The Corvette Club Has A Picnic, And I Did Not Have My Camera!

Here is a picture I borrowed from a Corvette Club, but they are such nice people that I do not think they will mind at all!



Nursing a bad mood and a migraine headache, I took the Path Of Wisdom and drove my dogs to the park for an evening walk. There is always something at the park to turn a sour mood sweet, and at first I thought it was the acres of goldenrod now blooming or the family of Kestrels(Sparrow Hawks) that I saw on the power lines near the Ensworth School. These were good things, but not unexpected. I had seen a party going on down at the picnic area near the Little Harpeth River, but we walked out to the greenway by another road. We came back on the path near the shed, and I could smell the grilling. A man rode by us on a bike, and smiled at me.


"Where's your Corvette?', he asked. I just smiled the way I do when people say things that make no sense. Then I looked over at the cars parked at the picnic shed, and I knew.


There were at least a dozen. Pink. Copper Penny. Yellow. Burgundy. Shiny, groomed, and loved. It was the Nashville Corvette Club and a Corvette owners' pot luck. We stopped, and looked. I cursed myself for leaving my camera at home. Then as we turned away we met a couple walking. I asked them if they had noticed the Corvettes.


They had. The burgundy one was theirs. They told me their club had several hundred members, one of whom owned a 1954 Corvette fully restored. I asked if they went on road trips. I imagined them in a long, sleek Chrome line, tops down, cruising down the Natchez Trace on an autumn afternoon.


"We do", said the gentleman, "We drive down as a club to Hoehenwald or Ashland City, and we visit different restaurants".


"It's a lot of fun", said his wife, but I could see that for myself.


I asked if other cars had clubs and enthusiasts.


"Tri-year Chevys and Mustangs" ,he said.


I drive an 11 year old Toyota Tundra truck. I have never worshiped cars.


I could make an exception for the Corvette, for what car would be better for the Great American Road Trip. It is modern. It is retro. It is 77 Sunset Strip with a handsome guy at the wheel and a gorgeous blond at his side, her bouffant "do" covered with a scarf. It is getting your kicks on Route 66 powered by gas that doesn't cost a fortune and driving across an America that runs on optimism. It is proud Detroit. A better future. The American Century. Speeding out across into the night through sparse land covered with tumbleweeds and hunted by roadrunners. It is driving down the mountains into LA on a six lane highway at 80 miles an hour. It is being free.


It is the way things used to be.