Chapter Ten

Dip top cones, John Prine, Whole Wide World and a family slide show

Live recording of Cynically Yours (circa...2003?)

Rode Hard from The Sugar Tree

Thanks for listening!

Transcript

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SPEAKER_01 0:00

Chapter ten Could I get one of them junior dip top cones? Vanilla ice cream with chocolate dip and let me see, a root beer float? A woman's face loomed through the dairy dip window. She pushed a five dollar bill across the counter. I gave her change and she dropped some coins in the tip jar. When she stepped back to wait for her order, I leaned out the window to catch a breeze. Early August in Nashville, and it had to be nearly a hundred degrees out there. Inside the dairy dip, it felt a good twenty degrees hotter. I wasn't working a teenager's summer job because I couldn't get anything better. Back in the spring I'd helped my friend Claire with her refurbishment of the old ice cream place on Charlotte Avenue. Claire had taken a course at ice cream university, sought out the very best beef for her burgers, and an authentic Belgian recipe for the French fries. The newly painted pink, red, and mint green exterior of Bobby's dairy dip was a nostalgic contrast to neighboring commercial chains Crystal and Burger King. I remembered stopping at the original Dairy Dip when Hazel and I first visited Nashville together and how captivated we'd been, saying, Wow, this is America, so different from New York City. I was proud of Claire and her vision and thought it might be more fun helping out here than going back to temping in an office before I headed out to play shows in the fall. Fun wasn't exactly the right word for hours of sweating, scooping and slinging burgers and fries alongside my surly teenage co-workers. I commiserated and laughed with Juan the grill cook, a sweet-natured man about my age who sent his earnings back home to his wife and children in Mexico. Twenty summers before, I'd been the teenager scooping ice cream at the original Hagendas store on Christopher Street in Manhattan's West Village, handing cones to buff leather clad gentlemen with thick mustaches and eyes only for each other. Maybe I liked the carefree nature of a summer job as a brief respite from adult responsibilities. When I tied on my white apron each day in Nashville, there wasn't that lure of temporary jobs in academia, real estate, or the world of business that said, Why only be a temp? Give up your foolish music dreams and come work for us forever. My music life had been so insecure and financially precarious that at times I was afraid the lure of a steady paycheck would just be too tempting. I liked how scooping ice cream at the dairy dip was seasonal work that would end after Labor Day. Another thing I appreciated about the Dairy Dip, ice cream made people happy. Children's eyes would shine, adults too. Businessmen with their brick like cell phones, sweating in dress shirts and voluminous khaki trousers turned into beatific little boys when they gripped a cone and turned their heads sideways to lap up the drips. Mm, good, they'd say, and I could almost forget they were probably Republicans. I was still getting settled in Nashville. Anyone I knew in town eventually pulled up in their car for an ice cream or burger at the dairy dip, but unlike temping back at Sony, but unlike temping at Sony back in New York City, where I'd hidden in back of the elevator to avoid running into music biz people I knew. I didn't mind having this Charlotte Avenue window onto what began to take shape in my mind as a community, guitar players, fellow songwriters, and music publishers. I didn't mind if they saw me with hamburger grease and chocolate ice cream smeared across my front. I felt proud to help a friend realize an ambitious dream that benefited everybody. Claire and her husband Greg Trooper hit on the idea of putting on live music in the parking lot. A PA system was set up next to the picnic tables for John Prine's birthday party. A friend and supporter of Claire and Greg's, Prine brought Greg on tour to open for him, a huge vote of confidence coming from an important folk performer. Prine had the dream singer songwriter career, love and respect from fans and fellow musicians over his decades of crafting classic songs for the simple act of being himself on stage and on record. He was kind of a patron saint of Nashville. The summer humidity had lifted, and the air was full of fall energy. Kids back to school, autumn touring starting up again. Folks grabbed burgers and cokes, and musician pals started cranking out cover songs. Get Amy out here, somebody shouted. I came out from behind the counter in my apron, and Greg handed me an acoustic guitar. I'll be back in about three minutes, I shouted to my teenage co-worker who was struggling to fill orders alone. First I played Cynically Yours, a song I'd started writing as a temp in the CBS Legal Department in New York City, finished at a temp position at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville, and recorded for the Sugar Tree. Working to make ends meet had been a big part of my artist's life, and I'd tried to not let it ever stop me from creating. I hated to think financial challenges might even be the fuel that kept me creating, because that meant I could never stop scrambling. I wasn't thinking any of this in the parking lot, just John Prine's here, so I better be good. Beneath the big yellow crystal sign shining down from next door, I played my song and Prine laughed and cheered. That's a good song right there, he said. I felt like he'd blessed me.

SPEAKER_02 5:50

You know, I love you 100% of the amount I'm capable of loving you. And you know I need you to the fullest extent. It's feasible for me to be. I'm working.

SPEAKER_01 6:40

Next time the guys were set up for another night of covers, I asked if they knew Reckless Eric's song Whole Wide World. It's only got two chords, I said. Like Louie Louie, every musician sort of knew the song. Garage Punk and New Wave Records were a secret handshake for a certain type of musician drawn to Nashville. That place where the wit and simplicity of classic country intersects with the early rock and roll attributes of punk was a good, if slightly exclusive, place to be. Bill Lloyd, Steve Allen from Tulsa via LA Power Pop Outfit 2020, Dave Jakes, who played bass with Prine. We chugged through the first two verses of Whole Wide World before things kicked into higher gear for the chorus. We messed up the two extra beats in the chorus, but redeemed ourselves and ended on a celebratory note. That song, romantic and rogue, had a magical power to lift an audience. I didn't realize when I started sticking it into my set, anytime it felt like I could use a friend on stage, just where it might lead. For the moment, it just felt like the song and I were meant to be together. Later in the evening, after locking up the dairy dip, I pedaled my bike a few blocks over to our sweet rental house on Nevada Avenue, where Hazel was doing her homework, and I thought how living in Nashville was going to be alright. A few days later, the landlord called to tell me they'd decided to sell the place. Except I wanted more. So much more. Grantland Avenue was a two block long street in a historic neighborhood called Woodland and Waverley, bordered on one end by utilitarian Bradford Avenue, and on the other by a mansion called the De Munbrian Inn. Franklin Road, a busy thoroughfare, ran parallel, with an alleyway shielding us from the noise. We moved our stuff across town in the Aero Star and a U-Haul with help from Paul. He and I were still casual enough for his help to feel like a favor from a friend and not the obligation of a partner. He clued me into the hidden gems nearby, long-running music club Douglas Corner, Arnold's Country Kitchen, a well loved meet and three, and also the seedy side that wasn't immediately obvious, a surplus of massage parlours fronting Franklin Road. Those establishments, shorthand for brothels, dotting the stretch between our house and downtown, would soon be shut down for good by a city government primed for change. They looked almost quaint with their low key signs, doddies, menage, sunnies. Another transitional neighborhood. The tawdry grit helped me feel at home. Most of the houses on Grantland were early twentieth century wooden affairs, Queen Anne Classical Revival, or craftsman bungalows with gently sloping roofs, columned front porches and walkways lined with spiky green monkey grass. A few of the neighboring houses were single story brick duplexes, making the street a cross section of early eras of the town, frozen at about 1962. Our rental was a mint green duplex, and Hazel and I occupied the larger unit, with attic converted to a second bedroom and full bath. The other tenant was a polite single woman, a little younger than me, who worked full time and kept to herself, making her the perfect duplex neighbor. Birds, so many birds, sang in the morning. Next door was a mustard colored two family with mud brown trim, whose inhabitants came and went at all times of the day and night. It wasn't a crack house, though a few of those existed just to the east. Our neighbors were trashy in a genial way, like the constant hum of I sixty five just beyond the backyards one street over, and the weekend wine of Nashville Fairground Speedway beyond. Out on the front porch swing, the weather still warm, though it was autumn. I read or wrote in my journal, and swing, Hazel was twelve, starting seventh grade at MLK Junior, Nashville's first secondary magnet school. It had to be better than head. Swing, I wrote song after song, played gig upon gig, shopped at Kroger, bought a rake. James the Cat came into his own. He lounged calmly around the house when he wasn't roaming outdoors. We were frantic when he disappeared one day. Only in his absence did I feel his important place in our lives. He returned, badly beaten up, and Hazel and I wrapped him in a blanket and rushed him to the vet on foot. Our comrade fallen in the trenches, only James knew the life we'd left behind in Brooklyn, and the wistful tentative joy we felt adapting to this new town. We were relieved to find out he would be okay, and chastened to learn he was hugely overweight. Through all my travels, the friends and acquaintances who'd stay for a week or two and help look after him couldn't resist his charms. We all overfed him. My daughter took the upstairs bedroom at first. It had its own bathroom and loads of storage under the eaves. I was in the downstairs bedroom with a door that opened onto the backyard, I rarely took advantage of, not sure how to make the outdoors nicer with lawn furniture or plants or flowers. And then there was the intense humidity and the bugs. Eventually we swapped. Hazel moved downstairs and I took the larger room at the top, which gave me space to set up my four track and writing desk. I loved looking out the window there onto Grantland below. I'd see my neighbor across the street start his car each morning by running alongside, and when the motor caught he'd jump in and drive off. I cheered him on every time, and this made me feel part of the neighborhood, even though we never met. Hazel and I still had the twenties enamel top table my mother gave me back in the early eighties. I'd moved it to the first apartment that was completely mine, the one on 14th Street in Manhattan, where I'd made a family with Will and Hazel, and we'd brought it along to Brooklyn. Now it served as our dining table in the middle of the tall living dining room kitchen, part polished hardwood floor, part carpeting. Not gross carpet either, but classy Berber style neutral, unthinkable in New York City. Look at us, I thought, living in a real grown-up kind of house. Hazel and I rarely sat at the table to eat, preferring to bring our plates to the sofa and dine in front of the television, rickety metal folding trays in front of us. My mother gave me these trays from her antique shop, and like everything my mother scavenged and sold or passed on to me and my brothers, they had style beyond the use they were intended for. Each individual tray was a different vibrant color, red, chartreuse, yellow, they must have come from the thirties or forties, pre-television. Maybe a posh family used them to hold peanuts and olives and cocktails as they sat around the living room listening to a radio program. Me and Hazel's default shows were The Simpsons, American Idol, and Seventh Heaven, where a Midwestern Reverend and his loopy wife wrangled a brood of seven kids. We loved to mock the warm, loving family with their everyday problems while we sat in front of the TV, our plates on the trays, screaming along to the acoustic guitar driven theme song, shaking our heads at the smugness of it all. The Simpsons were so comfortingly us, they were every family, but the Seventh Heaven clan made us feel like we should be better. For one night only we sat down at the twenties table with our plates of chicken tenders, pasta and broccoli. This is how the civilized people eat, I said. We chewed. I thought we could have a conversation, like the Seventh Heaven family did at their dinner table, noisily relating tales of their lives while they passed platters of food around. But Hazel and I had already talked about our days on the drive home from school. We talked all the time. Now, a knife scraped on a plate. I found myself looking longingly over at the television set. Hazel saw me staring at the TV. I'll get the trays, she said. Well into fall I walked in the early morning before heat and humidity set in. I drove out to Radner Lake or traversed the alleys around Eighth Avenue, climbed up towards twelve south, past Dolly Parton's compound that looked like a girly Alamo, and down around Severe Park, breathing the sweet doughy scent from Communion Bread Company on Gale Lane. I circled back past the Acuff Rose building on Franklin and home. Maybe I'd imagined a different life for myself in Nashville, one where I was a professional songwriter, driving a better car, looking groomed and professional. Instead I wore sweats and grubby old keds and drove a thousand dollar minivan. But most mornings I sat out on the front porch swing with a mug of coffee and thought, maybe today I'll write a song that changes everything. Then swing, early one morning the phone rang. Amy, it's your father. I set my coffee cup down on the cool wooden boards of the front porch. Ever since the phone call twelve years ago, my mother in a devastating car accident that shattered the security I'd been so lucky to have for twenty nine years, but never felt a drop of gratitude for, just assumed that's the way things should be. I always tried to prepare myself for bad news. My dad said he was selling our childhood home and moving himself and my mother into an apartment at an independent living facility that could offer care for my mom if needed. He was, after all, in his mid-seventies. He was giving my brothers and me the chance to meet up at the old house in the suburbs south of Pittsburgh and take any meaningful items we'd like to keep. The rest would be tossed. I knew there were paintings I'd made for my parents that I felt obliged to hold on to. They weren't particularly good, but they'd become part of our family legacy, and in the way that paintings do felt like they captured memories better than a photograph could. And when it came to photographs, we had hundreds of slides. My dad was a decent photographer and Concodachrome was his film of choice, our childhood documented not with disposable fading in stimatic snapshots, but via color drenched slides, carousels of them. For years dragging out the slide projector and unfolding the metal pole and screen for a family viewing had become as familiar a part of growing up as the faux brick linoleum that covered the hallway and kitchen floors of a house I couldn't imagine another family ever living in. So one last time on Sleepy Hollow Road, we set up out on the driveway to project directly onto the back of the house. My dad had painted all the red brick white years ago, decreeing, this way there will always be a Republican in the White House. Ha ha. My dad was funny when he wasn't pissed off. I'd eventually grow to appreciate his wit. Back in my forties I felt nothing but impatience with him. Be sincere, I wanted to say, be loving and warm. Be like mom was. Someone grabbed a carousel and the show began. Slideshows were a kind of Russian roulette as nothing was catalogued, so we could get 1967 when I was still Daddy's little princess, or any time after 1971, when I'd hit puberty and was the family pariah for my thick black eyeliner and wanton ways. We were on the 70s. There were many shots of my brothers in penguin jerseys and pirate t-shirts, looking sweaty, throwing footballs and wiffle balls around the backyard. There were photos of them red cheeked in the snow, building forts, or wearing hilariously short shorts and tube socks in summer. I finally shouted out, Where am I? Wasn't I part of this family too? There's your leg, one of my brothers said helpfully, after a shot from a summer birthday party flashed larger than life on the back of the house. One of us dated the photo to be from about 1974, probably based on the number of rings on a tube sock. Back in those days, I was mostly absent having just discovered sex and rock music. I had a boyfriend with a car, and when I wasn't sneaking into the house after a night of partying, I was nursing a hangover in my room, or laying out at the public swimming pool working on my tan. Alongside my urgent artist dreams, maybe I had always been deeply superficial. When photos of me and a Jane Fonda shag or Farah Fawcett waves appeared, the hoots of laughter made me sink down into my lawn chair as if I were sixteen all over again. I'd learned that going along with a joke was better than showing weakness and humiliation, but somehow back there on the driveway, where we'd all played together, shoveled snow, and I'd danced a Stevie Wonder at my first boy-girl party, where it had dawned on me I'd finally gotten my period. I couldn't help regressing. I thought of the challenges and benefits of being the only girl with four brothers and a hard to please father, how many of my choices stemmed from that men, rock music, bands. My daughter kept supportively silent during the slideshow, except for an occasional muffled gasp. You are a nice young lady, said my mother. I looked at the basketball net just above the garage doors, thinking how easy it had been to shoot baskets here with my brothers while we were growing up. I never realized until I left home that the net was a good foot lower than it should be. I wondered how many other things I thought I was better at than I actually was, and how useful a little self-belief would be in the areas where I actually deserved some and was lacking. Isn't life just so many adjustments for advantages and handicaps, real and imagined? One thing I did know, without any doubt, was that I could write songs. We drove back down to Nashville with my old paintings and a few choice pieces of family Pyrex and pewter in the back of the minivan, and just as I'd hoped for and staked everything on, enough to move me and Hazel halfway across the country, a few weeks later I signed a publishing deal.

SPEAKER_00 22:02

We've been listening to Girl to Country, a memoir podcast. This is Amy Rigby. Sorry it took a little while for me to get this new episode up. Then out there on the road. Next week, through the writer's door. Thanks for listening.

SPEAKER_02 22:20

I could ruin my reputation around here. But this town don't know need for me. Somebody put something in the water. I swear I only had one fear. Maybe I'd better leave. Would hard put away with Driven round the band As far down as I could get, but I'm going back out.