A Depressing Run Across Tennessee

For a fleeting moment, with my sandals, white pants and light weight shirt and a weakened sunshine, I thought there might be one more day of warm vacation but NOOOOOOO! I froze, it rained and the overwhelming ' Chrisianity' of Tn drove me mad. The last few minutes in Ms and the familiar road along the Shiloh battlefield faded quickly as we crossed the State line and encountered 'Jesus" signs plugged into multitudinous lawns as though he were running for office along with the Weems woman who wants to be County something or other! By the time we came across Emilee Kay's with its full to overflowing parking lot I was sure they weren't serving lunch but that we had stumbled into a prayer meeting--it was after all, Sunday! It might as well have been--they all belonged to the same church, they had just come from church and the heavy guy with glasses talking to the waitress is the minister--the conversations were all about church or church related topics. The crowning touch was receiving my dishwater coffee ( caffeine is probably sinful! ) in a church mug!!!!!! I had said during the Jesus sign jungle that if I lived there I'd put a Blessed Virgin in her bathtub shrine on MY lawn--but at this I was going to demand another mug--Bill was adamantly against it--so I refrained! But give me a break--this is a public restaurant and I am Catholic--suppose I were Jewish or Buddist or Muslim. Forget it--all of us C,J,.B or M are lost souls here in another Bible belt. I looked at the mug shelves as I left--there was a whole set of Pentecostal mugs--the church down the street and probably the Rev's --and a whole set of secular mugs--most likely for use on days other than the Sabbath! It got worse--we left and as we drove down this backwater road I noticed a small sign tacked to a tree--I told Bill it said ' repent'--he said, oh, I don't go back for pictures for you but I'll go back for that one--so there it is ; Repent in the middle of nowhere! So we continued along the back roads over more rivers than I can remember until we came to Loretta Lynn Land--oh, I mean, Hurricane Mills where she owns a house that she no longer lives in and many varied enterprises, all of which we drove right by. Eventually, we arrived in Clarksville, just outside of Nashville and Logan's Roadhouse--we ate at one in Florence, Alabama last year and really liked it. I had a great mesquite grilled salmon with baked yam and cole slaw. Then we checked into our last free suite--the tenth free night of the trip----and I read until midnight, while Bill slept. I am really bummed that we are getting home before April---now he says he didn't know I waned ted to go to Arizona--or that I wanted to be gone until April. Well, if he'd go get a hearing aid maybe he'd hear more! We were going to get home by the 15 th to file our taxes and I said innumerable times that I wanted to go to Ajo. Bottom line--he wants to get back to Price Chopper and mr. nice is getting what he wants--nicely, of course!