Some odds and ends from a great trip to Nashville, Memphis, Branson and points south put together by West Pic Travel of Niagara, North Dakota. I was “guest host in training.”
* Sign in the men’s room of Loretta Lynn’s museum at Hurrincane Mills, TN: Please Do Not Spit Tobacco in the Urinals. (Signed in her actual handwriting) Loretta Lynn.
* Somewhere outside Branson, Missouri, gas was selling a week ago Monday for something like $2.96.9 a gallon.
* Our bus driver April who works for Anderson Coach and Bus of Frazee, Minnesota, has been driving for thirty-four years. I think I’m correct when I say she told me she’s driven something like four million miles. She walks to work.
* I’m told (on pretty good authority) that there are between one hundred and one hundred twenty live shows running in Branson right now. In three days, we didn’t see them all.
* During a wonderful breakfast brunch outside Nashville, I broke my life-long grits fast. I sworn off grits way, way back in the 70′s when I was stationed in Georgia in the army. But, the other day I had cheese grits (and much else) for breakfast. What can I say? Like nearly all other Southern cooking, grits can be delicious.
* I very much regret not ordering chicken-fried steak during the trip. It looked so damn good on someone’s plate. Sadly, I can’t eat everything.
* Guitar fly swatter, the Ryman Auditorium’s most popular souvenir. Price: about two dollars.
* Thanks, again, to Elaine West of West Pic for asking me along on the ride. I had a great time!
