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
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
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