December 3-6
Weekend rents in Memphis get steep so we stayed across the river instead, in West Memphis, Arkansas.
We took a few hours to get there from Nashville. I-40 runs through the city of Memphis, and it’s all pretty easy to do.
The highlight of the drive was a brief detour to the Natchez Trace State Park in Tennessee. We stopped at the visitor center, and talked to the ranger there.
Actually, she invited us in. We had come up onto the porch and saw the lunch break sign. As we were headed down the steps, the lady came to the door. She had forgotten to take the sign down.
The park road follows, not the Trace itself, but a spur. So it’s not likely that the Harp Brothers or Eudora Welty was ever here. But Nathan Bedford Forrest was. He found it a lucky escape route after he led a raid on Grant’s supply lines in Tennessee and nearly got boxed in by Federal troops.
Forrest would not only get away from that one, but would survive the war and become grand wizard of the KKK.
The ranger asked where we were from and where we were going. When we said West Memphis, she told us it could be a dodgy place. She and her husband stayed there once, she said, and they were approached several times by people asking for money.
I guess if you’re used to living in rural Tennessee, that’s probably a very rare experience, rare enough to be eerie.
Memphis is in the southwestern corner of the state. It goes right to the Mississippi River on the west side, and its south edge touches the Mississippi state line.
When you drive west out of the city, you can get a kind of jolt. That bridge must be magical, because it changes the planet you’re on.
You cross the Mississippi to reach a nearly empty plain, sparsely littered by a few franchises, mainly gas stations and motels, including La Quinta, which is the one we were looking for. They are probably too few to qualify as sprawl. No malls or anything like that. They’re just scattered around here and there, maybe dropped by accident on the way to somewhere more suburban. The locals call this flat country the Arkansas Delta.
We were able to walk to dinner. We pretty much had to. The only thing we could find was Cracker Barrel.
I had been to one years ago in North Carolina. I couldn’t remember what the food was like, except that it was traditional Cracker fare.
No wine or beer, but a reasonable selection of dishes, and the ones we had were surprisingly good for a gimmick chain. I had pinto beans, turnip greens, and blackened catfish. Joanna had trout with turnip greens and string beans.
Vegetables done Southern style are cooked with some form of ham, usually ham hock, for shortening.
Cracker Barrel is mainly a restaurant, but you enter through a mock country store selling all kinds of things that nobody really needs. Lots of Christmas decorations this season. Also packages of what passes as old-fashioned candy, toys, and loads of other merchandise.
I don’t know where the park ranger and her husband stayed, but nobody was going to walk all the way up here to ask for a buck or two.
Saturday we went to Downtown Memphis, but first we detoured to the burbs to get a photo of Graceland.
Those stray franchises that got dropped on the Delta? They may have been originally intended for this neighborhood
Graceland is on Elvis Presley Blvd. The house sits on a rise behind a stone wall covered in graffiti. Its neighbors near and far include Days Inn at Graceland, the Guest House at Graceland, the Graceland Plaza strip mall, Checkers, KFC, and Advance Auto Parts.
Just south of the graffitied wall, there was a line of cars following a driveway. I wondered if that was the public entrance to the property, but not so: it was the drive-through lane at BJ’s Buffalo Style Hot Wings.
There’s a turnoff that runs in front of that wall. Joanna was able to snap the photo of the day through the a space by the gate.
To get from there to downtown Memphis, you find Third Street, which becomes B.B. King Blvd. and takes you to the Beale Street neighborhood.
After Nashville, I was asking myself if Memphis was going to be more of the same. Well, the answers are yes, a little, and not, a lot.
In Nashville everybody wears cowboy hats and pretends to be from Texas.
In Memphis, everybody wants to be from NOLA. They sell drinks to go. The music is heavy on blues. No cowboy hats.
We parked near Beale and found that several blocks are closed to traffic.
I’ve been wearing a pair of two-toned bucks. They remind me of pimp shoes. I felt right at home in Memphis.
We did a run-through of the Memphis Rock ’n’ Soul Museum, which traces the roots of rock from the old bluesmen through Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis to the present.
It’s similar to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, but much smaller and with share-croppers thrown in. They give you a device for a self-guided tour that includes explanations of various exhibits and also a sizable collection of antique recordings, including Robert Johnson, W.C. Handy, and Furry Lewis.
We also walked up and down several blocks of Beale Street. We saw the ducks in the fountain of the Peabody Hotel lobby. We were hoping to have dinner there, but they didn’t start serving for an hour and we were famished.
We wound up having more Cracker food at Silky O’Sullivan’s Irish Pub. The raw oysters on the menu cinched it.
They were the most disappointing oysters I’ve eaten. No brine, no flavor at all. I had to dose them with catsup and horseradish.
The pulled pork barbecue plate was better, but not by much. Memphis uses a red sauce. It’s not as sweet as the Texas variety, so I like it better. Nor is it as savory as the vinegar-based Carolina barbecue, which is my favorite.
Joanna had Dixie fried catfish and French fries. It seems that even if the kitchen is in a hurry, as this one was, you can’t screw up catfish.
W.C. Handy overlooking Beale Street.
We drove almost straight through to Fort Smith on Sunday.
We made good time, driving about 280 miles in a little more than four hours. The speed limit on most of I-40 is 75 miles an hour in Arkansas. Judging by the number of cars and pickups that passed me, I expect that’s only a polite suggestion in this state.
We stretched at a rest stop for a few minutes. We pulled onto an overlook, but didn’t find much to see so we didn’t get out of the car.
The longest stop was at a liquor store in Wiederkehr Village. A billboard just before the exit warned us of “dry counties ahead,” so we took the sign’s advice and stopped to stock up. I bought a couple of bottles of red.
I’ve emptied one so far, a blend from Portugal called Silk & Spice—nice and dry.
The store is on Rue de Cabernet, just across from the little vineyard.
We’re in another La Quinta, on the south side of Fort Smith.
We are in a stretch loaded with fast food, but share a parking lot with an Outback Steakhouse.
So we’re able to walk to dinner again. I had steak frites with asparagus. I don’t know if it’s regional or a sign of changing times, but decent green vegetables are readily available so far on this trip.
I had a fine pinot noir, and two different Cab Sauvignons. One, from Australia, had a definite tart edge. As with sour ales, I wouldn’t want more than one in a single sitting. That tartness can cloy if you drink too many in a row.
Monday we went to the reason we are stopping in Fort Smith, Out on the edge of the state, by the Arkansas River, is Miss Laura’s Guest House, the only brothel on the National Register of Historic Places.
The brothel opened in 1903 and shut down in 1948. It stood abandoned for while and had deteriorated to the point that the town was going to tear it down. A public-spirited man, who felt that it had too much history for that, bought it and started to restore it.
I think the town is glad that happened. The former brothel is now Fort Smith’s welcome center.
A tornado hit the place several years ago and tore the roof off. And it was restored again.
Only one of its stained-glass windows is original. There are other artifacts, though, that were found in the house. They included tokens that customers would give to the ladies, who were not paid directly in cash for their services.
Mike, our guide, gave us the story of the place. Miss Laura bought the house in 1903 for $3,000. She sold it to one of her employees, Pearl Younger, for about 40 grand in 1911. Younger operated the business until it closed.
These were ladies who packed pistols to maintain order.
Miss Laura’s was one of a row of houses, and the only one left standing. She charged a premium, Mike said, because the girls working for her saw a doctor once a month instead of once a year, which was the practice at the other houses.
I don’t know what particular wisdom to pass along after all these learning experiences. Beware of dry counties? Don’t eat at a place called Silky’s? Behave at Miss Laura’s or she’ll shoot your ass?
In any event, stay well and eat your greens.
Love to everybody.
Harry and Joanna
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