Skip to main content

Thinking About the Opry

    A few years ago my wife and I went to Nashville. We wanted to take the tour that they give at the Grand Ole Opry. You'd never know what the building was from the outside. It's not all that huge and the exterior is all wood, very dark. The wood is almost black.
    Inside, the first thing that struck me was the seating. It was church pews with mauve padding and reminded me very much of a church I had been in, down in Louisiana. There was a little red barn on the stage. I understand that during the recent floods, this stage was covered by the water from the Cumberland River. I would have thought Mother Nature would have been more of a country music fan than that.
    Our group stood on the stage and sang a song. The acoustics were quite good. I asked the lady if Elvis had ever sung at the Opry and she told me a funny story. A man at the Opry had told the young rocker not to quit his day job because he would not find much success. Consequently, after Elvis made it big, he never agreed to appear there.
    Across the parking lot is the Opry Mills Mall, which we liked very much. One of the bigger stores was, at that time, Tower Records. I loved it and prowled all over it. I found a terrific CD of Herman's Hermits, my favorite group from the sixties.
    I've said all the above to get to this. Tower Records is now closed and gone. Me, and millions like me, go to I-tunes and scrounge for oldies, but goodies.
    When I was twelve or thirteen, I used to read a series of novels about a boy inventor named Tom Swift. The books were written around the turn of the twentieth century, yet the dude had enough imagination to write about airships and other things which were as yet on the distant horizon. Well, the other day I used the Stanza app on my I-Pad and found these books on Gutenberg. I downloaded them for free. I could have searched dusty books on shelves all over the nation without finding them. Not to sound too much like Abe Lincoln, but I remember walking about five miles to check out books from a county library that had been opened in a tiny house. Only wealthy people owned books in that area. What a thrill it was to hold a book in your hands and know that Zane Grey or Edgar Rice Burroughs would take you to places you could only dream of going. Yeah, books are special. Later, when I actually owned books, I treated them like they were special, you can bet.
    Clearly, we are watching the birth of a new era in books, which is neither all good or all bad. So long from the green retreat. CE Wills

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The White Chicken Mystery

    The other night I happened to come home very late. It was the middle of the night and I was driving up a steep mountain road. Near the top I saw something white in my headlights. It was standing in the other lane, standing very still. It was a large white chicken. It was probably a rooster because I thought I could see his comb as I whizzed by at my customary pace. He never moved a muscle. This is weird, don't you think?      After a couple of days to consider this phenomenon, I have come up with some plausible answers for his bizarre behavior. 1. He was conflicted whether or not he should cross the road. 2. He was feeling cocky and decided to play chicken with the traffic. 3.He was being hen-pecked at home and had decided to end it all. 4. Someone had egged him on to do it. 5. He had just watched the movie Fantastic Four and decided to try to stop a truck the way that Ben Grimm did on the bridge. 6. He had driven himself crazy wondering if ...

Cake Is Better Than Swords

Hey, everyone. On Thanksgiving, we had a get-together here at The Author's Green Retreat. One lady brought a cake which I wanted to show you. It had the look of a Roman Coliseum about it. Inside it was just as decadent...and fun, as ancient Rome. When I cut it open, homemade marshmallow cream began to ooze out in several spots, running over the chocolate cake and peanut butter icing. It is best served warm so the cream is fluid. Very tasty. The same lady, and her children, are people who have played a lot of Skyrim. They gave me some pointers on the game because I am having problems with it. They taught me how to fast travel, and a ton of other things, but the main thing was the armor and clothing problem. This is a little embarrassing, but let me explain. Okay. For several weeks when I played, I would enter towns and everyone I met would comment on my nakedness. I would select a tunic and shoes, whatever, go back around people and they would say something about it. I guess I w...

Egg Art

     Hey, everyone. One of the odd customs in America is the Easter Egg Hunt. Here at the Green Retreat, we do a hunt every Spring. I just ran across some of the pictures from this years hunt and it is obvious that an artist had sneaked into our midst. The orange egg is a rendering of one of the Angry Birds of gaming lore. If I were a bird and had to pass an egg that size, I would be angry too. Ha, ha.      We typically will dye about 10 dozen eggs and people get quite creative with their quotes and colors, as you can see. Many of the eggs are a bit risque for these pages. After having a few laughs, we hide the eggs. All of them are never found, which is cool. It is amusing to see old men (me) and all ages of folks, walking around with a basket on their arm. Some of the hiding spots are dastardly. Like eggs hidden in the guttering downspouts and ten foot up a tree. The kids are perhaps the most devious at hiding the colorful orbs, goi...