Lucky

Greetings from Hagerstown, Maryland! We are about nine driving hours away from home. While I don’t usually have two blog posts so close together I wanted to sum up this particular road trip before I got home.

First off, let me make it absolutely clear that I am very much aware that The Grand Ole Opry is in Nashville and not Memphis as I had indicated in my previous entry. I was up at 5:30 after very little sleep and spent all of my energies on making sure I had spelled Tallahatchie correctly. I hereby commit to avoiding writing my blog entries when I first get up in the morning from now on!

I did learn two things though: 1) I think it is clear that six weeks minus five days of continuous travel is beginning to take its toll on me, and 2) people are actually reading this blog! Thank you to those of you who gently reminded me of the geography of Tennessee so kindly and sweetly. While I occasionally receive some feedback (thank you Celina, Andrea, Marie-Claire, Lise , a few others and especially Lee!) sometimes doing this blog can be an act of faith that there is someone actually opening reading this. No complaints, it’s the nature of this style of writing.

After Eric told me that I moved the Opry to Memphis we headed off to Dollywood. This is an amusement park, much like Canada’s Wonderland, in which Dolly Parton obviously plays a key role being the owner and all. Eric really wanted to see her museum so off we went.

We took in a show that consisted of some of Dolly’s relatives, including her Uncle Bill who helped get her first break, singing her songs for about thirty minutes. It was...interesting. You know when you go to someone’s house and they show off their kid’s incredible talent in singing or acting or painting or whatever and the kid actually sucks so you have to sit there and try to keep your breakfast down and not wince in pain? It was kind of like that but at fifty-four bucks a person. Alvin and the Chipmunks would have done “I Will Always Love You” better.

The museum was your typical collection of posters, awards, costumes and personal mementos that we have seen elsewhere, most notably at the grossly overpriced Loretta Lynn Dude Ranch (that’s right...Dude Ranch!), but it began in an attic set with her entire career piled up around you. A film has Dolly welcoming you in and giving you a brief introduction to her museum. She is the bubbly, laughing, self-deprecating person you all know well on television. She jokes about herself when she talks about trying to lose weight by using a “personal sauna” that was popular in the 1970s. “It made some of me shrink...but as you can tell not all of me.” She ends the video by hooking herself up on one of those old time vibrating belt fat busters that you wrapped around your butt as you stood there and shook and saying “Some people thought I had a great vibrato voice but...” and then singing “I Will Always Love You” in a shaky voice.

You can love or hate Dolly Parton’s music, career or even talent, but anyone who finds her public persona anything but charming and playful is one bitter pill. Of all the country and western personalities we have regarded during these past few days, Dolly Parton is the only one who has consistently and publicly supported the rights of gays and lesbians. She embraces diversity while honouring and proudly referring to her rural Tennessee background. She is an incarnation of the possibility of bridging the progressive and conservative elements in our North American society.

And Eric has admitted to having a girl crush on her. Watching him slowly wander through this building was worth ten times the ticket price.

After Dollywood we headed north to home. Today we drove through a bit of North Carolina and West Virginia, through the state of Virginia, and have stopped half way through the sliver of Maryland that is on our path. Tomorrow we go through Pennsylvania, New York, Ontario and home.

It has been an amazing trip! So many things I haven’t even had the chance to tell you.

Like explaining to the staff at The Acadian Village in Lafayette, Louisiana that there should be a crucifix at the front of the  refurbished church instead of a Protestant cross (“The Acadians were Catholics? Really?”), or how everyone in New Orleans warned us not to go into certain areas to avoid getting robbed or killed (including a charming young woman at the Jason Mraz concert who offered us her phone number in case something bad happened), or how we visited a replica of the Parthenon in Nashville (it was built for the World Exposition of 1897). We visited the site where Patsy Cline’s plane crashed, saw the Church that Martin Luther King, Jr. preached in, and visited the grave of a voodoo Queen in New Orleans.

We ate crawfish, crawfish chowder, jumbo shrimp, shrimp po’boys, blackened catfish, old style chocolate malts, and as much local cuisine as humanly possible. We drank alcohol before noon, got drenched in the remnants of a tropical storm, and walked Beale Street in Memphis, Bourban Street in New Orleans and Music Row in Nashville.

We were startled at how much the Civil Rights Movement came to be a part of our trip at first but have now come to the conclusion that it really was inevitable. We thought people walked slowly in the south because of the humidity, but we now think it is also so that they can get brief gusts of air conditioning from open doors. We learned that it is physically impossible to walk through the French Quarter of New Orleans and not hear music. A train goes through the main street of a small Kentucky town many times throughout the day bringing vehicular and pedestrian to a standstill. Kudzu is an vine originally from Asia that is threatening the ecosystem of many of the southern states. It is aggressive and covers other plants, cars, houses and telephone poles and wires if given half the chance. It is damn creepy too.

All in all, a pretty awesome road trip.

Up next, Eric and I have some family coming in for  a few days and then some prepping for the fall. This Labour Day Weekend we are back on the road to Nova Scotia to bring an end to an era in our lives and help start a new one. More on that later.

For now, I will head off to bed and get some rest in order to prepare for the final leg of this journal. 

Eric was saying today how lucky it was that we can take these kinds of trips. Indeed. And how lucky I am to be able to take these trips with him.

Like the song says...

“Lucky I’m in love with my best friend/Lucky to have been where I have been/Lucky to be coming home again...”