You could be forgiven for watching Jade Goody’s recent (and mind-numbingly uninteresting) fall from grace and concluding that racism is a no-no in Britain. But not so! It’s perfectlyacceptable to be racist here and now in the 21st Century. Sweeping, inaccurate generalisations about an entirecountry – no problem whatsoever in everyday conversation… …PROVIDED you’re being racist about the Americans. A-ha! Now you see my point, don’t you? We all know plenty of people who do it – somehow, Yank-bashing inpolite company seems to creep in under the radar. (And yes I do know that ‘Yank-bashing’ sounds like aeuphemism for something you really wouldn’t do in polite company.) Even when folks recognise that the USA boasts its share of cosmopolitan cities like New York or SanFrancisco, there still seems to be a feeling that the southern states are populated with nothing but biblebashing, gun-toting, cousin-marrying rednecks who couldn’t point to Iraq on a map of Iraq. Consequently, my Elvis pilgrimage to Graceland provided just the opportunity to kick back with the good ol’ boys in Tennessee, and maybe try and confirm or deny a few stereotypes.And where was my first port of call in The Volunteer State? One of its great cities, steeped in musicalhistory? Nashville? Memphis?Not even close, my friends: Bristol! Yep, you read that right. A mere 2000 miles after leaving home in Bath, I found myself driving into a place called Bristol on the north-eastern state border. And my time in
Tennessee was pretty much defined by the first words spoken to me by one of the locals. I’d pulled
onto the side of the road, wandered over to where a couple of mullet-haired gentlemen were having a
conversation, and asked if they could recommend somewhere to get a bite to eat. The reply said it all.
“What’choo lookin’ fawr? Steak?”
I told him I was indeed looking for steak! I also abandoned the misconceived idea that I would be eating anything else during my Tennessee travels.
With extremely good-natured precision, the two gentlemen spent the next fifteen minutes giving meridiculously detailed directions to a nearby steakhouse called Ryan’s. And, fair go, it was a first-classsuggestion. Ostensibly, you get served the majority of a cow, along with enough beer to have actuallydrowned the animal in the first place. And, even though you’re not going to believe this, it is honestly 100%gospel: one lad who was working at the buffet counter (who you really couldn’t describe as anorexic)actually genuinely said to me, “You’re from England? Hey, do you know Lloyd?”You don’t know how tempting it was to say, “No way! You know Lloyd too?! I’ve met him a few times round the Queen’s house.”
Anyhow, it all made for an excellent evening, which ended with me heading off to find a liquor store, to pick up some carry-out for my night in a motel, I was highly entertained to discover that they did a rather fine line in four-packs of wine. Not full-size bottles, you understand (although how damn cool would that be?!), just miniatures. And thus armed, I settled down to an evening of watching stripping lesbians on The Jerry Springer Show. God bless America.
The following day, I motored south to a town called Pigeon Forge. And I’m not going to tell you what I did there.
Oh all right then... I went to Dollywood. Yes, I know what you’re thinking but it was pretty cool, although
I feel as though I should only be saying that in front of some kind of support group – “My name’s Dick
and I’m a tacky theme park addict. *Pause for applause* I guess I’ve felt theme park tendencies ever
since I was a child. It was really my uncle who started me off…” and so forth.
But I won’t bore you with anecdotes about funfair rides or very large-breasted country & western singers.
On to Lynchberg…
When the commercials talk about Jack Daniel’s distillery being in a town with only one stop-light they really aren’t fucking kidding. Lynchberg is not the sort of place you’d stumble across by accident. In fact, for the most part, it doesn’t seem like the sort of place you’d stumble across on purpose – ‘bustling’ is not a word you could use to describe the town. Consequently, though, the JD distillery is exceptionally easy to find, especially given that the nearest notable attraction is an Old Jail Museum fifteen miles away.
I booked myself onto the next available tour – which, cheerfully, is completely free – and soondiscovered that the gentleman working as the guide had the least comprehensible accent I’d heardsince arriving in the state. And, as you can imagine, that’s up against some pretty tough competition.Not quite what you’re looking for in a tour guide though; I can’t imagine the application formcontaining the stipulation “Must only be able to utter one intelligible word out of every three.”However, the parts of the tour I could actually understand were very interesting. Being given a whiff of the whisky when it’s still at the stage of being 140 proof is guaranteed to clean out your lungs – in the sense that inhaling hydrochloric acid fumes will clean out your lungs. I also got the feeling that life in the heartland of Tennessee genuinely is slower and more casual than I’m used to. One line the guide came out with, which absolutely killed me, was “Now we’re gonna see the bottlin’ man workin’ – ’less he’s already gone home.”
Legal working hours? Not a bit of it!
Then came the really fun surprise. I’m not a massive whisky fan, but I was still looking forward to the free sample you always get at the end of these tours. At this point, we were told that because Lynchberg is in a dry county it would in fact be illegal for them to provide us with a glass of Jack Daniel’s.
Because this is so patently ridiculous, and therefore could only be a joke, I laughed out loud quite heartily.
Then I realised that no one else was laughing.
Moore County has been dry ever since prohibition; they never reversed the law. My exasperation was
rather difficult to put into words. How could you not reverse the law when all the counties around you are doing so?! You’d have to be living in some kind of isolated, middle-of-nowhere backwater.
Oh, I see.
I settled for some chocolates laced with liquor from a gift shop round the corner, and headed north towards Nashville and alcohol.
To be continued…
