier family tree. And that's when the time-warp opened up and sucked me into the Wikipedia rabbit hole.

I found myself fascinated by Jackie Kennedy's aunt and cousin, both named Edie, who took a spacious estate in the Hamptons and turned it into a feline infested garbage dump. Both women aspired to stardom, had haphazard careers that never really took off, and ended up squirreled away in the playground of the rich and famous performing skits for one another until the health inspector showed up to evict them.

That's when the story became tabloid fodder and spurred Jackie O to spend more than $30,000 to clean up the mess. But just two years later, the women had once again allowed Grey Gardens - an estate with one of the most notable gardens in the Hamptons - to drift into disrepair. Ironically, it was their eccentricity that finally led to their fame when the 1975 documentary Grey Gardens made them cult icons.

"Little Edie" suffered from alopecia and wore colorful, dramatic headscarves to mask her condition. Though she lived in a weed-choked dilapidated house filled with catfood cans and raccoon feces, Little Edie managed to pioneer a fashionable garbage chic that turned her into a style icon.

The squalor's extremity was appalling; and yet, the photographs depicted a house well-loved with touches of whimsy and affection. And the women looked curiously happy. The whole story was fantastical - the kind of truth you'd swear was fiction. Perhaps my preoccupation, my willingness to go down so many rabbit holes, was my own predilection to derelict spaces. You could almost imagine Little Edie pirouetting through the dashes of sunlight slanting through holes in the roof, skipping around piles of moldering books, skirting broken furniture and humming a tune...one that only she could appreciate.

Abandoned

Last Saturday, I spent the better part of the day in the dimmed corridors of several abandoned buildings. Strapped with cameras, my friend Tommy and I worked our way through the slightly damp and musty innards of empty factories and their dilapidated outbuildings. The factories themselves were cavernous - at the same time airy and stifled. The other buildings were in varying states of disrepair, from splintered roofs that let slivers of sunlight cut through the dust to completely open to the blinding blue sky that looked all the more clean and bright against the gloom.

We picked through glass shards from broken windows, rusted metal machinery and the weeds that worked their way through the concrete. And there were the other signs of man: stacks of time cards from the 40s and 50s; a list of money saving measures still tacked to a bulletin board; piles of carpet samples; scattered hard hats.

I took a photo of a door with no knob. Tommy noted that there was something poetic about it. Perhaps it was the contradiction of silent factories. Quiet spaces that once hummed. Empty stillness instead of deafening industry. Concrete fortresses filled with rain pools and lush vines. The mundane items that somehow seemed exceptional because they had been abandoned. The strange beauty of neglect.

I'm almost certain that Willie Mae Hollis never thought that a time card from 1944 noting a standard 8-hour workday in December would one day be fascinating just because it had been left behind.