A Lyrical Jaunt

        I am back with the Trophy Wife from a jaunt to the lands of country sunshine and the Delta blues with the wedding of a former pretty good little league player in the mix.

        The Nashville Skyline is subdued in the good times, but downtown and the new and plastic Opryland recently flooded the music lived between Third and Fifth Streets.  The old Grand Ole Opry building Ryman Hall was open for a live radio broadcast/concert which was a whole lot of old white folks listening to what sounded good, but fundamentally nostalgic.  An expert told me later that the Whites who we saw are quite well known.

       Off the interstate the slow road to Memphis leads through the Bible Belt, with four churches in each small hamlet and “Jesus” signs on many, many lawns.  They are different from us.

       Graceland is on the long route into town, almost to the Mississippi line.   It fulfills every imagining of kitsch including a real life Heartbreak Hotel, but it recalls for us just how much and how good Elvis was, and how revolutionary.  A white guy sings black music and the world is not the same.  A talented kid, modest,– what was all the ruckus about?  At Graceland they gloss over the end, but that seemed correct in the context.

      “Walking in Memphis with my feet ten feet off of Beale” the music was no  more country sunshine but blues blaring from every door.  Entry onto a beer soaked Beale Street on Friday night is by police frisking everyone which seemed somehow appropriate, and a drunk hit on the Trophy Wife, making me proud indeed.  Cacophonous, raucous, more fun than whatever else I would be doing.

       Which brings me to the elegance of the wedding.  I can testify that I have seen a black lady with blond hair singing Hebrew while Chinese people do the hora.  I am too old to see these things and had an uncustomary second drink, but I can die happy – I’ve seen it all!!

April 4, 1958

           The other day I drove by the building which long ago was a department store, and I thought of waiting in my mother’s 1952 Buick on April 4, 1958 in a parking space by the side of the store while she went in.  It was an important day, and I waited in the Buick contemplating and a little bored.

           Some months before I had asked if I could go to The School, a private school.  An odd request to leave what Life Magazine regularly called the best publc school system in the country, but my parents said I could go if I could get in.  So I took the standardized admission test which in those days was the same test for 6^th graders going into 7^th as for 12^th graders going for 13 years.  I understood there would be a grading curve but was mystified by the geometry, trigonometry and something called a “predicate nominative”.  I was called for an interview.

           It was a warm day for April and sunny.  My mother got lost on the way to the School, and when we arrive a little late Miss McKinnon, the School secretary since 1919 brought  me in to the Headmaster.  He was a tall man with a red face and a brown suit who started by asking me some questions, and as he began to read me a story I noticed a blossoming tree through the bay window behind his desk.  In the story someone walked down a corridor with a candlemaker, a baker and other tradespeople lining the right and the left.  The tree behind him made it look like his office was in a garden.  He stopped and asked me if I knew which trade was in the second door on the left.  I was stunned.  Not close to paying attention, I was sure I had blown it.

           Miss McKinnon escorted me out and my mother in.  After a while she came out, and as we walked to the Buick she told me that I had been accepted, but the Headmaster said, “He will not be at the top of his class”.

           My mother stopped at the department store on our way home, and I stayed in the Buick in a parking space which has since been removed but which I remember.