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Date:         Fri, 1 Sep 1995 10:01:22 -0700 (PDT)
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         "Tobin T. Copley" <tobin@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca>
Subject:      Big Trip Report [part 7, long]

Part VII: Graceland, Tupelo, and Joel Walker

This week: Tobin and Christa check out Graceland, visit Elvis' birthplace, and share possum BBQ with Joel Walker. And we see cotton... lots of cotton.

February 19, 1995

We'd taken the Graceland Tour tour bus across Elvis Presley Boulevard and rolled up the driveway to Elvis' Graceland mansion. We got off the bus and were almost immediately overwhelmed by the experience. The other Gen-Xers on the bus, who had also come to make their pilgrimage to The King, appeared to experience the same effect, and we all sniggered together at the stuff around us... but _quietly_, because we didn't want to offend any of the nice tour guides all around us who were probably getting paid $4.25 an hour to recite their lines without emotion or feeling, 1,000 times a day.

At the base of the steps leading to the front door of the mansion, the young woman who was our steps-leading-to-the-front-door-guide started in:

"Wailcome to Gricelund, the home of Aylvis Ayrun Presley, purchised in nahn-teen-fifty-sayvin for his payrunts..." Yada yada yada...

One smart-ass in the group interjected "Who?" and that actually stopped her--the stared at him and repeated "_Elvis Presley?_ The singer?" before she realized she'd been had. I'd have thought she got that all the time.

Next we moved on to the front-hallway-inside-the-house-person, the Elvis'-dining-room-person, the Elvis'-tastefully-decorated-living- room-person, and so forth, for the remainder of the tour. We were disappointed to see that we didn't get one guide to lead us through the whole house, but that we got shunted from one room to another to be talked at by a guide who was stationed (maybe for 8 hours a day?!) in the room. These poor people repeated the same damn lines over and over and over and over all day long. Do they scream whenever they hear an Elvis song? This scene blew my mind so bad that I actually hung back just to listen to the guide in one room go through the spiel three times in _precisely_ the same way as each new group shuffled in, gawked, and were herded out. Christa and I really, _really_ wished we had Something For Bob to help us along the tour. Maybe they would take us up to see Elvis' bathroom, and we could do a quick search through his medicine cabinet...

So we proceed through the house, room after room. Highlights for me were his TV room (with 3 TVs in row set into the cabinet-- Elvis' had gotten the idea from Lyndon Johnson's set-up in the White House: now THAT'S classy!), and the "Jungle Room," which utterly defies description.

We proceeded to his grave at the "Reflecting Pool." Rumor has it they made a typo on his gravestone, because his middle name is spelt with only one "A": Aron. Whether it's a typo or not, they could have at least proofed the copy for grammar. How's this bit of the epitaph for redundancy (I won't comment on the appropriateness of the press-kit tone on a grave stone): "He became a living legend in his own time." What?! Who wrote this crap?

Oh, and the fake Greco-Roman-Italianate-something-or-other statues and columns were a real nice touch, too. And the very tasteful flower arrangements sent by fans were very nice as well. I just had to get my picture taken here.

All in all, Graceland was... interesting. Definitely worth the trip, even worth the bucks for the tour. It's so bad it's good. And from an anthropological point of view, it provides a lot of insights about what makes America. Elvis was a small-town-boy- makes-good, rags-to-riches, stays-in-Memphis-because-it's-home, makes-sacrifice-in-career-for-country, more-money-than-taste, gun nut (yes! it's true!) white male. America de-constructed for $9.00 admission? Hell, I'll go!

We mailed a bunch of post cards to friends and relatives from the Graceland post office, where all mail is cancelled with an Elvis cancellation mark. Oh, and I sent a post card with a picture of Elvis' grave stone to my ex-employer.

We walked back to the parking lot, having absolutely no problem finding our bright mango-coloured camper. After saying hello and going through the usual greeting (checking the oil, etc.), we pulled out and drove along the river towards downtown Memphis. We were looking for a rib joint that had been recommended to us, but when we found it, it was closed. I had wanted to go to the American Civil Rights Museum, but it, too, was closed. We briefly considered hanging out in some of the downtown blues clubs for a while, but we were hungry and getting tired, so we decided to hit a grocery store then find a free campsite.

An hour later, we had a full cooler, full fuel tank, and were just a few miles from the camping area. We pulled over at a pay phone and called Joel in Tuscaloosa to confirm we'd be getting to his place the next day, and to get instructions to his house. Joel gave us detailed instructions on how to get to his place all the way from Mississippi. Now THOSE were instructions!

We drove the six or seven miles to the Army Corps of Engineers camp site at the north end of Arkabutla Lake, in northern Mississippi. We settled in to a nice spot a few sites away from the only other people there, a large local family. We went over to say hi. They'd spent the day running around with dirt bikes and all-terrain vehicles, getting muddy and making themselves deaf. They had a cozy little fire going, with flames leaping four or five feet into the air. Nobody could get within 10 feet of it. The fire made a lot of noise, so they had to turn the stereo in the pick-up up real loud, otherwise they wouldn't be able to hear the Judds wailing at each other. They were throwing their beer cans into the fire, except when they missed, which was often. They had no idea where Canada was, let alone British Columbia, and they made it pretty clear they didn't care. They weren't mean about it--they just already had their brains full of other stuff like dirt bikes, Coors beer, and Patrick Buchanan. We took our leave, explaining that we had to tend to our own dinner.

Back at our own site, Christa couldn't concentrate on dinner preparations with the sounds of country music, screaming kids, swearing parents, and the clatter of empty beer cans hitting the ground. So we fired up the camper and drove down the access road to the far end of the camp ground, through a ditch, and up to another site. We could barely hear the Loud Family from here, so we settled in for dinner and sleeps. About an hour later, the Loud Family's mufflerless pick-up roared out of the park, leaving us in blissful solitude for the rest of the night. We slept well.

We got up early the next morning, and despite our problems a few days before trying to navigate the Mississippi back roads, drove the back roads east towards Tupelo. We passed through towns with names like Cockrum, Wyatte, Thyatira, and Cornersville. Of course, I didn't see any obvious corners or junctions in Cornersville. We drove through miles and miles of low rolling hills and cotton fields. Christa wanted to stop next to one of these field so she could pick some cotton, but I put it off, thinking we would find a "better" place up ahead. We never found this better place, and Christa never got to pick her cotton. I felt very bad about this.

After a couple hours of putting along the Mississippi blue highways, I finally gave in and joined up with US78 near New Albany, and we cruised in to Tupelo, the birthplace of Elvis Presley, and new growing centre of the White Supremacy movement. We stopped off to visit the two-room house where Elvis was born, paid a buck each for the 2 minute tour of the house, given by a very nice older woman, and then went out on the porch and swung in Elvis' porch swing in the sun for a while.

Time was passing, and we still had a way to go to Tuscaloosa, so we rolled out and jumped on US78 heading east again and got buffeted by big noisy trucks for a couple of hours before turning south on the quieter, two-lane US43 towards Tuscaloosa. Joel Walker's instructions were as accurate as they were exhaustive. We rolled up to his house about 30 minutes later than we'd planned on arriving to find no Joel, but did find post-it notes for us stuck on every door to the house. He'd gone to dinner, and would be back shortly. So we cooled our heels for a few minutes, and pretty soon Joel rolled up in his impressive mid-80s vanagon. Big hellos all 'round (turns out we were the first vanagon@lenti folks he'd ever actually met face to face), and he invited us inside his house.

Well, if any of you have been entertaining fantasies of Joel not being one crazy wild 'possum, you can just dispel them now. It seemed that every table, shelf, and horizontal surface in his dining room and living room was piled high with Volkswagen bus manuals, books, sales literature, parts catalogs, photographs, and so on. I was overwhelmed. By his television there were stacks of VW bus videos, including one very fun but surreal one of Derek Drew managing to get his syncro stuck in just about every way imaginable. We spent one night watching Joel's slides of his past busses and trips he'd taken in them. Good thing Christa was so into VW busses as well--she even scolded Joel for selling his beautiful old '71.

Joel took took us out for some "Bah-bee-kew" at the Potter's Grill, a little hole-in-the-wall restaurant where everybody knows Joel by name. He introduced everyone to his friends from Canada, and they were all much impressed that we'd driven all the way from "up there." Joel warned us that the portions were small, so we took him up on his suggestion that we order two items each. When the food came, it was clear we'd ordered at least our body weight in food. We tried to get Joel to help us out with it, but he just chuckled and ate his pie. We ate what we could and waddled out.

It was dark outside by then, so Joel had a chance to show off the amazing lighting system on his bus. The large halogen reverse light made backing out of the parking spot no promblemo. His Hella H-4 halogen headlights, coupled with the two scary-powerful driving lights he had mounted on the front bumper appeared to light up half the state. The computer that sat on top of the dashboard gave a reading of his instantaneous fuel mileage, and we could watch his fuel economy go up and down as we went up or down hills, accelerated, or got behind trucks on the freeway. Cool.

When we got back to Joel's house, he showed us his kitchen. The kitchen looked normal enough at first glance, until I realized I didn't see any dishes or glasses anywhere. Joel opened up his kitchen cabinets for me to see. Christa and I stood there, dumbfounded, and our mouths hung open. Joel's cabinets were packed absolutely full of oil filters, fuel filters, spark plugs, grease cartridges, air filters, WD-40 cans, assorted 3M products, replacement halogen light bulbs, distributor caps and rotors, fuses, wiper blades... we just couldn't believe it.

We chatted some more, then turned in. For the next two days, Joel drove us around town, showing us the sights, taking us to his FLAPS for parts, and getting exhaust parts made up for our auxiliary gas heater. Joel particularly enjoyed drilling a big 2" hole in our camper with his electric drill. I let him do it--I was too freaked to do it myself, and he did a good job. I needed to drill a hole for the gas heater exhaust through the battery tray on the left side of the van. After a few trips to the muffler shop to get a piece custom-made, and then bent and cut exactly right, Joel and I had finally installed the heater in a way fairly close to the factory specs. I also took advantage of the warm weather and Joel's level driveway to adjust the valves, change the oil, and to patch up the worst of the rust holes in my heat exchanger boxes. Joel also gave us a clear shower curtain and some strip-type magnets he had lying around, and Christa spent the better part of the "car day" installing the curtain tightly behind the front seats so our heaters would only have to heat a relatively small area. Both of us were already starting to think ahead to the next five or six thousand miles through the colder weather we expected to hit in the Northeast and across Canada in March. After a busy day working on the car, all three of us relaxed, watched VW videos, and telephoned Martha to update her on our progress.

After another day with Joel spent exploring the town and looking for used book stores, we thanked Joel for his incredible hospitality and rolled out of town headed to see some friends in South Carolina. As much as I hated to do it, I had to admit we were beginning to get a little pressed for time, so we headed east along I-20 through Birmingham and Atlanta. It was nice and warm, but cool enough that I could drive with the driver's window rolled up--that cut the noise of passing cars down considerably. Traffic picked up as we neared Atlanta, and got fairly heavy from time to time, but we could keep our 57 mph cruising speed most of the time, so it didn't bother me. We swung north on the I-285 ring road as Christa slept quietly through it all. I travelled all the way around to the I-20 exit again, heading for Augusta.

Half an hour later Christa woke up to see an I-20 sign slide by. "Where are we?." she asked. "Oh, about half an hour outside of Atlanta," I replied. She looked at me for a second, then reached for the road atlas. "We're on the wrong road," she said, "You were supposed to take I-85 to Charlotte, not I-20 to Augusta." Oops. We pulled off at Oxford, bought some food for lunch, and ate lunch in the supermarket parking lot. We got back in the camper and spent the next hour or two working our way north through beautiful countryside with great old houses. Maybe I'd subconsciously just needed an excuse to get the hell off the interstate highways. We putted along secondary roads, finally hitting I-85 near Maysville. We cruised across Georgia and into South Carolina, watching the incredibly low gas prices. Lowest price we saw for 87 octane regular unleaded?: 84 cents a gallon! We'd paid over two dollars a gallon in California! (We'd pay nearly 70 cents a LITRE in some places in Canada, but we didn't know that yet.)

We continued across South Carolina with the sun setting behind us. Our camper's long shadow was cast on the pavement directly in front of us, and, gosh, was it darling! Christa and I smiled at each other, holding hands as we cruised down the highway, wondering why everybody else was in such a rush.

As we approached the North Carolina state line, we rounded a curve to see a brightly lit 200 foot peach directly in front of us. Christa and I exchanged glances and we both wore exactly the same expression: Cool! It was beautiful, all floodlit under an early evening sky that still had traces of orange and midnight blue left over from the sunset. I wanted to stop for a picture, but Christa reminded me we had to get to our friends' place, and we were late already. Besides, the picture wouldn't turn out with our point- and-shoot camera anyway. I had to agree, but we made a pact to come back in the next couple of days for a daytime photo-op with the camper.

An hour later, we rolled into our friends' driveway, parked the camper, and joined our friends for a few drinks around a warm fireplace. Our camper sat outside under the stars as we slept in a guest room in the house, but we waved at it at kissed it good night before we went to bed so it wouldn't feel lonely.

[Next week: We fulfill our promise to photograph the Gaffney Peach, do a tour of the RJ Reynolds Tobacco factory, and explore the sticks in Virginia.]

Tobin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Tobin T. Copley Currently ============= (604) 689-2660 Occupationally /_| |__||__| :| putta tobin@freenet.vancouver.bc.ca Challenged! O| | putta '-()-------()-' Circum-continental USA, Mexico, Canada 15,000 miles... '76 VW Camper! (Mango)


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