Country Crosses the Pond

When Joey found out about the big concert in Hyde Park in London, he knew it was time to cross the pond. Joey and Peggy had been married for 35 years and had never ever crossed a border and set foot outside of the good-ole USA. They had crossed over the other pond and went once to Hawaii, but that was still America and did not really count as a true land of foreigners.

After talking it over with all the family in Tennessee, and the Beach Boys and Girls in Marco Island, Joey and Peggy decided to drop the big bucks, hire a travel agent, and book flights all the way to London, England, and Paris, France. It was time to see how the English made tea, and why the people in France ate snails and frogs and wore the little hats that looked like someone sat on them before they ended up on the head sideways.

Joey was a little worried about foreigners, but he was music crazy, as was almost everyone in Tennessee. Atop the Great Smoky Mountains and all the way down through the foothills and even into the valleys and the cornfields leading to the Grand Ole Opry, Tennessee has always been a land of music, church going, a little whiskey drinking, and a lot of Big Orange Tennessee football! For almost everyone in Tennessee, music is more than a pastime, and if no one believes it, just hop in a car and drive down the road to Nashville.

After pondering all the possibilities of over-the-pond travel, and a boatload of cautious advice from all the neighbors about the weird ways of foreigners and their eating and almost unmentionable bathroom habits, Joey and Peggy boarded the plane in Nashville that was set to fly in the middle of the night all the way to London, England.

When the sun came up over the ocean after midnight, that was perplexing, but when the plane finally landed and the policewoman with the fancy hat asked Joey and Peggy if they had anything to declare, they just smiled and said that they were very happy to have landed and not crashed.

After one of the old black taxicabs that looked like something from a war movie drove around Big Ben and the London Bridge on the wrong side of the road three times, the driver slammed on the brakes at the door of a fancy hotel and asked for a 100 quid. Peggy looked at Joey and declared, “I never seen no one driving like that - not even at the NASCAR track in Bristol.”

When the London driver was still waiting for the Tennesseans to climb out of his cab, Joey scrutinized the driver and announced with his country drawl, “I’m pretty sure you want some of my money, but back home, a quid is a plug of chew-tobacco and pounds is how much you weigh. I got some money for you with the queen’s picture, but the ride was rough, and I don’t think we needed to see the big clock and the river more than once.”

When Joey and Peggy walked into the hotel lobby, they were the only ones wearing shorts, t-shirts, and tennis shoes. When they started looking for the front desk, no one could understand “plain American” until they found a skinny girl at a bar they were calling “Reception.”

The girl was nice enough, but she sure was anxious to get her hands on a credit card.

After patiently explaining to a man with white gloves and an Abe Lincoln hat that “They did not need no one to carry their roll-behind bags,” the couple from Tennessee finally opened the door to their room. Before Peggy could pout about the tiny room with the two twin beds that was not even big enough to open the luggage, Joey was back out on the fancy carpet and headed down to the skinny girl and the bar without drinks they were calling “Reception.”

After a new room and a steep new bill on Joey’s credit card, the following days in London were like a mountain twister in springtime. Everyone was nice, but like the skinny girl at the bar without drinks, everybody wanted lots of money. The concert in Hyde Park was amazing, and the music was almost as good as Nashville.

Although everyone at the bars - they called them pubs - seemed to like the beer that was not cold enough, Joey and Peggy finally tried something called cognac and that, when mixed with American Coca-Cola, tasted pretty good.

After London and the train ride through the tunnel under another big pond, Peggy and Joey arrived in Paris, France. In no time, they found another bar at another fancy hotel that was another “Reception,” and just like in London, the man behind the desk could not wait to get his hands on a credit card. This time, the room was better and even had two toilets in the bathroom.

In Paris, the days were also like a whirlwind. The Tennesseans rode up the Eiffel Tower, saw the Mona Lisa, and took a riverboat ride with a bunch of other folks that were mostly foreigners. One night, after a few drinks of cognac and American Coca-Cola in the City of Lights, Joey and Peggy called a particular beach boy on Marco Island, USA. “We love Paris!” They declared. “France is so nice, they even have a city called Nice, but we are having a hard time finding good food. At once fancy restaurant, we couldn’t eat supper because they was serving some kind of Italian spiders and little square pieces of something they was calling duck pate, but to tell the truth, in both England and France, every Sunday at the old churches was the best part because everyone made us feel right at home.”