and back again

Were you paying attention? I skipped April. I'm going to make up for it by posting twice in May. Here's the deal:

Last May I had an autumn oak leaf inked onto my right calf -- a promise to myself to practice the grace of letting go. It's now time to let go of a story I've been writing, and rewriting, and just about mulching back into the ground, for over a decade. I don't think letting go is quite the same as giving up, though--once in a blue moon blogs become books in this network-of-platforms narrative age, right? In any event, the 61,000-word beast of a travel diary that has all but devoured my craft shall now be put to rest, a few segments a month, until a fresher story finds me. Let's hit the road...

 

Only a fool blames his bad vacation on the rain.
Paul Theroux

            When I get home from a trip I seem to have lost something. There used to be light seeping in from under the door, a promising glow of diversion that is now gone. Maybe it's somewhere in the battered suitcase, and when I find it I can fill a closet with all the fairy dust gathered on the trip. But at first coming home is clumsy and unpacking incomprehensible. With pupils stunned by the sudden dimness, it’s hard to recognize a pile of mail on the counter, an empty bowl of cat food on the floor, the fichus withering in the corner. All I can see is the blurring mirage of the remarkable place I was before. The luminous fingerprints I left on menus and hotel door handles; the sweat I left on bar stools and benches and in the sand.

When we tell stories about places we have been, it might be ourselves that we're trying to illuminate. We want to share the stuff we’ve seen, for sure, but we want everyone to see that we were there as well. It's a way to work our flimsy identity cards into sturdier frames.
            On my card it says West Coast. My heart is the Pacific Ocean; my arteries are Interstates 101 and 5. I am freckled with cloud and turbine shadows crawling over grapevine and grain fields, waves that smash frothing into fir-strewn cliffs. I distinguish North from South as the two halves of my life: one in emerald Seattle, an open window, a crisp edge of wing slicing the wind; the other in tawny Los Angeles, surging in electric grids and smoldering out to sea. The furthest tips of my experience are just different wares stored in the same warehouse. Shifts of style or idiom fade into a larger familiarity of the West Coast way people inhabit houses, buy groceries, name their pets, talk to and move past each other on the street. 

I have been in each city desperately missing the other, seeds planted deep and stems tethered between them. But lately I wonder if missing a place isn't just as much about missing a time. In the places we were before, more was ahead and more was possible. We were less mortal. The further away from those places we get, the closer we get to the truth that nearly all light fades. That dark spot down the road makes me sort of sick with fear, and my antidote is to wander, to see and be seen in as many other places as possible first.

Of course every antidote has limits. If fear wants to, it will badly rattle our confidence to board a plane, drive a car, leave the house. I will know such anxiety well by the end of my fourth decade; but when I am 28 years old, we have not been formally introduced. I am breathing easily most days. I live with a man who has disposable income and was seemingly a travel agent in a past life. Much to his dismay, I have not been off the North American continent yet, have not even been east of the Rocky Mountains. My country's miles of history and mythology are whispering often in my ear. I want to go see if all these United States are pretty equivalent, as I believe the pieces of its West Coast are. I want to find out if all our endeavors to form a more perfect union are working, and in this late summer of 2001, I will.

They will not be.

September 1

            We land in Memphis in the late afternoon, losing two hours in the time zone matrix between here and Seattle. Besides watch recalibration, the flight is uneventful, which is good because I don’t like to fly. I’ve never understood how anyone can relax with so much ominous air just hovering beneath them. A plane to me is a flimsy Pringles can laced with a million tangled wires waiting to short. The worst part is ten minutes past take-off, when, having reached altitude, the bottom drops out and the wings teeter crudely. After that any turbulence is cause for concern, any ring of the attendant call button is an alarm. The idea of ever leaving my seat is absurd--I've never been on a long enough flight to require it. 

But because I am more excited than I can remember being about any another trip, heading for Tennessee is the easiest flight of my life. I am buoyed by the prospect of finally being on the streets of an American soul I have sensed but never seen first-hand. The journey means so much to me that, for once, I spend more of it imagining what those streets might show me than what the long free-fall between me and them would feel like.   

The arctic air-conditioning inside Delta B gates is a visceral shock; my skin had expected a wall of wet heat instead. I zip my sweatshirt up to my chin and shove my hands in the pocket. The first moment I register with my eyes is while riding the escalator down to baggage claim. Under a banner that verifies we have reached the Home of the Blues and Birthplace of Rock ‘n’ Roll, beyond the beige corridors and brown tile, one boutique has sucked in all the airport's color and is spewing it back out through open glass doors. The red neon sign says Absolutely Elvis. My left brain knows this is the same as a smoked salmon kiosk at the SeaTac airport or a star-shaped sunglasses store at LAX, but my frozen face still breaks into a big smile. I stumble off the escalator, trotting toward the increasingly loud rockabilly. This is what I came for: Elvis, loud, shiny and alive.

My boyfriend Brian is more composed as he waits in the swarming baggage area. Once I have gotten a nice deep breath of the blue suede merchandise, I turn my back on the novelty store and look around for his closely shaved head. At six feet he's just tall enough to pick out of the crowd, and it helps that his head is so white, too. There are fewer white heads in here than I’ve ever seen in such a large collection of people. You're not supposed to be struck by that, I say to myself. Whatever, it's true and I'm new, my self says back.

The cultural transposition sinks in as we wait for and then wrestle our giant duffle bags off the carousel. By the time we’re heading outside, I am past eager to see more. My legs aren't able to move across the parking lot as fast as my intentions, though. I step as if through thickening syrup, melting in that wet heat I had anticipated but not really prepared for. It's 98 degrees at nearly five o'clock. Brian staggers, straightens, and attempts nonchalance, 'cause you know, he's been here before. It's just a little humid, no big deal. I follow his lead and peel off my irrelevant sweatshirt, wishing I could also get rid of my jeans. The sky is low and overcast; the air heavier than I’ve ever known.

In the rental car office we're reminded that I am not authorized to drive the rental car since I do not possess a personal credit card. Though this is not really news, Brian theatrically huffs while he fills out the paperwork for our carriage across eight states. As usual, I appear to be his dependent, and he appears to be by turns troubled or pleased about that. I just relish being officially relieved of any driving responsibility. I'm comfortable with him doing the hard labor. I’ll bear the nobler obligations: to navigate and record.

            After touring the vast reaches of the Hertz lot, I end up co-piloting a blue van that smells of Windex and McDonalds fries. I fastidiously arrange our cockpit from the contents of my backpack: state maps folded and chronologically ordered in my passenger door pocket; video camera, Kleenex, chap stick, gum and bug-off in the glove box. A hundred CDs in their nylon Case Logic binder come out of my duffle bag and slide under my seat. Then I lean back, roll down the window, and get doused up to my t-shirt sleeve. The low sky had started drizzling while we selected our van, and the one we chose has a reservoir above each window that pours water inside with every turn of the wheel. 

“Shit,” I declare, wiping my arm on the seat. "The rain gutters."

            “No way,” Brian shakes his head in denial, but he knows what’s up. He used to own an SUV by the same manufacturer that did the same thing.

            “Well, it’s not like it’s really going to rain very much…right?”

            “Shit.” He’s still shaking his head. Of course it's going to rain, possibly in buckets, possibly every afternoon of September--this is the southeastern US, and he knows this. We can't abide such a lack of accommodation from our vacation van. But he says we’ll come back and exchange it for another make in the morning, and I agree. We have built too much momentum to delay any longer. I am on a highway in Memphis, as far from home as I’ve ever been, and going farther. A rain-drenched arm is irrelevant tonight.

Out of the commuter loops and into the suburbs, we roll past restaurants and stores I’ve only heard of, repeating themselves so quickly that I see four Waffle Houses and three Piggly Wigglys in twenty minutes. More novelties which aren't. Are other people looking at my Red Apples and Starbucks like this? The very dimensions here are different. The tentatively stormy sky stays right on top of us, but the blocks of this strip mall road we're cruising are miles long, the traffic lights spaced miles apart. The road--six lanes wide and each one seemingly fit for a weaving 18-wheeler--is concrete, not asphalt. It smells more like dirt, and reverberates less as it absorbs the plump rain drops.

Making our way into a neighborhood, I discover that the streets are named for trees: Poplar, Cypress, Sycamore, Persimmon, Oak. Such naming may be a nation-wide practice, but these trees are particular; they accentuate my impression that width trumps height here, and I like it better than the invocations of Cedar and Maple. The houses are surrounded by dark green lawns and nearly every house is made of brick—ramblers and  cottages, all shades of red cinder cake with white frosting. There are lots of people hanging out on front porches. I have not seen much of that in real life; left-coasters live in private. A rosy twilight gathers under the clouds as the streets crisscross around a hill. The hill is topped by a water tower watching over its suburban flock. Orange streetlamps start to hum as we twist through the arboreal blocks; crickets ascend behind the foliage to offer their song. I'm in a Country Time Lemonade commercial.

We arrive at the house where Brian’s grandmother died a few years ago, and where his bachelor uncle still lives. Uncle Don directs us to drop our bags in the blue gingham guest room where pictures of Brian’s cousins and his young parents, his dad in army uniform, pepper the chest of drawers. I rummage through my bag for a long sleeve t-shirt to moderate the muggy air outside/frigid air inside dilemma. Then we stand awkwardly in the den while Uncle Don makes small talk about the rain and The Mariners.

“I got the game on one a those extra ESPN channels, so I can keep up with ya. Bet you’re gonna come back on top of those Orioles tonight...and how about this Suzuki kid? Boy, he's not foolin' around; where’d he come from?”

That’s about all he’s got for us, this slow southern uncle, who has only seen his nephew a dozen times and must know that we are not really here for a family visit. Having the home base was certainly a catalyst for this trip, and Don’s hospitality is sweet; but it’s unsettling to reach nightfall in the house of someone you don’t know very well, where everything seems to have stopped happening a decade ago, where the television sits on the floor in an oak cabinet and the only thing it shows is baseball and Wheel of Fortune, where you can’t see into the backyard through the heavy chintz curtains. My heart skips with a sense of dislocation, feeling far away from anything I can actually touch, picturing how far the invisible wire will have to uncoil to connect my voice to my mom’s over the phone.

            I clear my throat and look over at Brian, tapping his foot. He glances back at me and nods. At Don's next pause I interject, “You know, honey, I’m pretty hungry.”

            “Oh yeah," Don looks down, "I just finished the pot roast and fixins your aunt brought over the other day…” He might be embarrassed, but emotion is difficult to pin down with him; he raises his eyes again quickly. “Okay, y’all go on out. I’ll probly be turned in when ya get back, so I'll say g'night.”

            We head out of the neighborhood the way we came in, stopping at the first gas station in town to buy cigarettes after putting them off all day. We decide that we need their ceremony and familiarity, despite our best intentions not to. We are not famous for our will-power, and we need them now especially because three packs in Memphis are wrapped together for the price of one pack in Seattle. 

            “Okay, these are THE three packs;” Brian asserts, “we start rationing for the length of the trip right here.” The trip is sixteen days long. Three packs, two people. But I don't pursue all the math right now, because it's good to have the best intentions.

            Social smoker—it's a precious concept. I have imagined I could be one for ten years. But when a cigarette is both congratulation for having a good time and condolence for having a bad time, when a cigarette is a reward for not having a cigarette, I am really just a smoker who would smoke all day if it wasn't frowned upon and bad for my hypochondria. Meanwhile Brian is not a smoker at all, but pretends to be, to fit in.

            “Okay, then we need a restaurant where we can sit for awhile and enjoy one.”

            We peer out the van windows, through the sticky raindrops, for a few trips up and down the main drag, looking for an authentic first taste of The South. Evidently the day has stretched too long and we haven't gotten our bearings. We end up at Denny’s. Actually it's a spin-off called Denny’s Diner, with mini-juke boxes on the Formica tables, purple vinyl booth cushions and counter stools, and black and white checkered tile on the floor. But it’s the same all-night menu of generic grand slams and greasy appetizers, and I can’t believe this is the inauguration of a journey that has been largely anticipated for its cuisine. 

            "Are we at Denny's?"

            "No," Brian pulls out the first cigarette and puts the pinched cellophane ball in the ashtray. "It's Denny's Diner, and it's just because we had to get out to anywhere for a minute for the first night. Tomorrow will be the real deal."

 

My life with Brian is built on a mutual delight in traveling and eating. Woven through the foundation is also a caveat that delightful things come easily, and a habit of blaming each other when they don't. When we hooked up barely a year after college, Brian was a salesman whose commissions could whisk me away to lavish resorts and limos waiting at the airport. Before we even lived in the same state, we spent a weekend at the swanky Empress Hotel in Victoria, B.C. and flirted over their famous high tea. So began a long affair with especially quaint or decadent food, hotel beds and bathrooms and lobbies, alleys I’d never been down, air I’d never breathed, proof of so many million crannies of more existence everywhere.

We started on holiday, and in my quarter-life crisis I thought: this could be me; this could be love. I moved from California to Washington in pursuit. I went to grad school in a sleepy town and he came with me, forfeiting his commissions, making the holiday harder to maintain. We kept a steady stream of social noise running through our house, and when it got quiet we looked forward to leaving it, especially on road trips—where we could go as far as we wanted and measure our freedom in miles from ordinary. We cherished the highlighted lines and worn creases of the map, the search for regional, in lieu of personal, authenticity.

So far in our life together, we had rented cars to make our escape in Acapulco and Alaska; we had driven through every national park in the western US and slept in the back of that leaky SUV a lot, surrounded by strata of rock, sand dunes, big sky and redwoods, accumulating sand in the floor mats, pausing at ominous warning signs in desert parking lots. But every vacation could only go so far. Now grad school was over, people were getting a life, and the new house in the city got quiet too often. In the quiet I had begun to panic sometimes at the sound of my fluttery heartbeat, the whine of my fleeting potential; I needed a relatively grand escape this time.

I looked toward Uncle Don's house and my dreams of Graceland. Never mind Washington D.C. or Plymouth Rock--to me, Elvis Presley was America’s skin; and the willows, white columns and magic spells of The Delta were its bones and muscles. The secrets of our national identity were surely encrypted down there. I thought the best stories were set in the South, the best writers those who worked to lay bare its mercy and menaces. So I asked Brian to take me to see the whole thing. He happily charted the course: fly to Memphis, drive a van to The Outer Banks, down to Savannah, over to New Orleans for a three-day party, and back up the Mississippi River, flying home again from Memphis roughly two weeks later. It looked to my sheltered eyes like an odyssey, and maybe I could be hypnotized by Calypso long enough to also learn the magnetism of my own home.

The Denny’s Diner, on a summer Saturday night, is packed with teenagers. The ones at the closest table to us have black canvas wallets chained to the pockets of their baggy black pants, their height extended with platform boots and stiff neon hair. Their colors compliment the decor of the diner. They are smoking extremely socially. Although they are rowdy, I can’t make out the details of their conversations, so I make some up. They look to me like kids from almost anywhere trying to say, This is short time, I’m not getting trapped here, I need even more room. I sympathize, but I’m sorry they can’t be as content in their city as I am at the moment, even at Denny's Diner—eating cardboard peach pie and drinking diet coke through a bendy straw, allegedly ready for anything.        

September 2

          We’re out of the house early on Sunday; we don’t even see Uncle Don. As they say, we are on a mission, and already going to be delayed by a return to the airport where we swap the leaky van for a sturdier one, a moon gray Chevy Venture. I roll both front windows all the way down. It’s not raining, but low muggy clouds still clutter the sky. The drab residue quickly begins to stick between my shirt and back, my hair and neck, my sunglasses and where they sit on my ears. I am blithe though, from my proximity to Elvis. I thumb through the CDs until I find the one I have always meant to hear at this moment. Soon Paul Simon verifies that these are the days of miracle and wonder, this is the long distance call....

We slurp water bottles from a six pack purchased at the gas station last night and share a bagel from Don's pantry as suburban Memphis morning rolls by beyond the open window, characterized by church parking lots packed with sedans. Full loads of Baptists emerge from each car—men in butter-colored suits and ties hold polka-dot-dressed ladies by the bicep; the ladies carry white purses at the crook of their elbow, and snap, literally, after the children who skip ahead in throngs. Organ chords and church bells beckon.

            Memphis was a city made by the river and the railroad, but transportation technology has evolved since then, and may have left the city somewhat behind. As we cross into urban territory, things begin to look their age, and look tired. In Whitehaven, the stretch of Highway 51 that was renamed Elvis Presley Boulevard 30 years ago looks like any other street on the neglected outskirts, except for the big blue sign wrapped around the corner that introduces EPB, kind of like the signs that herald the entrance of Disneyland. A few blocks further downtown, the street starts to resemble certain places I’ve been lost in East Los Angeles, but older. Trash skitters along the sidewalk in the thermals of traffic exhaust, runoff spills beyond the gutter to stain the clay road ever deeper shades of brown. More than one building has been left derelict after a fire.

“Kind of a sad scene?” I hope it might be debatable.

“You’re in the real south now, Baby.” Brain says.

We cross the Betty Jean Jones Bridge at King Creek, and pass Forest Hill Cemetery, where Elvis and his mother were buried the first time. Their remains were moved home to Graceland after a grave-robbing attempt, so this site is only notable to a serious fan. Beyond it, the Elvis Presley Boulevard Inn advertises $36/week rooms next to a Laundromat sponsoring a “Cash for your Car!” billboard. There are innumerable telephone poles and the traffic lights swing from wires. We pass locksmiths and liquor stores, furniture outlets and nail parlors, and the Memphis Visitors Center. A Church’s Chicken is between a Chop Suey House and a Coney Island Polish Sausage Shack. The Days Inn has a guitar-shaped pool, street-side, and the Heartbreak Hotel has a campground behind it. 

Waiting at one red light, I observe on the corner a row of crates covered with old sneakers and work boots. Some have fallen to the sidewalk and a thin man in an overcoat stoops to examine them. A floppy cardboard sign taped to the light pole says: SHOES $1. According to Paul Simon, There is reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland.

It is easy to miss the first glimpse of the mansion. What we see instead is the huge lot where you pay to leave your car. Elvis’s planes, the Lisa Marie and Hound Dog II, are grounded forever in this parking lot, so you can take a picture of them on your way to the ticket office, where you pay again to see what you really came for. At 10 a.m. the place is just opening and there are more than enough parking spots. I light a commemorative cigarette as I step out of the van, and try to walk slowly, keeping pace behind a couple incongruously dressed like Metallica groupies. When we reach the ticket office it's somehow already full of people, who I eventually understand arrived on busses. We all squint up at the digital board above the ticket windows. An electronic voice gives us options in multiple languages: tram tour…V.I.P. tour…plane tour…combo tour… 

            “I just want to see the house!” I hop from one foot to the other like a child.

            “Okay, so we’ll just get that!” Brian mimics the crest of my voice. “And then I think we’ll get in another line and take a tram across the street.”

Yes. $50 later we’re back outside, on the other side of the ticket office. The gift shop and the Elvis Diner are over here. I look across the street and finally, there’s the house.

I’m glad all the extra attractions are separated from it, so it still looks like a house, instead of like the biggest roller coaster in the amusement park. Behind a quarter mile of brick wall and an acre of up-sloping dark grass dotted with birches and elms, it is set way back in the shade; and it looks just as it always has on TV, except now it is sitting right here in front of me, and there is something actually kind of modest about it.

            Before we board the tram, we get an obligatory picture taken by a tour guide in front of a plastic Graceland backdrop. We sit in the tram’s last row as it wobbles across the street and past the brick wall, which is covered with layers of Sharpie-scrawled messages. We park in the King’s wide horseshoe driveway. While waiting in his gazebo, we get an earful of visitor and property statistics, as well as a lecture about not taking any flash photos, which over time would cause everything in the mansion to fade.

             Graceland was opened to the public in 1982, after Priscilla found a way to turn its $500,000 a year upkeep costs into a profit. In 1991 it was listed in the National Register of Historic Places, and now the only private residence in the country with more visitors is the White House—50,000 fans poured into Memphis for the 20^th anniversary of Elvis’s death a few years ago. Ironic for a place that was designed to be an escape from the clamoring world, but the legacy of this sanctuary is too spectacular for the world to ignore, and that of course is Elvis’s fault. After he bought it, he personalized the twenty-three room limestone mansion every which way, including the iron musical note-embellished front gate we just came through.

It turns out though that inside, Graceland is not my idea of a mansion at all, in the same way that Elvis Presley Boulevard is no charming thoroughfare. It feels small. There could never be an echo in Graceland; the walls and fixtures are all too close, perhaps even claustrophobic for an increasingly portly guy. As soon as we all get crowded inside the front door, the kitchen is directly on the left. No grand foyer in which to hand your coat to the butler, no double spiral staircase cradling a mammoth chandelier. Just the kitchen—a little carton of vanilla tile and appliances, dark oak cabinets, a few plastic coated chairs at the Formica table. And then we step right into the next little carton, the lace and china dining room, with more dark wood and heavy drapery behind which ghosts can peer out the windows onto the lawn. No wonder the cook, Mary Jenkins, often served Elvis his chicken fried steaks in the bedroom.

             The upper floors are off limits. We aren’t allowed to see the velvet-walled, mirror-ceilinged master suite and its tragic carpeted bathroom, unsullied since the day Elvis died in it. Instead we’re ushered down to the basement, and I wonder how the King could have fit in this narrow stairwell in his last years. Maybe he didn't bother, since down here are just the showpieces. I recognize the lemon and chrome futuristic media room, with three TVs Elvis watched all at once; the jungle room teeming with shadows, fur and a waterfall; the blue and yellow paisley room, where the pleated fabric on all four walls matches the couch, and the pool table has robin’s egg blue felt. These rooms look more like sets here, in person, than they did when I saw them on a TV screen, as if the real wiring was never installed. It's weird.

It takes an average of two minutes for the whole herd of us to pass through each room. Out the back door we duck under rusty trellises until we reach a labyrinthine shed called the Trophy House, which holds a zillion records plated in gold, silver and platinum, bolted to the wall in columns of plastic box frames. This room has its own pair of guards. The other structure out back is something like stables turned into a gym. The racquetball court where Elvis played at 4 a.m. the morning he died is converted into a sarcophagus of memorabilia. The walls are papered, to the 20-foot ceiling, with movie posters and glossy photos of the King with fans and stars. We didn’t miss anything in the upstairs closets because every piece of his wardrobe—from military garb to velour track suits to ruffles, sequins and capes—is displayed here on wire mannequins, posed around the room like a battalion of headless Elvis clones.

Brian and I scoot by most of the other people in a rush back outside for air, and then we lead the charge around the side of the house to the Meditation Gardens, where Elvis, his parents Gladys and Vernon, and his grandmother are all now buried. This most hallowed spot on the property was opened to the public just a year after his death, four years before the rest of Graceland. His headstone lies flat here, crowned by an eternal flame burning in a hurricane lantern. In the center of all the headstones is a fountain framed by teddy bears and bouquets in various stages of decay. The sound of muffled speech emits eerily from the fountain; not Elvis, maybe a recording of his memorial service or news reports of his death? We take a picture and wander off to re-contemplate the front of the house.

I am reminded of the day I glimpsed behind the façades of "It’s a Small World" at Disneyland, visiting the park for the first time as an adult. I had loved floating through that magical singing cave every summer as a child, and it broke a piece of my heart to finally see how the thin cardboard figures were chipped and propped in places with bricks, how the clacking cables yanked the hands back and forth and blinked the eyes. I never went back on that ride or another like it. And now another fantasy world fades before my eyes--Graceland, where I wanted to find that life is like a movie, even one with a perfectly dramatic overdose ending; that real magnificence is possible, even if exhausting; that the shell is as naturally luminescent as the pearl inside. Nope, this is it.

At least I have seen it for myself, though. Maybe there is something to be learned from being received in such a place? I have to consider it for awhile. But first I have to get back on the tram and go to the gift shop, all polished glass and pink neon.

“Look at all this crap!” says Brian. “What are we doing in here?”

“Consuming, like good happy Americans.” I play along because, yep, spending money makes me feel better. I choose fried peanut butter and banana recipe postcards and a black and white calendar for my office. Proof. Whatever this place is, it belongs to me now.

Then it’s noon and already time to leave the kingdom I had looked forward to for so long. In the van I'm wistful and not sure how to proceed--despite knowing that many Southern delights still lie ahead, starting at the top may have been a bad plan--so I switch the CD to an early Elvis mix and go backward to before there even was a Graceland. That’s alright, mama; that’s alright for you; that's alright, mama, just any way you do... Brian exits the parking lot, drives past the estate and then turns around, pulling into an open spot on the street in front of the great wall of graffiti. Lots of people are posing for pictures out here, and many are kneeling on the sidewalk adding to the Sharpie messages, mostly names and dates. But I have nothing to write a message with, and nothing to say.

We drive by Baptist Memorial Hospital, where they hammered Elvis’s chest for hours after he was gone, and then head for 700 Union Avenue and the legendary Sun Records studio where Elvis and the rest of The Million Dollar Quartet became famous. On another edge of downtown Memphis, it is not an area I’d like to be caught alone in after dusk. Windowless brick buildings with metal doors, occasional hubcaps in the yard and torn chain link. Has it always looked like this? The twelve-stall lot behind the record studio is full of potholes and my sweaty feet keep slipping out of my clogs. We pause to inspect the portraits and names airbrushed on the outside wall: Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Jonny Cash…Sheila E? Def Leppard? Dennis Quaid?

We move on to the front entrance.

            “Is it a fucking coffee shop?” I am incredulous. It resembles the independent Starbucks-busters that pervade every neighborhood at home; it has the same Sumatran roasts and Parisian tables where parts of the newspaper have been left behind. A hip girl with loosely tied henna hair is behind the espresso machine, and behind her is a narrow stairway. A laminated yellow sign hangs from the banister: sun records and a forefinger pointing up. As if the studio is a bonus feature of the café, instead of the other way around.

            At the top of the stairs is a gift shop. A drab one compared to Graceland’s, like an attic we wandered into looking for Antique Roadshow loot—besides records, the collectibles are all mimeographed versions of the same dozen sepia artifacts shoved in boxes, under shelves, or suspended from the ceiling.            

“Where’s the booth and the sound mixer?" Brian, too, is growing impatient. "Where’s a keyboard, a drum kit, a microphone?”  

            “$8.50 for the studio tour.” A clerk behind the cash register points to a nondescript door in the corner. “Next one’s in 30 minutes. Every 30 minutes.”

“What do you think?” Brian asks me.

“What do you think?” I respond at a loss. I don't know what I'm looking for now. He turns to descend the stairs, and I follow him. At the bottom he asks, “Want a coffee?”

            “Nope.” 

Outside we take a picture of the Sun Records plaque. It’s black iron with white raised letters, a memorial motif that will soon be very familiar. It summarizes the history of the studio’s beginnings, and offers no explanation for what has become of it since then.

Stax Records might have been cooler, as soul is often cooler than rock-n-roll, but we aren’t cool enough to know that yet. So instead, we go to Beale, the most famous original street in town. It starts at the bank of the motionless Mississippi, and is bordered along the river by sleek brick condos. Beyond those is the affluent neighborhood of big white houses, white fences, plantation shutters and Audis parked at the clean white curbs. To the north is a pyramid arena, and behind that, a steel bridge crosses the river into Arkansas.          

But all that's over there. Beale itself, again, defies me by being less lustrous than the Marc Cohn song rolling through my mind. I clearly need to get some new songs, or rather, some older songs, to use as reference points. If I spent more time with Howlin Wolf or Ike Turner, or even The Stones' Honky Tonk Woman, I might have expected the street where Cohn's feet supposedly floated ten feet off the ground to remind me of Avenida Revolucion, Tijuana. Barricaded at random alleys by orange striped saw-horses, Beale has head shops, consignment boutiques and open-air bars with three beer taps and six stools. After the first block, the bars get bigger, selling two-foot plastic beaker frozen drinks on neck cords. On Sunday, there aren’t very many other people here. It looks forsaken, and I wonder which came first, the tourists or the tourist-ready attractions.

My stomach has been growling since we left Graceland, but I refuse to eat anything for lunch that I could easily get west of the Mississippi. Thankfully, we soon stumble upon Chef Bonnie Mack. His restaurant is a wide, whitewashed room with an open kitchen and fans blowing strips of paper that hang from the ceiling. We take a table with a view of grills and fryers, sandwich boards and tubs of trimmings. Meat glistens through the glass partition; bubbling sauces fill the room with a sweetly smoked aroma. Mr. Mack is proud of his work—his name is painted on a long scroll of butcher paper draped on the wall behind him; at the end of it hangs a picture of Bill Clinton thumping him on the back.

“Sweet Tea?” I ask the waitress.

“Hushpuppies and catfish,” says Brian, closing his menu, “for two.”

He only orders for us both like that when he’s showing off, and he hasn’t had much room to do that with me lately. But since we’re in the territory of his childhood, and so far my expectations about that territory have been faulty, he seizes the day. It’s my first catfish, and he was right to know I would love it—flaky in the center, battered with spicy crunches, dressed with thick yellow toast and a sloppy pile of slaw.

“Mmm…good call.”

“Yep.”
            Okay, I'm going to get the hang of this. I am not in Las Vegas. And though I always love being there, that's because it's supposed to be gilded with such high wattage excess. It isn't real; it's an igloo in the desert with no history of ever being anything but a show. I was thinking of Vegas Elvis when I went looking for the vault-ceilinged Graceland Resort, but that's not him, that's what killed him. Elvis grew up dirt poor among the gum trees in a town that only acquired electricity a year before he was born, and as an infant there he survived the 4th deadliest tornado in US history (for which Africa Americans were not counted in the 200+ death toll). Memphis obviously contains, beyond its tourism, the raw American story I'm after--genuine sweat and dirt and fighting for your life in close quarters. Very hard work has happened here, and that's what makes a shell sturdy enough to grow pearls.

After lunch we slink back outside into the hottest part of the day. Dark clouds are drifting but when the sun glares through their openings, my bare skin is instantly scorched. We wander down the street slowly, pausing in the shady patches thrown to the sidewalk by awnings and trees. We find a park and sit on the grass while a scruffy woman belts out anguished blues in the brick courtyard, guarded by the statue of W.C. Handy. Across the street I spy a Hard Rock Cafe and some of its progeny. More of the confounding veneer. This is where, in the 1960’s, the Cotton Makers Jubilee Parade rolled past the storefronts on a Friday night, Where a police order avowed that only couples (not trouble-making singles) could visit clubs and dance-halls. Where striking sanitation workers marched their humanity into recognition. Can all this be hidden behind a Coyote Ugly and a Hollywood Irish Pub?

 Tsk tsk. What I will have to do is come back again. Even though it's only been a day, there's no denying how the place is under my skin, and I'm hardly able to make sense of it until I go away and learn more and come back looking for it, rather than for me.

After a few more blocks of Beale, we round a corner onto the farmer’s market, dodging skateboarders and red-sandaled kids waving pinwheels. We push through a heavy glass door into a three-tiered air-conditioned shopping mall, and take a lap just to cool off. Hundreds of people are hiding in here after church, eating corn dogs and frozen yogurt. We push back out and through the heat to the Peabody.

I'm reassured to have found something I was looking for. An old-fashioned swanky hotel, its lobby bar features a large marble fountain surrounded by leather club chairs and oriental rugs. Legend says that in the 30’s, the hotel manager and his friend returned from a hunting trip, got drunk, and decided to put their live decoy ducks in the fountain. Guests were so delighted that the fountain ducks became a permanent fixture, and twice a day their farm-raised descendants still march through the lobby and take a swim. 

We sink into a couple of club chairs, and watch the ducks bob and swagger around their marble fountain cherubs; the cherubs hold up a colossal bouquet of asters, snapdragons, and spray chrysanthemums. The ducks are well-mannered and perfectly comfortable with all the comings and goings of hotel guests—they never flap wildly or stray from the perimeter of their indoor pond. A piano player accompanies them. It’s all so charming, just as it should be, that I send Brian to the bar for a mint julep. He returns with two highballs.

“The guy asked me if I wanted plastic cups," he reports.

“Are we not supposed to have glass in the lobby? I thought it was only off-limits at the pool. Is it because of the ducks?”

“No,” he sighs the word in a “don’t be silly” way, “they give you plastic if you’re going to take them outside.”

“WHAT?” Too loud for this lobby. He raises both eyebrows at me. “I mean, what? You can drink in the street?”  

            “Vegas, baby. Ya like that?”

I like it in Vegas. But maybe Vegas stole this idea from southern culture, where the party naturally meandered from the front porches into the street, and parched conversationalists needed a spike in their lemonade to truly beat the heat. We, not yet acclimated, stay in the lobby to drink these two, listening to Evergreen and other dentist-office favorites on the piano. When the ducks are marched back upstairs we depart behind them.

Our last of the day’s landmarks is the Lorraine Motel, site of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. It’s way past the upper crust on the other side of Beale Street, but King and other celebrities always stayed here because it was open to black guests throughout the history of segregation. The original structure remains: a shoulder-high wall surrounding a two-story motel trimmed in mint green. Dr. King’s room is on the second floor. The faded lettering of the motel’s name is somewhere, but overshadowed now by a marquis proclaiming this the National Civil Rights Museum. For $17, we can see the personal effects of the assassin James Earl Ray, a Middle Passage exhibit until March, and Sidney Poitier’s Oscar.

“Why would I want to see anything from the shitheel who shot him?” Brian sounds like he did in the Sun Records gift shop.

            “I don't get it” I whisper, “Sydney Poitier’s Oscar?” We lag on the outside of the wall while a few other sight see-ers stride deliberately past us to the ticket booth, and then Jacqueline Smith approaches us. We knew she would be here.

            We’d read about her—not the original Charlie’s Angel, but the homeless activist who has camped out on this corner for fourteen years since they evicted her from the Lorraine, where she had lived since 1977. We take the flyer she offers and follow her across the street to a couch covered with felt blankets and blue tarps. She has a shopping cart filled with clothes, paper sacks of boxed food and other necessities; and a card table with rows of news clippings, pamphlets and a thick petition that demands Boycott the Civil Rights Museum Now! An old radio scratches out Jimi Hendrix. Jacqueline wears unfaded jeans, a Vaurnet sweater and new Nikes, her epic sit-in evidently supported by some local charity. 

            She gives us her speech about the growing number of displaced Memphis citizens, and the disgraceful allocations for civic restoration projects. 7000 people will be homeless in Shelby County this year, and another 3500 will request but not receive emergency shelter or transitional housing, according to the Mayors’ Task Force on Homelessness. Meanwhile, the National Civil Rights museum will continue to profit from its $8 million investment in portrayals of racism.

            “If you go in there, you can see pictures of lynched folks and burning crosses, and a real old bus you can sit in the back of. Then you go up to Mr. King’s room, and in there they got his clothes on the bed. Room’s just as it was, with his books and papers and his suitcase open and pictures of him layin’ on the balcony bleedin’ out.” 

            She thinks this is disrespectful, and we are easily persuaded by her. She explains how after MLK was killed, the motel continued on as a low-rent extended-stay facility. A lot of struggling people like her found shelter there. Then in the 1980’s, plans were green-lighted to turn it into a museum about the history of civil rights. The centerpiece would be the last room the movement’s greatest leader ever slept in, frozen in time with his cigarette butts still in the ashtray. City planners agreed that the nation needed such a place to validate, pay homage, keep the dream alive. But Jacqueline thinks they should’ve taken all that money and turned the building into something that could be more useful to the community, like worker retraining or after-school facilities, along with the low income housing. She thinks this is the real dream Dr. King would have wanted, and we agree, again, that this seems right.

Maybe it isn’t, though. The little parking lot was almost full (on what I now know is Memphis tourism’s slowest day of the week). We’re the only people over here with Jacqueline, but many must be inside the museum. That side is education, recognition, where everything I was looking for on Beale Street has been framed and stored. This side is a different kind of witnessing; it is resistance. I can’t know which this city really needs more, but neither can I construe why Brian and I automatically choose resistance. Why not take a look inside? We want things to captivate us, but not in any pre-packaging; we want everything to run smoothly and we want to go off road. We don’t want to be tourists, nor do we want to miss anything cool. An increasingly impractical balancing act.

Brian adds our names to the petition; I feel futile and sort of irrelevant as we walk away from Jacqueline's vigil. We stand on the edge of a flower bed, peeking over some hoses piled atop the perimeter wall. We see the plastic tables in the patio and the shadowy entrance where the lobby used to be, and then we look up at room 306. A red and white wreath resembling a life preserver hangs on the railing outside.

Before leaving the downtown district, we cross the big bridge into Arkansas and then turn around at the end of it, just to sneak an extra state onto the long list ahead of us. The rest of the afternoon is spent on the opposite side of the city, in the strip mall district.

“Ice cream?” I ask, groggy from the heat. It’s not a strange late-afternoon request, regardless of where I am or what the thermometer says. But it seems the temperature's effect on Brian is more grumpy than groggy.

“Okay, but how am I supposed to know where there’s an ice cream place?” 

“Hmmm. How about just, if we see one, we can stop?”

But we don’t see one, and the boss will not be deterred from his pursuit of camping supplies. There was a lot of stuff we couldn’t bring on the plane, and we won’t be able to take too much home that way either, so we’re hitting Wal-Mart for cheap sleeping bags and a cooler. We also grab beef jerky, assorted muffins, juice boxes, more water bottles and batteries. Combined with the peanut butter crackers and travel Yatzee I’d crammed into my duffle bag, we’re ready for roughing it in the van.

            Back in Uncle Don’s driveway, we convert Hertz's Chevy Venture into a streamlined camping machine. All but the front seats are removed; right behind them the snacks are arranged efficiently in shopping bags and the cooler. Behind that are Don's two guest room pillows, the unzipped sleeping bags, and a faded flowery sheet from grandma's linen closet, all folded together such that they can be shaken into a bed in seconds. We test the spaciousness of our sleeping quarters. Plenty of leg room and the ceiling is high when we’re laying down. I feel like hitting the road right now, but we need some sleep I guess, and to get that we must pony up another ominous night of family time. 

We kill almost three hours of it at a barbeque joint called Corky’s. I’ve heard about this place for years, whenever we eat Seattle barbeque that doesn’t measure up. When we arrive, I wonder, if the place is so awesome, why didn’t we anticipate that everyone else in town would be here for Sunday dinner? Crammed along a wooden bench in the waiting area, I stare down at cowboy boots and smell spices that remind me fondly of lunch with Bonnie Mack. I nod when appropriate while Brian and Don reminisce about the good ol' days of grandma and grandpa. 

Eventually a happy host calls our name, leads us to our table and pours water into our mason jars. The waiter recommends his favorite ribs and the boys order them, but I go for the bizarre house special: pulled pork next to a pile of dark-sauced spaghetti. It works for me, but then lean juicy pulled pork might work for me next to a ball of twine. For dessert I have black bottom pie, Don has pecan and Brian mooches from both. With two meals in a row turning out just as wonderfully southern as I’d planned, I wash down whatever disparity and conundrum remain of the day. From the bed of the van on the way back to Don’s house, I watch the beginnings of a full moon rise in the window.