Next time you are hungry in Nashville, find your way to the Sylvan Park Restaurant, which is perennially voted Best Meat and Three in town. At lunch there today with my brother, I had excellent catfish, excellent baked squash, excellent green beans, and excellent white beans.

After the Sylvan we were at the Springwater bar, an absolute dive and truly very good place to drink beer, which is a good thing, since this is all they serve. We were on the front patio, from which you can see Nashville's full-size Parthenon replica. We were just settin', you know, and this other guy just comes out and sits and starts talking. I've been in town since yesterday, and finally a Nashville moment. He says how he used to live in Nashville ten years ago, and they threw this party at Vanderbilt with a gas tanker full of beer that was free for everyone, but he's been in New Mexico for his father's death, then just wandering around.

Then a third fellow joins us. "Any of you guys want to by a Kroger card? It has twenty dollars on it, but I'll sell it to you for fifteen, and you can buy anything you want with it, at Kroger. I'm trying to see Steve Vai tonight, and I need the money for a ticket. Maybe mom will buy it." He heads back into the bar.

Get to Nashville, friends. Go to the Parthenon, go to the Springwater, play Johnny Cash on the juke.