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
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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)