How to tour northwestern central Tennessee without actually going anywhere, or everything is more beautiful while riding a train until you get off.

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Catch a train from Nashville heading NNW or WNW and get off twelve hours later in Bruceton, TN. Try to get anywhere from there and presto, the title is fulfilled.

We got off the train with no idea of our locale, typical perhaps and lovely, almost certain we'd gone the wrong way but not really giving a damn since-hell-yeah-we'd gone somewhere. How wrong we were. Trying to move towards Pittsburgh, PA and ending up in The Dying Town of Bruceton, TN is a lot like not travelling at all...except worse. It's another southern spot with two closed factories and a burgeoning retired population that hunts, breeds dogs, and talks about weather so eloquently that you'd wonder how modern poets can carry those noses so high...
A ride later from roofers that wanted to come with us, saying "if you grew up in the 70s, you hitchhiked..." I'm glad they didn't but would have been overjoyed if they had...
A ride later from Hunter who gave us the verbal-tour on par with any auctioneer he flew us through everything from the racial make-up of the area to where the drugs come from and who uses them...who knew that the only freshwater pearl farm in the U.S. is in Camden, TN?

Paris, TN

A long walk to the other side of town we found $2 12oz margaritas on the rocks and drank them with gusto, devouring the basket of chips and licking the salt-rims clean. It was the first day of spring and 80 degrees of pseudo-humid sun made us sweat while sleeping under the burden of blossoming bradford pear trees...
We wore out our thumbs trying to get out of there, taking turns napping in the sun and stretching until Jimmy picked us up with an open beer between his legs and a warning about Dover, the next town, where we were likely to end up in the river if we frequented. Who knows if it was a lie...
He took us as far as he could, his female friend clinging to his hip with what could only be the love of years so secure it was...
He didn't leave. He asked us if we were hungry and returned to his home and gave us a beer before touring the tiny town of Paris Landing and pulling in to an ever-empty bar where he bought us burgers we devoured (again, with gusto) and then dropped us back off to vie with the setting sun for a ride. We lost...

Sleeping in the grass with ticks and louder-than-life frogs that sing sing sing so sweet awake at dawn we rise for a ride we can only pray for.
Mistaken for someone interesting by a woman who stops with the first words from her mouth "who are you?" She's only going to Dover with another warning that we'll never get out and we heed it and watch her drive to her "one McDonald's town." I sleep...
And am awoken with a kick as two boys from Dresden, TN tell us they'd give us a ride but they don't got the gas and we shell out $20 and hop in to find out he's never been to Clarksville before. I am amazed...
They're town kids content with what they have something so simple and yet so far removed from the reality I know as "American Life" that speechless I watch them drive into the stripmalls that "must be downtown Clarksville" despite the twenty blocks left to walk and I thank them with a heart swelled by the Jeep's country music and their mechanics' hands and their comfort in a country life more genuine than a million hours in movie theatres or the miles and miles I've walked while looking for a home...

Clarksville, TN

We decide that Clarksville is full of jerks as, after drinking coffee for hours, we try and hitch to the interstate. A cop tells us that hitching is illegal in Montgomery County...Jerk #2...
Jerk #1 only counts as half a jerk...an old vet who talked more than we cared to hear but with heart so genuine it made me smile...while Donnie cursed his name and mouth beneath his breath while receiving unwanted advice on scoring points in scrabble...
Jerk #3 was wearing a pastel Polo shirt and we should have known (we always should have known) despite his sage car-dealer-advice that the interstate was about "a quarter mile away, just over that hill" as we walked for mile-after-mile and asked for directions twice more and began to hate that round-face in his pastel polo shirt and this hatred bred like mosquitos feeding on fresh blood a desire (so unusual...) to punch him in his smug-ass-bad-advice-face...
Six miles later we stop walking.
A piece of cardboard finds its way into our hands from the ditch beside the road and markers are procured to pronounce letter-by-letter our Nashville now-destination and old plastic bags serve to attire ourselves such and a car stops as if by milkshake-inspired (as our deal was the next non-coffee spent funds would be for milkshakes we felt so sorely deserved that were effectively and deliciously acquired giving us strength of spirit needed) providence and a ride to Nashville is won with Caroline and Christina who are only going to get out of town and a good ride is nothing to question now or ever...

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