Party Barges! 8/14/2016

Cheekwood is a privately funded 55-acre estate on the western edge of Nashville that houses the Cheekwood Botanical Garden and Museum of Art. That was our first stop today. The history of Cheekwood is intertwined with the Maxwell House Coffee brand. The cousin of the mansion's builder developed a superior blend of coffee that was marketed through the best hotel in Nashville, the Maxwell House. His extended family, including Leslie and Mabel Cheek, were investors. In 1928, Postum (now General Foods) purchased Maxwell House's parent company, Cheek-Neal Coffee, for more than $40 million. It was this money that allowed the owners to build this estate. One of the Cheek daughters opened it in 1960 as a botanical garden and art museum.

They placed the house at the top of a hill near a former plantation (Belle Meade), ensuring that their views in that direction would never be spoiled. The house itself was built by artisans from the area, and most of the house that the public can see is as it was when it was constructed, minus some of the

furnishings. The only thing that didn't seem to fit was a chandelier that had been gifted to the museum

by some donors. The chandelier consisted of many optical fibers hung from the ceiling a few floors above where it hung. At the end of each filament was an LED light. It had an interesting effect, but hardly fit the character of the house, built in 1929-32. The other house details were notable: intricate hardware on the doors, beautiful custom crown molding, wrought iron, limestone floors, and hand-carved oak doors.

The third floor of the house had been turned into an art gallery per the wishes of the Cheek family,

and there is also a scuplture walk on the property. I must confess that the sculpture along the woodland trail stretched my ability to understand it. One piece was a block of stone.  Another (an homage to aboriginal peoples per the description) was a bunch of dead trees

"Memorial to the Aboriginal People of this Land who lived in these Forests", or "A Bunch of Dead Trees"?

pushed into a pile. Another was a white stone bench. OK then.

After a lovely afternoon at Cheekwood, we headed over to the Parthenon, a full-scale replica of the original Parthenon in Athens. It was built in 1897 as part of the Tennessee Centennial Exhibition. Today it functions as an art museum, the centerpiece of Centennial Park, a large municipal park in Nashville. As it happened, they were

having a music festival there with performing artists. So we walked over to the venue and laid on the grass to listen for a while.

We stayed long enough to listen to one band, and then decided to try to find a place to park to cruise some of the music bars on Broadway, Nashville's lounge district downtown. Live music is the order of the day here. The bars are chock-a-block, one after the other,  on both sides of the street for 6 blocks. All have their doors open, and as you proceed down the street, you can hear snippets of each of the performers. That, combined with the thousands of people  cramming those bars and walking the street,  make quite a din. To add to the roar, there are "party barges": imagine a haywagon without the hay, full of people  who are drinking and singing along to recorded music at the top of their lungs. Then there are the pedal taverns--large wagons powered by the 10-15 people onboard who are pedaling. They were drinking as well, and singing along to music being played on their conveyance. apparently you can BYOB on those. They provide the ice and cups. The Party Barges looked like they would be fun to take with a group of people you know. Hey--BC people--want to meet in Nashville in October?

It turned out that not only were the Titans, Tennessee's NFL team, playing yesterday, but the Symphony was performing, and both institutions are within a few blocks of the downtown, making it impossible to find a single parking space. So we cruised down Broadway, and called it  a day.