It took almost 2 hours to walk there. An older gentleman (who looked like the great bluesman Lightnin' Hopkins) mapped the last leg of the trip for me. We talked a lot about Stax. It's a source of pride for the people along McLemore Ave. My legs were tired when I arrived, but it was like the end of a pilgramage.
The museum, built just a couple of years ago, is superb. My favorite artifact was the old control room. Stax was built in an old movie theatre, and they used the theatre's sound system to do playback. They had a one-track, 8 input mixing board but no reverb. So in the bathroom, they placed an output speaker whose sound echoed off the bathroom tiles and into a mike mounted on the ceiling and back into the mixer. Fantastic!
I taxied back to downtown's famous Arcade Restaurant, but missed the lunch hour. For those of you who've seen the movie Mystery Train (Anybody?), the Arcade is the scene of the Elvis Presley ghost story. You know ... the guy tells the tourist how he saw Elvis, still living and walking the streets of Memphis, and then gave him his comb. And he offers it to the tourist for five bucks. "Elvis Presley's comb???" the tourist yells.
Anyhoo, I ended up going to Charlie Vergo's Rendevous restaurant. That's where they invented Memphis style BBQ - that is, with rubbed spices instead of gooey BBQ sauce. Oh man, they were good! I was chawing down ribs like a neanderthal. It was disgusting! Apparently, I de-evolutionized a bit much, and the waiters insisted I stop throwing gnawed bones in the corner.
One thing about Southern servers. They ask "Are you OK?" instead of "How are you doing?" The first time I heard "Are you OK?" I thought, "Why do you ask? Am I supposed to be ill by now? What did you put in the food???"
After a Maggie Moo Cinamoo Bun Milkshake (cinammon ice cream, carmel and crushed up teddy grahams), I was supremely tired and hit the hay early. Sunday is Highbrow Day, so I have to look prim and proper. "A demain, y'all!"
From the Mailbag
My father wrote, wayyyy back in the first post, that I was his favorite writer next to Stephen Pastis. Not knowing who that was, I Googled around and hit the Pearls Before Swine web site. I laughed my fool head off! Here's a sample:
1 comment:
You're probably the first to walk that far in Memphis---or any American city---in the last thirty years. I bet the ribs and the Maggie Moo milkshake replaced any lost muscle and bone mass. Or, you can tell yourself that anyway!
Inquiring minds want to know: what's Sunday laik in Memphis?
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