Shortly after the end of Doc Martin last night, I heard a BOOM. Going to the window I saw, at the end of the dock, flames illuminating the night and a thick black tower of smoke rising into the sky. Adding to the drama were the rotating lights of firetrucks and police cars; happily, someone had noticed the fire long before I had.
I put on my sandals and headed downstairs. By the time I made my way past the closest firetruck, the flames had been extinguished. A small crowd of onlookers stood in the driveway of the 1300 building, gazing at the smoldering boat; firefighters walked past in their bulky brown outfits and sloping helmets.
No one, including the owners, had any idea how a boat could have caught on fire at night.
Hania found Nashville “exotic” – we were walking up Broadway on Sunday morning, music pouring out of the honkytonks as she said this – but not especially attractive. The European ideal of urban beauty doesn’t really exist in the U.S., outside of San Francisco and New Orleans, and parts of Philadelphia and Boston. The British writer Cyril Connolly once famously remarked that “New York would be the most beautiful city in the world if one never had to descend below the fortieth floor.”
Instead of beauty, American cities have character, and in this category Nashville ranks high. We depended a lot on Lyft, because of Hania’s sprained ankle, and the drivers, without fail, had an easy-going friendliness. A few of them welcomed us to Nashville as soon as we got in their cars. One asked us if we had any questions. “I do,” I said. “What makes the people here so nice?”
“We all had grandmas who taught us to say ‘please’ and ‘thank you,’" the driver said. "And if you didn’t they’d knock the teeth out of your head.”
Saturday morning in the authors' hospitality suite at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville several people sat around a large conference table, one of them picking softly at a guitar. This, I learned after sitting down next to him, was Peter Cooper, author of Johnny’s Cash and Charley’s Pride: Lasting Legends and Untold Adventures in Country Music.
Looking into my author gift bag I found a Goo Goo Cluster, a Moon Pie, and a small bottle of Jim Beam bourbon whiskey.
My session was with the poet and travel writer Richard Tillinghast, a native of Memphis who now divides his time between Hawaii and Sewanee. After our readings, people asked us questions, and Turkey kept coming up in the conversation. Richard has been visiting the country since the 1960s, and speaks Turkish; I noted that it was that rare place that made me feel like a guest instead of a tourist. Richard spoke about the Islamic ethic of hospitality, and put it in terms the audience could understand.
The average Muslim, he explained, is very much like the average Tennessean: They are both devout, God-loving people who act with kindness not just toward their neighbors but also toward strangers.
I had never thought of the connection before, but after this last visit to Nashville I saw it clearly.
Headline in today's Herald reads: "Keys tries [sic] to lure tourists with an unusual approach: showing damage." I was hoping it would say: "Keys try to lure tourists with an unusual approach: reasonable prices."
One month ago I received a number of emails from friend expressing concern about Irma. One woman, who lives outside the town of Sonoma, urged us to evacuate. Yesterday I sent her an email asking if she and her husband had evacuated. She said they were staying put, for now, but had been told to leave at the first sign of fire. There are not many things that make a hurricane seem the preferable option, but a wildfire is one of them.
Saturday afternoon we drove our friends Don and Joanne down to Little Havana. We walked past Domino Park to the Tower Theater, where we watched the Czech-Slovak film The Teacher. Afterwards, we visited Ball & Chain and then went for dinner - ropa vieja and vaca frita - in a restaurant whose wall was covered with old Cuban advertisements and magazine covers.
"This is like going to Cuba," Don said, "without the pain."