We decide on a whim to make a pit stop in Chattanooga on the way to Nashville. Home to the famous choo-choo and gobs of public art, the city is scrubbed clean. We score a parking meter in the heart of downtown—with 1hr. 45 minutes already on it!—and meander in the arts district along the water, admiring a $1,000 drum made of extra special redwood. “I’ll be rich in two years,” George tells the saleslady at the gallery. “Maybe then.”
Where are the homeless people? As an alternative to panhandling, Chattanooga uses “the art of change” begging meters. Donations are directed to charities, and tourists are spared all kinds of unpleasantness. We regret that we have no change to spare, since we’re spending it all on gas and Dick Cheney’s war, and return to the car to find an $11 parking ticket. Seems the meters in Chattanooga go right to left (in some twisted tribute to Hebrew) instead of left to right. We come up an hour short. We decide the karma in Chattanooga is broken, and plow onward to the town that gave birth to all those country stars we can’t stand.
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