Walk the Line

When I was 10, I would read Teen Beat magazine and stare at the photos of David Cassidy and Robby Benson. One issue had a two page spread of Elvis Presley’s sweaty face. The photo was blown up so large, you could see his pores. I didn’t know who he was other than this man corrupting the pages of my magazine. I would intentionally turn to the page so I could look at his sweaty pores and shriek. I thought of that as I took my son through the Johnny Cash museum. Not even I liked Johnny Cash until I saw the movie “Walk the Line,” 13 years ago, and my crush wasn’t so much on him but on Joaquin Phoenix, the actor who played him. It’s only now at age 54 that I’ve come to appreciate Johnny Cash’s look, his sound, his baritone voice, his lyrics, his machismo.

My son was largely uninterested in the museum, though he enjoyed playing with an iPad that had cover versions of Cash songs by various artists. You could click on the artist and hear a snippet of the song. My son clicked on an artist and began saying repeatedly, in a very loud voice – he couldn’t hear how loud he was talking because he was wearing earphones — “I like this guy! I like this guy, mommy! I like this guy!” It was Snoop Dogg singing “I Walk the Line.”

My son also liked a movie that showed Johnny Cash’s film and television roles. In one black and white film, called “Five Minutes to Live,” Cash took the wife of a bank manager hostage so he could get ransom money, and when police arrive, he grabs her young boy, played by Ron Howard, runs outside and a cop begins shooting at him. A bullet appears to hit the boy, and an angry Cash rises up and tries to confront the cop but is then shot a few times. He stumbles to the ground, blood leaking out of his mouth, and dies.

“I liked when he was a bad guy,” my son said after we left.

We went to the museum after walking down Nashville’s honky tonk Broadway, a Bourbon Street-style promenade of live music, drunken tourists and bachelorette parties. Tucked in the middle of the bars was a store that sold Western boots. My son wanted a cowboy ‘costume,’ so I bought him a pair of black metal tipped boots with white stitching up the side, a belt with a big metallic buckle that said, ‘Rodeo Champion,” and a straw cowboy hat with a brim that he bent up and down so many times by the end of the day that it looked droopy.

When we got back to the hotel, we went to the Health and Fitness center. Under the guise of “showing my son the weight room,” I thought I could get in a quick jog on the treadmill. Working out is always hard when just one parent is on duty, but I’d recently read a story in The New York Times about a quickie workout where if you promise to run your very fastest for three 20-second spurts, you can get away with running for just 10 minutes. I got in a whole workout before my son could pinch his fingers in a weight machine.

We went to dinner at the restaurant under the hotel, a steak place in a beautiful wood-paneled room. I’d made a reservation for two, and they looked askance when I showed up for dinner with a seven-year-old companion. I had a martini, my son, a Shirley Temple with lots of crushed ice, and we ate fried tomatoes, macaroni and cheese and ribeye steak, though the steak was rippled with gristle and hard bits, and I kept surreptitiously removing them from my mouth and leaving them on my plate until I’d created a small mound. My son was the picture of civility for much of the meal, but by the end, tanked up on ginger ale, he kept getting out of his seat and running over to my side of the table, making sucking sounds with his straw, and playing with the crushed ice in his drink like it was a slushy. When the waiter came to collect our plates, my son said, “My mom likes to suck the juice out of the steak and leave it on her plate,” as he pointed to the pile of half-chewed discarded remnants.

The next day, we went on a tour bus around the city. It was a hop-on-hop-off circuit, though one only need do that kind of tour once to see the downside: once you hop off, you can wait up to half an hour for the next bus. We did hop off in The Gulch, an up and coming neighborhood where land is vacant one minute and has a 20-story condo glass condo on it the next. Three tour guides told us that 80 to 100 new people move to Nashville a day, and that Peter Frampton and Daryl Hall or John Oates – it was one or the other – had moved into the Gulch.

We hopped off in The Gulch because we’d heard there was a great view of the city from the roof bar of the trendy Thompson Hotel. While there, we had an Oreo ice cream sandwich and some high-end kettle corn and returned to the bus stop. After waiting about 25 minutes, my son had to pee. I didn’t want to leave the bus stop because I knew as soon as I did, the bus would come. I took a quick look around us, at the shops, restaurants and condos in the up and coming Gulch and wondered what would be the least terrible thing on which to urinate. There were now about 10 people waiting nearby for the same bus. The least offensive spot to pee was the parking garage behind us. The bus stop was at the top of the ramp. I told my son to walk down the ramp just until it curved, so he would be out of sight. And I would remain at the top of the ramp to stop cars from driving in. He walked down the ramp about five feet and urinated on the wall, well within view of our fellow bus passengers. It reminded me of a time when he was three, and we’d gone to a neighborhood playground outside of which a cop had parked to set up a speed trap. As the officer sat in her car, my son informed me that he had to go to the bathroom. I scanned the park and saw an unfortunate paradox: the farther from the cop I could send him to urinate, the closer he got to all the houses that surrounded the playground. I thought better to pee in front of people than police, so I sent him to the far end of the park by a tree. I stood between him and the cop, hoping to block him, and when I turned around, I saw him crouched under the tree, defecating. I ran over, diaper wipes in hand, scooped up the poop in one hand, my son in the other, and fled.

For dinner, we had BBQ. I ordered Texas brisket, St. Louis Ribs, and some pulled pork. I opted not to eat the corn bread in deference to my diet, though when I sent my husband a photo of our dinner, his only remark was, “Wow! That’s a lot of food!” Good thing I worked out for 10 minutes.

After dinner, we walked along the strip and would stop outside each bar to listen to a few minutes of live music. Yesterday, I couldn’t get a drink because I had forgotten my ID (I couldn’t even feel flattered as the bartender kept saying, “It’s Tennessee State Law. I need to check everyone”). Now, I couldn’t get a drink because at night, the bars don’t allow children. But in the middle of the live music venues was a karaoke bar. I love to sing (“Duke of Earl” is my song of choice), so I dragged my son into the bar. There was no bouncer to stop us. I bought a beer, and put my name on the list of singers. Of all my renditions of “Duke of Earl” over the years, that night was the worst. The key was too low, so I sang high – and not high enough. It was awful. I walked out embarrassed.

As we walked back to the hotel, my son said, “You were great!”

I bought him some rock candy.