From The Evening Before

KLRE is Little Rock’s classical station and I just opted for this after a the atmospheric Spanish station turned out to be a Christian broadcast upon closer consideration.  We’ve still got four hours to, till Dallas, Ft. Worth.  Big cotton ball clouds up on the sky all over Arkansas.  The first two hours driving into this state over the Mississippi River were all flat.  I couldn’t’ tell you what they were growing, but it was all farm land.  This area just outside of Glen Rose is more hilly and full of woodlands, which is a welcome relief.  I haven’t been able to bounce around in the woods yet down here but I can see a few things that are different.  In addition to the white pines and the sycamores I see what I’m almost sure are the same willow oak s with thie thin leaves tha I saw in Arlington.  Benton looked rather desolate, as we tried to detour through it in search of a way around the road work on Highway 30.   Like a caricature, there were more gun stores, churches and flea markets than anything else. 

 

This morning we were over to the Sun Studio in Memphis just like a proper tourists ought to have done.  My older one was upside as I’d insisted on this and one other site this morning.  “Don’t we get to decide?”  Turns out the next tour wasn’t for an hour and we’d already gotten a late start. This bought back a bit of credit.  The tunes we’d played on the Sun Studio mix on the way over and the plod around the studio would have to do.  I noticed one remarkable photo of a young man with a duck tail whom I didn’t recognize, though it looked just a strange blend of Joe Strummer and Mick Jones which, upon asking turned out to be Johnny Cash. 

No time to do the Stax Soul Museum.  That would have been nice.  If Beale Street could talk it would have to be open and at 10:30AM  or so it looked rather closed.  The National Civil Rights Museum, at the Lorraine Motel was open.  There it was, that infamous anachronistic sign and the porch where we’ve all seen folks pointing off at the neighboring building with MLK lying on the porch.  And this museum did a good job in my opinion of building the story up from what we covered yesterday in the underground railroad museum, the obligatory movie brought to you by the Ford Motor Company notwithstanding.

Many, many meditations to consider, as we considered the many remarkable stages of the Civil Rights movement history.  Things I know of but could always reconsider anew.  And I suppose like for many but by the time we get to the Memphis Garbage Workers Strike, there in the eponymous city and they have a running clip of the “I’ve Been to the Mountain Top” speech from the evening before the assassination, and it was hard to keep back the tears.  Then you turn and consider the last room he slept in, on that Thursday, April 4^th, 1968.

 

 

 

Sunday, 06/27/21