On the Road Again with the Traveling Macy's

 

by Pa Rock

Traveling Fool

We covered a lot of ground yesterday - from West Plains, Missouri, to Knoxville, Tennessee.  The first highlight of the trip was a gas and McDonald’s stop twenty miles from home in the town of Mountain View, Missouri, a place where our family lived when the kids were young.  While we were there Molly got to see the first house that she actually remembers living in.  She was one when we moved in and six when we left – and had not been back since – and she is forty-four now!
 
The second interesting attraction came when we crossed the Mississippi River on an old steel bridge in southeast Missouri.  The big blue bridge, which looks like it might have been a WPA project during the Great Depression, sets down in Illinois near Cairo and then, about a quarter-of-a-mile later the road leads to an identical big blue bridge that crosses the Ohio River into Kentucky.  Three states and two of the three largest rivers in the United States in about five minutes!
 
An hour or so after entering Kentucky we drove near Ft. Campbell where I was employed as a civilian social worker from 2005 to 2007.     We also passed near the community of Hopkinsville, Kentucky, where I lived while working at Ft. Campbell.  I hadn’t been back to that area for nearly fifteen years, but was able to note several places from the interstate that I remembered.  Hopkinsville was the hometown of famed psychic Edgar Cayce who lived there a long time before I did!
 
It rained all day long but as we got to Nashville the wet weather relented long enough for us to get out and walk around the downtown music section of the city.  Lots of noisy country bands were blaring music out onto the streets, and I heard one band leader announce that it was Willie Nelson’s 88^th birthday – and he was playing some Willie classics to celebrate.  We went into a few shops and the gift shop at the Johnny Cash Museum.  Molly and I stepped into the famous Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, but it was too crowded to get very far in – and unbelievably noisy!
 
But lots of people were having lots of fun in Nashville!
 
Today we have about six hours of driving to reach our destination.  The play will be performed tonight and tomorrow night.  

And speaking of Willie, we are "on the road again . . . "