Who Knew

For all of my life I have been exposed to photographs of the Rymen Auditorium in Nashville,Tennessee home of the Grand Ole Opry.

Having never visited before but knowing the address was 116 5th Avenue N, I always assumed that these doors seen in the above photograph are the entrances, and that the stage would be on the other end of the building.

Dead wrong as I found out when I finally made a call to Mecca on February 28th 2009. After trudging up the hill from Broadway, and climbing the steps shown in the photograph we were greeted with a small sign that said that we should walk around the corner and enter from the other end of the building. Right away my mind then reasoned that the stage area much be behind the shuttered doors.

Wrong again. Entering the auditorium area I was surprised to find the stage area to my left. This now made it clearer to me how the artist in the past could go from the back of the stage area to bars located in the alleyway as you hear about in many stories.

Had a great time with my friend Randy and sons Stephen and Reuben. Saw many of the artists that I listened to on the radio as a young man who are still singing the same songs of yesterday. In fact if you tune into WSM Radio on the Internet and catch a live performances of the Grand Ole Opry you will soon realize that they play the same songs, tell the same jokes and perform basically the same act week after week, year after year. Good for them, at least they are working and apparently having a good time at it and we enjoyed their performances.