Natchez Trace Parkway, beside which Tom Hendrix lives, runs from Nashville to Natchez, a distance of over 400 miles.  Its a single carriageway road which winds through mostly forested areas with a 50 mph speed limit.   On day one - Nashville to Florence (which I am increasingly realising is a rather nice city) - I saw wild turkey and deer beside the road.  And on one occasion deer on the road, panicking, and giving my tummy a flutter.  Fortunately they saw sense and ran away from me.  I met someone last night who hit some last year when a bunch of slightly stupider deer ran at him.  He was only doing 35 mph having spotted a bunch ahead.  Then, suddenly, a different bunch leapt from the bushes in a kamikase attack. Death toll was 2 deer; one Harley Davidson.

At a couple of points I travelled past patches of devastated trees.  They had been snapped off at between 10 and 30 foot from the ground.  I can only imagine this was the work of the tornadoes Tom Hendrix had said come out of the west.  I think it an appropriate use of the word American has now completely devalued: awesome.  The power neccessary to create such havoc is equivalent to some of the most sophisticated devices human beings have created.

Before leaving Florence I did find the WC Handy Museum. At $2 good value.  He had a hard time for several years before fame and fortune, not an uncommon story.  A skilled arranger, formally trained, some of his manuscripts, handwritten, are there.  Unable to bottom who first called those accidentals which characterise blues, 'blue'.  The Administrator at the museum just said they're the blue notes, the black ones on a piano; which  think is not quite strictly true; but I wander a little from expertise of knowledge so I better say no more.  When I have nothing better to do I may google it.  What the Administrator did tell me was that a room in the museum is devoted to Black History studies.  All very laudable, but I noticed in the main museum room a newspaper article from the 50's where he basically said, 'stop whingeing black folk and get on with it, America is wonderful.  I made it, so can you.'  I think this qualifies a straightahead Uncle Tom collaboration.  Hope I have the phrase right.  What in those heady days of politically correct nonsense of the 1980's used to be called a coconut - black on the outside and white in the middle. 

In Nashville, after the Bearfoot concert, I visited an exhibition in the library, of paintings done this and last year, commemorating the 'Freedom Riders'.  Those civil rights activists in the 60's who deliberately flouted segregation laws in the south and got clouted, and arrested, and harrassed for their pains.  Here is WC, a whole decade earlier, telling Black America, essentially, that there is no problem.  Oh how seductive it is to be sucked in to the ways of your oppressors.  You can say what you like about Jo Stalin but he knew how to deal with collaborators.  After World War 2 Soviet troops who'd had the misfortune to be captured as POW's tended to get sent to Siberia; just because they'd been captured. 

I see Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has been laying it on the line to the USA; as far as I can tell perfectly reasonably.  Just such a shame he goes and spoils it all by hanging people from cranes in public squares for not toeing the line.  Uncle Jo had much the same problem in the end.

The Natchez Trace Parkway is a migratory route for buffalo which Indian tribes also followed, later the White man used it too; it can be traced back over 3000 years. (source Tom Hendrix).  I soon discovered it to be almost entirely empty of traffic.  Working on the logic that if very few cars  and motorbikes were using it then the cops probably wouldn't be wasting valuable police time harrassing motorists; I began to ignore the speed limit.   When I resumed on Thursday I did much the same. 

I had something like 5 hours, in total, of completely unrestrained driving down one of the most beautiful roads in America.  Eventually the National Parks Police passed me going the other way.  They have quite sophisticated technology these days that can read your speed, even if they are going in the opposite direction.  83? Is that right?  Yes sir, and I think you were slowing down at the time (I was).  The guys I met later that evening, who told me the deer story, said I was actually quite lucky.  That kind of speed is usually taken as reckless driving and subject to more severe penalties than the $225 I incurred. Probably down to being a tourist and impeccably polite. 

Worth every cent.  As Michael Winner is alleged to have said," I love London, you can drive in the Bus Lanes and it only costs you £60."  But I won't do it again.