Family vacation: Mile 1011

The kids made this a disappointingly music-free and sober visit to Nashville. Don’t get me wrong: I love family time. It’s just that I don’t have to leave my driveway to enjoy it. Heck, I don’t have leave my bed to enjoy it. The kids usually go to bed in their own rooms and I’m awakened every night with one or both of them kicking me in places no man likes being kicked.

And when in Nashville, we usually stay with my brother who’s militant about avoiding fun. He’s involved in investments and has made me money through the years. But he should go off duty when I come to visit. I want to golf with him, drink with him and spend many pointless hours in tiny bars listening to song writers sing about how much worse off they are then even freelance writers like me.

He’s the kind of guy who says that the world was better off when Garth Brooks was singing making music. I agree, but tend to give more credit to the fact that Bill Clinton was president and that things would have been better still if Clinton hadn’t had to play judicial hide-and-seek with guys like Ken Starr, Rush Limbaugh and all the other right-wing jackasses who influence guys like my brother.

But with Eric, we rarely go out. He was the reason I wound up in Nashville in the first place more than 20 years ago.

He had a job at the Olde Spaghetti Factory on 2nd Avenue in downtown Nashville after I graduated from Ohio University, where I’d tagged along with him, too. While visiting Eric, I was invited spur-of-the-moment for an interview with Joe Worley, the imposing managing editor at the Nashville Banner. As I thought the big city paper was out of my league, I simply showed up in shorts and a sports shirt and the carefree attitude of drug-hazed hippie. But Worley took it way more seriously than I, the applicant, did.

He read my funniest humor pieces without cracking a smile while I sat there for 10 minutes reading the august wall-mounted citations to Worley for his years of service in the Tennessee National Guard. He broke the awkward silence mumbling, “How long were you on the school paper?”

But to my Yankee ears, it sounded like, “Ow longer you ona skul paypa?”

“Beg pardon?” I said, an innocent question that instantly transformed into a drill instructor and me a raw recruit.

“YOU GOT MUD IN YA EARS, BOY? I SAID, HOW LONG WERE YOU ON THE SCHOOL PAPER!”

“One year, sir!”

“DID I HEAR YOU SAY JUST ONE YEAR, SON! ONE LOUSY YEAR!”

“Yes, sir, sir! One year, sir!”

“WELL, WHAT DID YOU DO THE OTHER THREE YEARS, DRINK BEER! “

The vigorous exchange startled me into an unaccustomed burst of honesty.

“Yes, sir, drank beer, sir! Lots and lots of beer!”

He smiled and said, ‘Good boy! I did it for four.”

I got the job and started spending many nights eating free plates of spaghetti where my brother worked.

I got him the other night to tell the story about how he through a revered country music superstar out on his rear.

“Yeah, they came back and said some guy was playing his guitar in the bar. Well, this was a family restaurant and we didn’t have entertainment.”

He told him to pack up guitar, they called him a cab and Eric hauled the guy outside to the cab.

As he put him in the cab, the guy looked up said, “You’re gonna want to remember my name.”

“Okay, what is it?”

“I’m George Strait.”

“I’ll be sure to remember that, George. Have a nice night.”

And remember it he did.