Booked Up

A few years after my Knoxville book association experience, I travelled to Nashville, Tennessee to sit in a publishers booth at the Opryland Hotel.  It had rained profusely the week before and half of the parking lot was under water when I arrived.  At check in, I was issued a name badge and given a map that was intended to guide me over a checkerboard of catwalks to the booksellers area.

I pointed out the obvious: "It looks like I'm taking the long way around."

"Yes," the lady at the registration table informed me, "but you can't get there from here.  That part of the hotel is under water."

I see.  So instead of hellish heat I would now be contending with flood waters.

By the time I made it to the publishers booth (along with my box of books) I had lost all appetite for walking around the hotel or riding in the log flume boat that scouted guests around the lobby.  I just wanted to sign at get out.  Oh, if only there were people.

The fellow at the publisher's booth explained the dilemma.  "Slim crowd this year," he said.  "Too much rain.  People don't want to contend with the water.  You brought books to sign?"

I sat down at the booth and chewed the fat with this bad toupee for four hours while all of three booksellers, an agent, and one little old lady who kept asking, "Now, who are you again?" toured the premises in search of free books. 

In lieu of carting my books back home, I accepted a total loss and left the lot at the publisher's booth.  I did spend the night at the Opryland hotel, but the only channel I could pick up on the TV featured a looping retrospective on Conway Twitty and I ended up back down in the lobby near midnight walking around in a rented bathrobe.  I should have brought my toy boat and taken a bath.  No one would have noticed.