Old Enough To Get There But Too Young To Get Inside

It all started with Dolly. In 2016, my family took a trip to Gatlinburg. My whole family...mom, dad, sisters, aunt, uncles, cousins, grandparents, everyone. We stayed in one of the mansion-size cabins associated with Dollywood and spent several days in the park (in addition to getting lost trying to find our white water rafting dock and arguing with my mother about buying a pair of real boots because my feet had finally stopped growing). It was a great trip. It was also then that my youngest sister, Erin, began her obsession with Dolly Parton.

We had always been country music fans. My mom would play 92.5 XTU on the radio when she was driving me to dance class as a kid, so some of my favorite songs in middle school were by Eric Church, Zac Brown Band, and Tim McGraw. Erin didn't take interest until she was older; right around this trip to Dollywood. When she was in high school, Erin qualified to participate in a science competition through school that took her team to the Gaylord Convention Center in Nashville. During the planning and permission slips phase, she said to our mom, "You're coming with me, right??"

"...I hadn't planned to? You're in high school, don't you want to spend the trip with your friends?" our mom replied

Erin looked dejected, the epitome of "mommy's baby princess pout" on her face. "But you always come to everything!"

Very quickly, my mom was then taking a trip to Nashville. This worked out incredibly well for Erin as the other competitors from her school were much more interested in sitting by the pool reading than actually experiencing Nashville. With my mom there, Erin had an out. My mom met her at the convention center several days throughout the week and they took the shuttle to Broadway to go adventuring. This was where Erin discovered a band called Lazer & Levi playing at one of the restaurants during the lunch rush. She followed them on Instagram, tagged them in her story, and was over the moon when they followed her back. It was all she talked about when she came home from her trip.

The following year, I had a dance competition in Nashville that turned into a girls' trip when my mom and Erin decided to come with me. Erin, now a high school graduate, was beyond excited to see Lazer & Levi play again, take line dancing lessons at the Wild Horse Saloon, and have the whole Broadway experience all over again.

The trouble with being a recent high school graduate in a town like Nashville is that you're not 21. Which means your Cinderella hour is much earlier than the rest of the tourists and birthday parties and bachelorettes stumbling up and down the street from bar to bar. We learned very quickly that wherever we went to dinner would end up being "the" spot for the night; if we left, we'd never get in anywhere else with the underage member of our party.

On our last night in town, we spent the afternoon into the evening hopping from place to place, enjoying the music and practicing our new line dancing skills (or at least what we could remember from the lessons). What we didn't realize was that each bar has its own rules about when underage guests are no longer allowed in. Some cut them off at 9, some at 8, some as early as 6:00. After leaving one place around 5:30, we had no luck finding another.

The fun thing about Nashville's bar setup is that nearly all of them have huge windows that they keep open during the summer. All up and down the street you can hear music from the sidewalk. We made the best of it and had our own little dance parties outside the windows of a few places, including Whiskey River Saloon. It was nearly 9 pm, and this ended up being our last stop for the night. This was where a "tired but didn't want to show it" Erin leaned through the window as the band played 9 to 5.

Though the band was playing Dolly, my musical nerd self thought immediately of Eli Young Band's Even If It Breaks Your Heart:

"Downtown is where I used to wander

Old enough to get there but too young to get inside

So I would stand out on the sidewalk

Listen to the music every Friday night"

...even though it was Thursday. It was a perfect fit, and a perfect photo of Erin's love of the Broadway scene even at an age too young to fully participate. Nashville has become an annual trip for us, spending time enjoying the music and dancing and food and overall atmosphere of the town. And in just a few years, Erin will be screaming along with Jolene with a drink in her hand right along with the rest of us.