Just Another Friday Night In Memphis - Part 11

.................never been so happy in her life.

It's a long flight to Atlanta and we hadn't booked any accommodation,
all we had was a voucher for a car I had booked before we left.
Hartsfield airport is massive, it actually has it's own underground
railway linking all the termini and there's seven stops. It takes ages
to clear immigration and retrieve your luggage but the car hire company
have buses to take you to collect your car. It was about 4.30pm when we
got to the car hire place and we were tired and needed a shower. We
agreed to find a motel, clean up and have a meal and then spend the
evening exploring Atlanta.

Next day I'd promised Jan I would take her to Martin Luther King's
birthplace and gravesite, as she was always very interested in him, I
knew where it was as I'd been before. We spent the morning there and
about 12.30pm I said we really ought to be leaving for Tupelo in
Mississippi thinking we might make it in one go. It was further than I
thought, halfway across Georgia from Atlanta, right across Alabama and
a way into Mississippi. It started to get dark and we stopped for the
night in Birmingham, Alabama.

We left early the next morning and drove the rest of the way to Tupelo
with a tape I had made specially for the trip playing and Janet
laughing and telling me how much she loved me and how happy she was.
Although it was mid-November the weather was like a hot English summer
with blue skies and temperatures in the eighties. We were cruising down
the interstate with hardly any traffic and I thought I had died and
gone to heaven. We arrived in Tupelo before lunch and quickly found a
motel near the town centre.

The reason for Tupelo was to visit the birthplace of Elvis Presley who
we both liked, and I was very interested in his pre-fame life. It
didn't take long to find the little shack he was born in and a short
way up the street was the first school he attended. We pulled up
outside the school and sitting on a low wall was a guy in dungarees
talking to a woman in uniform, as I walked toward the building
intending to take a photograph, the woman spoke to me asking if she
could help. It turned out she was a police officer on school security
duty and when I explained about Elvis she told me her grandmother and
Presley's were sisters. She offered to take us on a tour of the school
and when we got back she said she was going to phone the sheriff and
see if he had time to see us. I was a bit curious about this and she
explained that the sheriff, who was her boss, was actually Elvis'
cousin Harold Ray Presley. I couldn't believe our luck when she said
for us to go right round to the county jail and ask for him.

It was a strange experience, prisons in the US are nothing like here,
they have high chain link fences with lookout posts, like concentration
camps in Germany in the war. Harold Ray was waiting for us in his
office, which had a display of his Elvis memorabilia on the wall. He
chatted to us for 20mins or so about growing up in Tupelo and being
around Elvis. His dad and Elvis' grandfather were brothers apparently
and as he chatted Janet recorded it all on video. During the time we
were there he had a couple of phone calls and I felt we had out-stayed
our welcome and said we'd let him get back to his work.

He gave us a couple of his 'Presley, Sheriff, Lee County' baseball caps
and as we shook hands and left he said, 'Y'all come back and visit now,
d'ya hear?'

(That was the last I saw of him, and sadly a few weeks ago (July 6th
2001) I read in the papers that he had been murdered in a shoot-out
with a gunman in Tupelo.)

We visited a few other related sites I won't bore you with and left for
Memphis the next morning. By mid-afternoon we passed into Tennessee and
saw the first outline of Memphis on the horizon, for me it was like
coming home only this time I had the woman I loved by my side and not a
care in the world. If I'd only known.....

As we got closer to the city the traffic started to build up and we
were engulfed in the worst free-for-all we had encountered since
arriving in Atlanta three days previously. I'm not a nervous driver so
it didn't bother me much but you have to have your wits about you if
you're not used to traffic coming at you from unexpected directions. We
drove into the city along Union Avenue, the famous street that runs
through the heart of downtown Memphis from east to west stopping at the
Mississippi River.

I parked in a multi-story almost opposite the Peabody and we had a bite
to eat in the Holiday Inn I had stayed at the year before. Janet was a
little worried that we hadn't got a room yet but I told her not to
worry and we would sort it out just as soon as I had shown her the
Peabody. She was amazed when she entered the lobby and saw how big it
is, it's the size of a large ballroom extending up through the next
floor with a balcony all round, with a big fountain in the middle
complete with real ducks and a grand piano playing, groups of sofas and
armchairs everywhere with people drinking and chatting and a large bar
at the far end; it is like something from 'Gone With The Wind'. I took
her up on the roof to where the duck palace was and where they filmed
the barbecue scene in the Tom Cruise movie 'The Firm'. The hotel has
been used in numerous movies and has lots of famous connections, not
the least of which is that Elvis Presley used to take his girlfriends
to the annual school dance in the Continental ballroom.

We went back down to the mezzanine floor and while Janet gazed out over
the lobby I made a phone call to Sarah. She wasn't in; she'd not
allowed for the six hours time difference and in the end I got Adrienne
who didn't know about the room anyway. Janet spoke to Adrienne for a
while and then we went to get the car. As I drove down Second Ave I
turned into the Peabody car park and Janet thought I'd mistaken it for
a road, I had to admit we were staying there for the night and Sarah
had paid for it. She thought she was dreaming and didn't stop talking
about Sarah's extravagance until we got to the room on the fourth
floor. It had everything except a butler and Janet kept rushing from
the bathroom to the bedroom to the dressing room laughing, whilst I
unpacked the cases and hung stuff up.

That evening we spent in Beale St. famous for it's clubs and music, we
ate in B.B.Kings club and listened to the blues band before going back
to the Peabody for drinks in the lobby bar. That night was one of the
best I've ever known, Janet pampered me and made me feel like a king, I
never knew loving could be so good. We only had the one night there and
after checking out in the morning we decided it would be sensible to
find somewhere else before we did anything else.

As luck would have it we had picked the worst week of the year to come
to Memphis, every year in the second week of November there is a
massive religious convention and 80,000 people from all over the south
descend on the city and book every damned room in town. We couldn't
find a room anywhere in the city and eventually had to pay a fortune at
the East Memphis Hilton. We'd spent most of the day looking for a room
and we were a bit depressed but we changed our clothes and headed back
to the city. That evening we ate in a famous restaurant called
'Rendezvous', featured in one of Ainsley Harriot's food shows. It was a
lot of money for a plate of barbequed ribs and not a lot else, still we
had a bed for the night and I couldn't wait to get in it with
Janet.

We couldn't afford to stay at the Hilton again so next day we looked
further a field and had to settle for a hotel out near the airport,
about 5mls from the city. After spending the day at Graceland, home of
Elvis Presley we had a shower and headed back to the city around
teatime.

I pulled up at the traffic light junction of Bellevue and Lamar Ave to
turn left towards the city. The lights changed and I edged forward
waiting for the traffic to pass but the guy coming the other way
stopped and waved me across. I hesitated and he waved again, I pulled
forward across the front of him and a woman driving a large off-road
four x four came up the inside of him speeding to catch the lights
before they changed, I saw the car coming and stopped, the other
driver, a woman, had room to go round me but I could see she was frozen
at the wheel and she hit us head on at sixty miles an hour. It happened
so fast and yet it seemed like slow motion. There was an awful
explosion in our faces and then silence. I turned to look at Janet to
see if she was OK and she had a shocked look on her face, I was
stunned, the air was full of an acrid smoke and I realised that the
airbags had gone off and saved us both from serious injury. The bonnet
was up in the air and people were shouting, I managed to undo the seat
belts and we got out in the fresh air, the guy who had waved me across
had already decided he didn't want any part of this and had driven away
not even stopping to see if anybody was injured.

Thankfully nobody was hurt, just two wrecked cars. I could hear the
sirens already and in second's two squad cars and an ambulance arrived.
It was teatime on a Friday night in the busiest part of town and I
started to feel I'd made a terrible mistake bringing Janet here, there
were cars everywhere and the wreckage in the middle of the junction was
like something out of one of those Bruce Willis movies.

One of the cops greeted his colleague as he walked across to where the
second car had stopped, and the driver's door opened.

'Hell, it's a wild one again!', the first officer said.

As he slammed the car door the other officer answered with words I'll
never forget.

'It's just another Friday night in Memphis man!' he replied wearily,
surveying the wreckage in the middle of the junction.

He walked over to me and asked if I was the driver and was anybody
hurt. Pulling a notebook from his pocket he asked for my drivers
licence and I could tell he was a bit hostile towards me, not because I
was British but because I was white. There's still an awful lot of
racism in the south and an awful lot of black cops. I'd left my licence
in the hotel not knowing that it was an offence not to have it on you
(well no one told me!) and the cop got a bit awkward.

I said, 'I didn't know I was supposed to have it on me, I'm a stranger
in your country.'

'It ain't my country man', he replied, and I knew what he meant.

I said, 'Well you were born here and where I come from that makes it
your country, I don't care what colour you are, you're a human aren't
you?'

His eyes narrowed and I thought for a second I should have kept my
mouth shut but he suddenly smiled and said,

'How you getting back to your hotel man? You and the lady wanna
lift?'

He almost apologised about having to give me a ticket for not having a
licence and told me I'd have to go to the city station first thing
Monday and pay a fine. He and his partner gave us a lift to the hotel
where I called the car hire firm and they sent a guy from their depot
at the airport and they gave us another car.

As I drove into the hotel car park I saw Janet waiting for me in the
lobby, she held my hand tightly as we walked to the lift and up two
floors to our room. As I shut the door behind us I fell on the bed
crying uncontrollably. I felt I had let Janet down and had nearly
killed us both, she kept telling me it wasn't really my fault, that the
woman was overtaking on the inside of a queue and trying to beat the
lights and was driving like a maniac. I insisted it didn't matter, she
was my responsibility, and what would I have said to her family if she
had been injured or worse. (I still go cold thinking about that
accident, and any time I hear Willie Nelson sing 'City of New Orleans'
I shiver when he sings, 'changing cars in Memphis Tennessee') That
night Janet and I fell asleep with our arms wrapped around each other
so tightly, afraid to let go and just thankful we had each other; we
were so far from home.

tbc