Adonis Diaries

Trip to Nashville.  April 1, 2020

Note: I opened a special category on my blog “Travel/Excursion” to collect all my trips and adventure stories.

I learned that a young couple of my acquaintances at the university were leaving to Kentucky and would drive through Tennessee.

I had just graduated with PhD in industrial/Ergonomics engineering in 199,1 after 6 long grueling years of toil. I worked 4 part-time jobs within the university confine to pay tuition and make ends meet, in addition of a half-time student assistant in my last 2 years.

You know, I obey to regulations, even if most foreign students work outside and have much better pay.

I had an open invitation from my ex-girlfriend in Nashville. She once got pissed off of me and transferred her job from Oklahoma City to Nashville, along with her two kids. (No, the matter was Not of any cheating stories: just a nervous laugh in a funny situation. Told that encounter in my post on Rose)

I asked the couple to give me ride in their tiny VW Beetle. They dropped me in Nashville where Rose lived.

(I wrote about this trip in “An inch taller than her country women“, reminiscing about the women I got this lucky of befriending. A hard working and resilient divorced woman) .

I guess that I spent about three weeks in Nashville but I never had the opportunity to tour “Graceland“, even though Shannon, the daughter of Rose, worked there for pocket money.

I guess that I could not afford the $40 entrance fees.

I tried applying for a position in that period of acute recession during Bush Senior Presidency that lasted until he lost the renewal of his tenure to Clinton. Yes, I also endured this deep unemployment period in San Francisco.

I applied to Nissan plant at Smyrna? and other positions.

There is not much to see in Nashville and I was not in the touring mood since Rose was working hard to make ends meet and I was feverishly applying for jobs.

I recall that I paid a visit to this “famous” record company of Hall of Fames of country singers and gold records . I didn’t care much, but just for curiosity reason.

I even experimented with selling books for a multilevel scheme company.

Rose reluctantly let me use her brand new Japanese car. I don’t drive other people cars, but I was dead broke. The company allocated me a neighborhood to sell the “book of the week” that was to be promoted…

The deal is that you don’t miss a house or a business office in the area allocated to you and you tour the streets clockwise to close the loop.

You leave the customers the book of the week for three days for their perusal. You come back the next week to retrieve the book or sell it to the client.

We had to be at the warehouse at six in the morning, followed by a military style pep talk and then we are trained to memorize definite phrases to eliminate hesitations and how to close deals.

At six in the evening we had to learn the accounting procedures for our business and stay way after eight or even nine.

Supposedly, a few of our role models who were poor in math learned to add and subtract, to harangue, and to get rich.

I lost money in the final analysis because a few books could not be accounted for.

I think this “company” made money by charging the high priced of “displaced” or non retrieved books , when it didn’t cost it a fraction. Maybe they got these books for free just to spread them around.

I once got a traffic ticket for over speeding in Rose’s new Nissan car; it is impossible to know whether you are speeding in these smooth driving cars.  I never paid the traffic tickets.

The woman graduate student, Sara, picked me up on her way back to Oklahoma in her tiny beige VW.

I don’t recall that I spoke a word on that return trip. Sara didn’t attempt to talk either. I guess we both were Not in the mood of sharing our disappointment or frustration.

Sara reluctantly let me sleep overnight when we arrived in Norman: I had no place to sleep since I had vacated my rented apartment

Two days later, Fakhry (a close Lebanese friend whose parents worked in Africa and was married to an American) lent me $100 for the Greyhound bus fare to San Francisco.

I was to attend the American Human Factors annual convention.

It was an excuse to let go of Norman town, a “boring hole” and start afresh, though I had no acquaintances in San Francisco.

I figured that sleeping two nights at the hotel with my advisor might open up new opportunities for survival.