Our three-state odyssey concluded just before midnight on Sunday in the southern cosmopolitan country-fried city of Nashville, Tennessee. We stopped for gas in Jackson, and for fried catfish in Little Rock. If we imagine Arkansas as a sandwich, this shape is cut into two near perfect triangles by Highway 30: a long road with tall straight trees receding infinitely on each side. I met a man at a gas pump somewhere in all those trees; he introduced himself as an abstract painter. Canvas, he said, in a one sentence qualifier. He was leaning on his truck as I looked over at him, me with a dirty oil-covered sock in one hand, and in the other the ridiculous drooping saber of my Hyundai’s dipstick. He was trying to get together some funds to move to Austin. He wrote down his website on the back of a receipt. Aside from watching the line cooks hustle from my seat at the bar in a seafood joint, it was the only person I saw in the state. At any given moment, the most exciting thing happening in Arkansas could be a forest fire or a rerun.

Memphis after sundown, from the west via the de Soto bridge. The city is a jumble of lights and curved roads, edged by the darkness of the massive Mississippi river. It was nearly midnight when we explored the neighborhoods of Craftsman homes near Vanderbilt University, reading aloud the street names and numbers. A man was burning furniture in his front yard: “Emergency Moving Sale: Help If U Can.” I saw some vintage speakers at the curb but I pressed onward.

My brother Kyle lives in a cluster of newly developed houses on a hill in midtown. I woke up early on the first morning, and the two of us glided on scooters – the preferred vehicle of political canvassing, I found out – down to Centennial Park. It’s home to a famous Parthenon replica, which was built for a city exposition nearly 100 years ago and has weathered many calls for its destruction. The ceilings are intricately painted, and the bronze entrance doors are the largest in the United States, according to a plaque. Their necessity is hinted at by the Pallas Athena inside, which has the distinction of being the “tallest indoor sculpture in the western world.”

Spring was bursting all over the city. The pond behind the Parthenon was ringed with bradford pear trees and bright yellow forsythia.In the afternoon, we waited in line for a lunch at Hattie B’s Hot Chicken. Each basket of chicken comes served on top of two slices of white bread. To a traveler from a city of juiced vegetables and fermented tea, the soul food served as a reminder that you can’t feed just your body. Kyle even arranged for us to eat with the general manager.

Hatch Show Print, the longest-operating letterblock press in the United States (superlative fatigue) was our last stop on Monday. The Hatch brothers got their start pressing promotional posters for traveling circuses and vaudeville performers. They were there for the birth of country music, and their hand-carved block prints of Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Patsy Cline are iconic.

We toured the workshop to see the design team at work. It was walled with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, each shelf bowing from the weight of wooden letterblocks. Our tour guide showed us examples of prints in different production stages, their meticulous labeling and organization, and how damaged or retired blocks are creatively reused in the shop. The mechanical printing equipment surrounding us in the back of the shop was mostly original and totally cool to watch in action.

We took a trip to Jack White’s record store, Third Man Records. It was a playground of vintage electronics and kitsch: taxidermy, coin presses, patterned wallpaper. We returned that night to see Jim Jarmusch’s band Squrl perform. The line started at a large silver door, carved with lightning bolts in an atomic style. The door opened into a long corridor, dimly lit by a giant emblem of the record label.

If Willy Wonka had taken an interest in music production instead of candy, this place would be the factory. A giant elephant head hangs on the wall behind the stage. A mixing room sits high in the room like a crow’s nest, only accessible by a ladder. Seeing Jim Jarmusch perform was rad, but the music was terrible. Jim screwed up a song quite badly and they had to re-do it at the end of the set (it was a live recording.) The restroom was the cleanest I’ve ever seen.

Kyle took me to the local BBQ spots, the local bars, even a Mexican restaurant that defied my expectations with its fresh guacamole and delicious enchiladas. A woman named Peggy Sue helped me find a good pair of jeans at a hip shop that specializes in bespoke denim. We stayed for three nights in East Nashville, at a little house that I found on AirBnB. I spent quiet mornings reading on the front porch as the neighborhood came to life. Wild onions grew in the front yard. It reminded me so much of East Austin, and the little boxcar of a house that I used to live in.

I was thinking big at times during the entire week. Travel does that to me. Wild notions, and my limber mind alighting on old memories. Thursday: a day of rain. We waited out the storm on a cabin porch at Radnor Lake.

Later, more rain. We ran soaking through the sculpture garden until we found shelter under the A-frame of a footpath bridge. Pink and white variegated tulips. A field of buttercups and a cedar lodge, a suspiciously perfect image like a sample couple in a silver frame. Fresh biscuits on a blue and white checkered tablecloth. A folk oil painting of Hank Williams. We ate our fill and we went out drinking. Cocktails at the Patterson House are expertly mixed, served with shards of hand-carved ice and herbs threaded through slices of lemon. It was dark and intimate, with lo-fi hip hop on the overhead. Our barstool neighbors sampled various bitters and liquers in tiny glasses. We continued the festivities the next day, touring a bourbon distillery in the old industrial part of town. The brickwork was exquisite and a water tower looming above the tire factory served as a rusted ornament of a bygone age.

The next day, the power went out. I was seated cross-legged on the floor of Rhino Books, eying title pages for first printings. You okay? the cashier shouted in the darkness. She had to be asking me; it was a quarter after closing time and I had been asked to leave but I was intoxicated with solitude. The place was all narrow aisles of high cluttered shelves with no windows. The city’s tornado siren began to wail. I passed the time taking pictures of the old Gothic school building across the street and listening to the weather on AM radio.

The foodblogs decreed that I was to eat Turkish food that night: Anatolia. Fresh bread, stuffed eggplant, and lambchops with rose jelly. Everything was fabulous. The force of their coffee reminded me of perfect mornings in Greece’s cafes. That was another life: when I stayed up reading all night in a salvaged roadside chair on the patio, beneath Christmas lights.

Great brunch on Saturday morning, and group photos on the grounds of Fisk University. The deserted interior of the Cravath Building held a hidden gem: original mosaics by Harlem Renaissance artist Aaron Douglas. The figures on the walls gazed at stars and microscopes: outer space and inner. One woman held a skull in a twist on the classic Shakespearean pose.

Goodbyes to Kyle, who shepherded us through an amazing, indulgent week and showed us what it means to live the Nashville Way. It was a treat to meet mayoral candidate David Fox, for whose campaign Kyle is working. Looking forward to the election.

We drove for hours, listening to podcasts on the history of barbed wire, on palm trees and Venus fly traps, placebos, and disease. We stopped to stretch our legs in Corsicana, TX. I took Patty’s photograph in front of the original city jail: a modest two story building with an office for the sheriff. A couple parked their car nearby, approached us, and asked if we were geocachers. Such is the age. We walked down a back alley and found a wall covered with bright and diligent vine.

I love the roads and parks of the U.S., the diversity of its landscape. We talked about finding new jobs, new places, a new life. It may sound like two unhappy people passing time but it’s quite the opposite. It feels good to savor, but also to dream. To wish for more is part of being alive.