Day 2 - Spontaneous Nash Dash at DennyGibson.com

Day 2: August 3, 2018
Patsy, Santa, and the GIG
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I got to the Pancake Pantry at 8:00. It was full and there was a short line but we all fit inside for our fairly brief wait. The picture shows the line when I left an hour later. This was my third visit to the Pancake Pantry but the first two were ten and eleven years ago. I didn't remember what I ate on either of those earlier occasions but there is a record. Turns out my 2018 meal is a duplicate of my 2007 meal with one exception. Today the waitress brought cinnamon cream syrup (the light brown stuff), and it was marvelous. Yeah, I also had nuts in 2008, but they were walnuts.

There were no plans at all for today when I left home which left it open for a visit to the relatively new Patsy Cline museum. That's where I headed after parking in a space that earns more per hour than many waitresses. But I couldn't get there. 3rd Street is currently blocked to vehicles because of a big construction project. At this particular instant, it was also blocked to pedestrians as a crane swung something big overhead. I walked through an alley to Broadway.

Broadway has changed a bunch in the short time I've known it. When the Hard Rock Cafe first appeared, it was essentially the only modern chain operation on the street. And it was also just about the only open recognition of rock and roll in a country music world. Now rock and rockish music is heard virtually everywhere on the street from open doorways and off of rooftop bars. I love rock and roll. It's what I spend my money on. I own very little country but I own or have owned rock and roll on vinyl 45s, 8-tracks, cassettes, CDs, and MP3s. It's my kind of music, but it's not what I think of when I think of Nashville.

I walked to and through Tootsie's. For me, it was too crowded to enjoy a beer. Good for them. The Stage, which I entered through the back door, was much closer to what I was looking for. I relaxed with a brew and listened to several songs from a rather good countryish group whose repertoire included Fleetwood Mac.

Apparently the crane safely deposited what ever it was that it was swinging so that people could now walk down 3rd Street. The Patsy Cline museum opened about sixteen months ago. It's above the Johnny Cash museum which I visited when it was eighteen months old. Patsy's museum became possible when Charlie Dick, her husband, died in 2015, and the memorabilia he held became available. Patsy was born in Winchester, VA, and worked in local restaurants as a teenager. A booth and other items from one of those restaurants is displayed in the museum. Several of her stage outfits are on display along with the sewing machine her mother used to make them.

Some of the exhibits seem to be as much about typical home life in the early 1960s as they are about the life of a superstar. Perhaps not everyone could afford a big screen TV and a console hi-fi, but many could. Patsy's lifestyle was not extravagant. For some reason, I found myself drawn to the fireplug bar lamp. The jukebox is a window into the 1960, too. The hardwired controls and complex mechanics that brought a specific disk into play at the push of a button were -- and to some still are -- fascinating. Read the decal: "Dime one play - 5 for a quarter". The record on the spindle is Crazy. It's there because this is the Patsy Cline Museum, but the odds favor it being there regardless of the location. Patsy Cline's Crazy has been played on jukeboxes more times than any other recording.

A new multi-floor brick building doesn't seem like the right place for the words "honky tonk" but there they are. Pedal bars and open top buses roam the street with the majority of passengers being females in their 20s. Nashville has become the bachelorette party capital of the world.

The last two pictures were taken from the top of Acme Feed & Seed. It's an old building and I like it for that. It's a place where I've eaten and enjoyed music before. But the music was decidedly non-country and the menu includes sushi. Yeah, Broadway has changed a bunch in the short time I've known it.

How many guitars in a gig? This one, The Gallery of Iconic Guitars at Belmont, has about a hundred on display and more than for times that in storage. It is close enough to my motel that it showed up on some sort of search, or I would not have known about it, and would have missed a real gem. There's a 1933 Martin D-28 here and a 1955 Fender Stratocaster. There's a 1952 Fender Precision Bass that looks like the Telecaster that inspired it. The $5 admission might be the best bargain in Nashville. I guarantee that anyone who has ever spent more that five seconds admiring a guitar or mandolin will enjoy spending many seconds here.

I passed this place on the way to breakfast this morning and recognized it instantly. I once saw Santa's Pub on a list of top dive bars and think I even plugged it into the GPS once but I never made it. I spoke briefly with Santa when I took his picture. I told him that I'd been a little bummed out about Nashville because of all those glossy places on Broadway but that his place had renewed my faith. He said he was happy to do that. It's a great bar with friendly and sincere people. And some Badass beer.

My last two stops of the day were both places I'd been before. The first one is a restaurant that I ate at in 2013. I was staying even closer then, and walked to South Street. This time I drove but I think I may have gotten the same seat at the bar. The fettuccine I had five years ago is no longer on the menu the bartender steered me to some excellent catfish. She called the things that aren't hush puppies "tater tots" but they're not at all like the pre-fab frozen things I'm familiar with. These are more like fried mashed potatoes with cheese.

In hindsight, it might have been better to walk to Bobby's Idle Hour from where I parked for dinner but I drove. My one visit here was much more recent than my previous visit to South Street. Some friends and I came to Nashville last September to see Van Morrison. We came here after the concert to see one of the group's cousin... or niece... or something along those lines... perform as part of an in-the-row showcase. I caught two in-the-rows tonight.

One group was just starting their last round when I walked in and I hung around for the first pass by the second group. The picture is of that second group. Bobby's is the only live music venue on Nashville's Music Row, and I understand that it and many other Music Row buildings are at risk of demolition for development. In just two visits, I've come to really like this place. The music is the main reason but I just naturally have great admiration for any place that has Vienna Sausage on the menu at "Market Price".

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