On Saturday the nearby town of Old Hickory is holding a town-wide garage sale. I drive around sampling a few offerings and then find Old Hickory United Methodist Church and its members’ garage sale. They’ve got quite a few books for sale and I find a few paperbacks. (Note: Old Hickory is a town built by DuPont which has a large plant there. Albuquerque friends Alan and Julie Eaton work there. You may recall that on our fall 05 New England trip we stopped to visit them and their family in Delaware. They’ve since transferred to Nashville and work in the Old Hickory facility. An update and picture below.)
Next I head downtown to Elder’s book store, located near Vanderbilt U. I get there early, before it opens, so I go to the nearby Soda Shop café for breakfast. I find out later that it’s listed in our Roadfood book. Lucky me to happen upon it. The book says the Soda Shop opened in 1939 and has scarcely changed since. It’s known for great biscuits and waitresses with an attitude. I experienced the first, not the latter. There’s a jukebox in every booth. I put a quarter in but it doesn’t drop. Waitress has obviously seen this happen before. She shows up with a piece of scotch tape and says, Here, you can pull it out with this. I wonder if none of the jukeboxes work, or just mine. At any rate, I enjoy a country ham and biscuits and eggs breakfast – just what I would have ordered if I had read the Roadfood write-up ahead of time.
Elder’s is a treasure trove of old books, stacked and piled everywhere. The website says it's often been listed as the best bookstore in the South! The books are organized in sections, but within sections I don’t see any alphabetic or other rhyme or reason behind the organization. In some sections you will see a sign saying, For more X books, look in the Y section or ask for assistance. The search is part of the experience. Of course if you’re just browsing, waiting for something to catch your eye, I guess order is not that important. If you have something in mind, when you ask the owner or, he can usually go right to it. The store has a huge collection of Civil War books, so if that’s your interest, if you’re ever in Nashville, check out Elder’s.
There are lots of signs, such as: Don’t handle these books, Don’t stand on this chair, Ask for help in removing books from this shelf. … . In the Religion section: Please refrain from loud Bible discussions in this area (must be a story behind that one). Also: If you just like to handle Bibles, go to a church or library. I spend a couple of hours in Elder’s and leave with only a “facsimile first edition” of Grapes of Wrath – my choice for best book ever. I had sort of been looking for books on World War II battles in the Pacific, based on our Fredericksburg museum visit, but didn’t find any stand-out books on this topic. Most books, I think, I would only like to read once, so I’ll make notes and maybe check them out of a library some day.
Sunday we go to church and brunch with Paul, Mandi, and Heidi. That afternoon we visit the Eatons. Alan and Julie have four kids under six years of age. The youngest are twins. The house pulses with energy. It’s simply amazing to see. Occasionally, grandparents Roger and Donna Eaton fly to Nashville to stay with the kids when Alan and Julie both have to be away – they both work for DuPont. When they come home it’s like Wow and Whew (and those are just the twins!).
Sunday evening Mandi and Heidi treat Susie to Mother’s Day dinner at The Palm – Paul and I get to go, too. Very nice meal, though once again, as in Doe’s, I wrongly pick a seafood dish in a steak house Just before we went to dinner I found that my camera is not working – the lens jams as it tries to close. I go to plan B: this picture of the three girls was taken with Susie’s camcorder which also takes stills.
Monday I call a couple of camera repair shops, but nobody in town works on digital cameras. Nevertheless, I take it to a shop that says they will mail it in to Sony for me. I just want an expert to diagnose the problem. Tech looks at it: says your lens is so dirty it’s a wonder you get any pictures (I hadn’t noticed any problem). Then he finds that there appears to be sand in the lens mechanism (Did you take it to the beach?), keeps it from extending and retracting. He obviously thinks I’m not fit to use a camera, but he spray-cleans/lubes it and all is OK!
Also, Monday, Susie discovers evidence that TuziTwo is now occupied by a mouse. (We’ve been sleeping in the house. Tuzi is parked in driveway; when their house was built, Paul and Mandi had the driveway extended to accommodate a motor home.) I buy some “modern” (build a better mousetrap … “) traps at Lowe’s traps, but they don’t work – the mechanism is too stiff; mouse gets cheese without suffering extreme penalty. So Tuesday I get some old-fashioned spring type traps from Home Depot. We’d tried these at home before (we occasionally get mice in our garage) and I hadn’t been able to set the traps – couldn’t set the spring and trigger mechanism. Well, I have trouble again – mechanism goes off, repeatedly, while I’m trying to set it, but fortunately, doesn’t catch me. All fingers are intact. Susie gets so tickled she can’t stand it – but eventually I get a couple of them set.
Tomorrow it's off on a slow trip to Ames, Iowa for a statistics conference. This is going to be good!
Cheers,
Rob and Susie
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