ROAD TRIP 2006, WESTWARD: ASHEVILLE TO NASHVILLE TO SWEET SOUR MASH

Day 5 (6/11): Batman Returns to Begin Again! In Nashville!

Spent the night of the 10th in downtown Asheville, where live music abounds. Beautiful drive through the Smokies into Tennessee, where we quickly saw signs for the Smokey Mountain Knife Works, which boasted the world’s largest collection of knives, so, of course we had to stop. Three floors of nothing but blades (and taxidermy). Everything from pen knives to bat’leths. A thirty foot knife emerging out of a stony waterfall before a backdrop of mounted game heads greets you upon entering. Videos of burly men throwing knives, cutting rope with knives, and lacerating suspended pieces of meat with knives play behind counters staffed by older, formerly burly men, who, perhaps, long for the days when they could chop large pieces of rope. Hunting knives, skinning knives, throwing knives, gigantic 1 foot folding utility knives, katanas, washizakis, broad swords, rapiers, blades from Star Trek, blades from Lord of the Rings, even a gauntlet that looked like some of Voldo’s gear from Soul Caliber. So worth stopping for.’

Had lunch at Puleo’s Grill in Sevierville, TN, wholly unremarkable meal save for the presence of salad on the menu, my first actual serving a vegetables in days.

In Nashville we were welcomed by Francis and Yvonne, friends of Dave’s family. They gave us a driving tour of Nashville, which was excellent. We saw a full replica of the Parthenon (after having heard a TAL story on the road about the American impulse to create synthetic worlds through recreation), a beautiful old railway station converted to a hotel, across the road from a very large Christian bookstore in front of an even bigger office building bedecked with a massive cross. There was a wonderful memorial park before the capitol, with a long marble wall inscribed with chronological events in the state’s history, from geologic prehistory through the founding of Piggly Wiggly. There was also an enormous map of the state carved into granite slabs surrounded by raised marble placards featuring smaller, thematic maps, showing climate, geology, population, ecological areas, etc. The WWII memorial featured a huge black marble globe suspended on a jet of water, so I figure there was a map nerd somewhere in the making of the park.

The Bell South building in downtown Nashville has two pointy spires on either side of the rectangular building, bearing a passing resemblance to Batman’s head. Whenever this building came into view (quite frequently), Yvonne would say, “There’s Batman!” This happened about 20 times, and every time it was true. Since their favorite BBQ joint was closed for a private party, Francis and Yvonne treated us to dinner at the Flying Saucer, where we had some decent local ale by Yazoo. Later I monopolized their internet connection while they watched Faulty Towers.

We couldn’t have asked for more friendly and generous hosts than Francis and Yvonne. Interesting folk and great conversationalists. They could take second jobs as tour guides.

Day 6 (6/12): Drinkin’ Mash, Talkin’ Trash

After some excellent coffee, F & Y sent us off and we were on our way to Lynchburg, TN, home of the Jack Daniel’s distillery. Scary name aside, the distillery turned out to be awesome. I was eager to compare it with northern Californian wineries. Would a bigger brand mean more pretension than Napa? Was more pretension than Napa even possible? The whole place smelled of yeast to different degrees, just like a winery, substituting corn/barley/rye for the grapes. The visitor’s center, where the tour began, was clearly the product of money, unsurprisingly, but tasteful money. Some neat exhibits on the history of the place. The functional buildings seemed very unaffected though. Napa always seems fake to me, and the larger wineries flout their money in outrageous architectural flourishes of bygone eras or distant places that never seem to fit quite right. There are plenty of other wineries that are subtle or plain, of course, but the outrageous ones stick in memory.

Anyway, the buildings at Jack Daniel’s had worn corrugated iron exteriors that seemed hard to fake, and the famous waters emerging from the famous cave seemed hard to fake too. The interiors seemed more industrial, or perhaps larger scale, than many of thew wineries I’ve visited, but they also seemed more used, and consequently more real. We got to stick our heads in the fermentation tanks and breathe deep the heady vapor. The tanks actually bubbled from the heat of the fermentation. From there the mash goes to huge distillers to separate out the alcoholic fraction, and from there to mellowing chambers where it filters through charcoal made from sugar maple. Then it proceeds to white oak casks, where it stays for many seasons, expanding into and contracting out of the wooden barrels as the temperature rises and falls, lending flavor, character, and color.

Each different area smelled more and more of whiskey, which breeds a deep pang for the stuff by the tour’s end. However, the distillery lies in a dry county, where the sale of alcohol is strictly verboten, lending credence to my new strand of Intelligent Design, Ironic Creationism. The long history of alcoholic conflict in the region goes way back to the moonshiners. Apparently “revenuers,” the government agents who collected tax revenue from producers of alcohol and hunted down backwoods outlaw moonshine operations used to find distilleries by looking for a unique black mold that seems to grow wherever alcohol is made. This black mold was all over the Jack Daniel’s facility.