After my thankfully brief car scare, I continued to drive west. The Nashville KOA wanted $27 for a tent site (what do they think this is, Newburgh, NY?). So, I decided to spend Halloween tenting it in Lebanon TN. That only cost $14, and it was less than a mile from a Wal*Mart and a panoply of fast food restaurants. There were no other tent campers in that campground. It would have been a bit scary if not for the 100 or so RVs there as well.

In the morning, I bought a polo shirt for $2.50 at Goodwill and then washed it. The polo shirt was a prop I was going to use in Gallatin, as the next entry will make clear. I also tried to find a hand-held microphone for my Gallatin trip, but the least expensive was $10, and I considered that too much of an invested for a joke. The next entry will make all this quite clear I hope.

I needed to mail some letters and otherwise TCB in a flash, but the Lebanon post office was closed. So, rather than being able to drive directly to Gallatin (see the next entry), I drove to Nashville first and then doubled-back to Gallatin. Unfortunately, the only part of Nashville I saw was the area around the airport. Then, after I went to Gallatin, I drove through Nashville but I didn't get off the freeway, which was probably a mistake.

The Nashville post office was right next to their international airport, and it turned out to be open 24/7, and a 24/7 Kinko's was just down the street. Those are the kind of operating hours I like. So, as much as I hate country music, it's unfortunate that I only drove through Nashville and didn't even drive down its main drags a bit. I get the feeling - based on very little knowledge it's true - that Nashville is a bit of a southern-fried Las Vegas.

While I was doing my laundry in Lebanon, I experienced one of the few times during this trip when I thought I might have to unleash Bo and Luke. I was standing outside the laundromat across from the Goodwill in the rather run-down part of this little town, doing a bit of people watching. I was about a mile from the fast food and Wal*Mart strip, back where the residents live and do their thing. One of the people I was watching was an interesting guy in a logoed T-shirt and jeans. He had a mullet as well. Perhaps you've seen him? He was walking away from me about 50' away, when he notices me peering over the top of my vehicle, looking his way. He turned around a couple of times, once very quickly, as if to catch me in the act. Perhaps he thought I was a copper. He kept walking, but, even though I was a distance away, I got the feeling that he might be a-thunkin' about chargin' the Lonewacko. Thankfully, I didn't need to let The Boys out to play, as he kept on walking. I'll leave the reader to speculate on what substances could cause one to have this behavior; I don't know about that there Hillbilly Heroin, but I'd imagine that it generally has a more calming affect, so that probably wasn't it.