Hey Dave, what was Roy Acuff like? The story about Dolly Parton is awfulsome, but the fact that Acuff pulled you off the line to have lunch with you sounds way cool... can you elaborate?
Here's the deal.
I worked the hot food line at the employee's cafeteria at Opryland. Most of the people who worked in the park were teens-early 20s, and most of them went through the grill line, but the cafeteria maintained a hot food line at the request of park management. I got to be the "chef" one day a week when the old man Walter took his day off; I can't tell you how many stuffed peppers I made that summer.
So, Mr Acuff did a lot of the park's daytime shows. At 10, noon, 2, and 4, every day but Friday and Saturday, a member of the Opry, usually an oldtimer like Mr Acuff or Ernest Tubb, or Porter Waggoner would put on a mini-show. These shows were usually 6-8 songs, and lasted about half an hour.
Anyway, for whatever reason, he comes in one day, points to a few items he wants, then says something about how one of his grandkids was supposed to join him for lunch but something had come up. He wanted to know if I wanted to join him. My boss was behind me, and he said it was fine. Acuff said something like "he's still on the clock, though, he's tending to my needs." And basically, he just talked. He was very nice, very funny, and the thing I loved about getting to know him was that he seemed to have a real respect for everyone who spoke to him.
So that started it. Once or twice a week he would come through and drag me over to a table with him. He lived in a house on the other side of the river that was near the neighborhood where my dad grew up, and mostly he told stories, things that happened to him as a boy, current stuff that was happening in his neighborhood, almost all mundane stuff, really. He thought it was funny that I didn't like country music or Richard Nixon, but I was still a "decent enough boy." (This was early in the summer of Nixon's resignation, as I recall.) I was a quiet kid, and he would work to sort of drag stuff out of me. He loved my long story about my grandfather's exploits and death. I told him that one at least three times. The only specific stories I remember him talking about was how no one took him seriously when he ran for governor (he lost), and he talked about what a pain it was to get prepared for TV shows (lighting snafus, makeup, stuff like that) when he really just wanted to get on out there and get his songs "over with". I did try to ask him once about Hank Williams (who my dad loved), but he wouldn't talk about him outside of saying something like "so sad".
He had hatched this plan; he knew that I played guitar, and thought it would be funny if we stood up during lunch one day and did an impromptu song. He said that if I would learn Great Speckled Bird, we could do it, but he was afraid to do it cold without hearing me play it first, and it just never worked out.
Nice guy, though. A couple of times he came in with Minnie Pearl (she would always say "Call me Sarah".) Del Reeves joined us one day (an interesting guy who could not remember the names of all of his kids,) and the most surreal of them all, he came in one day with local wrestling legend Tojo Yamamoto, who I hated and feared as a small child, but who turned out to be downright urbane. They were friends because they lived on the same block.
