I am at the age where Christmas holds no excitement for me but I am glad to have the holidays surrounding it. (only now am I really paying attention to all the Christmas lights and Christmas trees.) All is quite and I am purposefully treating myself to little things I don't do throughout the year like reading fiction in the middle of the day, baking cookies or riding my bike to no particular place. And I am loving the weather. It was so windy last night; we took a bike ride in the moon light.
Today after attending a very emotional and passionate sermon at the Fifteenth Ave North Baptist Church by the Rev. Buchanan, I drove around North Nashville and Germantown area and explored the way people had decorated for Christmas as well as how the neighborhood is living. Couches and chairs at storefronts, basketball goals rolled out to the street, chairs place out in the driveways, ribbon woven thru the picket fences, back alleyways opening out onto the streets - things I don't see in my neighborhood. I love this area. So much of North Nashville, up and down Buchanan, DB Todd, Herman St, Jefferson St is unchanged since the 70's or even earlier. So to me it is wonderfully unique and exciting. I saw St. Vincent de Paul for the first time. Being Catholic I heard of St. Vincent de Paul all my life. We collected money for St. Vincent at my parish. It was sweet small church with a sweet, small school beside it. Nuns ran the school from 1934 to 1973. It is the only Catholic school dedicated to educating the African American children in Nashville or the state. I will have to revisit to get my fact straight.
In the back parking lot, behind the school and church were basketball goals and the baskets had chains instead of nylon rope. I hadn't seen this in years. It is those simple things I see in North Nashville that are nostalgic to me. Rough or not the neighborhood has a community, small town feel that I miss or long for in my life. Living in the whitewash, generic, conservative area of town can be uninspiring. It just seemed as if I had driven into a new city.
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