GRAND CANYON: THE ROAD TO NASHVILLE

It has been a long road and an eventful journey. Only now do our thoughts return to Nashville. As we venture south on highway 127 everything around us begins to look like Tennessee. For the first time since Utah or Nevada we abandon the mass transit multi-lane interstate and settle into the rural American countryside. The further south we travel, the denser the forest becomes. The night is serenaded by multitudes of clicking, screeching, croaking insects and tree frogs that are never seen but always heard. Through the rolling hills of southern Illinois, the bluegrass pastures of western Kentucky, the farm, dairy and grassland communities with their small clusters of modern life, all-night convenience stores, fast food restaurants and brightly lit gas stations. They seem as out of place in this wide-open country as a California Mustang in East St. Louis.

This is the land of the Shawnee, Choctaw and Cherokee. It is the land of the great rivers where thousands of Indian nations, faced with the onslaught of a European invasion, condensed social evolution into a microcosm. The distinctive Indian burial grounds still mark the landscape. It is the land of the pioneers as well, the Daniel Boones and Davy Crockets who braved the dangers of the forest and moved on at the first sight of smoke on a distant hill. It is the land where the line was drawn in civil war, a land rich in the ironies of a nation.

As we drive by the large simple houses with their huge and manicured yards and open spaces between them, our minds drift to quiet places and simple times, settling at last on the place we now call home. This land holds added meaning to Wiz. He grew up in these parts. His grandparents still live here in a little town called Royalton. His old haunts are in Pinckneyville down the road. The place is full of ancient memories for Wiz and he is surprisingly sentimental. This is his heritage: Small town America.

Our first stop is Nashville, Illinois with a population of 3,202. We’ve started talking about golf in Nashville and decide to take advantage of this early opportunity. There are not many hours of daylight left as we drive down Main Street and turn at a small sign directing us to a golf course. For a small town there is a large park with lighted baseball fields, picnic tables, driving range and golf course – all in one cozy package.

As we drive down the one-lane road to the clubhouse, kids are playing baseball off the road. Nothing brings out the kid in me more than a ball game. I wouldn’t mind a few innings but Wiz is a bit anxious. We locate the clubhouse and he lingers while I check out the scene. Strangely, the clubhouse door is locked. Inside a circle of gray haired folks, neatly dressed, are engaged in an intense discussion as they sit around a large wooden table behind a Plexiglas wall. I think about knocking for an explanation but their intensity pushes me back.

I walk back to the car and tell Wiz what I’ve seen. He goes for his own look and comes back with the same impression: Looks like there’s no golfing today.

We head back the way we came and drive to Pinckneyville, arriving as the sun sets slowly on a distant horizon. It’s a charming little town with forties architecture and a circular drive at its core. Wiz takes it all in with a quiet breath of nostalgia.

You can never go back, my friend.

I don’t know whether it’s the rural scenery, the mood of sentimentality or the remembrance of home but we pass on an opportunity to fill up with gas though we are getting low. After a spell I begin to calculate mileage in my mind and take a look at the road map. Sure enough it looks like an adventure. The oversight costs us a detour to Royalton when the little town of Vergennes is closed for the night.

In the not too distant past, I remember discovering what was for me the key to driving mountain roads. They had terrorized me and left me feeling far more exhausted than I should have been. The key was relaxation in the gut, the solar plexus, freeing the third chakra of all tension. Suddenly the car seemed to bond with he curve of the road and found its proper pace. When the inevitable maniac came sniffing at my tailpipe, I calmly pulled over at the next opportunity and allowed him to pass. No panic, no tension.

I summon the technique now and the effect is immediate. There is an undeniable joy in risk taking, an attraction to the excitement and mystery of danger whether it is real or imagined. I recall running curfew as a teenager, being chased by cops through back yards and alleys not know if a growling dog would greet you over the next fence or afterwards if your friends managed to escape. It was a childish pleasure and one of the great adventures of youth.

We struggle into Carbondale, a veritable metropolis in these parts, and fill up with gas at an Exxon station. Sally takes in 16.3 gallons, close enough to justify the worry. We grab coffee and a burger at a local fast food, marvel at how closely this town is like every other town across the country, and toy with the idea of hitting a local bar before we head out into the night.

We cross over the Ohio, Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers and enter western Kentucky just north of the Land Between the Lakes. We drive in virtual silence, thoughts to ourselves, until a roadside attraction pulls us off the road one more time. Somewhere around Saratoga or Lamasco or Wattonia there is a late night driving range just off Highway 24 to Nashville.

There on the Kentucky roadside, more than two hundred holes behind us, in the land of a billion flying, crawling, buzzing and biting insects, I find the missing link that molds my golf swing into one flowing, magical motion. A widened stance strengthens my balance and playing the ball back toward center sends my long irons screaming into the darkness straight as an arrow. Here on the bug infested Kentucky roadside I am playing the best golf of my life.

I know that the lessons of today might not be the lessons of tomorrow. The swing, like the golfer, is a dynamic ever-changing phenomenon. But for the moment and the moment is all we really have, the game and I are in perfect flowing harmony. If all the lessons of golf could be reduced to just one, maybe it is this: Savor the moment. Nothing in golf or life lasts forever. When it’s right, it’s right: embrace it, cherish it, bask in it, and create a picture in your mind to remember it by.

It is unfortunate that two people so rarely experience the moment we call Zen at the same time. Wiz struggles at the all-night range and races through his bucket of balls as if he were finishing up a kitchen cabinet. By the time I’m down to twenty, he’s twiddling his thumbs. The bugs are bugging him. At my urging he helps me finish off my shots and we head down the last stretch of road before Nashville, Tennessee.

The silence descends on us as we drive and the Welcome to Tennessee sign appears in the distance. I glance at my watch and inform Wiz that I just turned forty years old. We had almost forgotten. He wishes me a heartfelt happy birthday and our thoughts return to our destination. Across the border, exit one takes on a whole new meaning.

So they say: Life begins at forty.

Somewhere overhead, hidden in darkness, a crow heralds our arrival with a woeful caw. Welcome to Nashville.