Tennessee Dreaming

Sometimes I miss our home in Tennessee. When Flip and I were first together, we bought an old house with possibilities on an acre and a half of beautiful land near Nashville. The house had designated parkland on two sides which could not be built upon, and there were often deer in our backyard. The land rolled gently down to the road, and a creek ran through it.

We spent several years fixing it up ourselves. We learned to replace wood flooring and to re-fit door jambs. We ripped off artificial wood paneling that was in every room and turned out to be concealing large holes in the plaster and sheet-rock walls where there had once been air conditioners.

We tiled the bathrooms, updated all the plumbing and wiring, put in a new kitchen, and Flip got friendly with the snakes and spiders in the crawl space under the house replacing floor joists with cinder blocks. He would emerge from these excursions covered in spun glass insulation material.

The only thing we didn't do ourselves was roofing. It was legal to have only two roofs, one on top of the other, but our house had four. We had them all removed and replaced with a single new one.

It took a long time and a lot of money, but we were finally ready to paint the outside and put up shutters and window boxes. We landscaped the entire property.

We had purchased an old used tractor, which Flip painted green and yellow and called a John Doe. I found my true calling with that tractor. Cutting the lawn in perfect rows was marvelously zen. It took me six hours to mow all the grassed areas, while Flip did everything requiring strength and intelligence: weed-eating, hedge trimming, cultivating, pruning, and tractor maintenance. Every time I mowed the lawn, he had to make adjustments so it would work one more time.

Just before we sold the house, we bought a new Craftsman 28 HP tractor, and I was sure that life couldn't get any better. We each got to use it once before we gave it to the female couple who bought our house for much less than it was worth. I still miss my tractor.

Flip was eager to see Tennessee in the rear view mirror. He was tired of working at his day job with people who brought guns to work, and we both realized that we didn't belong in the South, despite its great natural beauty.

Nashville was a wonderland of music. Besides the ubiquitous country music, which we were not into, there were several jazz venues where we saw Joshua Redman, Brian Blade, Sam Yahel, Larry Carleton, and Wynton Marsalis, among others. We heard Leon Russell, the Moody Blues, Rush, James Taylor, and AJ Croce in concert, as well as numerous acts I've forgotten.

My favorite town character was an old man aptly named Buttons, as his clothing was covered in them. He performed authentic blues on a downtown street corner and was always up for a conversation between numbers. He had kind eyes and a good word for everyone who showed him respect, and was a great musician.

Flip's former music partner, Stephen, played at the famed Blue Bird Cafe, and Flip's new band performed on the Cumberland riverboat New Year's Eve, where I finally got to say the words that every girl longs to utter, "I'm with the band."

Our only near neighbor was a couple we'll call Jeff and Judy. (Most Southern men with only one first name are Jeffs.) This particular Jeff used to start each day by kicking his dog, which was tied to a tree, and revving up every engine on his property including the vehicles on blocks. He had piles of carburetors everywhere that probably resembled pyramids from outer space, and eventually built an immense and immensely ugly building behind his house to play mechanic in.

Meanwhile, Judy followed him around planting flowers, which tried to bloom among the vehicular litter.

I untied his dog one moonless night and took him to a shelter in another town.

The next day, Judy's son, Tommy, flagged me down and asked me to help him find his dog. To avoid blowing my own cover, I did, and we drove around calling the dog repeatedly, one of us with considerably more optimism than the other.

We ended up at a mall, where an appealing teen age girl carrying several shopping bags ran in front of my car without looking, and then flashed the universal cute teen age girl grin that means, "Oops. I'm sorry I scared you, but I am adorable." I grinned back while braking firmly.

Tommy leaned out the car window and yelled, "How do you feel about nooses?"

I was shocked but not speechless. (That rarely happens.) I told him I didn't feel that way and if he did, he was not welcome in my car.

I had seen the young girl, who was black, drive away safely, so I evicted Tommy and drove home alone. He and his brother shot their guns behind our house late into the night.

It's impossible to comprehend such hatred. The Civil War was recent and personal to so many people, who just assumed that we must share their prejudices because we shared their skin color.

It would be unfair to imply that all white Southerners hold these views. Many don't. But far too many still do, and we needed to be in a place where race was not a constant issue requiring us to take a stand over and over on something that should have been settled long ago.

Our other neighbors around the "holler" were the Peyton Place people. They lived in a huge house with several children. There had been two families that were best friends. They switched partners, and the women and children stayed in their own homes while the men played musical houses.

I thought there were kinkier things, like flying Confederate flags off the backs of pickup trucks.

Lorrie Morgan lived on our road and was known to be an evil bitch unfriendly. I learned to watch for her car after she sideswiped me into a ditch on my bicycle and nearly hit my dog more than once.

One year, I had a Christmas job at a local department store. She picked out a few things and cut to the front of a long line of customers waiting to be rung up, shoving her purchases at me.

I told her politely that she would have to wait her turn.

She yelled in my face, "Do you know who I am?"

I said that it really didn't matter, that I had to take care of everyone in order. She got abusive so I quietly commented that some of these people had helped her to become famous. She threatened to have me fired, threw her stuff at me and stomped out, leaving quite a cloud of booze breath, rage and bad perfume.

You can't buy class.

I made Christmas for a lot of people that year. I had no authority to change prices, but if someone complained that an item was too expensive, I asked, "What would you like to pay?" and rang it up at that price.

I didn't do it for myself, though, as that would have been stealing.

I was lucky I didn't get put in jail, but I think the store management assumed that I was too stupid to ring up sales correctly.

When I applied for a Christmas job the next year, I didn't even get an interview, or, of course, a job.

I know I got off easy.