Nashville Lower Broad Tour, Part I

Sorry I haven't posted since Tuesday. It's been a busy week here in the Hollow.

On Monday, I rode with Joyce uptown to drop off her car at the Body shop to get it repaired. On Tuesday we made a short trip to Murfreesboro to pick up something Joyce's brother's wife had given her and we stopped off at Lower Broad on the way back for a quick tour. More on that below. Then on Wednesday I returned to the doctor for a checkup. He adjusted my coumadin level, said I was doing okay and sent me on my merry way. Afterward we ate at Ruby's Cafe in Hendersonville, our favorite Meat and Three.

Now, as to the whys and the wherefores of the body shop excursion... Back on Saturday Joyce was involved in a crash in the Publix grocery parking lot. She wasn't hurt, thank goodness, just shook up pretty bad, and still trembling like a leaf when she got home. She was driving straight down the lane toward the store when she was "T" boned by a guy cutting across the parking lot. The crash damaged the bottom of the driver door slightly, the back door, and the back fender panel. Thankfully, the other driver was gracious and admitted fault and his insurance is taking care of it. Three panels: $5500. Here's a pic of our car (note: you can click on any pic in this post to make it bigger):

I thought we might get a Yugo rental but instead we got a Chevy Impala. Not bad.

Like I said, on Tuesday after getting our rental we stopped off on Lower Broad in downtown Nashville and pretended to be tourists for about 45 minutes. It was fun and Joyce got some good shots even though the weather was overcast. I'll be showing some more of these photos over the next few days. I can do a pretty quick post that way when I making my morning blog rounds and then get to work on cleaning up the mystery novel, which I hope is going out next week sometime.

We dropped the car off, got the rental, and headed downtown. Here's a pic or two I took from the car. First, as we crossed the railroad bridge, we passed the old Union Station, built in 1900 as the city's main train depot. In recent years the depot was restored and turned into an upscale Wyndam Grand Hotel. But in 1956 at the age of 16, I caught L&N's  "Hummingbird" at Union Station and rode it to Cincinatti and then from there I went on another train to Detroit. It was my first "solo" like that and will be the subject of a post sometime in the future.

Here's another pic driving on Broadway headed downhill toward what people refer to as Lower Broad. In the 60's and 70's it was a mess, drunks on the street, porn theaters, etc., but the city cleaned it up and it's a big tourist attraction now. The tower you can barely see at the right of the pic is on top of the Bridgestone Arena. I'll show more of it in a later post. Right now, I'll just say the "Stone" is where the Predators play hockey.

After paying an exorbitant fee, we parked our car on 5th Avenue. Here's a closer view of the building you may have noticed in the previous photo. We locals call it "The Bat Building." I think you can see why.

We walked down 5th and took in the grandeur of the Mother Church of Country Music, the "world famous Ryman Auditorium," as the Opry announcers like to say. I'll stop today with this shot and continue the tour in a day or two. There'll be more shots of the Ryman, plus Tootsie's and other Lower Broad hot spots. Happy trails!