Ribbon of Highway - Route 1 - Leg 1 - October 2011

Leg One
Indiana to Tennessee

October 7, 2011

Somebody suggested I call this the Midwest Motorcycle Diaries. Not bad, except for two things. Originating in the Midwest,  I’ll be traveling all over the country – so American Motorcycle Diaries? No. Sounds like I am copying Che Guevara’s famous book – and I despise Che Guevara, who was a totalitarian Cuban communist who was responsible for the deaths of thousands and enslavement of millions – he presided over Cuba’s first firing squads and established its “labor camp” system. The world was better for his having been killed in 1967 trying to foment revolution in Bolivia. So no, that word won’t do.

The American ultra-left is currently staging sit-ins and protests in New York and other cities under the banner of Occupy Wall St., now supported by several labor unions jumping on board and praised by House Minority Whip Nancy Pelosi for their “spontaneity.” They also received supporting words form President Obama. This is crazy. Wall St. didn’t cause the current financial mess, and Wall St.can’t fix it. The government did, and maybe it can’t! They carrying signs saying “99% work for 1%” – Their website claims “The 1% has destroyed the nation and its values through their greed. The 1% has stolen this world.” - this in a country with the highest standard of living in the world, where the poor have TVs, the government is now giving the poor cell phones, and where even today in this financial crisis  unemployment is less than 10% - or less than 20% if you count the underemployed. That’s bad, but that also means 90% (or 80%, depending on how you look at it) have jobs! It demagoguery and based in envy of the “haves” – not even by the have-nots, but by the leftist “intellectuals” who are calling for revolution. A semi-organized group of hackers who apparently brought Visa and MasterCard to their knees with spam attacks has now vowed to “erase the new York Stock Exchange from the Internet” on Columbus Day- proof positive that this is not a ground roots movement of laborers. Line workers don’t know how to do that kind of stuff. These are college educated so-called intellectuals with too much time on their hands whose half-baked theories are dangerous. 10-1 they are Che hero worshippers.

One of the broadcast networks did one of their sound–bite interviews of one of the NY protestors, a young man who looked to be in his early twenties, with a scruffy beard and long hair. Unchallenged, he claimed that he was over $80,000 in debt, hadn’t been able to find a job in 4 years, and was “still” homeless. He just oozed ‘entitled.” One of the thousands of lefties who romanticize the 60”s and want to turn back the clock so they can engage in street riots and drugs, sex and rock ‘n roll. He sure looked healthy enough, certainly he was not under nourished. But of course the “journalists” did not ask him any penetrating questions at all, such as:

• Why was he $80,000 in debt? Did he choose to go to an expensive private school, or an out-of state public university? Why should he empathize (or be stuck with the bill) for that choice? Why didn’t he go to an in-state public university? Did he work during school? During summers and vacations? I did all of these things – public university, meal jobs, menial jobs cleaning professor’s houses, summer jobs – and I didn’t have anything like that kind of debt.
• What’s his degree in? Sociology? Or engineering? Didn’t he know there were no jobs for sociology degrees? If he went to college to be able to get a job, he should have gone to engineering school. What was his grade point? Top or bottom of his class? Makes a difference!
• Couldn’t find a job for 4 years? What kind of job? Has he looked for everything and anything, part time and full time, or filtered out those beneath him? Has he been turned down for jobs – why? Consistently, for 4 years? Could it be something is wrong with this character? If he can’t find a job, what about the Peace Corps or Job Corps or the military? Where did he look? Oh, only in New York? What about Texas, where they have been adding jobs – that’s what people used to do, they went to where the jobs were; what about this guy?
• Couldn’t find a job? Has he tried starting his own little business? I’ve done it, several times – lost my ass, too – but I’ll never forget that the guy who started National Presto Industries, whom I worked for and whose family are now multi-millionaires, started out collecting and selling rags. Maybe if this guy wasn’t protesting in the streets he might have applied for one of O’Bama’s green company loans…

A bunch of Woodstock Wannabees who say they want riots in the streets. Great. I feel I may be witnessing the beginning of the unraveling of the republic, led by a closet anti-capitalist socialist at the top. It is not a comfortable feeling.

Understand, I’m no fan of Bank of America, either. Especially after what they did to me, and my company, yanking our credit line without warning when we had never been in default, and putting us on the road to ruin. But that’s another story. No am I a fan of the country club Republicans or the rich guys who actually seem to think that they are inherently better than those with less money because they have money. That’s almost old style Calvinism, the fact you are rich and powerful is the proof that you are among the blessed chosen by God. My experience is to the contrary. Almost everybody that I have known personally who has accumulated a real wealth or power (and in America that is much the same thing) has done something unsavory to accomplish it. Not necessarily criminal, although I am certain criminal activity lies at the root of many successful families. And sheer luck plays a big part as well – “I’d rather be lucky than smart any day.”

I had better get on the road.

Dropped Beemer off for pre-trip check up in South Bend. Coolant, oil, clutch fluid, tires, lugs, electrics, etc. Will pick it up form Kurt tomorrow morning, and go. He’s the kind of guy I respect, what I’m talking about. Kurt was the certified mechanic for South Bend BMW. When it went bankrupt, he opened his own service shop, for BMW motorcycles and antique classic cars. When the economy got rough, he dropped the shop he had rented, and moved his operation into his garage – and got a full time job during the day. He’s not out protesting. He’s taking care of business. And he’s a good mechanic.

October 8. 2011

Saturday morning. Christy and I drive to South Bend to pick up the bike. Kurt is not there. I called him last night, thinking I was doing him a favor by giving him until Saturday morning to finish up the clutch fluid change, and he was already done – and leaving his mooring to fly with some friends to some kind of fly-in, wheels up at 9:15. So we agreed he would leave the Beemer in front of his place, with the keys and invoice under the seat. You can only get to that by pulling lever in the left saddle bag. All locked up and I would use my spare key. Leave a check in the door. Try arranging that at your friendly Ford dealership!

So when we arrived, there it was, ready to go – only he forgot to include his invoice so I’ll have to pay him when I get back. And at my insistence, he had checked the lug nuts on the rear wheel. Not only did he find one loose, one was missing! Kurt said he had never seen that before, and just happened to have an extra. So now I have a new lug nut and they are all torqued up properly.

Note to self: follow the maintenance guide in the owner’s manual!

Loading the bike is fairly fast. Computer and electronic gear wrapped in an orange cloth sack that I picked up at some shopping center in Xiamen, China (with Chinese lettering all over it), wrapped in a towel to cushion against bumps and placed in a saddlebag. Plus some extra tools. Small black PADI carry bag with all (!) my clothes and toiletries fits perfectly in the trunk behind the seat. Tucked in around it are gloves, goggles and maps. I use bungi cords to attach a bright red sleeping bag on the rack on top. The second saddlebag is pretty much filled up with the extra helmet. Ready to go.

The weather is crazy-unseasonably warm for October. By the time I gas up and get rolling, its already near 80. 16 degrees above normal predicted. By mid-afternoon, the thermometer on my Beemer hits 88 – in mid-October! But on the bike, jacket vents open, its not hot, the road wind making it comfortable, only getting hot when I stop.

Because I’m getting started late, I scrap the scenic route I had planned and head right down the middle of Indiana on 4-lane US 31.

Note to self: get different color hi-liter to mark actual route!

My bike is a metallic gray 2003 BMW K1200LT, a heavy weight (833 pounds dry) luxury tourer that produces 98 horsepower and 85 foot pounds of torque from 4 cylinders totaling 1171 cc of displacement. The engine hums like a turbine, smooth at any speed with an aircraft-like growl when I accelerate, almost like flying.

It really is a really pretty pastoral ride, whirring past big John Deere tractors working the fields, and huge combines cutting wide swaths of corn and blowing the kernels into huge hoppers, doing in ten minutes what its takes a crew of Amish and horse drawn wagons an entire day. The entire countryside is shades of golden brown, dull brown soybeans, golden cornstalks with subtle green accents, golden yellow beans, and bright yellow rape, framed in broad strips of bright green grass against a backdrop of red brown oak trees underneath an azure blue sky with high scudding white clouds.

I take a quick break for a McDonalds cheeseburger and an iced vanilla latte (yes, at McDonalds!) at Peru, cross the Wabash River and then keep going straight South through Kokomo, to Indianapolis. The Kokomo stretch is Everywhere America, USA, a clogged four lane highway featuring every chain restaurant, fast food joint, big box store and brand name gas station if not once, several times, interspersed with traffic lights every few miles timed to please the local merchants to you catch you at least every other one. McDonalds, Wendy’s, Hardees, Burger King, Best Buy, Lowes, Home Depot, O’Charly’s, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Pizza Hut, Day’s Inn, Taco Bell, Ford and Chevy Dealerships, Staples, Starbucks, BP, Shell, Marathon, Exxon – its got them all.   Takes me 30 minutes to get through all the traffic lights, and then like birds escaping from their cage the traffic hits 80+ within a mile South of the last light, just like the temperature.

Somewhere South of Kokomo I realize that in my hurry to get going, I forgot my pistol. What made me think of that? A pistol is one of those things that you hope you never need, but if you need it, it doesn’t do any good in the drawer at home. Heading alone and stopping who knows where, I’d feel more comfortable with it.

Note to self: bring pistol. Now, how to I get it there by airplane for the next leg? I’ll have to investigate that.

I make great time around Indianapolis on I-465, despite construction everywhere along the bypass. South of Indianapolis, I take SR 67, a two-laner meandering through wooded ridges and valleys crossed by all kinds of streams. Definitely not flat here. A great, easy ride with wide swooping curves at speed. The fall colors are even more spectacular here, more reds interspersed with the gold and brown, with slashes of evergreens covering the high ridges. Across the White River on SR 39 through Martinsville to SR 37, then South again on the 4-lane past Bloomington - terrific university town, but no time to stop. The highway is up and down here, with deep cuts through wave and wave of limestone hills. I I pass up Bluespring Caverns, just the kind of place I want to stop on this trip, but no time today. When the  4 lane ends, traffic immediately slows to more of a country road pace, through Orleans to Paoli, where I turn West on US150 to go to French Lick.

Sign of the day, outside a convenience store in Paoli: “Behind every successful man there is a surprised woman.” That one had me chuckling for half a mile!

Pulled into West Baden Springs around 5 or 6, and had to find a place to stay. No rooms at the grand hotel, its filled with conventions and weddings this weekend. Checked internet on Blackberry and found Artists Inn and Cottages. They don’t have any rooms, either, but they do have one small cottage available - $189/night. Robbery for what it is, but it’s that or the sleeping bag or heading on down the road to – where? I take it. The woman on the phone says it’s more like a time share. The door is open and keys are in the bowl on the table. After several wrong turns and stopping a man walking his dog for directions, I find the cottage on a steep road above “downtown” French Lick. Its ok, but “timeshare” means you strip your own bed in the morning, wash any dishes you have used, and there’s no soap or shampoo! For $189 (plus tax)? Beggars can’t be choosers. I dump my stuff and go back to the 5 Star West Baden Springs Hotel and Spa where I can’t get a room, but I can soak up the atmosphere with  a Hendricks gin martini, up, very dry with olives, under the rotunda listening to the bistro singer and her band. The West Baden Springs Hotel is a spectacular place, 5 stars in the middle of nowhere. When it was built, the dome was the largest unsupported dome in the world – and remained the largest for something like 75 years. 5 or 6 stories of rooms have interior windows opening into the covered court, and the outside is wrapped with a broad veranda that overlooks gardens and grounds resembling European palace gardens.

Despite the ambience, the martinis are too expensive for more than one – and besides, with another I might not be able to balance the bike all the way back to my cottage! So I head back to French Lick, stash the bike at the cottage, and walk down the hill to a locally famous watering hole called 33 Brick Street.

It’s jammed. Features memorabilia by local basketball legend Larry Bird. Sipping Makers Mark at the bar while waiting for a table, between football scores I watch a news blurb on Occupy Here and There. Get to talking with a new friend and share some thoughts about the protests in the big cities.  He thinks it will get a whole lot worse before it improves, and I can’t argue with that. He thinks the system will fail in his lifetime. I am more optimistic than that, I think things could get turned aright, but I do think we have some nasty times coming. He says our culture is driven by money, power, sex, just that simple, all the time, every time. In vino veritas. Have to ponder that one further when not under the wisdom of an alcohol haze.

Covered 331 miles today. A good first day’s ride.

Oh yes, I highly recommend 33 Brick. Great drinks, friendly staff and patrons, cool ambience, and really good BBQ ribs! With grilled asparagus spears, yum!

October 9, 2011

Planned on getting up early and riding a while before breakfast.

Not. Woke up after 8. So much for those plans. Must have had more bourbon last night than I realized. Come to think of it, I don’t remember much about the walk home!

There must be some place good for a country breakfast in French Lick. Denny’s was open. Skipped that. Thinking non-chain. Found the Rowboat Café, or something like that. Good, but not great. I did try persimmon pudding as a side for breakfast. Pretty good. Like a gooey ginger bread. I’d have it again.

Back on the road. It’s still chilly when I start out. And what a ride! On Sunday morning, very little traffic, and SR 145 South turns out to be one of the best motorcycle/sports car roads I have ever ridden! This is definitely not a road for making fast time. Twisty, turning, up down and around, curves banked wrong, following streams through woods and vales, all in fall colors, and then steep climbs to high ridges with great views, then dropping straight back down to broad river bottom valleys like a roller coaster, simply spectacular countryside. Crossed Patoka Lake, a lake nobody outside of Indiana and most people in Indiana have probably never heard of. It’s big and clean, irregular shoreline fingering off in every direction to secluded coves, dotted with fishermen in their bass boats, and apparently lots of log cabins for rent. This is a place I would like to get back to and stay a few days.

And the Beemer is still humming, sometimes with a steady and somehow comforting patterned surge in the engine revs when I keep it at the same speed for a long time. Riding through places like Siberia and Birdseye, a hillbilly burg which has definitely seen more prosperous days perched atop a wooded crest with a steep incline in and out.

At Possum Junction, I am unsure which way to go, but I notice a steady stream of antique cars and hot rods taking the fork to Bristow. Never heard of Bristow, but this looks interesting. Let’s go to Bristow.

Bristow is hardly a wide spot in the road where the road bottoms out in a valley and makes a U-turn to go up the other side – but its mobbed. Two cute Hoosier 20-somethings in flip flops and reflective safety vests are directing traffic at the stop sign. Antique cars and tuck and hot rods line the highway and rows and rows of them fill the farm field behind the row of old houses that is Bristow. Sprinkled in between there is a flea market of engine parts and tools, food and drinks, and vintage rock and roll is blaring from somewhere in the middle of the rally. Enthusiasts sporting a lot of gray hair are wandering around looking at all the cars and swapping stories. I almost get run over by a rumbling Shelby GT as More cars steadily roll in. Where are they going to find a place to park? I especially admire several 1934 +/- vintage Ford two-seater hot rods that are in cherry condition.

I have been thinking as I have been riding that I wanted to adjust the placement of my highway pegs, but I only brought a screwdriver and pliers, no wrench, and the standard BMW tool kit isn’t robust enough. So I stroll over to a flea market tool table and find an antique adjustable wrench, oiled forged steel, solid and tight with thick lips like you don’t find anymore, in perfect condition. He wants $4 for them. He takes $3. I have my souvenir and now can adjust those pegs somewhere down the road when I have moment. Happiness on a sunny day.

This rally is apparently an annual event. Why this weekend? Oh my gosh, that’s when I realize its Columbus Day Weekend. That was a big holiday when I was a kid, celebrating one of the world’s greatest explorers who discovered America. “In fourteen hundred and ninety two, Columbus sailed the oceans blue…” But in the theology of post-60’s Civil Rights Act PC America, he has been vilified and confined to the pantheon of evil white European oppressors of indigenous people. Never mind that the Caribes were cannibals who terrorized their neighbors, the Taino Indians. It’s hard to find a Columbus Day parade anymore. The holiday is now just a day off for government employees and bankers.

Time to hit the road again. SR 145 climbs out of Bristow sticks to farmed ridges for a while. A few miles down the highway I pass a lonely steepled church with a large 3-story brick building a hundred yards behind it, with St. Mark’s School in concrete letters above the door. Its obviously quite old. Out here on top of a wind blown ridge in the middle of nowhere, had to be on a dirt road when they built it, I wonder who attended that school? The church fathers that founded and ran the school must have been proud of the educational opportunity they brought to isolated rural folk.

Note to self: bring black shoe polish.

Stop in Tell City to gas up. Ask a local or directions to the Ohio River bridge, and learn its not in Tell City, I have to back track a few miles and cross at Cannelton. Tell City and Cannelton are run down, old industrial buildings and downtowns in decay, once prosperous river towns which have been left behind. The bridge at Cannelton is old, a two-laner that rises high above the Ohio River to Hawesville, Kentucky. Crossing the Ohio on this bridge is awesome. Riding the 20^th century highway to cross the 19^th century highway in the 21^st century, it’s easy to imagine that it looks much the same at this crossing as it has for over 100 years. The Ohio is broad and full and stretches in both directions far below, wooded on both banks. It cuts a swath through the middle of the country that is still the physical dividing line between two cultures, North and South.

Immediately, everything seems just slightly more prosperous. I’ve noticed that state boundaries take on a life of their own. Physically, they may have been laid out by a survey crew, or in this case, they follow a natural boundary like the river, but decades of being under different state governments have their effect. The trees and flowers and topography may be the same, but the roads are better, the homes are in better repair on the Kentucky side. On one side they root for Hoosiers, on the other side they support the Wildcats.  I see the same thing at home between Indiana and Michigan, only there it’s the Indiana side that has prospered.

The deeper I ride into Kentucky, the more apparent it becomes. Southern Indiana was pretty much poor hillbilly country, forested hills interspersed with old white wooden barns marking family farms, and pocked with double-wides. Kentucky down state highway 69 quickly becomes much more rolling, with larger homes more and more built of brick with better tended lawns. The farms are bigger with different out buildings, gradually more livestock than crop oriented. At Dundee, I see the first of what I would call an estate farm, with broad flat fields spreading across the Rough River Valley centered on a stately home on a knoll surrounded by shade trees. It isn’t hard to figure out where the first family of Dundee lives.

I know I am drifting more West than the route I had planned, but I like highway 69 so much that I stick with it, not knowing exactly where it goes other than South. At US231, I turn left toward Bowling Green as I remember I was planning on going through there on the way to Nashville. I pull into a McDonalds for a break, and ask the girl filling the soda machine where I am.

She hesitates. “I’m from here all my life, an even I have to think a minute,” she laughs. “We’re in Beaver Creek.”

I wanted to ask where is  Beaver Creek, but the answer is pretty obvious: right here. I get my vanilla latte and scan a copy of USA Today. Nothing about Columbus. The news is all about Occupy Wall St. The big news is that bunch of computer hackers who shut down Visa and Mastercard earlier this year with a mountain of spam are joining in support of the protestors. Hey, this is proof that this is not a grass roots blue collar movement. Hackers are educated computer geeks. Once again coddled intellectuals living in their own version of the world. The protestors are even referring to themselves as over educated and under employed. Some commentators are raising concerns are being about rampant open drug use in the occupied park, even heroin. Somebody interviewed a fugitive criminal from New Jersey is camping out in the middle of the crowd, hiding in plain sight. Well, I uses the Jersey police now know where to find him! There are no facilities, and people are urinating and defecating in the streets.

Back on the bike, I see a sign welcoming me to Bluegrass Music country and celebrating Bill Monroe. So that’s where I am! I pass a smiling guy in his twenties riding along the side of the road on his bicycle backwards, sitting on his handlebars. I slow down to ride next to him for a while, fascinated. How does he peddle backwards and steer, let alone keeping his balance looking where he’s been?  He has no problem. Clearly he does this a lot! I guess riding your bicycle backwards down a US highway is a pretty good way to spend a sunny Sunday afternoon. We smile and wave at each other, and I continue on down 231 to Morgantown, “Catfish Capital of the World!” Must be, the sign says so. The first tavern I see advertises catfish fiddlers, whatever they are. I’m hungry, figure I’ll stop for lunch at the next opportunity and have me some catfish. Only that is the last place in Morgantown that I see catfish advertised on the menu. I did pass a lot of taquerias and mercados, though. Amazing. More enchiladas than catfish in Morgantown these days.

After the disappointment of Morgantown, I cut over to the William H. Hatcher Parkway. I have no idea who he is, or was, but he has a beautiful road named after him. The forested hills West of Bowling Green are gorgeous.

As take the exit to Bowling Green, home of Western Kentucky University, to look for some place interesting for lunch. The first thing I pass on the left is a mosque and Islamic center, complete with a tall minaret. In Bowling Green, Kentucky. Not a Baptist church, a mosque. I’m blown away. Within a mile is big billboard advertising a lawyer who provides immigration services. Don’t think this phenomena is confined to New York and Los Angeles. If it’s in Bowling Green, Kentucky, its everywhere.

And no catfish. So instead I stopped at a Southern fast food icon and had chicken fingers with sweet tea at Zaxby’s.

I decided to stick with 231 into Nashville. The topography continued its metamorphosis. I am definitely out of hillbilly country. More and more grand manors on the top of a hill surrounded by white fences. More cattle, Black Angus, beef country. Road signs saying “Beef, its what’s for dinner” put up by the local cattleman’s association. And as I got closer to the Tennessee border, more horse farms. Estates.

I need to find place for the night. When my family went on road trips when I was a boy, my father always stopped early to make sure of finding a good place to sleep before they all filled up. Remembering that and French Lick, I decided to do the same and look in Gallatin for a nice Bed and Breakfast. Can’t find a thing. I pull over and use the Blackberry to search for B&B’s in Gallatin. There are two or three, call one called the Hancock House, and success, they have a room. I get directions and drive South of town toward Nashville. What find. It’s an old stage stop built sometime before 1850. The proprietors, Roberta and Carl, couldn’t be nicer, even though she is something of a Chatty Cathy. She tells me proudly several times that the house is the only log cabin Colonial Revival building in Tennessee. Inside, the rooms are large, ceiling and door frames low, fireplaces everywhere, wide plank wood floors throughout. The house has several levels as it climbs the hillside where it is perched. They have just have just  finished with a wedding that weekend, so they only have one room made up, a queen bed with a private bath and shower across the hall, microwave, coffee maker and TV, all for $90 including breakfast. I am the only guest and have the run of the inn.

It’s early yet, so I ask where there is a park where I can spend some time, and where to find some good catfish. Carl gives me directions to both. The park he sends me to is actually an Army Corps of engineers RV park, right on the Cumberland River. Nice place to walk around, watch people going about their RVing activities, and sit down to watch the river traffic for a while. A coal barge goes upstream, several speed bots zip by, a Skidoo and a pontoon boats heads out with people having cocktails. On the walk back to my bike, I scare up a 5 foot tall great blue heron, who flaps his giant wings and takes off into the sun.

I ride back toward Gallatin, cross the Cumberland River over another two lane bridge as the late afternoon sun is dapples off the water. Carl directed me to the Cherokee Inn and Steak House, sitting right on the river next to what used to be Reba McIntyre’s house.  She recently sold it to Donavan McNair, the Tennessee Titans quarterback. The home is what you would expect a country music star or pro-quarterback would live in. Manicured grounds surrounded by fenced horse pastures, with the main house set way back from the road. I’m guessing Reba and Donovan have been to the Cherokee a time or two!

The Cherokee is not what I expected. The “inn” is a grouping of small cottages and a fewer trailers, and the steak house sits between them and the river, all around a big paved parking lot. Behind the steakhouse a flat a grassy area slopes down to long docks sitting in the river with houseboat after houseboat anchored along side each other. Several boaters are enjoying the end of the weekend, sitting in lounge chairs on and around their houseboats, some grilling, others drinking beer and visiting. The second surprise is that the county is dry, so the Steakhouse serves no liquor. You can bring your own in with you if you wish, but I have to do with Coca Cola. And the third surprise is not only do they have catfish fixed several ways, but they also have fried oysters. Oh well, no beer, but a dozen fried oysters, two thick filets of great fried catfish, both drowned in Louisiana hot sauce, with salad and down-home mac n’cheese more than makes up for it, and fills me up. The Cherokee specialty may be beef, but believe me, the catfish is top notch! Just remember to bring your own beer.

Back at the Hancock House, I open the bottle of Bulleit Frontier Whisky that I have stashed in my saddle bag. None of this smooth city whisky. You feel this stuff going down your throat and it warms your belly right away. Lip smackin’ tasty.

254 miles today. A nice day’s ride. As I’m getting ready for bed, I notice that the front toes of my boots are all scuffed up.

Note to self: bring along some black boot polish to keep them presentable, and water proof.

I watch the news for a while. According to recent statistics, the US education system is 23^rd in the world in science, 17^th in writing and 31^st in mathematics. I don’t know how they measure those statistics, and maybe I transposed one of those subjects with another, but it doesn’t matter. It isn’t good. We were number one in all of those within my lifetime.

Sign of day? Well, today I had one plus a runner up.

Runner up, motto at the Cherokee Steak House: “You can whip our cream, but you can’t beat our meat!” Yuk, yuk, yuk.

Winner, hand painted in big blue letters by some scruffy dog houses under a run down shed next to the biggest house in Bristow: DOGS WILL BITE!  That’s straight and to the point!

October 12, 2011

What a breakfast! This not a Denney’s imitation, this is the real American country thing. Fruit (cantaloupe, strawberries, grapes, sliced oranges), orange juice, apple juice, coffee; eggs any way you like them; pancakes with blackberries and all the home made black berry syrup you want (or blueberries or maple); home made non-mix biscuits, possibly the best I’ve ever had, with sausage gravy or peach compote; butter; crisp thick slice bacon; potatoes coked in bacon fat; and I’m sure I’m forgetting something. Stupendous. I don’t need lunch! This, a comfortable bed, large bedroom and the run of the old stagecoach stop inn for $90. Wow. Take that, Holiday Inn Express with Eggo waffles for breakfast…

Breakfast is in the old dining room, a long table that could seat 24 or more, looking through opened worn double doors on a sun spattered brick courtyard covered with English ivy. I step out to greet the morning and share it with two birds, not sure what species, large and gray with orange and black on their heads, and white breasts, who are flitting bout, courting and mating. I watch transfixed for a few moments, but as soon as I reach for my camera, they fly up and over the roof. Camera shy lovers, I guess.

Today is an easy day, just a twenty minute drive to see Andrew Jackson’s home, the Hermitage. The name exudes the false modesty of a man who was reportedly insufferably arrogant and proud – although at least his arrogance and pride was not without cause. Drove the Creek Indians out of the Southeast, defeated the British at the Battle of New Orleans, became President of the United States, and king maker for two other Presidents, Van Buren and Polk, and paved the way for Texas to join the Union. Amassed a fortune. The Hermitage is 8,000 square feet of mansion on an 1,100 acre estate that was worked by 150 slaves.

And therein lies another problem in this PC early 21^st Century. Despite all this man accomplished, only some of those accomplishments were even mentioned by the signs and docents. For every one about Jackson, there are three or four detailing the life of the “enslaved laborers.” There was even speculation that the beautiful balcony at the back of the house was for the purpose of keeping a watchful eye over those working in the back fields, and assertion that he kept his slave families in tact because they would be less likely to try to runaway in those circumstances. There was never any mention by anybody or any sign of his role in the Indian Wars, and forcible removal of the Indians, basically 19^th Century “ethnic cleansing.” One two minute mention of what he accomplished as President of the United Sates. Nothing about the Battle of New Orleans except that it made him a national hero and propelled him to the Presidency. I came away from the Hermitage knowing little more about the man or understanding of his significance than when I arrived, except that he fancied himself a Little Napoleon, he grieved for his dead wife Rachel for 14 years (their marriage was scandal ridden as he married her while she was still legally married to her “former” husband), and he went his grave thinking that a portrait in his parlor was of Christopher Columbus, when instead it was of some obscurely famous Italian Count. Funny, Jackson revered Columbus while we ignore him on his namesake holiday today.

Political correctness obscures the truth so as not to hurt anybody’s feelings, and in so doing obscures the lessons to be learned from history. There were other life-lessons to be learned there, though. After Jackson’s death in 1845, it took his profligate son only 11 years to bankrupt the estate. It was sold to the State of Tennessee to settle some debts and at the time had been reduced to only 520 acres. The classic 2^nd generation wasting of the 1^st generation’s labor. I did learn that Jackson’s son and his wife lived in a bedroom directly across the hall from him for 11 years before he died – I’ll bet the death of this arrogant man was like a get out of jail free card for his son, so it’s no wonder he may have gone a little crazy.

Paid extra to go see Tulip Grove, Jackson’s nephew and protégé, who built his estate just down the road form the hermitage. The docent gave me a wrong turn, so I stopped to ask directions from a young woman at the end of the end of her driveway collecting her mail form the mailbox. She was totally confused, said she thought it was back out to Old Hickory Boulevard several miles away. I didn’t trust her direction and went back to the Hermitage – where I got better directions from a state trooper. The house was less than a half mile from the woman who would have sent me in exactly the opposite direction. I wonder what its like to live so close to one your country’s historical and architectural  monuments and not have any clue? If that survey I saw on TV had ranked history, we must be down around 109.

Tulip Grove was beautiful, but they are struggling to keep it up. The gardens are gone. There are few furnishings. To raise money, they bring in caterers for weddings and similar events. The fire marshal won’t allow them to show the upstairs because there is only the one staircase, a spectacular three story circular staircase with not visible means of support. That is the stupidty of bureaucracy. Don’t you think they could get an exemption for a 200 year old historical mansion tourist attraction? “No, the regulations say you have to have two exits for any building open to the public, so either put an ugly fire escape on the outside or destroy the integrity the building by adding another one inside.” Stupid.

Time to go to work. I drive East to Mount  Juliet to meet Tom Meeks at Maxx Auto. I leave the Beemer in his garage, and after dinner, he drops me at a hotel near the Nashville airport so I can fly home the next morning. Total 634 miles across 3 states in 3 days. The average is good, but 300 miles in a day is about the limit I will want to drive on a motorcycle. A few less each day will give more time to stop and see and visit. But overall, a very good first leg. I’d rather keep going than head back home!