If ever I get worried or angsty at the thoughts of travelling alone, I think of the time I was on my way to Hoi An in Vietnam and I was doing grand until I got off the train and got an almighty dose of WHATamIDOINGs. I sat on a step outside and a woman about my age came over and asked for a light. She was going to Hoi An too, we got chatting and decided to split a taxi. Her name was Magali, and we ended up hanging around together for days, having epic chats and putting away a lot of beer (we’re actually still in touch). And I think of that because when I was feeling lonely, I found a person – or rather, a person found me. In the world of backpacking and hostels, they usually do and I know they usually do. Well, I think I know that but then I find myself standing at the Greyhound station in Chicago getting on an twelve-hour overnight bus to Memphis without an actual fixed plan and a dying phone.
The Greyhound gets a bad rap here in the US. Firstly, cars are huge here – both literally and figuratively – and because most people have one (I looked it up, they do) the idea of getting on a bus is alien to the majority of Americans. Therefore, most people riding the Greyhound don’t own or can’t hire a car that’ll get them across several states and are likely to come from socially and economically disadvantaged backgrounds. You’ll find all sorts at a Greyhound station and I was a bit intimidated the first evening I walked into the station in Chicago, not fearful per se but very conscious of being there on my own, my trepidation manifesting itself in the perception of everyone there as being a threat of some sort, which is kinda mortifying even if I didn’t intentionally formulate those thoughts. I did, however, intentionally formulate a Good Talking-To.
A Good Talking-to: gud-talk·ing-to/good ˈtôkiNG ˌto͞o/informal noun:
To repeat the words ‘CATCH YOURSELF ON DOIREANN’ in the voice of Jim McDonald from Coronation Street. Proven cure for when you’re being a mentaller or wondering what in God’s name you’re doing in a particular place.
Fact was that everyone was just going about their business just like I was, hoping to fall asleep and get to wherever they were going quickly. Turns out interstate travel so much nicer…. well, ‘less crap’ of an experience when you’re not being an over-anxious eejit. I spent the equivalent of three days on buses, I met a lot of people with a lot of interesting stories (which makes sense; must be something pretty interesting you’re going to if you’re willing to spend that long on a bus) and encountered so many really, really kind people that a later post will be dedicated to American kindness. I can see that Greyhound travel’s not for everyone; the buses look like they’ve been on the go since the 1950s, the stations are pretty grim and things can get a bit chaotic because everything’s always understaffed but I definitely preferred all of that to haemorrhaging money on air travel and/or going nowhere and I got a lot of PBS documentaries watched on the free Wi-Fi. And I got to pass through Markham, IL. And in the end, after twelve hours (it takes eight in a car but who’s counting….), I got to Memphis, TN
Right so, I arrived in Memphis and made my way directly to the National Civil Rights Museum. The museum is a marvelous undertaking, a heroic effort to convey the heroics of others. It built around the Lorraine Motel where Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in 1968 and you can visit the room he was staying in, which is something that would normally have me bawling (I wept and nearly got run down in Dallas at the X where JFK was assassinated) but the bravery and courage of the activists exhibited throughout the museum had kinda drained me of further awe. They were all so young! Maybe youth is a crucial ingredient for the courage to endure what they did to protest segregation, knowing that death was a far realer prospect than social change. It is no wonder the Northern Ireland civil rights movement was inspired by them. However, in Memphis itself today, much remains to be done in terms of racial equality – social and economic – as a spin around the city clearly shows.
Memphis as a Mecca for musical pilgrimage cannot be separated from the city’s role in the birth of the civil rights movement. Music doesn’t just come out of nowhere; one culture’s instruments are blended with another’s rhythms and someone else’s arrangements, and it’s political or economic or social shifts that bring the bearers of these sounds to the place where new music is formed. To visit and skip the National Civil Rights Museum is to skip crucial chapters in a book. That said, the Smithsonian-affiliated Museum of Rock and Soul makes a good job of weaving the social, political and economic factors that helped create the blues, jazz and eventually rock and roll – the music that literally changed the world – into a compelling narrative. There’s so much to learn in Memphis so go there, ditch whoever says they don’t like museums and then move into the National Civil Rights Museum or the Museum of Rock and Soul.
I also went to Sun Studios and Graceland. To stand in the same space as Elvis, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Johnny Lee-Lewis, Roy Orbison stood (and assumedly some women too) was tremendous though space is limited and the tours are quick. I hadn’t intended going to Graceland but after Sun Studios and two Elvis movies (Jailhouse Rock and Viva Las Vegas!) I got myself a ticket. I’m glad I went; the house itself is the embodiment of my granny’s old saying ‘more money than sense’ and it’s a Disneyland of Elvis-ness that you wouldn’t believe anyone actually takes seriously until you see someone actually taking it seriously. However, it’s got to be said, Graceland Inc. gives you nothing beyond ‘Elvis was great, America’s great, only in America could the Elvis story happen see you, bye’. The lauding of his grueling tour schedule in the same breath as mourning his death at the age of forty-two is shameless…. then again, so too is the creation of a multimillion-dollar Disneyland around a man who was utterly exploited in life and in death and sure didn’t I pay into it like everyone else so I don’t know what I’m on about. I love a good grave so I do, and the one thing I found genuine and touching was modesty of his grave, alongside his parents.
I’ll go back to Memphis another time. I always think the world is too big to go back on places but Memphis is the exception. I’d being a heap of friends and we’d have a ball, it’d be a whole different experience all over again. I’d hire a car this time though. And I’d abandon any notion of vegetarianism that I ever had because barbeque is the best thing in the world. Thanks for reading, give me a shout if you’re going to Memphis, I’ve soooo much more to say about it.
doireann.ie 