I picked up Martha and our three kids at the bus station about two weeks after I’d arrived in Nashville and drove them to our new home—a little green trailer house at Dunn’s Trailer Court on the east side of town. There was a used-car lot on one side of Dunn’s and a veteran’s cemetery on the other. About thirty trailers sat on concrete blocks behind a headquarters house with tall stone pillars. There was a pay phone on a post in the middle of the yard. The rent was $25 a week, which was about $10 more than it was worth. Martha went right out and got a job mixing drinks at the Hitching Post. It was on Broadway, across the street from Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge, where I hung out with the other broke pickers who were trying to sell songs. Being the hard worker that she is, Martha quickly became manager of the Hitching Post and began working a second job at the Wagon Wheel. Martha had two jobs and I had none. For eight years she had been going around the country with me and it seemed like every time we took a step forward we fell backwards six feet.
