Going South

We left Florida ten years ago. Upon departure I declared that I never wanted to set foot in Florida again. Of course, three months ago, when temperatures in Meadville dipped into the double digits below zero, that decision seemed hasty. It was not an unwelcome thing, therefore, when the dice were thrown in the ministerial search game, and came up Nashville.

The next step in the process is a ten-day candidating week, to meet the whole congregation, have meetings with various groups and committees, preach on two Sundays and be voted in by the congregation as their next minister. The normal routine is that the minister and significant other fly to the host city. We, however can usually be counted upon to eschew the normal and carve our own groove. We were not comfortable leaving Grace with "strangers" (Grace knows no strangers - all humans are her close personal friends) so we planned to drive to Nashville, a ten-hour drive according to Google Maps.

My parents live in Blairsville, in the mountains of north Georgia - a four hour drive from Nashville, according to Google Maps. We figured that if I were going to get a visit with them this year, now would be the best time. If I accompanied her to the first three events - dinner with the Search Committee on Friday evening (to which Grace was pointedly invited,) dinner with the Board of Trustees at a Thai restaurant (A THAI RESTAURANT!!!) on Saturday evening, and church on Sunday morning - I could be excused to go to Georgia for the rest of the week. We contacted my sister-in-law Rachel, a Blairsville resident, and asked if she would be willing to drive to Nashville, babysit Grace on Saturday evening and Sunday morning, then haul Grace and me to Blairsville on Sunday afternoon. Lo and behold, she said she'd love to.

On Wednesday. the lace on my right Keens waterproof dog walking boot began to fray. It looked as though it could snap at any time, but time to figure out what length of laces I needed was something I did not have. I tied them gingerly, and vowed to rectify the situation as soon as the opportunity presented itself.

On a snowy Thursday morning (April showers bring snow plowers) we loaded the Subaru with Carmen's ten days' worth of interview clothes, my much smaller volume of stuff and Grace's big bag of necessary items. Hermione, our GPS, declared our arrival time to be 8:30pm. She sent us down south on Interstate 79, and off we went. Looking at my new 2015 Rand McNally Road Atlas, I thought that the best route would take us down I-79 all the way to Charleston, WV and I-64 over to Lexington, KY. The Bluegrass Parkway would take us to Elizabethtown, where we would pick up I-65 south to Tennessee and on to Nashville. Evidently, Hermione wanted us to go through Columbus and Cincinnati. She added a half hour to our arrival time when we ignored her orders to take I-80 west. When we ignored her again and refused to take I-70 west, she added an additional hour. She must be pretty well connected, because we hadn't been on I-64 more than ten minutes when we hit a wall of stopped traffic in western West Virginia. Three more hours were added by the time we cleared whatever it was at mile marker 11, but we had a lovely drive through downtown Huntington, WV to cap it off. By now the estimated time of arrival had jumped to 1:00am Eastern daylight savings time.

The late night drive around Lexington was the next pain in the ass. I thought going around the south side looked best, but my track record hadn't been very good up to now, so we followed Hermione's directions. Off the Interstate we went, traversing about five miles of suburban surface streets north of the city to reach the Bluegrass Parkway. Once we did, however, it was smooth sailing all the way to Nashville. As advertised, we arrived at Extended Stay America right at midnight Central time.

Room 325 was, as one might guess, on the third floor. What we did not guess was that our little girl Grace is afraid of elevators. This was her first encounter with one, as far as we know, but she did not want to go in there. Carmen took her up the stairs while I maneuvered the fully loaded baggage cart into the elevator and from there to the room. It was a pretty nice room, with a kitchen sink, a two burner stove, cabinets and counter top. We were perplexed because there were no dishes, utensils, pans or even a coffee maker (!!!) until Carmen found a notice about calling the front desk and requesting items from a list of possibilities. First thing Friday morning she called, and within ten minutes we were up and running.

Carmen was busy with her preparations for meetings and Sunday's sermon. After walking the dog around the block and back, I slipped quietly out the door and set out to find boot laces. The first place I tried was a running and walking shoe store two doors down from the hotel. They recommended Cumberland Transit, a hiking and camping clothing store. On the way there was a shoe repair shop. They recommended Cumberland Transit. I went to Cumberland Transit. What they had was a twelve foot long lace with four shrink wrap ends, All I needed was a knife or scissors and a lighter, and I was in business. Yippee.

Even more exciting: between the hotel and the store I passed a Panera, Chipotle, an Indian restaurant, a Chinese restaurant, a steak house and an ice cream shop. "I could live here," I said.

Soon after I returned to the room, we saddled up the pup and drove about five blocks to Centennial Park, where there was reputed to be a dog park within the park. We didn't find it, but had a lovely couple of hours walking Grace around the pond and the Parthenon. It was warm (to us, anyway) and sunny. Grace was her usual big hit with park goers, and we were struck by how alive and vibrant the atmosphere was. "We could live here," we said.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped at Walgreens. I stayed in the car while Carmen went in and bought a lighter, a roll of paper towels, two gallon jugs of water and a few more items. The rest of the afternoon was spent (by me) unlacing my boots and installing my newly cut and tipped laces. It turned out, however, that the hard rubber top grommet had a very small hole, and the shrink-wrapped nibs on the new laces were not going to slide through. After 2 1/2 hours of trying, I managed to poke two of them through with the help of a fork. The other two nibs came off in the struggle. After much weeping and gnashing of teeth, I peeled the label off of a prescription bottle and used strips of it to tape up the two fraying ends. They went through the grommet pretty easily! So I had laces - not pretty, but not fixin' to break, either. I measured the old laces before throwing them away. They were 48".

At 6:00, a search committee person picked us up and drove us to the beautiful home of another search committee person and his significant other. Grace was warmly welcomed and so were we. Grace was the belle of the ball. She greeted every guest without being a pest. When the hamburgers came off the grill, she curled up beside me and went to sleep for an hour or so. Dave, our host, fell in love with her. He said he'd be happy to dog-sit anytime. About an hour after we ate, Grace woke up and lobbied me for a walk. I took her out to explore this new territory and mark it for canine posterity. When it was time to return to the party, we encountered some difficulty trying to figure out which of the nearly identical condos was the right one. When we finally did, folks were stirring, getting ready to depart. We loaded Grace into the car and went back to the hotel.

Saturday morning at about 9:30 Rachel called to say she was downstairs. I went down and helped bring her stuff up to the room. After a bit of relaxation and conversation, we loaded the four of us into the Subaru and drove to the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation's beautiful building, where we were met by Pam the realtor, thick southern drawl and all. We put towels on the back seat of her Lexus, loaded all five mammals and set out to look at the possibilities for places to live on the west side of the Nashville metropolitan area. The one she was most anxious to show us was "near the church," and would likely become available about the time we would be ready for it. She drove and drove, describing all the while how nice the place was, how convenient to the church, how the coyotes would make it unwise to leave Grace outside unsupervised. And still we drove. The whole way I was thinking about how much I love to walk to the store, and how many hours it would take to walk from way out here. Long before we arrived, Carmen and I both knew this was not the place for us, but we kept quiet. Then Pam drove us around and around the vicinity, describing subdivisions and neighborhoods as we rode through them. The ones we liked the best had no homes available, but Pam said she would keep watch for them to come up for sale. After about two hours, we returned to the church, said bye to Pam and headed back to the hotel.

Dinner at the Thai restaurant was very yummy, as Thai food is wont to be. (I hadn't had Thai since "Tasty Thai" in Orlando) The Board of Trustees was a nice group of humans, and they seemed to like us as well. We didn't want to take up the ten-person table for very long, so it was still pretty early when we broke up the meeting. Back again to the hotel, where Carmen worked on her sermon, Rachel watched TV and I took Grace for a long walk.

Sunday morning was a joyful thing. The congregation had been hearing updates from the Search Committee for two years, and here at last was the minister and her wife. We hid out in the minister's office until time to go on. When the time came, I took a seat between two Search Committee members, and Carmen went to the front. A Search Committee person introduced her, to tumultuous applause - yes, they are an applauding bunch - and on with the show. Her interaction with the kids was a hit, her sermon was a home run, and then came coffee hour. Obviously, someone had spilled the beans about me and my long love affair with show business, because several congregants sought me out to tell me about their theatre group or operatic organization. It appears that I will have no trouble finding fun and rewarding things to do in Nashville. The problem will probably be choosing what to do and what to say no to. Luckily, I learned to say no many decades ago.

We peeled ourselves away at about 1:30, picked up lunch for us and Rachel, and returned "home." It was after 3 by the time we had eaten, loaded Rachel's, Grace's and my stuff in her Rav4, piled in and hit the road. We ran into a one hour construction delay just east of Nashville, but one stop for gas and one more for all three of us to "rest'" put us at my parents' house a little after 9:00. Rachel high-tailed it home to her kitty, and Grace and I visited for a little while before going to bed.

I fell easily into the routine at my mommy and daddy's house. Up early, eat breakfast, lounge around a while discussing what to do and not do today, eat lunch, lounge around sleepily for a while, eat supper, watch the 8:00 movie on TCM and go to bed. I, of course, included hour or so dog walks after breakfast and before supper. On Monday afternoon we went to the grocery store, where I found 42" boot laces. The 48s were really too long, so I bought the 42s. They work excellently to this day. At last the bootlace saga came to a happy ending! On Tuesday morning, my dad and I took Grace to a big wooded park where people walk their dogs. The (nearly) 92 year old man kept up with us all the way around, and Grace got to sniff some dog butt - a good day! On Wednesday, Grace and I wandered onto the property of a geezer wearing a pistol in a holster. "Oh, this is for snakes," he said. Thursday we were back at the grocery store primarily because of ice cream issues. They eat ice cream after lunch and supper pretty much every day - I like that. I don't remember any fun facts about Friday or Saturday. On Sunday early afternoon, I got a text message from Carmen that the vote was unanimous to call her as the new minister at the Greater Nashville Unitarian Universalist Congregation!

It was early evening when Carmen rolled into White Oak Drive. She was exhausted after ten days of meetings and church services, not to mention the drive from the west side of Nashville. We all visited for a little while, then went to bed. Monday morning we got up, ate breakfast, I walked the dog while Carmen got everything packed up for transport, and by 10:00 we were on the road. We stopped by Rachel's apartment to see her new digs and thank her again, then lit out for Summersville, WV, with one stop for gas and another at Tamarack, the artsy fartsy "Best of West Virginia" place near Beckley. After a fairly peaceful night's sleep, we pushed on for home with one stop for gas and another at the Fiesta Ware Outlet at the other end of West Virginia. We arrived home in late afternoon, ready to go full bore into the process of fixing up the house to sell and deciding what to move and what to let go.

By early June, the whole house was repainted inside and out, the realtor had put it on the market and we had let go of a whole lot of stuff. Every room was staged to look roomy and cute. The landscaping was beautiful, a far cry from the ugly it had been. Today, June 15th, we accepted a strong offer and signed a contract to sell. A month from now we rent a 26 foot truck, bring in the loaders Carmen hired, and off we go, new boot laces and all!