Bus Tour #1
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Day 2: September 21, 2024 Bus Tour #1 Comment via blog |
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The first stop on the first day's bus tour was at the former Key Motel
which was completely renovated and reopened as
The Dive Motel in
2019. I opted to stay on the bus and grabbed a shot of the original
key-shaped sign with the new name through the window. I also stayed on the
bus at our second stop and just shot a picture of the people shooting
pictures of the Lst Chance Liquor sign.
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I did exit the bus when we stopped at the
Country
Music Hall of Fame. We did not take in the museum but walked through
to a group of attached shops that was not there when I visited the museum
in 2005. The main
attraction was Hatch Show Prints which has been printing stuff since
around 1875. It moved here from Broadway in 2013.
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Outside, our big red limousine awaited.
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The Nashville Arcade got new owners in 2021 and is undergoing major
renovations. Few tenants remain and the few that do don't seem to be
actively seeking customers. Finding the Peanut Shop closed was a
disappointment but the arcade itself is definitely cool.
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We drove by quite a few sites of interest where stopping was not at all
practical but, if stopping was a possibility, Tim would ask if anyone
wanted to stop and exit the bus for photos. One such place that wasn't
actually on the agenda was the Joslin Sign Company. Joslin is responsible for much of
Nashville's neon. The shop is marked by a nice modern sign but was not
open and Tim's query about stopping for photos got no response. But when
he asked about the company's "bone yard", nearly everyone
shouted yes.
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I have often said the Lane Motor Museum is one of my all-time favorite. The
car selection is unique and always changing. It is where we had lunch
catered by Martin's Bar-B-Que Joint preceded by about an hour of
car gazing time. Their van was parked outside
when we arrived.
A current display features station wagons and the 1962 Corvair near the entrance immediately caught my eye. The 1948 Lamar is described as "road-worthy wheelchair". There are plans to make the two-piece "Sir Vival" once again drivable and I bet they will. The one-of-a-kind 1945 Erickson Special was built just up the road from me in Dayton, Ohio. The 1952 Future is another one-of-a-kind. Check out the front end. |
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Marathon Village is a collection of businesses in a complex of buildings
where the Marathon automobile was manufactured between 1910 and 1914. Read
a little about it here. Businesses in the main
building include a couple of tasting rooms and tools and machinery from
its manufacturing days line the halls. When I started seeing metal working
equipment I just knew there had to be something from the Cincinnati
Milling Machine Company in there somewhere and I was not wrong.
One of the buildings houses a small museum with a few Marathon cars including a 1912 Roadster with headlights from Cincinnati. |
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I had never thought of Nashville's lower Broadway as a "neon
canyon" but when Tim O'Brien coined the phrase and used it to name
this SCA gathering ("A Walk Through Nashville's Neon Canyon") it
made perfect sense. Our first day ended with a couple of hours to walk
that canyon and check out the music, food, beverages, and neon. My
pictures start with the neon on the police substation funded by Garth
Brooks whose Friends in Low Places restaurant is next door. The bus is
just one example of the wide variety of conveyances that haul celebrating
bachelorettes around town. Lastly, there are a couple shots of some bright
lights of Broadway both with and without sunlight.
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I listened to a couple of good bands, learned that Robert's Western World
is now too popular for me, and checked in with
Patrick Sweany
to find out the relocated Buckeye would start playing at
Acme Feed and
Seed a little before bus departure time. I stopped by, said hi, and
listened to a half dozen tunes before walking the canyon back to the
pickup point.
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