Volume 5: Pete in the USA Part 7. A young balding mans journey through 20 something states and back
Day 13 – Memphis
Today’s first stop was Elvis’ old residence, Graceland. It was after that visit I learned “subtle” was a word that never found its way into Elvis’ vocabulary. What was annoying was that flash photography was banned inside Graceland, so I was now trying to figure out how to adjust the shudder speed on my new camera to take indoor photos. It wasn’t obvious that a minus meant the shudder was open for more time or less time. In a 50/50 contest where you only have two options, either set the shudder speed to its highest positive number or lowest negative number, you’d think it would be easy to get the desired result. Unfortunately it was a contest I lost (put it down to last nights $10 challenge affecting my clarity of thought) so I didn’t digitally capture the true colours of the jungle room. In another room his pool table had a rip in the corner, which was according to legend put down to a trick shot going wrong at a party. Either that, or the legend was created by the mover who put it there to cover up a mistake he made while the table was in transit.
Out the back of the house is where Elvis kept his horses. There was a sign hanging on a fence where the horses were kept that read “OUR HOSRES ARE WEARING PROTECTIVE EYE MASKS. They Do Not Cause Any Discomfort or Sight Obstruction To Them And Are Used As A Safety Precaution”. Safety precaution from what? To protect them when they’re doing some welding? Or when these horses are doing some woodwork on the lathe? What? These horses where so gifted with wood they actually built the barn they were living in? Just some of the many thoughts that were running through my head.
From Graceland it was a natural progression to go visit the motel site where Dr Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, the Lorraine Motel. It’s there that the richest homeless person on the planet now protests out the front. The “homeless” person, Jacqueline Smith (no relation to Bob or JP) used to live in the Lorraine, but was kicked out of the motel when it was converted into a museum to pay tribute to the great man. When we reached her she’d been protesting out the front for 15 years and 190 days. How do I know? Because in between buying her new clothes and cell phone and presumably visiting soup kitchens, she found time to buy a big sign in which she can roll the days and years over. Jacqueline now made her living form charging people a buck to have their picture taken with her and listen to her story.
As I was more concerned with keeping that buck to help pay for JPs $2 a day tip, I walked past her and headed to the front of the motel to read a plague and listen to Bob give his conspiracy theories on where he thought the actual fatal shot came from. Bob, now being a ballistics expert/bus driver, believed the shot was fired from a water tower positioned further back than where it is officially recorded where the shot came from. What I found most comical were the morons from the bus hanging on his every word, working on the theory that Bob was black so he’d have to know. It was as farcical as believing any theory I threw out about the disappearance of Harold Holt because I was Australian.
Hanging just below the Lorraine Motel sign where I assume is where they used to put up something like “No Vacancy” or “All rooms with colour TV” now contained the words “LOVE IS THE ONLY FORCE CAPABLE OF TRANSFORMING AN ENEMY INTO A FRIEND”. It’s a shame the US government seemed to have misread the first word and worked on the philosophy ARMED FORCE IS THE ONLY FORCE CAPABLE OF TRANSFORMING AN ENEMY INTO A FRIEND. A philosophy they were now sharing with the Iraqi people.
From there our ballistics expert took us back to our hotel and we were free to explore Memphis. I ventured with a few tourers to Beale Street where we visited A Schwab; the oldest family owned and operated working General Store in the south. It was founded in 1876, and judging by the inside of the store someone had made a bulk buy in that same year as they were still trying to sell some of the original crap, sorry merchandise, they purchased in 1876. The stores official motto is “If you can’t find it at a A Schwab, you are better off without it”. I think a more appropriate motto would’ve been “At A Schwab, we buy any crap from a garage sale, put a sticker on it and try to sell it back to you”. It’s the best way to describe A Schwab’s. It was like the owners were just having a year round garage sale, there was such a large assortment of unrelated goods. A Schwab’s was also an opportunity for JP to have a John Denver moment. On the bus ride into Memphis he encouraged us all to go to A Schwab’s and purchase Elvis glasses that we would wear the next day in New Orleans. For some reason I was surprised that A Schwab’s no longer sold the glasses. Lucky for JP I didn’t have Jacqueline Smith’s cell phone number so I couldn’t call her and tell her I had $2 for her.
Later in the day we went to the Peabody Hotel to witness an unusual event. At the same time each day the ducks in the hotels lobby fountain walk out of the fountain to the elevator and catch a ride to the penthouse. This event attracts hundreds of people to the hotel lobby. For me it was a moment, a moment where I’d finally found an event more overrated and less interesting then the Glockenspiel.
Overcome with the excitement of that experience we ventured back to our hotel. The lifts in our hotel were as equally slow as anything I’d ridden in Europe, but these lifts had the added feature of moving before the doors closed. The night before when we checked into the hotel we’d attempted to set a Memphis record for the number of people you could fit in a lift. Unfortunately the record didn’t stand as the lift made a large bang around the 3rd floor before slowly falling to the ground floor. Inside the hotel, Gav and I were blessed with possibly the hottest room in Memphis, which had its window facing the afternoon sun and non-existent air conditioning.
Dinner that night was spent at TGI Friday’s. They had something foreign to Memphis, friendly good service. The young waitress looking after our table was friendly, at one time calling me love. We were so blown away by this oddity to Memphis we probably tipped her enough to put a deposit on a small house. We even called out the manager to tell him how great a job she was doing. He informed us she gets a lot of compliments, which I figured was true because she was the only waitress in Memphis who didn’t treat the customers like they were a dog turd they’d just stepped on (not just any turd, one of those annoying turds that gets stuck in the small grooves of your shoe) and couldn’t get rid of quick enough.
After that pleasant experience we spent the night drinking in BB Kings Bar where they served beer in small jars. I had a quiet moment to myself, as it took me back to my days in Rome where I had drunk beer from Jars with my adopted brother. The entertainment largely consisted of a band, with a small interval broken up with some high school kids doing some acrobatic feats that were rewarded with people throwing dollars bills from the first and second floors. After enjoying a few jars it was back to the hotel at a time I don’t seem to recall.
Day 14 – Memphis to New Orleans
Just for something different lunch was spent at a non descript car park. A group of us had lunch at a small take away restaurant called “Po’ Boys”. My understanding of US culture, founded on listening to a lot of rap music growing up, is that “Po” is actually short for “Poor”. As many rappers grow up in the ghetto they are so poor they can’t even afford to spend the time it takes to complete the full pronunciation of words. Also along the way to New Orleans we stopped at a truck stop at the state line, took some pictures of us “taking the innocence” of a Louisiana sign, and then proceeded on our way again.
We entered New Orleans via the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway, the longest bridge in the world (and possibly the straightest and most boring) at just under 38 ½ kms. What do you do when you create the longest bridge on earth? You create the largest name on earth for the body that controls the largest bridge on earth, the Greater New Orleans Expressway Commission (GNOEC). When the acronym representing your organisations name is longer than most words in the dictionary you really should reconsider the name of your organisation.
After crossing the bridge we reached New Orleans late in the afternoon. New Orleans is of course known by many names, such as: The Big Easy (in reference to its women), The Crescent Way (in reference to all the “moons” that are flashed), The city that care forgot (because they were too busy looking at hooters), and the city where pronouncing the “ew” after the “N” is optional.
Each hotel room was a multi-level extravaganza, with a bedroom on the ground floor and with a bedroom at the end of a spiral staircase on the second level. The 2nd level bedroom was soon dubbed the “boom boom room” in reference to the fact it provided a secluded bedroom that would be ideal for consummating a relationship with someone on the bus in private, a privilege the other hotels had not given us. When I’d managed to get aussie Victoria and Flipper sitting on that bed in the boom boom room with me shortly after we checked in, I was starting to think about making the impossible possible, completing the onshore double. Aussie Victoria had kept up her hectic pace of flirting with me 4 to 5 times a minute, while Flipper sat quietly on the bed not saying anything but sending out an energy of I just want to be included in anything that happens no matter how freaky it happens to be. At least that’s how my radar was reading it, but it’s safe to say the radar was picking up interference caused by the excitement of completing the onshore double.
After dinner we headed off for a swamp boat ride (the ones with the giant fans, similar to any fan Jack would have seen at the top of the beanstalk) on the New Orleans aromatic swamplands. JP, making only his 2nd useful suggestion for the tour, told us to empty the bins in the hotel room and fill them with ice and beer for the swamp boat ride. With some creative packing Gav and I managed to fit 10 beers into the small bin. Along the ride we saw a number of small alligators, which later received additional liquid into their aquatic wetlands from everyone on our boat. I’m not quite sure how long the swamp boat ride was in terms of hours and minutes, I just know it went longer than it takes for me to consume 5 beers and not feel the need to urinate. Sometime into the ride, about 4 or 5 beers, we convinced the driver to park the boat near a small hut and we all made use of the maze of wooden pathways to run off and “top up the wetlands”. As the girls had to squat, they played a few practical jokes on each other by pretending to see an alligator. As Gav is all class, he just calmly walked to the back of the boat and urinated off the end.
After the boat ride we headed back to the hotel, spruced ourselves up for a big night on the town, and then followed JP to the nearest trolley stop. Just for something different, JP had a John Denver moment, as the trolley was not running. So we all caught a bus into town and to the famous Bourbon Street. The thing that struck me most about Bourbon Street was not the drunks, not the flashing of boobs, but the constant stench of something resembling human faecal matter that stretched the length of the street. Once you get used to the stench your focus is drawn to the boobs. As it was not Mardi Gras I thought we might miss this great site of countless strangers flashing their boobs to countless strangers, but thankfully it’s a year round thing. You’ve got to love a city where it’s a socially acceptable norm for chicks to flash their tits for some 99 cent beads that can easily be obtained free hanging from the many trees courtesy of previous Mardi Gras. When in Rome…embrace the culture differences.
As for me I got caught up in 2 Hurricanes, that’s the name of a drink, which by coincidence has the same devastating affect as the tropical cyclonic storm with the same name.
In the wee hours of morning before heading back to the hotel a group of us got something eat in a take away restaurant that is unique to New Orleans. The place is called Krystals and they sell miniature hamburgers, ideal for meeting your munchy needs after surviving a hurricane. As my head still felt like it was still swirling around in a hurricane, it made the less than wise choice to use the internet kiosk inside Krystals. I seriously doubt there is anything more difficult on this planet then trying to eat a miniature burger from 1 hand while trying to type an email with the other hand while your head is swirling in a hurricane trying to punch out a witty email inside the 5 minutes your $2 has just bought you at the internet kiosk.
Fell asleep sometime before sunrise.
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