Tennessee Wooing Me

Belmont Plantation Children's Bedroom

I got to be a tourist today in Nashville. We went to the historic Belmont Mansion. It is one of the largest antebellum homes in the South. It was fun to stroll about her creaky wooden floors and imagine life in that day. The life of owner, Adeliecia Hayes, although incredibly illustrious, was  full of hardship. She seemed like quite savvy as the story goes that she negotiated the sell of her cotton with the help of both Union and Confederate soldiers to England for over $900,000. That was quite a lot of cotton. Apparently she was paid in gold and went over to get it and went on a grand European tour and met Napoleon, as one would. Only one of her ten children lived to adulthood. And, as I recall, she lost her first husband only after a few years of marriage. I cannot imagine that ship ride to England or life without indoor plumbing, no matter how fancy or gold inlaid the chamber pot. Her first husband owned over 850 slaves. Oh to have a seat at that dinner table. Looking so closely at the past makes me wonder how much more will we evolve in the future? Social issues like slavery and women’s rights finally having been settled so that I don’t have to live in the Old Testament, make me wonder what else we have been getting wrong entirely. 

After strolling through the 1853 Italian villa, we jumped forward to the 1950’s and had lunch at Puckett’s in Lieper’s Fork. It’s a dusty old institution and country store that serves BBQ and "meat and three". We were greeted by tall cowboys with handle bar mustaches and Wrangler’s, on horseback no doubt. I ate lima beans with a plastic fork and listened to sisters-in-law, sitting knee to knee at my table swap stories. We crossed the street and loitered about in shops picking up candles and soaps, sniffing and peering through glass cases. We went into the sweet little gallery of David Arms where your spirit cannot help but settle and be still for those moments, taking it all in. Admiration and peace. We sped back home with the top down in Dad’s little sporty car in this absolutely perfect weather here in these green Tennessee hills. My fickle heart once thought Georgia was the grandest place on earth, she still is. So is Pemba, Mozambique and slowly, of all places, Tennessee is wooing me. 

Italian Villa circa 1853

Puckett's Grocery- Lieper's Fork

David Arms Art Gallery

It's growing on me.