On the Road to Charlotte

Lately, the highway between Asheville and Charlotte has become deeply ingrained into my psyche, much like, the road from Charlotte to Chapel Hill once did. I can picture every turn, every landmark, every twist in the road.

I’ve been burning up the road between Asheville and Charlotte lately because my mother has fallen ill—a ‘minor’ stroke is the culprit. She’s 92 but quick to tell you that she’s going on 93. She’s done exceedingly well for all these years, but it’s growing much harder for her to regain her balance after each health care stumble—no matter how minor. Her latest setback is going to be a very long haul, I fear.

Most of my trips are down and back in one day. The drive to Charlotte from my house is just a touch over two hours—depending on where you’re going in the greater Charlotte-Mecklenburg area. The trip is very lovely too, through some of the prettiest scenery on the east coast. Just 15 miles east of my house you descend the Blue Ridge Escarpment on I-40. At Swannanoa Gap, the interstate bursts through the ridgeline, and I-40’s path down the escarpment is memorable, almost monumental in its scope.

The highway swoops up and down the ridge in a serpentine series of broad three-laned s-curves. The elevation change is fairly severe, and my ears tend to pop at least twice often three times on the drive up or down the Black Mountain grade. The six-mile grade is the steepest climb that the highway makes in its 2,400-mile journey from Wilmington, N.C. to Barstow, Calif.

In I-40’s eastbound lanes, semi-trucks lunge and shudder down the hill as their diesel engines strain with high-pitched whines in a struggle against gravity and to keep the trucks from careening down hill at a maddening jackknife pace. The smell of overheated brake drums often wafts through the car’s air vents. In the westbound lanes, 18-wheelers struggle and crawl up the 6 percent grade. Usually one or two tractors have lost the battle, sitting stranded and smoking in the emergency lane.

On clear days from the top of Swannanoa Gap, you can clearly see where the mountains end, dwindling into the Piedmont and seeming reluctant to surrender to the flatlands. The final gasps of elevated landscape extend eastward for another 40 miles flanking the interstate with the foothill ranges of the Brushy and South Mountains.

I-40 is filled with a typical traffic mix of trucks, SUVs, RVs and sedans. A fair smattering of out-of-state plate mingle with ubiquitous N.C. plates and the “First in Flight” slogan. Once off the Black Mountain grade, traffic nudges up above the 70 mph speed limit, and the small foothill towns of Old Fort, Marion, Dysartville and Nebo pass by almost unnoticed.

Often to break the monotony and sterility of the interstate, I will bolt down N.C. 226 heading southeast out of Marion through the heart of the South Mountains and into Shelby. If you drew a straight line between Asheville and Charlotte, it would trend more toward the route of I-40/N.C. 226/U.S. 74. It’s maybe 20 miles shorter going that way, but takes at least 15 minutes longer to drive. Shelby is a series of stoplights every half mile or so for about 10 miles, which are sequenced to bedevil and frustrate the most patient driver.

Shelby is just another in a line of foothill towns that all look and feel so similar--it's almost eerie. If I was blindfolded, thrown in a trunk and then set loose in the middle of Shelby, Marion, Morganton, Wilkesboro, Lenoir, Rutherfordton or Forest City, I'd have a damned hard time telling them apart and knowing exactly where I was, and I know all these towns--so lord help, a foothills neophyte.

The quickest route to Charlotte follows I-40 on through the larger foothill town of Morganton. Morganton is a nice place fairly unremarkable though except for Broughton Hospital—which for years was a state mental institution. Broughton and its heavy brick Victorian facades loom over the southeast side of Morganton, cresting a bluff that sits not far off the Catawba River. When I was a kid, the hospital’s shadow cast a gloom over Morganton because that was the town where crazy people went. Through the years, the town’s reputation has brightened though and is now a gateway to the high country of Avery, Yancey and Watauga counties.

Still, driving I-40 through Morganton can conjure some sad memories for me. My grandmother died along that highway in the fall of 1970. A careless pick-up truck driver cut off my grandparents’ car clipping it on the left front fender. The impact sent the AMC Rambler careening down an embankment where it hit a tree smashing the passenger side. My grandfather who was driving survived with two broken arms, which were most likely snapped from the impact with the tree as he gripped the wheel tightly.

I know the spot, and there’s a guardrail there now just a few yards off the emergency lane. I try not to look as I speed by but usually catch myself glancing down the embankment into that fatal line of trees. I often wonder: How odd is it to have an emotional connection with a road—especially on a highway specifically designed to detach you from the landscape. Maybe it’s this connection that has led me to know every mile marker and every exit on this highway.

The familiarity feels good though, like I’m cruising with an old friend. And right now, with all the challenges my mother and in turn my family now face, I need as many friends as I can get.

Damp in Downtown Nashville

There’s a lot of neon along Broadway in downtown Nashville. From Ernest Tubbs’ record shop along the four or five blocks to the Cumberland River, neon shines like some sort of mini-Las Vegas. Some is garish and some fairly tasteful, and not totally unexpected for the capital of country music.

The rainy night seemed to make the neon glow that much brighter as vivid reds, greens and purples reflected off the wet asphalt and puddles that rippled haphazardly along the curbs and street corners. My feet slipped across the sidewalk grates slick with rain and whatever amalgam of grease and dirt had been knocked loose from the concrete by steady downpours.

The rain let up long enough for me to take a walk around the Ryman Theater where some of the best country music stars shone their brightest. I’ve been lucky enough to see a show or two at the Ryman but have never darkened the door of the new and oh so completely faux home to the Grand Ole Opry.

The new theater is stuck out in characterless suburban Nashville and surrounded by the most butt-ugly expanse of parking lot filled with buses that routinely disgorge masses of tour groups. No doubt these people will be entertained, since the Opry still is a wonderful showcase of musical talent. But for me, I prefer the feel and tradition of the Ryman. Several years back, I expressed these opinions to the group sales manager from Opryland, and his reply to me: “You and Roy Acuff would get along famously.” High praise indeed.

After splashing and slipping a bit around the Ryman, I wandered over to Printers’ Alley—home to Nashville’s most famous and in some cases infamous honky tonks. Outside one joint, a sandwich board advertised “Nude Karaoke.” While intriguing to say the least, I hurried past while a street barker did his best to entice me to step inside. I’ve learned through the years that when someone tries so hard to get you to spend money that it’s definitely not worth it.

I hurried past, ignoring the barker’s hard sell and went into the bar a few doors down. It was much more my speed, dark and dank. A faded wooden bar with brass rails lined one side of the barroom. A mismatched assortment of barstools most with torn leather seats were scattered about. The black paint on the walls and ceiling was faded, worn and infused with 40-plus years of dust. I ordered bourbon on the rocks and settled in to observe the clientele. The bar’s house band was setting up, and I figured that a bar band in Nashville might be pretty damned good—I was not disappointed.

The bar was filled with mostly local types. You can tell a tourist in a situation like that from miles away—they positively glow with naïveté. Plus everyone in the bar seemed to know each other. I was definitely the odd man out, and I hoped that my own naïve glow wasn’t too obvious.

Most of the patrons had a hard and sun-faded look to them—pale and tan at the same time with tobacco drenched wrinkles lining their foreheads and crinkling around their eyes. Tattoos of skulls, snakes, lizards entwined with flowers covered arms, necks and legs, and it was the first time I ever saw someone actually hobbling along using an orthopedic cane fully festooned with skull and crossbones.

The crowd grew larger as the band took an inordinately long time to tune up. “Check-check one-two, one-two” blaring for 15 minutes can be a bit tedious. Still, the band was excellent once they got all the checking out of their system. In most towns other than Nashville, these guys would’ve filled the bar to capacity.

The audience listened some, but mostly they just talked over the music. It was all so familiar to me. While I had never been there before, the cast of characters was the same. Barmaids looking bit a tired and much older than their 20-something years. An assortment of guys some with ponytails and hairstyles most men left behind in the 1970s. An attractive young blonde with knee-high leather boots, tight jeans and a flowing lacy top flitted among the men with mullets and shoulder-length hair. Before the band started, the lead singer gave her a hug and climbed back on stage.

I couldn’t help but wonder how many like her had stood in the same spot and dreamed of a big break in the Nashville music scene. Some people can stomach a lifetime of that kind of scene, and many in the bar obviously had.

Glimpses of this kind of life play out every day in thousands of bars scattered about the country. Still, Nashville might be a bit tougher with the level of talent drawn to its promises of fame and fortune, and this thought depressed me a bit. I was ready to leave and outside the rain let up. I stepped out and hurried past the strip club barker. However intriguing it might sound, Nude Karaoke can only be the bottom-most rung of Nashville’s musical ladder