Morning. I went down to the lobby and ordered a coffee. I was carrying my banjo. Nobody even looked twice at me.

“Room for cream?” the guy said.

“No, thank you.”

I waited for him to stare at my banjo and ask what was in the case. Everyone asks.

But not in Nashville. Banjos here are superfluous. In fact, it’s more unusual NOT to be carrying a banjo in Nash-Vegas.

But before I left, he smiled and said, “Break a leg, man.”

I played banjo on the 650 WSM AM morning show. Bill Cody interviewed me and did his best to make me sound interesting and smart. After a lifetime in radio, Bill Cody could make a fire plug seem interesting and smart. Which is exactly what he did this morning.

Then I left the studio and met an older woman from Bowling Green, Kentucky, who has attended well over 500 Grand Ole Opry performances. Elaine Sledge. Tonight she’ll be bringing her sister to see me. We got our picture made together. She told me to break a leg.

Then, I went back to the hotel. I had a whole day to kill. So I played my fiddle for several hours until someone knocked on the door and interrupted. It was a veterinary doctor with a medic bag.

“Hello,” he said, “we just received a call about a dying animal in this room?”

So I played banjo instead.

Then it was almost time for soundcheck.

I took a shower and kept thinking to myself how surreal this all is. Me, an ordinary fire plug, playing the Opry.

I put on my suit. My lucky red socks. Socks which have not been laundered in over 20 years and smell like it. My wife won’t come within 200 feet of them.

I picked up my guitar case. I walked out the door.

“Break a leg,” the hotel clerk said.

“Yours or mine?”

She laughed uncomfortably.

I arrived at the Grand Ole Opry backstage and went to my dressing room. It was fancy. They tell me Dolly Parton used to change clothes in this room. My cups runneth over.

I had a beer. I looked at myself in the mirror. “What am I doing here?” I said to myself.

The guy in the mirror didn’t answer.

Roy Acuff. Minnie Pearl. Bill Monroe. Vince Gill. Carrie Underwood. Garth Brooks. They all changed clothes in this room. Not all at the same time, of course.

Then, a knock at the door.

The stage manager said “We’re ready for you.”

I strapped my guitar. My wife fixed my collar. I was walking down the corridor. Ricky Skaggs’ band wished me good luck.

“Do you KNOW who that was?” my wife said.

“Sweetie,” I said. “Right now I can’t even remember my own name.”

As it happens I didn’t have to remember my name. The announcer said my name for me. The audience gave polite applause.

The audience didn’t know this, but they weren’t applauding me. Not really.

They were applauding a boy. Not a man.

They were applauding the boy’s grandfather, who played fiddle; they were applauding the boy’s grandmother, who buck danced; they applauded the kid’s single mother who raised him without much money; they were clapping for that boy’s father, who ended his own life at the same age I am now.

They were clapping for a kid who grew up fatherless and poor, on the wrong side of town, without much future. The kid who listened to WSM 650 AM most Saturday nights. The kid who still sees himself as a cussed fool.

“Get out there,” said my wife, ushering me toward The Circle. “And go break every leg you got.”