Arrived at Opryland

Just as Scarlet vowed she'd never go hungry again, I have made a solemn promise that I will never darken the doorway of Opryland again. God, I hate this place. I remember once being in this really busy restaurant and I was with someone who had been a chef, and he said "this isn't a restaurant; it's a food processing plant." I never forgot that because this restaurant was just slamming out the food tray after tray. And this place is like a human being processing plant. It's not a hotel. It's just set up to process people. Everything is fake from the crappy ye old shoppes to the landscaping to the fake waterfall and river, and it's all under this biosphere dome so the "fresh air" isn't really fresh and the outside is actually inside. There are people who appear to be here on their own free will and all I can say, in my most snobbiest, is they must never have gone anywhere to see anything real.

In the elevator, I rode with these two young women holding these 5-inch binders  and all sorts of materials. I looked at it and said, "Oh, that looks boring..." then I looked at them and said, "And they make you dress alike too." They chuckled, but it's like send 500 people for training at Opryland. It's like a corporate re-education camp where everyone is wearing a nametag.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Driving from Knoxville to Nashville, you know your in Jesus-land. Lots of billboards with the 10 commandments, saw a big Confederate flag, and then when I stopped for lunch... this was my view:

It's sad that God Bless America rubs me the wrong way, but it has taken on a meaning different than the original. Plus, as a former smoker (Barbara schooled me that I'm not an ex-smoker as I still think about it) I am stunned by the prices for a carton of cigarettes. And this, evidently are advertising-worthy prices. I think the last carton I bought was $7 or $8.

To be continued../// work interferes!