Chapter 7: That Evening

If you haven’t spent time in Nashville you may not know what a fun town it is.

Of course everyone knows that Nashville is ‘Music City’, which is true enough. You can drive down ‘Music Row’ past one old home after another that have been converted into businesses, most of them involved with music production: entertainment lawyers, even a large building housing the musicians union and another “ASCAP”, the American Society of Composers and Producers.

But Broadway Street in the downtown area, known informally as ‘Nash Vegas’ for its neon lights adorning one honky-tonk after another is the live music heart of the city. On both sides of the street, all the way down to the Cumberland River, the tourists can go into any of the bars and find world-class musicians playing. Most of them are the ones who haven’t made it ‘big’ yet. They are amazing. Just to keep people interested in coming back on a regular basis, it isn’t unusual for not just world class, but world FAMOUS musicians, to drop by and ‘sit in’ on a session.

Off of one of the side streets is the Ryman Auditorium, which used to house the ‘Grand Ol’ Opry’ until they built a new facility to the east of town off of the I-40.

But you don’t have to go into Nashville proper to find great dining and great music.

One place made even more famous by the recent television series ‘Nashville’, is the Blue Bird Café, which is located off of Hillsboro Pike road — not far south of the Vandy Medical Center, and just a couple of miles north and east of my house in Brentwood. It’s very difficult to get reservations, but I shamelessly had Vandy’s Office of the President use their influence to get us in that evening.

That was where I met the Adams for dinner.

We all had a marvelous time there — it reminded me that I should go out more often and take in the ambiance of this fine Southern City.

The musicians who were playing that evening, even though they were quite good, were not famous for their performances, but rather because they were composers whose music was frequently performed by other, more famous performers.

I actually enjoyed the Adams family a great deal. They were in fact an offshoot of the famed Adams who had been twice Presidents of the United States, and involved with politics and government for several generations thereafter. Their lineage was through Henry Adams, and they were delighted and astounded to find out that I was quite familiar with his books ‘Mont-Saint-Michael and Chartres’ and ‘The Education of Henry Adams’.”

“By god, Christian,” George exclaimed (we were on a first name basis by this time), “I didn’t think that anyone as young as you would have read any of old Henry’s books. I’m afraid they rather fell out of fashion over time.”

I smiled and replied, “It seems to me, now when I look back on it, as if I read it a hundred years ago!”

George laughed. “I know you’re too young for that. A hundred years ago, you would have been reading a first edition; it was originally published in 1913!”

I nodded and agreed with him, all the while thinking that I ought not mention that I DID read it as a first edition, and I shouldn’t let him know that it was in my library at home. George might find it a bit disconcerting to find that it was inscribed by his ancestor to a young man named Christian, who had astounded Adams with his knowledge of Normandy during the late medieval period and mindset of the people all of those years ago.

George, it turned out, was a self-made man, despite his family name.

“My branch of the family lost it all in the stock market crash of ‘29. So we still had connections to the old money Brahmins, we just lacked the wealth. The one great advantage I did have was an Aunt who was appalled at my family’s financial condition and saw to it — that is to say paid for — that I could go to the finest schools.

“Fortunately, after getting a wonderfully useless Liberal Arts degree, it turned out that I had some talent for business. I went into real estate development and the rest, as they say, is history.

“Thank goodness that I had the money to send Phillip to an Ivy League school myself when the time came, because my Aunt had long since passed and the rest of the family didn’t look kindly on an Adams making his fortune in ‘trade’ as they called it! Well, I may not be a billionaire developer like Trump, but I’m worth enough to keep my family comfortable and the rest of the family can lump it!”

Then George turned to his son, Phillip, and put a hand on his shoulder. Phillip looked happy, even though somewhat thin and drawn, presumably as the result of his illness.

“And Phil here is even better than I was at his age!”

Phillip smiled, pleased at his father’s praise before he looked at me to speak.

“Don’t take Dad too seriously about my being better than he was. If I am, it’s only because of the training I’ve gotten at Dad’s hands.

“When I was growing up, Dad never pushed me in any particular direction as far as future career.”

Phil kind of chuckled, “In college I must have changed my major, what, Dad? Four times?”

George laughed at his sons self-deprecating confession, but nodded his head in agreement.

Phil continued, “But in the end, I came back to Chicago and couldn’t imagine doing anything that interested me more than working with Dad in real estate.”

At that point, George turned to me with a serious look on his face and asked the question that I knew would come eventually.

“So, Doc, what is Phil’s prognosis?”

I put on my ‘serious thoughtful wise’ Doctor game face before I replied, “Based on the initial results from the tests that I could do in my office, I think the outlook should be good. I think that his cancer is very treatable. I should be giving you all of the disclaimers as well, but I’m fairly certain of my diagnosis.” Like hell! I was sure of my assessment.