Our Big Trip Week 21- November 2 to November 8

A BRIEF APOLOGY FOR THIS UPDATE BEING TARDY:

Sorry.

Sunday, November 2:

We took off for Great Smoky Mountain National Park, which boasts that it is the most-visited national park in the country. We found this hard to believe, given the fame of some of the parks in the west. We found, however, that this is, in fact, the most visited park in the country, and, in fact, everyone in the country was there today. I'm surprised that all of our readers didn't email us to tell us you would be here, because obviously you were. After looking at the map of the park, we headed for the part that was the least accessible, and so, we figured, the least crowded, Elkmont Campground. There we found a nice campsite. We had a relaxing day- Beth went for a walk, I went for a bicycle ride, we made a fire, did some reading, and cooked some rice and beans. Quite a relaxing and enjoyable day.

Monday, November 3:

After waking, we figured that, it being Monday, the park would be somewhat less crowded. So we made for Cades Cove, which is one of the "hotspots" in the park. There is an 11-mile loop that you can drive/bike/walk/slither around that leads through the cove. It is a one-way, one lane road. Let's just say that my dear friend Laura the marathoner could have made it around the loop faster than we did. It was pretty, but it wasn't so wonderful that it deserved all the traffic, in your humble narrator's opinion. It reminded me of some of the fields in central Oregon that we drove through, with the exception of the entire population of the original 13 colonies. Now, I don't mind the fact that there were other people in the park, after all, we were visiting it too. My problem had to do with others' complete inability to read directions. There were signs all over the loop that read, "Please be courteous and do not stop in road. Use turnouts." Seems plain enough to me. (Again, this is a narrow, one-lane road. If one car stops, they ALL stop.) I, however, must be a super-advanced sign reader because NO ONE DID THIS! We'd be moseying along at roughly 6 mph when suddenly someone would SLAM on their brakes because there would be either a deer or a deer-shaped pile of leaves about a thousand yards away. I know, I'm being a poopiehead. Beth was sure to tell me that. Maybe it was because we've seen a lot of parks the last few months. I just got fed up with all the traffic and turned into Karl the Grouch. What can I say? Our readers demand journalistic integrity. After the park, we stopped at a little roadside cafe and ate some broasted chicken. What is broasted chicken, you ask? It's yummy, I reply. We then headed north to Rte 40 and took that west into Nashville, which is called, as y'all know, Music City. In fact, they weren't gonna let us in until Beth did her Britney Spears impression and I accompanied her on harmonica. Once inside, we figured we should hear some locals play. So we took out our map of the city and headed into town. Nashville is, by the way, the most confusing place on earth to drive. Some roads have 3 names, two of which are contradictory- Rt 331 West, 441 North, Pete's Pikeway East- that sort of thing. In addition, often you get to an intersection for a road and find that left is, for example, Rte 70 East and right is Rte 70 North. Really. Anyway, we finally, with much effort, found our way to The Bluebird Cafe, which is a famous venue to hear singer/songwriter types. People play there who write songs for other famous people- tonight we heard a man play a tune that was to be recorded on Johnny Cash's next record before his untimely demise. The level of musicianship was superb- there were people who had come from Lousianna and Florida and North Carolina just to play ONE SONG. This was big time, and like many other places that are really big time, from the outside it looks like a tiny hole in the wall on the end of an anonymous strip mall. We had some dinner there and then mysteriously managed to find our way back to our hotel.

Tuesday, November 4:

Your humble narrator had a bit of an upset tummy today, so I just stayed at the hotel and caught some Z's. Beth took the opportunity to check out the local mall, where she found a store she liked very much, called Metropolitan Deluxe. She has declared it "Coolest Store in the Universe." For shopping euphoria, look for one near you (Note: if you don't live in Tennessee, Georgia, the Carolinas or Florida, the nearest Metropolitan Deluxe won't actually be very near you). Later in the evening when I was still resting in the hotel, Beth checked out some more Hollywood entertainment, and went to see "Runaway Jury," the latest John Grisham flick. She liked it very much (What, she says, is not to like about John Cusack?). She had a "big trip" moment on her way out of the theatre. The kind where she realized that it was 10pm on a weeknight, and she had just enjoyed a movie, and didn't have to worry about getting up early to go to work tomorrow morning. The feeling of freedom we have on this trip is phenomenal.

Wednesday, November 5: Happy Birthday, Paul Salerno!

Your humble narrator was up and running, so we toured Nashville. Our first stop was The Parthenon. "What?" you ask. "I thought The Parthenon was in Greece!" Well, it was, but it turned out someone slipped it through airport security and put it in Nashville as a Halloween prank. No, no, that's not true. There is, however, a full-size replica of the Parthenon in Nashville. It acts as a museum/art gallery. There is a statue of the Greek Goddess Athena inside , as well as an exact replica of all of the stone sculptures on the outside and top of the building. It was really cool touring around inside. Outside, we sat on a bench by the pond in the park and fed the numerous geese, ducks, pigeons and other unidentified fowl our somewhat stale wheat thins. We then took off for Opryland. Our first stop was the Opryland Hotel. Imagine the biggest hotel in the world, them multiply that by 10. Then double that. That is how big each room is in the hotel, and there are 2,881 of them. For $250 to $1,100 per night, you can stay there. The hotel is set up around three large conference center atriums. Each one is about as big as a football stadium, has a glass roof, and lots of plant life, stores, restaurants, streams and boats. There are hundreds of rooms that line the 8ish story walls surrounding each atrium, and all of the rooms have balconies. Each atrium is quite a spectacle. One of them, the name of which escapes me, contains southern-style mansions inside, decorated with Christmas lights (though if you visit at another time of year, the Christmas lights may not still be up) and expensive patio furniture. While we were tooling around in this atrium we realized that the 2003 Country Music Academy Awards were being held right there that very night. That was big news, but the bigger news, and I'm sure you already knew this, was that we had arrived in the middle of the 2003 Indoor Tanning Expo. Some of the seminars being offered were, "Selling More Lotions," "What The Anti-Tanning Lobby Doesn't Want You To Know," and "Thinking Like An Owner- Becoming a Better Tanning Salon Employee." After touring the hotel, and the excitement of the Tanning Expo, I found a couch in the main hotel lobby that was, let it be known, the most comfortable couch in the world. It was right next to a player piano that was playing classical music's least offensive greatest hits (NOTE: I really love classical music. The problem is that so few people do, that when there is some sort of a classical music thing in a public place like a hotel lobby, the music played is the same 20 tunes that we all know because of their inclusion in commercials, etc.). Anyway, I fell asleep on the couch and Beth documented that fact We then drove right past The Grand Ole Opry itself. The entrance was mobbed with people ringing the red carpet with HUGE limos dropping famous country music stars off. Had we stuck around, we could have seen Shania Twain, Willie Nelson, Shania Twain, Toby Keith, Shania Twain, Martina Mcbride, Shania Twain, Alan Jackson, and Shania Twain. We aren't really fans of country music, however, and other than Shania Twain, we really didn't want to see anyone other than Shania Twain. So we went to The Alabama Grill, which, we came to find, is kind of like a country music Hard Rock Cafe. The restaurant was started by the group Alabama, and featured a lot of memorabilia from them. It also featured various relics from many other country stars, including Shania Twain. We had a country-style dinner (meat with meat on the side, gravy, and if you asked persistently, a small cup of vegetables (drenched in cheese)) and checked out the Shania Twain artifacts.

Thursday, November 6: Happy Birthday, Mom!

Today we sadly left Nashville but excitedly headed west on Rte 40 toward Memphis. It was about a 3-hour drive. We had planned to stay at a hotel near Graceland, figuring we'd soak up the Elvis-infused flavor of the place. We had thought that Elvis was enormously wealthy, and were prepared to witness his extravagance first hand, but apparently he wasn't as well off as we thought. Unfortunately, due to record company executives' greed, the poor guy had to buy a house in the ghetto. This is why you readers need the journalistic integrity that can be found here at k&b dot com. The travel brochures ain't gonna tell you that you should pack your uzi if you're planning to stay near Graceland, that's for sure. The hotel we were planning to stay at featured not one, but TWO cars with flattened tires in the parking lot, and one even had a broken windshield. In addition, one of the windows of the hotel was broken and had been "fixed" with duct tape. So, after surveying the situation, we decided to lodge elsewhere. The strip, which encompasses a couple miles on either side of Graceland, was a combination of schlocky memorabilia stores, pawn shops and half-vacant strip malls. We wondered if, during Elvis' prime, the place was bustling and had since fallen into disrepair as The King becomes less of a draw, or if the place is just a poor neighborhood that stays on the verge of sustainability because of the tourists. Anyway, we found lodgings about 10 miles north of Graceland, though we didn't realize how lucky we were, because it turns out that there was a HUGE convention for The Church of God, and every hotel room in the area was taken. After a bit of a startle by the dinginess of the Graceland area, we felt lucky to be in the midst of a religious convention. I mean, people have different beliefs, that's for sure, but you figure that whatever religion people are coming together to celebrate, it most likely doesn't include vandalism. At least not in The South. They take their religion pretty seriously down here.

Friday, November 7: Happy Birthday, Andy Alpert!

Today was one of the days I had been looking forward to since we started planning for Our Big Trip- Graceland. The home of The King. I am a so-so Elvis fan, and Beth thinks he's okay when I force her to listen to my Elvis CD's (which I did incessantly as soon as we got into Memphis). I guess we wanted to go to Graceland out of sociological interest as much as out of homage to Mr. Presley. By the time we left, however, I think it's fair to say that we were both fans. The full tour includes 4 parts: Graceland (his house), a museum of personal artifacts (including the TV he shot), a museum of his "toys" (cars, motorcycles, souped-up golf carts, etc.) and his 2 planes (a huge jetliner and a smaller jet). Let me just say that Graceland was not nearly as gaudy as I had been led to believe. Sure, it was pure 70's, but that's when he died, for pete's sake. We were struck by the devotion that his fans had for him, as displayed by many videos, interviews and fan-created art on display throughout the tour. My take on Elvis is as follows: he was a relatively simple country boy who all of a sudden was thrust into the spotlight like no one else ever had been (or may ever be), and his fame puzzled him. He enjoyed horsing around with friends and spending time with his family, and certainly he enjoyed performing. But the fact that most of the world thought of him as a god made it difficult for him to live the simple life that he enjoyed. He constantly gave money away, both to charities and to needy individuals, and really wanted to do the best he could to make the world a better place. His excesses were legendary, but given the fact that he didn't do drugs (until the sleeping pills, etc. at the end of his life) or drink, his personality had to come out somewhere. Interestingly, Graceland was only redecorated a couple of times. Much of the furniture was present for the entire 20 years he lived there. The most interesting thing was the way that his fans adored him. I don't mean they adored him in a carnal, sex-symbol kind of way, either. They just loved him because he was an honest, soft-spoken southern boy who talked lovingly about his mother and said that when on the road he missed his daughter. Now, I don't know a whole lot about him, but I left with the impression that he was a considerate man who, when he asked how you were doing, really listened to your answer. He said in one of the TV clips playing that he saw no reason not to sign an autograph or pose for a picture with a fan just because people enjoyed his performing. Maybe people like that aren't entirely rare, but I'd be willing to bet that you wouldn't find a lot of them if you looked down the current top 100 album chart. So, I like Elvis. One of my favorite clips in the tour was of Elvis singing "Suspicious Minds," one of my favorite Elvis tunes, and all of a sudden he starts laughing, walks over to the side of the stage, picks up a pair of rather generously-sized women's underpants, and looks out at an (unseen) fan and says, "These yours, Darlin'?" I challenge anyone to go to Graceland and not come out at least partly under the Elvis spell.

Saturday, November 8:

After participating in the free breakfast buffet (which is a very critical element of computing a hotel's nightly cost), we went into downtown Memphis and went to The Civil Rights Museum. It is housed in what used to be The Lorraine Motel, where Dr. Martin Luther King often stayed (and was assasinated). The museum traces the roots of the civil rights movement, from the earliest slave revolts generations before the civil war to present-day legal struggles. As you can imagine, quite a bit of the museum is somewhat grisly, as there were virtually no laws protecting blacks in the south until, in all honesty, probably the last 40 years. Yes, the government may have had some law on paper, but if an all-white jury who knew Bubba Johnson for 20 years was put in charge of deciding what to do about the fact that he killed a 15 year old "nigger who thought he was as good as white folk," how well do YOU think justice was served? There was a lot of that sort of thing, and it gave me some of the same feelings of disgust that I had in The Holocaust Museum. There were instances of blacks enlisting voluntarily in an Army that didn't want them to get shot at in WW II for a country that didn't treat them as citizens, who came home to be lynched and burned. Lynching, by the way, is not the simple neck-breaking procedure that "hanging" implies, but the more cruel process of pulling someone up with a rope around his neck and standing around until he strangled to death. Growing up in the place and time that I did (suburban NJ in the 70's and 80's), I really wasn't aware of how terrible things were for blacks in the south for a long time. Then to read how Dr. King came along and said that they could win this thing but without violence must have struck a lot of blacks as hard to digest. They were (rightly) angry, and then this savior fellow says that they can't fight back? Dr. King had a long interview process with people who were to accompany him on his peace marches and protests, and if he or his staff decided that an individual was too hot-headed and may cause any trouble, that person wasn't allowed to join the demonstration. The brutality faced by King and his supporters was horrifying, and I am truly amazed at the bravery of some of the people who simply walked into a diner and took a seat, knowing that they were about to get beaten and bloodied by a bunch of stupid, angry hate-filled rednecks. Man. Took a lot of courage. The exhibit in the museum ends at the hotel room Dr. King occupied on the last day of his life. There is a marker on the deck outside the room where he fell. The exhibit then continues across the street, where current civil rights leaders are honored and the investigation into King's death is studied. I personally believe that (as I believe in almost every situation, from JFK to Roswell, and maybe even King Tut, as well- seriously) there was a conspiracy to kill King. I'm not convinced that it involved the federal government, though I think it's possible they gave the ok. I just think that the Memphis Police saw that there was a lot of anger and frustration in the black community, and that King was tapping into that. Even if the cops thought that it would be ok for blacks to eat, drink or pee with them, perhaps they felt afraid of what would happen in such a racially mixed place if ALL the black people got really, really mad one day. Also, perhaps a good many of them had taken a whack at a black prisoner when they could get a free shot, or whatever. So, they may have decided that it was the best thing for the city, country, etc. King's assasination changed a whole lot in the south, and particularly in Memphis. Beth talked to one store owner who said that after King's assasination, businesses left downtown Memphis in droves, and are only now (35 years later) starting to come back. His assasination also changed a lot in the musical world, of which Memphis was becoming perhaps the capital, but I'll talk more about that next week.

LAST WEEK'S TRIVIA QUESTION RESULTS: Beth's brother Tom Clugsten was the first to correctly answer that Thomas Jefferson is featured on the 2 dollar bill AND the nickel.

TOM'S COMPLIMENT: Tom Clugsten, doting father, husband, and karaoke crooner, is an undyingly lighthearted optimist with an infectious propensity for fun and laughter.

ALTERNATIVE TRIVIA QUESTION ANSWER: My brother Eric, in response to the massive email campaign readers of this web site launched against him (our dad emailed him and asked what the heck the big hot dog was), has identified the mystery weenie. He says, " Phish rode on that hot dog while hovering over their audience at a new years show in Mass. in like '93 or '94. They also used it, or another like it, to get carried through the audience to the stage as they came out playing Meatstick at the Big Cypress Seminole Indian Reservation 5 minutes before it became the year 2000."

ERIC'S COMPLIMENT: Eric Mueller, video game black belt 9th dan, is a compassionate, sensitive person with a dry sense of humor rivaled only by Stephen Wright and a way with animals worthy of Crocodile Hunter status.

FOOD FOR DEEP THINKERS, INSTALLMENT 2 RESPONSE:

In the depths of my despair, my dad came through with quite an extensive list of great country song titles. Here are some that we think top the charts:

Am I Double Parked by the Curbstone of Your Heart?

How Can I Miss You if You Won't Go Away?

I Flushed You From The Toilets Of My Heart

I Gave Her My Heart And A Diamond And She Clubbed Me With A Spade

I Still Miss You Baby... But My Aim is Getting Better

I'd Rather Pass a Kidney Stone than Another Night With You

If I'd Killed You When I Wanted To, I'd be Out of Jail By Now

If The Phone Doesn't Ring, It's Me

If You Can't Live Without Me, Why Aren't You Dead?

I'm So Miserable Without You, it's Almost like Having you Here

I've Been Flushed From The Bathroom Of Your Heart

She Looks Good Through the Bottom of My Shot Glass

The Last Word in Lonesome is Me

When You Wrapped My Lunch in a Road Map, I Knew You Meant Good-Bye

You're The Reason Our Kids Are So Ugly

THIS WEEK'S TRIVIA QUESTION: What did the lightning bolt emblem, adorned with the letters "TCB," which Elvis often used, signify?

AN APOLOGY TO MULTIMEDIA FANS: Not many pictures this week. No cameras allowed in The Civil Rights Museum or Graceland. Well, in Graceland, cameras are ok, but not videotaping devices, and our camera does both, so we weren't allowed to bring it in.

BETH'S FAVORITE THING ABOUT THE SOUTH: Sweetened Fresh-Brewed Iced Tea, which seems to be served everywhere in these parts. When you order an iced tea here, you have to specify whether you want it sweetened or unsweetened.

SIGN OF THE WEEK: (In a "voodoo shop" above a collection of voodoo relics): No Touchee, Bad JuJu.

BUMPER STICKER OF THE WEEK (We don't know if was intended to be funny): U.S. Marine Corps- when it absolutely, positively needs to be destroyed overnight.

COMING NEXT WEEK: More Memphis, Little Rock, AR., and Texas (Dallas, Austin and maybe San Antonio).