Five Reasons I Hope I Get to Live in Nashville

If my recent on-campus interview went well - well enough for them to offer me the job, that is - there's a very good chance I could find myself living in Nashville next year. A year ago I would have balked at this. I had driven through Nashville several times on I-40, always on my way from Oklahoma to some blue state along the eastern seaboard, and I knew very little about the city. I did know several things, though:

1) Andrew Jackson, the genocidal monster who brutally uprooted tens of thousands of Native Americans and forced them to relocate to my home state (killing many thousands in the process), lived in a mansion outside of Nashville called The Hermitage. It's a beautiful place, with a lovely, Indian-free, tree-lined avenue; pleasant, Indian-free meadows; and a comprehensive audio tour that, as I recall, was also Indian-free. I do not like Andrew Jackson, and Nashville has always suffered, in my mind, by association.

2) There is a gigantic building dominating the Nashville skyline that looks, to me and many others I've discussed the matter with, like a gigantic cell phone. Batman's cell phone, actually, by virtue of its two "antennae." It used to be the Bell South building and now belongs to AT&T, thus making the resemblance stronger. The first time I saw this building was at night, and, with the whole thing lit up like a cell phone, particularly the part of the building that would be the digital screen on an actual cell phone, the effect was powerful and unsettling. Imagine driving down the highway, minding your own business, and then turning left to look out the window and seeing a gigantic toaster dominating the skyline of a major American city. It was a little like that. Here's what the building looks like during the day:

Trust me, it's much scarier at night.

3) Country music comes from Nashville. Once upon a time, this was a good thing - George Jones, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, Emmylou Harris, Patsy Cline, Buck Owens, Loretta Lynn, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Hank Williams, etc., all made names for themselves in Nashville, and our culture is much the richer for it. But contemporary country music - that reactionary, cloying, saccharine, Joe-the-Plumber idiot music that exemplifies everything that's wrong with this country - also comes from Nashville. Now, country music has always been politically right-of-center ("Okie from Muskogee," anyone?), and popular music of all sorts is often aesthetically revolting, and it is, moreover, supremely unfair to blame an entire city for the crimes of its principal industry, but I have to confess that the prominent association between Nashville and folks like Toby Keith and Kenny Chesney imbued me with a deep prejudice against the place.

I began to revise my opinion of the city this summer, when fate brought my brother and me to the city for a day. Well, it wasn't exactly fate - he was driving east and I was driving west and we decided to meet up there - but I still think fate had something to do with it. So allow me to enumerate several of the reasons I now think Nashville would be a pretty good place to live, Andrew (and Alan) Jackson notwithstanding.

1) Meat-and-three. This is a type of meal at which Nashville restaurants excel: your choice of meat (chicken dumplings, say, or fried chicken) with three sides. Sides include things like mac & cheese, mashed potatoes, corn, green beans, and turnip greens. This might not sound too exciting, but oh-my-god! you have to try these sides. At the Elliston Place Soda Shop, a Nashville institution near Vanderbilt University, I had some of the most exciting turnip greens in history - exciting because cooked in some sort of heavenly pork juice that took the bitter edge off the greens and replaced it with exciting pig flavor. My brother had these along with a deep-fried pork chop, and I'm happy to report that he's still living. Here's what it looked like:




2) Anywhere you can put a band in Nashville, there's a band. Seriously. Restaurants, hotel lobbies, parking lots, meat-and-threes. Last week I had to yell across the table at one of my interviewers because there was a band playing in the student dining hall while we were trying to eat lunch. Most of these bands are several orders better than the lunatic drivel you'll hear on a country radio station - which means, of course, that they don't stand a chance of getting a record contract.

3) The Pancake Pantry. This is a breakfast spot not far from Vanderbilt where it's not uncommon to wait outside on weekends for up to an hour before being seated. We had a slight wait, but it wasn't that long. And then we were rewarded with heaven-on-a-plate in the form of sweet potato pancakes. The good thing about this is that we can both now die happy. The bad thing is that all other pancakes can only ever be disappointing. Here's what they looked like:

4) The Charlie Daniels Museum. Okay, so this choice is a little tongue-in-cheek, but if you've got the right attitude it is possible to spend a very long time in the Charlie Daniels Museum, which is free, open to the public, and located right in the heart of downtown Nashville. By "right attitude" I mean, of course, the willingness and ability to laugh at the small-minded, flag-waving, chest-beating over-the-topness of it all. Charlie Daniels loves three things: guitars, NASCAR, and the US military, and his love of these things is loudly proclaimed throughout the museum in photographs, commemorative items, awards, and souvenirs from Charlie's seventeen decades in the music business. I have several favorite items, but the best might be the photo of Charlie and his wife with Vice President Dick Cheney and his robot bride:

The gift shop at the Charlie Daniels Museum is also notable for its large number of racist knicknacks, from Confederate-flage bikinis to Aunt Jemima figurines. Say whatever else you will about it - that takes balls.

5) The Ernest Tubb Record Shop. Just down the road from the Charlie Daniels Museum, this Nashville institution was founded in 1947 by the "Texas Troubador" Ernest Tubb, stalwart of the Grand Ole Opry and pioneer of honky tonk music. It specializes in classic country records and memorabilia, and serves as a standing rebuke to the travesty that country music has become. While there I bought two Buck Owens CDs and a bottle of - no kidding - George Jones bottled water. My one regret is that I did not buy the bumper sticker that says "What Would Ernest Tubb Do?" If I get the job, however, I'll have a chance to rectify that error.

There are several other features that make Nashville a desirable place to live, but these will do for now. Watch this space for future developments, y'all.