Cognitive Dissonance

This weekend’s trip was really quite the study in cognitive dissonance, from start to finish. The Coach and I headed out on Saturday morning and made our first stop at the birthplace of Jefferson Davis. For those of you who have forgotten your Civil War history, ol’ Jeff Davis was the first president of the CSA. The cabin that Davis was born in is long gone; a church sits atop the old homestead. Next door, however, is this Kentucky State Park with a memorial that resembles the Washington Monument. We paid the $4 to see the museum, learned that the construction project took quite some time, and discovered that some people are *still* trying to rewrite history. Scattered among the books in the gift store were items like The South was Right and Myths of American Slavery. Looking at the gift store, full of Confederate flags and books like these, it would be easy to write this place off as being idiotic and full of crackpots. Yet … the girls who were working the front desk were incredibly nice and polite. Go figure.

Our final comment on the place? If the Confederacy had won, would the Jeff Davis monument be taller than the Washington Monument?

Our second stop on the trip was at the Trail of Tears Commemorative Park in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Honestly, we didn’t know this place existed until I read an essay by Sarah Vowell that talked about her trip through the same area. As we drove into Hopkinsville, we saw this sign:

The location of this sign was a bit problematic. We turned into the driveway located right in front of it, only to discover a bunch of abandoned, run down buildings. Obviously, this was not the right place. I managed to turn Sally around, pulled back out on the main road, and found the actual park. After talking to the lady who runs the Trail of Tears site, we learned that they are planning to move their interpretive center up the street — to the place with the run-down buildings. In some ways, that’s a bit troublesome to me because the grave sites of two Indian chiefs are located at the current site. I’m not going to comment much about the rest of our visit to this site; I’m just going to say that it was a depressing place to visit but the weather was beautiful. Ah, there’s that cognitive dissonance again.

The Coach and I headed into Nashville and stopped at the White Trash Cafe for lunch. This place is f*cking awesome. (If you know my secret identity, you can see fun pictures on my Flickr site.) It had good, cheap food; we both ordered the “Meat plus 3″ which was only $7.50. It had a funky atmosphere. It had a hysterical waiter. Seriously, if you ever end up in Nashville, this place is worth a visit. It’s certainly unique.

By then, we were dog tired, so we checked into our funky airport hotel. That was another moment of cognitive dissonance. One expects airport hotels to be quite sterile, right? Well, the Hotel Preston is anything but. You can have goldfish and lava lamps sent to your room; you can order milk and cookies for a late night snack; and there’s even a “pillow menu.” The price was right ($99), the service was fairly decent, and the parking was free.

After The Coach napped for a while, we decided to go to Opry Mills. I wanted to see the Gibson Showcase, we wanted to check out the movie offerings, and we thought it might be pretty cool to eat in The Aquarium Restaurant. The whole place is a monument to American consumerism. As some of you might know, this mall is located on top of the site of a former amusement park. All that’s left of the park is that hunk of rock shown at the top of this blog entry. (Yeah, that’s part of the Grizzly River Rampage if you really care.) Now, I had been to Opryland USA when I was really small, right after it opened. All I really remember about the trip is that my grandfather had a heat stroke. Yet, it still bothers me that people would rather shop than ride roller coasters.

I’m not a mall person, so the whole Opry Mills thing was a bit obnoxious. The movies were expensive, the stores were huge, and the most entertaining thing I saw was a little girl climbing the rock wall in a sporting goods store. The Aquarium was interesting, but it’s a little creepy to eat fish while being stared at by fish. {LOL} The stingray place, however, was really bothersome. Here’s this giant tank where people can pay money to feed the rays. Of course, the tank is all concrete and glass; there’s no sand or anything for the rays to bury themselves in. That depressed me, but then, zoos tend to depress me as well.

The worst part about Opry Mills? The Coach and I were primed for a record store. I mean, this is a huge mall and it is located in the Music City, right? We walked into the mall under these signs — signs that are so large that you can read them from the Briley:

Now, wouldn’t you expect that the mall would have a record store? Yeah, uh no. We asked at the information desk. The record store had gone out of business. Now that, my friends, is mind boggling to me.

And now, I must go to work …