Elvis must have ate them...
Trip Start
Jul 01, 2004
1
65
68
Trip End
Ongoing
Memphis,
Tennessee,
United States
Saturday, November 10, 2007
Instead of taking the train from Jackson back home I rode with Jen to Memphis. She was heading for St. Louis for a workshop. I got to see a little bit more of the state but not so much that I got any more idea of what Mississippi was all about. On the train I didn't get up until Greenwood, which Jen says is in the Delta?, so that was the only other town I even got to see a glimpse of. It seemed very working class and interesting - a place where maybe the big chain stores haven't hit yet.
So Jen dops me off at the Memphis station at 3:30 and my train doesn't pull out until after 10pm. Not a problem, I thought, because there would be MUCH more to do in Memphis than 8 hours in Jackson... At the station there is no one in site. I walk around this big cavernous space and call hello every once in a while. Very weird. Finally I run out and catch a guy who's driving a golf cart around and he turns out to be the Amtrak worker - thank gawd because I couldn't walk around Memphis for 7 hours rolling my suitcase behind me.
The Civil Rights Museum is luckily right across the street and Mondays are free from 3:30to 5:30 so I was good to go. I unfortunately had no idea how large it was and spent all my time reading the plaques from the 1800's that I had to nearly run through the rest of it. The museum got really interesting starting in the 50's when they brought out the AV material and had a real bus in there etc. The footage they played was astonishing, heartbreaking and inspiring.
Lorraine Motel
Black kids sitting at a lunch counter totally surrounded by horrible white guys pouring flour on their heads and such things. Lots of demos and sit ins. There was only two windows of Black Panther stuff but you could spend an hour there alone, combing over every little artifact. The museum is built around the Lorraine Motel where MLK was shot and killed. They put glass on one side of the wall so you could look into the rooms where he spent his last days. They reconstructed what it looked like. I'm not too sure what that part was suppose to communicate or mean, but it was sort of interesting to put yourself there back in time. Dude who's band shall not be named told that there was a woman who protested and lived basically across the street from the musuem. She and other low income livers were kicked out of their places in order to put up the musuem. She was protesting this as well as the idea that the place is a museum - a fragment in time. She was trying to get it turned into a grassroots civil rights center - because the fight continues right!? This was a golden nugget of information - it proves once again that things aren't always how they appear and that even seemingly black and white things (no pun intended) sometimes aren't that way.
Leaving the musuem I started for the downtown, touristy, Beale district. As I walked along I was totally baffled at where everyone was. Was Memphis not a big city? Was there something going on in different part of the city? Where WAS everyone? When I got to Beale street i was even more shocked at the fact that although there were people milling about it just wasn't hopping like one would imagine.
Civil Rights Museum
It was just so weird. I decided to check out the "hipster" area, more midtown and since I had no idea how to use the transit and heard it sucked I tried to hail a cab. TRIED is the key word here. I just couldn't SEE any! I was in the touristy section of downtown and there were no cabs! Finally I got one and it ended up costing $15 to get to my area.
Hipsterville was where the record store was, the pizza joint was and the cafe Jen and I were suppose to eat at when we came into town but we were really late so she had to drive off (I could have also seen the Stax museum and the "pink house" owned by the Piggly Wiggly guy but they closed at FOUR pm!) There wasn't anyone in the pizza place or the record store. The record store was cool and I felt comfortable there. There wasn't anyone in the cafe as well but I had a damn good tofu sandwich and Mexican chocolate cake at the counter. While I was inside it rained hard. I left to see where I could find some PEOPLE. I walked briefly in this area - cooper and yonge - and STILL couldn't find anyone. Where the hell is everyone in Memphis!?
Dude tells me that Memphis is indeed a sucky place and that downtown is dead and Memphis is sprawling. Sounds just like a ton of other US towns I've been like Rochester, Jackson, Detroit. It's hard for me to believe. It's the town of Elvis and Blues and Rock n Roll. But apparently in November people aren't anywhere but the suburbs.
I got a cab back downtown and hang out there for a while before catching my train. My roommette sucked somewhat as the heat didn't really work that well and the top bunk was broken so I couldn't put my bag up there. But it was still more comfy than the damn seats. I lost my glasses in the bedding and the attendant found them for me. I felt like such a dweeb.
