The Fabricator
He's talkin' about shaft
The owner of the famous Music City Sequin Mine is upset over all the negative publicity his business has been getting since comedian/football announcer Dennis Miller mentioned it last week.
In the midst of Monday Night Football’s broadcast of the Titans’ preseason blowout of the St. Louis Rams, Miller noted he’d taken in some of the sights of Nashville and mentioned a tour of the sequin mine, including the Porter Wagoner shaft. Virgil C. Riley Jr., who took over the operation of the legendary mine in 1973 after the death of his father, Virgil C. “Pete” Riley, said that he doesn’t understand why so many Nashvillians were offended at Miller’s remarks.
“Dennis couldn’t have been nicer when he was out here,” Riley said. “He asked questions, like most tourists do, and he really seemed impressed by the mine. He asked if he could see the shaft named for Porter, and I said sure.”
But notables such as Brad Schmitt, callers to sports talk radio shows, and writers of letters to the editor of The Tennessean detected some slight in Miller’s description of the mine, which has been in operation just north of Leiper’s Fork in Williamson County since 1943.
“All the greats have worn our sequins,” Riley said with pride. “Porter, Hank Snow, Jack Greene, Teddy and Doyle [Wilburn], Hank Junior, and Hank Senior.” Standing in one of the narrow shafts, with the glitter of the embedded multicolored sequins reflecting the headlamps of the miners, Riley shakes his head at all the fuss a couple of sentences on national TV can cause. “I feel like Dennis Miller was very appreciative of our mine and our tradition,” he said. “I don’t know why so many of our local people aren’t as appreciative.”
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