My Visit To A Foreign Country With An Island Of Wonder: No Passport Required

My Visit To A Foreign Country With An Island Of Wonder: No Passport Required

By

Leonard Zwelling

I live in a bubble. I know that. I am retired. The number of times I need to interact with anyone else is quite limited and this is of my choosing.

I do get cold calls from scam artists wanting to promote my books, or republish them and take them to international book fairs. These callers inevitably have heavy foreign accents, have done absolutely no homework about me or my books, and have nothing to sell of value. They say they are in San Diego or Las Vegas. I believe they are in the Philippines. If they were really in San Diego, why entice me to show my book at the Manila Book Fair?

The rest of the time my interpersonal interactions are with my family, my friends, or people who help me around the house now that I am unwilling to climb ladders.

When I do go out into the world of Houston, there is a little bit of shock to my system sometimes, but not much. I tend to go to restaurants where again, my interactions are limited to the hostess and the wait staff. I favor buying things I need or want on the internet (I have Amazon on the keyboard equivalent of speed dial) or from small, local vendors away from malls. I even go to Central Market at 8 AM Sunday to avoid any crowds.

I have done a lot of volunteer service on the boards of non-profit health care entities as a way to continue to contribute and meet new people. Unfortunately, I have found these groups totally mismanaged and people in the organizations or on these boards of questionable ethics. My next novel is centered on the question of corruption in this segment of the health care industry.

I have joined an important committee at my golf club, but my interactions there are with men (yes, they are all white) pretty similar to me in education and income. You get my drift, I hope.

I live in a bubble.

This past weekend, Genie and I joined cousins Hyla and Stu in Nashville. Our cousins have always raved about the place and neither of us has ever spent any time in the city nor visited the great music venues. I was leaving my bubble for three days.

On our first night, we went to a concert by Leonid & Friends, a tribute band composed of Russians that mostly play Chicago hits but veered into Blood, Sweat, and Tears and Steely Dan as well. The venue was the Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Belmont University. The hall is magnificent. The concert was great. The crowd was mostly over 50, well-dressed, well-mannered, and appreciative of the band. All and all a great experience. Then we visited the other country.

Broadway in Nashville is a never-ending succession of bars and honkytonks (I am not sure I know the difference). In every bar was a band or singer hoping to be discovered. They play for tips only and this goes on all day and night. Broadway here is almost as crowded as Broadway in New York. It’s Times Square minus the cartoon characters. It is every bit as loud, if not louder with screaming members of bachelorette parties and would-be cowboys in boots and hats competing with a new band every few yards. I live in Texas and I know of only one place in Houston with people wearing clothes like this. The rodeo.

We saw a comedy show at the famous Ryman Auditorium where the Grand Old Orpy used to be housed before it outgrew this old church where seating is on the original pews. David Spade topped the bill, but was not entertaining at all. One of the warm-up comics, Patrick Keane, however, was terrific. I never considered that when Cain killed Abel he decimated 25 % of the world’s population. Keane had.

The next day we took the Redneck Bus Tour which was an amusing ride through downtown Nashville. Our co-tourists were from all over the U.S. Nashville is filled with people from somewhere else. It is a definite destination for those bachelorette parties by-passing Las Vegas as the most desired site for such affairs.

We then went to the OpryLand Mall. I had visited this mall about 15 years ago when I gave a talk at the Gaylord OpryLand Hotel and Convention Center which is 25 minutes from downtown. I remember the enormity of this hotel because it took me 20 minutes to walk from my room to the site of my talk and the walk was totally inside. This place is big. I visited the mall after my talk. Then it was filled with very high-end stores with merchandise at a discount.

The mall is a metaphor for what has happened to the country in the intervening 15 years. Almost all the high-end brand names are gone replaced by the usual mall store fronts and at least 20 different places to eat over-processed, high carb food. Every other person I passed was overweight and heavily tattooed. My only thought was that if we were to go into a real war, we might not be able to muster the man or woman power to win.

We had also stopped for a bio-break during the bus tour at the Country Music Hall of Fame. The same crowd was grazing the gift shop. Large, tattooed, and loud. This was a different country than the one in which I live.

What so struck me was how much of a foreigner I am in my own country. I don’t look like these people. I don’t eat what they eat. I don’t listen to the same music. And, I certainly don’t vote like they do. Remember, this is the state that had Al Gore won in 2000–and this is the state that he represented in the Senate–he would have been president.

Then Saturday night I visited the true Magic Kingdom, the Grand Old Opry, an island in this foreign country. In 1974 the Opry had its first show in this new venue a good 25-minute drive from downtown. The building has a gorgeous façade, and is efficiently run by knowledgeable and caring staff. The 4400-seat venue is beautiful with crystal-clear acoustics. The show starts exactly at 7 PM because it is broadcast live on the radio. There are about 6 or 7 acts. Each act gets three songs. Our bill was headed by Vince Gill, but it was a 21-year old newcomer named Bennie G who stole the show in his first Opry gig.

The audience was respectful, appreciative, and well-behaved in every way. The “house band” is made up of studio caliber musicians who can play with anyone after one rehearsal. For someone who has loved live music for 60 years and has been relegated to some lackluster arena concerts of late, this was a real treat and the absolute best of America. I loved it. I can’t wait to go back.

So, I will leave Nashville glad that I came, just as glad to be going, and convinced once again that I am not in the American mainstream in age, beliefs, ethnicity, or politics, but excited about returning to the Opry which is unique in my experience.

I do feel far more comfortable in Houston—the Houston where I can live my life away from all of this.

Do I sound old, cynical, and joyless? Maybe, but I am very grateful for the life Houston has given me and the blessing of being able to live a life far from the America I just visited, yet still be living in a great country that gave birth to the Grand Ole Opry.

I needed no passport to get to Nashville. I enjoyed my time in this other country. I am quite sure there are people like me in Nashville, but I met very few on this trip. Maybe I need to get out more—in Nashville and in Houston.