I've been having some odd thoughts as I have watched the city of Nashville experience a devastating flood.
- My father was a college professor in Arkansas when my brother and I were growing up. And, for about four months in 1973, the whole family lived in Nashville while my father was on his sabbatical.
Obviously, that was many years ago. I don't think I've been in Nashville since that time. But I did live there for awhile. Many things have changed — but not the names of streets and waterways and buildings that were standing then and still stand today. Hearing the names brings back memories I haven't thought about in a long time.
For example, one of the buildings that was standing when my family lived in Nashville was Ryman Auditorium, the original home of the Grand Ole Opry.
For more than 30 years, Ryman was the Mecca of country music. The Grand Ole Opry show made Ryman, which began its existence as a tabernacle, its permanent home in the 1940s, and just about everyone who ever amounted to anything in country music performed there at some time during the next three decades.
But, as it turned out, the Opry relocated to a larger facility that was part of Opryland the year after my family left Nashville. And, for nearly 20 years, Ryman stood empty and unused, until Emmylou Harris came to do some shows in 1992 and made an album of the songs she sang there. Apparently, that revived local interest in the place (which is known as "the Mother Church of Country Music"), and it was restored for use as a performance venue and a museum.
Now, the Grand Ole Opry House and other local landmarks have been submerged in floodwater. As a result, the Grand Ole Opry is returning to Ryman for weekend shows, apparently indefinitely - It seems ironic, to me, that this should happen at this time. It was 15 years ago today that my mother died in a flash flood here in Dallas. And this flood seems to have caught Nashville as much by surprise as the one that struck Dallas in 1995.
I always had the feeling that Mom really enjoyed the time we spent in Nashville. And, while I would never say that she — or I — had much interest in the Opry, I guess we developed a kind of a local interest in it and the people who performed there.
I will always remember that she seemed genuinely sorry that David Akeman ("Stringbean" in the attached video clip) and his wife were ambushed and murdered on their rural Tennessee property about a month before we moved back to Arkansas. Perhaps that is why I make a mental connection between Mom and Nashville. - Well, things sort of seem to have come full circle now.
I never got to see an Opry show when I lived in Nashville, but I hope those who see one at Ryman while Opryland is being restored appreciate the rare opportunity they are being given to experience the Opry the way so many experienced it back in the day.
