In Mempis
Trip Start
Mar 04, 2009
1
3
5
Trip End
Mar 18, 2009
West Memphis,
Arkansas,
United States
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
I go into Memphis, and encounter the same difficulties navigating a strange town's streets that everyone does everywhere. I finally find Travis' apartment, pick him up, and we're off to Central BBQ. Now a whole bunch of people have given me their personal recommendations of places to go for the best pork ribs in town. I chose Central for our first taste for two reasons. One, it was not far from Travis' apartment, and the most compellingg was that our friend Helen, who grew up in Memphis, gave it a 5 star rating. We found the place, and it is very unassuming in appearance. I had trouble figuring out which door to use to get in, but we made it inside. As we were starring at the menu board above the counter, the owner greeted us by saying "Not from around here are y'all?". We got into a conversation with the guy. I told him I was from San Antonio, and Travis said that he was going to Memphis University. Well, the owner said that he had visited San Antonio, and had eaten at some BBQ places there, two of which he said he enjoyed. He said we had to have the ribs for our first visit, and comped us two bags of pork rinds that they make. The dry ribs were simply the best I've had, and Travis agreed and started trying to figure out if Central was within walking distance of his apartment.
I picked up Travis on Saturday and we returned to Central for lunch. We had pulled pork sandwiches. Yummy! We then went to get a uhaul trailer so we could load up the stuff I had brought for him. We were also going to be using the trailer to go to Bloomington, IN on Sunday to empty out our youngest daughter's storage space. The weather report for Sunday was severe thunderstorms and hail in Memphis, and severe storms round Bloomington. I spent Saturday night fretting about what hail would do to our beautiful trailer, and had visions of the pock marks I'd find on it when we got back on Monday. There were also dark thoughts of loading and unloading the trailer in the rain. I am a worry wart.
Travis and I left for Oolitic, yes that's a name of a village in Indiana, early Sunday. No rain. I decided to use the interstates for as long as I could in case we did find the promised storms. We took the same route My Precious and I had taken to visit Melissa while she was still in Bloomington. I pointed out the sites to Travis as we drove, like a welll weathered traveler always does. The first true high-light of the trip was a stop at Boomland - somewhere near Sikeston, MO. Boomland sells fireworks all year long. They also sell all the curios a person never wanted to see, I'm talking really gaudy stuff - fiber optic stuff and tons of the rest. Precious and I had spent some time there going up and down the aisles saying "Oh, my; oh my ... " when we camped for a night nextt door.
This rv park next to Boomland is even worse than the one in Crockett. It is carved out of crop land, has gravel pads, and all full time campers who had been there for a long, long time. The park is unstaffed and relies on the honor system for overnight campers to pay for their space by dropping the payment into a slot [ like you find in some parking lots]. When Travis & I walked overthere I saw a trailer parked in the same spot it had been in 4 years earlier. Precious doubts this recollection, but I know it was the same one. When first there I had struck up a conversation with the man of the trailer who was in his middle sixties, or so. He and his wife had owned a house in Sikeston, and he had been considering selling the house for a while, but had not listed it. He said that one day this guy drove up, and asked if he wanted to sell, and he did. Now this was a spur of the momment thing, and they hadn't made any plans for what they would do when and if they sold their house. He went and bought this trailer, and had it moved to this rv park. Now neither of them had ever spent one night in a trailer in their lives. He didn't even own a truck large enough to tow it. So there they sat, and he said that his wife was none that taken with trailer life. The way he was talking led me to believe was not a part of the decision tree that led to this change of life. Ok, back to the present. I'm telling this story to Travis when we get to the park, and there in the same spot is this trailer, just as I had remembered. The only thing different was that there was now a diesel truck parked there as well. Now I know that I don't have the total recall the My Precious does, but with that man's tale it would be hard to forget.
We kept driving, and the sky started looking black in the distance ahead of us. Just before we turned East for Indiana, the skies opened, the wind gusted, and it just poured so traffic slowed to 40 mph. As it turned out we were in the south east side of the storm, and so as we headed East we were able to drive out of the storm in a short disstance. We made our way into Indiana with rainless skies, and strangly named towns. I think Indiana takes first place for towns with strange names. There's Santa Claus, Affordable, Oolitic, Bean Blossom, and, my favorite, French Lick [hometown of Larry Bird]. We turned North onto US Hwy 237. I mention this only because I'm all to familiar with this State's smaller highways and they are no fun to drive on, even without a trailer in tow. Well, this highway was just a step above the state highways. The speed limits were 55, 45, and 35 to 25 through a myriad of towns. It took almost two hours to travel a bit over 60 miles. The storage space was located in Oolitic, a subburb of Bradford. We found Bradford with Travis' navigation, and by some miracle he also got us to Ooliticc and the storage space. An 8 hour trip, and now the work begins.
The storage space was only 5' x 10'. According to My Precious, and daughterr Sweet Melissa, it contained a few pieces of furniture and a couple of boxes of books and stuff. Only Travis, with his massive vocabulary, could adequately describe just what an understatement this was. One major omission was just how high the boxes were packed. Not to mention the overpacking of books into a box!! Travis assured me that many of the book boxes weighed well over 50#; I take his assurance because I could not lift them. Then there were the miscellaneous boxes with just stuff in them - Travis has some very special adjectives for these. The chest of drawers filled with clothes, boxes with children's books, and the box of halloween decorations. I had rented a uhaul that was 6'x12', and we filled it up! Not the description of mass that had been imparted to either of us. I can't leave out the rock, the brick, or the bags of dried clay. But we got it done.
We went to the hotel, checked in, and Travis treated me to supper. When we got back to the hotel our watches said that it was 7:00, but the clock in the room reminded us that we were now in a new time zone so it was 8:00. After an hour we went to sleep. We got up at 6AM, had breakfst, and reversed our route back to Memphis. As we werre entering Travis suggested we stop at my trailer to unload as many boxes as the trailer and the Excursion could take. Travis and I had made the trip with the thought that he was to take the furniture, and I would take the "few" boxes back to Texas. Remember the part about the weight of the boxes, and how many there were. Weight, and the distribution of weight, is a critical element of towing - much like a load that a boat can hold. After talking this over with Travis, he agreed to take a great deal more than he had planned to. As we neared the trailer I again resumed my fretting about what condition I would find my trailer in. Not a drop had fallen on us on the return trip, and storms had been predicted. We found the trailer in tact and unblemished. Sigh, sigh, sigh. We had to unload almost all of the uhaul to get as many of the boxes into the trailer and the back of the Excursion as I thought I could safely haul. We reloaded the trailer, and off to his apartment. We unloaded the remainder into his apartment, and many emotions were aired as Travis' apartment filled up with Melissa's stuff. ]I have to give him credit, Travis took everything in when he didn't have to. Not to mention that he did all of the heavy lifting.
I also have to temper this tirade of feelings with a little sympathy for Melissa. When Melissa left Bloomington she was moving to China [she wasn't about to let her baby brother go to China and have all of the fun - but that's another story] and she obviously couldn't take everything with her. She had to sort through her worldly goods, that represented her whole life, and decide what to take with her to China, what else she could fit into a rental car to come to San Antonio, and what had to be tossed. It must have been a very emotional time making those decisions. Still, those boxes weighed a damn ton.
Now for a day of rest, and then I'm a tourist again.
