Hi, Sugar!

A big part of what I wanted to experience in the south was the food. Biscuits and gravy. Southern sweet tea (essentially sugar water with a touch of tea taste). Fried chicken. And of course, barbecue. We had barbecue last night (Corky’s – perfection) and today – a chopped pork shoulder sandwich and a Sock It To ‘Em cake at Interstate BBQ.

All of it tasted good, but my word, it’s no wonder that obesity is on the rise. I must have consumed well over my daily allowance of calories at lunch alone, what with the sweet tea, the pork sandwich, the beans, the cole slaw, and the cake, which was essentially warm pound cake with icing on top.

I am feeling very expansive, and the waistband of my jeans agrees. Wow. Living here would probably kill me.

But I don’t live here, and that means I was a tourist today. We went to the National Civil Rights Museum in the morning, and unintentionally spent 4 hours there going through the remarkably well-executed audio tour and exhibition. The museum is attached to the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King, Jr. was shot in 1968.

It was a rather chilling experience, looking out the window of the erstwhile hotel at the balcony where Dr. King was killed. The whole visit was deeply moving, having been to a couple of the places notable in civil rights history – we started in Oakland, where Huey Newton founded the Black Panthers, we went to Chicago, the site of terrible race riots (and where Rosa Parks moved to when she could no longer find work in Birmingham after the boycott), and of course, we were in Memphis. I’ve been meaning to read more about the civil rights movement for a long time, and the visit reinforced my interest in the topic.

We of course had BBQ for lunch, as I mentioned. And then I took Pepto. Again. To appease the angry stomach.

And in the afternoon? We went to Graceland. Whoo hoo!


















I’m not an Elvis fan (I’m not anti-Elvis either, I’m just neutral about him), so it wasn’t a pilgrimage so much as an educational opportunity. I didn’t know that Elvis was a big reader, often underlining passages in the primarily spiritual material he read, or that he donated a lot of money to local charities and individuals. I didn’t know that he was such a shy, soft-spoken, and polite southern boy. I didn’t know he had black belts in both karate and taekwondo.

My image of Elvis before visiting Graceland was that of an extravagant, flashy, sweaty fat man. A tragic figure, in many ways. I’d seen pictures of the young Elvis, but I never understood the transformation from that lithe, shy, beautiful boy to the oft-lampooned figure in the white jumpsuits. I also never understood the way he could be that polite southern boy but rock so hard at the same time. And you know what? Graceland didn’t illuminate either of those dichotomies. It was a soft sell, a sop to pilgrims, and what else could I really expect? I saw the shag carpet wallpaper, and the fur-covered circular bed, and that was fun and cool, and I learned some new things (including that young Elvis really was that hot), but there weren’t answers at Graceland, just more questions. Something else to read about, someday.

What Graceland did provide was great kitsch, and we reveled in it. It was like a pilgrimage to the Elvis gift shop, more than anything. Whee!

Tomorrow we are going to Mammoth Cave and Lincoln’s birth place, both in Kentucky. Then to Lexington, where Joiner leaves the train and I continue on back to the east coast, alone. A little anxiety-producing, that. And sad, because this has been such an amazing trip, full of firsts and nice people and cool things to look at and taste and experience.