FIDDLES AND CORN PUDDING

In 1999, we took a trip down the Blues Highway, US 61, planning to go as far south as it would take us. In July 1999. We were riding a KZ1000 that had belonged to a friend, then to his brother, and being between Harleys I picked it up cheap when his brother tired of it. It was hot. We stopped after dark somewhere in northern Mississippi and the bank sign was reading 104 degrees.

So we gave up the Blues Highway dream and headed east toward the mountains. We ended up in Smithville, TN on the July 4th weekend, with the Smithville Jamboree in full swing. I bought a beautiful snakeskin wallet from a vendor at the craft fair around the town square.

The wallet has served me well for 10 years, but is looking a little raggedy nowadays. Pam has been suggesting a trip back to Smithville for a few years to get a replacement, and enjoy the Jamboree again.

The Jamboree is to find the national champions in various old-time country music styles, dancing, singing, and playing various instruments, for “beginners”. “Beginners” seems to mean non-professional musicians. The contestants range from very young to very old. A lot of them are from the area around Smithville, but plenty come from across the country. It’s a cool, low-key couple of days of music ranging from ear splitting, off-key, and terrible to some of the best singing and playing you will hear anywhere. It is all traditional mountain music. Church music, old style mountain music, and bluegrass. Even when it’s bad, it’s good, because everybody is sincerely doing the best they can.

So we figured we could swing through Nashville, catch the Friday night Opry, then jump over to Smithville for the second day of the Jamboree. I looked on the web to see who was going to be at the Opry on Friday night. Ricky Scaggs. Excellent! Of course, he would only sing one or two songs on the Opry, and the whole Grand Old Opry has turned into a sort of self-caricature since they moved it to “Opryland”, but it is still the Opry.

But, maybe they would be having something at the Ryman, the old church from where the Opry was broadcast until it moved to the new digs at Opryland. I googled the Ryman. Thursday nights were “Bluegrass Nights”, and Ricky Skaggs was going to be at the Ryman on Thursday. Things were looking up! This would be great. Pam had never been in the Ryman, where I first saw the Grand Old Opry after listening to it on WSM for years.

How could this weekend get any better? Well, let me mention two words: corn pudding. My Mom used to make corn pudding, and one of my daughters will make it on special occasions, but they are far and few between. Last winter, with an extremely strong craving for it running through my veins, I had, via the web, looked up recipes and tried to find restaurants that served it.

There weren’t too many restaurants willing to admit having it. One was in Nashville, one was in Kentucky. I couldn’t remember the names of either one. The Nashville restaurant was a pretty famous one, which served home-style. I figured that somebody in Nashville would know what restaurant I was talking about.

Thursday morning we loaded up and headed south. We got to Nashville about four and somehow found a motel pretty close to Nashville’s old Music Row and the Ryman, despite my habit of exploring rather than looking at maps.
The desk clerk found the name of the restaurant I described, and told us how to get there. It was only about a mile north of the Ryman, so we had time for corn pudding before the show.

The restaurant was called Monell’s. They serve their meals ‘family style’. There is no menu: you get what they cook. All the tables seat about ten people, so they fill up a table with whoever shows up and start serving. They bring everything in big bowls, and you pass them around and eat whatever you want from the selection. The only other place I have been like that was the White Fence Farm on old 66. It is a great way to eat at a restaurant.

The meats were pan fried chicken, smothered chicken, and BBQ ribs. Then there were bowls with coleslaw, mashed potatoes, cucumber salad, red beans, pole beans, macaroni salad, and ...CORN PUDDING. Of course, there was corn bread (with white corn inside it) and biscuits, and homemade peach spread for the biscuits and butter for the corn bread. And sweet tea and iced tea. And there was Banana Pudding when everybody slowed down passing the bowls.

Yes, they still know how to eat down south.

I skipped the smothered chicken. The fried chicken was pretty good. Not perfect (not exactly like my Grandmother made), but pretty good. Let’s say, the best fried chicken I have had since she died. The pole beans? What can be screwed up with pole beans? Nothing that I know of, and my mouth is watering just thinking back on them.

The corn pudding was corn pudding. I might have made the rest of the diners at our table a little nervous when I announced that I had come to eat corn pudding, that everyone at the table was welcome to as much as they liked, but I expected the bowl to be full by the time it got to me. OK. I’m a pig. I ate most of it. Nobody seemed to mind.

I controlled myself pretty well with the rest of the dishes, I kind of had to, I was pretty stuffed with corn pudding. We finished the meal with the banana pudding, and drove back to the motel, parked the car, and walked over to the Ryman.

It has a fancy new entrance, but other than that it is about the same as when a riverboat gambler saw the light, gave up gambling, and built a church there. It’s cleaner than I remembered, and smaller. I think that setting foot in it after listening to so many broadcasts made it seem grander than it actually was. It is pretty small. The old pews are still hard as rocks. And it is still the best place in the world to hear music.

Ricky came on at 7:30 with Kentucky Thunder. He pretty much blew everybody away till about 10:30, with a half hour intermission. He no longer screws around with ‘country music’, everything is Bluegrass. He even played a lot of his country hits bluegrass style. I guess they were always bluegrass, but Nashville wanted drums and other country style stuff on the records. He told stories of playing with Bill Monroe when he was 6 and Monroe was already one of the greats. Of playing with Ralph Stanley. Boone Creek.

He got everybody crying with “Mother’s Not Dead, She’s Only A-sleeping”. He got people jumping with “Uncle Pen”. He played them all. The last time I saw him, his fiddle player was just a kid, and looked around with a huge smile during the entire concert, like he couldn’t believe where he was or who he was playing with. He’s older now, but still seems like he can’t believe what he is doing. He could be Nicky Hayden’s twin brother. And he has become one of the best fiddle players I have ever heard.

Anyway, this whole deal was broadcast live on WSM, so it was kind of like an old time Grand Ole Opry. A good time was had by all. That stage is the first place I ever saw Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys.

After the show, we bummed around Music Row for awhile. It has turned into mostly bars, with country, rock and roll, and lots of drunken kids. That’s what happens when you get old, a lot of the drunks turn into kids.

Ernest Tubb’s record store is still kicking. They still have the Midnight show there live on Saturday nights, after the Opry finishes. We looked through the racks of CD’s, no vinyl anymore, while security in a blue shirt followed us around.

And there is some great neon on Music Row.

We finally strolled back to the motel and fell out.

The next morning we got up and headed down US 70 toward Smithville. After somehow passing in front of Ernest Tubbs about three times trying to find 70. I made Pam stop at the Snow White Drive-In in Lebanon, because there was a blue neon sign in the window saying “Coneydogs”. Nobody that worked there seemed to know what a coney dog was, so I finally gave up and ordered a regular hot dog, but had them do it up South Carolina style, with chili and coleslaw on top. Pam had pulled pork. We survived, and headed east on 70 to Smithville.

We pulled into Smithville and found the square. They set up a stage once a year in front of the courthouse, close off the square, and fill one side of it with folding chairs. It is usually sunny and hot. This year it was hot, but not turned up to broil like a decade ago. The rest of the square and some of the surrounding streets are filled with crafts. Homemade quilts, clothes, instruments, and a lot of other crafty kind of stuff. The snakeskin craftsman was nowhere to be found. A couple of leather makers tried to talk me into leather wallets with a snakeskin accent, but when you have the best, second best won’t do.

I couldn’t find any fried pie, either, which was kind of disappointing, since Smithville is also famous for fried pie. There was plenty of carney food, so I made do with a funnel cake and a Philly cheese sandwich. Later, the editor of the local newspaper was shooting photos from the roof of the Old Folks Home, which is across the street from the stage, and the announcer yelled at him not to fall and squish the fried pies. Mystery solved: they were at the Old Folks Home, so I did get a fried pie later.

I think we got there around 11. The Jamboree starts at 9 each morning, and runs till the champions for that day’s contests are determined. Anyone that enters in a category is accepted, and each person or group in each category plays during the day, with judges scoring. Three finalists are chosen from each category, and they are in the finals in the evening. It’s a lot of fun to watch everybody during the day. I think there were 14 categories on Friday, sometimes with 30 contestants in a category. At the same time that contestants are playing on stage, bands are being formed and reformed, and singers are practicing their harmony all around the other sides of the courthouse, and some groups are just picking together.

We didn’t stay for all the finals, because we knew we would have to go as far as Cookeville to find a room. We left about 11 that night, and four or five final categories had been completed, and the champions announced. The Jamboree sometimes finishes at 3 o’clock in the morning, and then starts again at 9 o’clock the next morning.

From Cookeville we headed up TN 135 and TN 53 into Kentucky. I was sniffin’ after some more corn pudding. Last winter I was overcome by a yearning for the stuff, and searched the web hoping to find a restaurant somewhere nearby that made it. I couldn’t find any near Chicago, but found a restaurant that was famous for corn pudding in Kentucky.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember the name of the restaurant or the name of the town it was in, but I had faith that I could find it. I remembered it started with a “B”. After all, how many places could there be in Kentucky that started wit a “B”?

Still in Tennessee, we came across a large occupied nest. It was on a platform at the top of a utility pole, not shaped like an eagle’s nest, but huge. Pam and I inspected the birds in the nest, and the parents that were coming and going, and finally decided they were a family of Red Tail Hawks.

Nearby we came across a historical marker about Lincoln’s Grandfather.

We continued into Kentucky, and the search for corn pudding. Once I set a goal, I am not going to be swayed from it! We needed gas, so I swallowed my pride and asked another customer if he knew of an Inn nearby that was famous for fried chicken and corn pudding. He said it was probably the Beaumont Inn, and he had grown up near it in Danville. The ‘Beaumont Inn’ was ringing some bells: dinner bells!

I asked him where Danville was, and he directed us north on US 68. He said when we got to Perryville, head east on US 150 and we would get to Danville. Someone in Danville could direct us to the Beaumont.

We headed up 68, while the name “Perryville” nagged at my memory. Where had I heard of Perryville? When we got to 150, there was a sign pointing west, indicating Perryville Battlefield. That was it! My grandfather’s grandfather had fought at Perryville during the Civil War. We headed west to see the battlefield.

We toured the museum at the battlefield, then wandered through the fields where the battle took place. Rufus Stafford was one of the lucky ones that survived the battle.

Time to resume the hunt for corn pudding. We backtracked through Perryville and east to Danville. We stopped at a gas station to ask about the Beaumont Inn. One of the cashiers had worked at the Beaumont, and told us it was not in Danville, but in Harrodsburg, a few miles north.

We found Harrodsburg and the Beaumont, quite a beautiful inn. Dinner would not start for about an hour, so I took a nap in a rocker on the spacious front porch, and Pam explored the Inn and their gift shop.

I had pan-fried chicken. It tasted like my grandmother made it, so I was happy. They offered the choice of three side dishes with the chicken, so I chose corn pudding, corn pudding, and corn pudding. Their corn pudding was excellent, different than any I have ever had before: a little sweeter and looser than the usual corn pudding.

I’d go back to both the Beaumont Inn and Monell’s at the drop of a hat!