This picture is from my 2011 George for the Holidays trip. Although basically a Christmas Escape Run, the trip pieced together a variety of elements. It started in Louisville, KY, where the Louisville Slugger Museum, Frazier History, and Caufield’s Novelty are all clustered together about a block from the Ohio River. The first day ended at the 232 (now242) year old Talbott Tavern in Bardstown, KY. On the second day, I drove a combination of Jackson and Dixie Highways to Shelbyville, TN, where I spent the night at a horse farm. In the morning, I took in the nearby Jack Daniels Distillery then headed to Nashville for the trip’s central event.
That event, which supplied the trip’s title, was the Long Players performance of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass in Nashville. I had picked up a good deal on a swankier than normal motel by booking three nights. My original plan had been to simply hang around Nashville but I managed to add a dose of complication. Belatedly, I realized that the southernmost point in my planned trip (Shelbyville) was quite close to where friends lived just over the Alabama border. I looked for a way to simply drive there for a visit directly from Shelbyville but the concert and prebooked lodging made anything but a driveby and wave impossible. So, after spending a night in Nashville, I drove to Alabama for a fun visit and Christmas Eve dinner. Christmas Day was spent back in Nashville, and that’s when the featured photo was taken.
My friend Mary had supplied me with cookies that included an entire gingerbread family that I photographed at various locations along the way. On Christmas Day, I decided to pose one of the Gingers on stage at Legends Corner on Nashville’s Broadway. Musician Buck McCoy not only tolerated the intrusion but participated. Exactly nine years later, I found myself looking at pictures taken by Buck. His apartment was just across the street from where an RV filled with explosives was detonated on Christmas Day 2020. Buck’s cellphone videos were some of the first visuals many people, including me, saw of the damage. The blast destroyed Buck’s apartment and most of its contents but just days later country star Brad Paisley gave Buck a new guitar so he could “get back to work and make a living.” He is doing just that including at his long-time regular Legends’ gig.
Trip Peeks are short articles published when my world is too busy or too boring for a current events piece to be completed in time for the Sunday posting. In addition to a photo thumbnail from a completed road trip, each Peek includes a brief description of that photo plus links to the full-sized photo and the associated trip journal.
This picture is from my Bunkin’ With Unk trip although that is obviously not my uncle in the photo. The uncle of which I speak had taken to wintering in Florida and in January of 2012 I decided to accept his invitation to spend a little time with him at Lake Alfred between Winter Haven and Lakeland. I more or less dashed to Orlando on expressways then moved to the old Dixie Highway. During my time at his place, my uncle and I took in a little more Dixie Highway, including that brick segment near Espanola that had scared me off back in 2008, and I made a solo run to Bok Tower. When it came time to leave, I headed west on what some call the Tampa Loop of the Dixie Highway. None of this loop was ever formally made part of the Dixie Highway although much of it was tentatively recognized by the Dixie Highway Association pending certain conditions that were never met. This not quite official Dixie Highway passes by Weeki Wachee Springs which is how I managed a photograph with Mermaid Karri.
