TOOTSIE'S AFTER MIDNIGHT

      It was after midnight in Nashville town when I strolled down 4th Avenue to Broadway. Curiosity and a gentle rain pulled me into Tootsie's Orchid Lounge.

      A guy  in a big black hat played to a crowd of one, Tootsie.

      It was an old Hank Williams tune that he never released and I can understand why. It wasn’t his best, maybe his worst. His boy, Junior, did record it.

      "There’s a tear in my beer

      ’Cause I’m crying for you, dear

      You are on my lonely mind.”

      It seemed a rather lonely place mid-week -- except, of course,  for Tootsie Bess, with her plain dress and modest bee-hive hair-do at the end of the long bar.

      She was perched on a stool reading a newspaper, the Nashville Banner. She wasn’t paying much attention to the singer in the cowboy hat as he packed up to leave.

      She had seen real stars come through her saloon.

      Walls were covered floor to ceiling with signed album covers, yellowing news stories and all sorts of notes paying homage to the bar and the lady who was its queen. One day,  I'd write a story about Tootsie's that would go on that hallowed wall, although at the time I had no premonition or even wish.

      I just wanted a cold, long-neck beer after a night shift of writing hum-drum stories. I had been inclined earlier to head home. I had filed my last radio report at 12:30. It had also been a slow night at the bureau, and I was restless, not at all tired. 

      Tootsie’s was an afterthought a few blocks away.

      It was the summer of ’72, as I recall -- the start of my fascinating couple of years writing a music column for a news service. It was  600 words of pulp about country clod-kickers such as Roy Acuff, Tom T. Hall, and Tex Ritter, and interviews with divas like Dolly Parton, who then was a year younger than I and still was teamed with Porter Waggoner.

      I was smitten by Dolly's vanilla ice cream beauty,. I thought she was so country-girl nice. She reminded me of my cousins in rural North Mississippi. I could almost smell fried okra and collard greens in her perfume.

      Tootsie motioned to join her at the bar. After all, I was her only customer. I knew a little bit about her, having read “The Nashville Sound” by Paul Hemphill. I knew she kept a wicked hat pin to threaten rowdy patrons.

      Then she walked me over to a booth in the corner, saying, “It was right here that Roger Miller wrote ‘Dang Me,’ " and she finished the line with a lilt,  "'Gotta get a rope and hang me.”'

      Tootsie had eye-opening vignettes of many Grand Ole Opry stars, with nary a word of gossip.

      Next door to Tootsie’s was Ryman Auditorium, home of the Grand Ole Opry for many years. And her back door opened up to an alley next to what has often been called “the Mother Church of Country Music”.

      In addition to Roger Miller, early customers at Tootsie's included such stars as Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Kris Kristofferson, and Waylon Jennings to name a few. Nelson supposedly received his first songwriting gig there .

      In a lengthy career taking me around the world,  I've made it back to Nashville occasionally, primarily to shoot commercials with my friend , John Sprague, a former Bob Hope USO stage manager.

      Each time I'd go to Tootsie’s, have a beer or three, and search the wall for the story I'd written about the famous lady and bar so many years earlier. I usually found it,  although it always took a while.

       Then, one day I saw that my article was gone.

       So was Tootsie.  

      Tootsie’s had fallen on hard times in 1974, when the Opry moved out to the Opryland Hotel complex and theme park on the edge of the city,

      By the time Tootsie died in 1978,  I had a new career -- as press secretary to Robert Byrd, a U. S. senator from West Virginia. But there was no escaping Nashville. 

      Byrd was a country fiddler and was asked to perform at the new Opry. I've joked that I was a roadie for the Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate, which wasn’t far off. I enjoyed my lowly status to no end.

      Today, I hear Tootsie’s has been reborn and it's become a happening place many nights. But I no longer have a desire to go there. 

      Once you've experienced a rhinestone, you don’t get excited about a plain old rock, even a colorful one.

J. Michael Willard is a novelist, painter, songwriter and essayist.