As we arrived in Nashville, we called the parents of the bride to get directions to their place so we could pick up our youngest daughter.
“Get off at Old Hickory, turn left. When the road dead ends, make a right…”
We turned left. After 10 minutes, I called her back. “Turn left, correct?” “Yes, that’s correct.”
At this point, the severe storm that we encountered in St. Louis made its way into the cab of our truck. Let me just say that I did not do the planning on this trip. If you will remember, I was figuring out how to get out of New Mexico last week.
We drove another 25 minutes, but the road never dead ended!
I went into a bar and asked the manager how to get to Brentwood.
“Old Hickory goes all the way around the city. You’re on the opposite end of town. You’ve got to back 30-40 minutes!”
Old Hickory is this little two lane country road that winds around the city. But, that is too simplistic a description. It seems to me that Old Hickory was laid out during the Civil War to confuse the ‘logical’ Yankees and thus slow down their progress.
When you drive on Old Hickory, you eventually learn that whenever another road joins Old Hickory, the road that continues straight forward is a different street. Old Hickory is the name on the sign that makes the 90 degree turn or the slight veer that you DON’T take so that you can ‘stay’ on Old Hickory and find your friends house and pick up your daughter!
And if you do happen to make the right turn to stay on Old Hickory, because your friend’s wife told you to take Old Hickory until it ‘dead ends, you later realize that you should have continued straight on the road with a different name!
Old Hickory reduces you to stopping and looking for street signs at every junction or intersection and doing that at night is a pretty slow process!
How did the South lose?