Hometown tourism

Tourism in the backyard Nancy and I mostly confine our tourism to places outside Nashville. Tourist mecca it might be, we live here, and most of the attractions aren’t places we would casually venture. We would rather get out of town, even if it’s short ride.

Then the chance for hometown tourism presented itself. After living in Nashville for a decade, my parents had never taken a long visit, just two short stops of less than 24 hours. Such a visit finally happened a week before Thanksgiving. For a brief window, we embraced some hometown tourism without once stepping downtown. My family had toured the Opryland Hotel’s gardens on a 1998 visit,

My parents had only one must-visit location - Antique Archeology, the store operated by the American Pickers reality show crew. Their network owns the show name, hence the difference. Aside from a handful of antiques for sale, the room housed many display items from the show, not-for-sale items from the owners’ collections and rows of T-shirts and other ephemera. The atmosphere seemed more suited to selfies than anything.

One of many items not for sale

We fared better through the rest of Marathon Building, which now displays old pieces of automotive assembly machinery in its corridors. Marathon was once quite familiar to me. A lifetime ago Marathon housed Yazoo Brewing’s original taproom, a tiny space they rapidly outgrew and where Corsair Distillery still operates. I regularly stopped for growler fills, then occasionally had a pint at the distillery taproom. The problem with its halls of boutiques is after the third or fourth one, their wares become almost indistinguishable. When I bought of vintage postcard and some locally made chocolate delights (Colt’s Bolts) at one stop, the boutique owner remarked that they didn’t get many locals through the door.

Marathon might be a new draw for the tourist pipeline, but one of the city’s oldest draw never fails. Barely a mile away lies Centennial Park and its full-sized Parthenon replica, a structure that never grows dull to me. When I moved in May 2007, we cruised outside the Parthenon, the last stop before they drove back to Columbus.

Athena of Nashville

This time they would get the full experience, a run through the history of the Parthenon replica and how it became a civic rallying point for Nashville. Hoisting a smaller statue of winged Nike in her hand, Athena towers above the upper galley. The statue mimics elements of Greek antiquity, with Athena holding a spear and serpent-guarded shield, which depicts Greek battle scenes. The statue took more than two decades to move from concept to its gilding, and it’s a testament to Nashville that it filled its Parthenon with such a stunning nod to the Athenian original. Along with miniatures of the front and rear facades, several anterooms display full-sized casts of the original Greek pieces owned by the British Museum.

The Parthenon’s lower level house the city’s public art museum, which has a modest collection augmented by strong exhibits from local artists. No one could skip My Tennessee Home: Paintings by Camille Engel. Taking a photographic realism to state symbols, animals, plants and fruits, Engel brought new dimensions to a seemingly simple theme. Since we only make it to the museum every few years, I forget about the excellent 19th century landscape and seascape paintings in the museum’s permanent collection. I could stare at those works until closing. My parents not being big country music fans, we skipped over downtown’s honky-tonks and overpriced restaurants for other local options.

With the highway closed for bridge repair around downtown, we drove around elsewhere. We breezed through my first neighborhood in Nashville, a west side grid thoroughly gentrified with rows of skinny houses and every hillbilly dive turned into a taproom or wine bar.

Percy immediately found Mom's coat

One of our favorite restaurants did not shine. On this rainy Saturday, their service doomed our visit. We hit our 10-minute mark without any acknowledgement and left for Nectar, a fast-casual taco joint down the street. . Nectar’s tacos served with a can of Tecate still sound tasty.

A series of storm cells swept through Middle Tennessee, produced a few tornados, set off several rounds of sirens and sent some ominous, fast-moving clouds above our house. Rather than tempt fate, we stayed indoors for a night, cooking a salmon filet and talking over coffee and a peach pie made with filling from the last of the Palisade (Colorado) peaches.

 Sunday would be a different story. Since our favorite Noshville near Vanderbilt closed several years ago, it’s grown too easy to forget its Green Hills restaurant still packs in crowds. Nancy and I rediscovered Noshville the previous Sunday, eating a comfort meal before an anniversary showing of Casablanca. On either Sunday, no one left hungry. We took the slow road down to Franklin, passing the mansions and horse farms along Hillsborough Pike. Further south, we cut around downtown Franklin, a tourist stop as frequent as downtown Nashville.

Nancy with ancient osage orange tree

We were headed for the far side of downtown and the Carnton Plantation, which preserves a key site in the Battle of Franklin, one of the Confederacy’s biggest military disasters. The plantation is a good lesson for me in that not all well-preserved and prominent Civil War are run by the National Park Service. The Battle of Franklin Trust operates two historic homes and the largest private cemetery of Civil War dead, with more than 1,700 Confederate graves. Confederate forces made many runs at the Union lines and failed to break them, resulting in the 1,700 dead and more than 6,000 total casualties. A second home, the Carter House, served as Union headquarters just south of downtown Franklin.

We chose the Carnton Plantation and its spacious grounds. The Carnton house built in the 1820s by Nashville Mayor Randall McGavock, who moved here permanently in the 1840s and hosted many Tennessee dignitaries, including Andrew Jackson. Some original pieces of furniture fill the stately home, with other contemporary pieces rounding out the rooms. Portraits of the McGavock family members hang in the many parlors. Several generations of the family lived there. Outbuildings included former slave quarters and spring house. A fire or natural disaster destroyed the kitchen, which previously connected to the dining room.

Garden trellises

But the mansion’s history cannot be intertwined from the Civil War and the Battle of Franklin. During the Battle of Franklin, the Confederate Army converted the house in a field hospital, with dozens, maybe hundreds of men treated in its rooms and porches. More wounded and dead filled the yard around the mansion, while four Confederate generals killed in battle lied on the porch to allow their soldiers a final salute.

No one needed to look hard to find evidence of the mansion’s temporary purpose - 150-year-old bloodstains mark where the surgeons amputated limbs. The stains are more impressive upon realizing the rooms were carpeted, so an inordinate amount of blood flowed off the surgical tables to soak through those carpets and stain the floorboards. Outside a garden borders the house. Well-kept shrubs and trellises rise in the shadow of a massive, burled Osage orange tree, which our tour guide said was here during the battle.

With the day waning – the sunset starts around 4 in the colder months – we decided on an impromptu visit to Arrington Vineyards on the farmlands east of Franklin. A handful of small wineries smatter Middle Tennessee, but Arrington is firmly ensconced as the local flagship. The tasting room bartender called this a slow day. While we waited less than 10 minutes for a flight of their wines, hundreds of people filled heated tents or picnicked on the slop overlooking the grapevines.

Carnton Plantation gardens

Arrington sources most of the grapes from California and Washington vineyards. Humid Middle Tennessee are unkind to most nonnative grape varietals. Their use of a Tennessee whiskey barrel to age one red revealed an innovative streak, and such wines could hold the interest of dubious locals like myself. As a good tourist, I left with a bottle of their Syrah, my favorite from the tasting. Quite a few deer grazed along the country roads separating the vineyard and Franklin.

 The weekend ended on a low-key note, where he had a few beers and entrees at Cool Springs Brewery, Nancy’s longtime happy hour spot when she worked in Franklin. They make fine beers, although the lineup has not changed since their previous brewmaster moved on. Their pub grub, anchored by their fish and chips, filled everyone as breakfast long since wore off. In a weekend that involved zero country music, we hit a number of local highlights, not even the obvious ones like The Hermitage. We could be tourists after all, if just for one weekend

Carnton Plantation house (no photos indoors allowed)