2024: The Deep South

2. Memphis and Graceland

Leaving Nashville behind us, our coach first took us to the Casey Jones museum. In case you don't know, Casey Jones was a train driver back in the late 19th century. Driving his train the Cannoball Express at full speed to make up for a late departure from Memphis, on coming around a blind bend he found his track blocked by the rear coaches of a freight train that had stalled whilst trying to go into the sidings. He pushed his fireman off the footplate, saving his life, and then held on to the brake lever right up to the impact - losing his own life but saving every one of his passengers. The train company tried to blame him for the crash, but witnesses stated that he was a true hero. He would probably have been forgotten had it not been for the fact that one of his work colleagues composed a song about him, and the 'Ballad of Casey Jones' passed into American folklore.

An engine similar to the one driven by Casey Jones

We continued our journey toward Memphis with a brief lunch stop at Jackson (a town which we did not find particularly interesting) followed by a visit to the Tennessee Delta Centre which is a museum about the history, wildlife and activities of the area, near to Nutbush where Tina Turner was born. This may have been quite interesting had our guide there been not been completely useless (he was  both ignorant and unintelligible as he simply mumbled to us the museum signs which we could all see anyway); to us the most interesting part there was the wildlife museum because we could view the exhibits for ourselves.

A snapping turtle: its tongue looks like a worm, which attracts the fish that it eats	Tina Turner grew up here; part of the museum is based around her schoolhouse	A small memorial to a very famous man

As we entered Memphis we were told that we had time to make a slight diversion and see the Peabody ducks. We had never heard of them, so were fascinated as we stopped outside the Peabody Hotel in central Memphis. It turned out that the Hotel has some resident ducks, who have their own luxury accommodation on the roof; every morning at 11am they come down in the lift to spend their day swimming around the fountain in the lobby, then every evening at 5pm they leave the water and go back upstairs in the lift to spend the night in their private area.

This tradition started back in the 1930s when the hotel owner and his friends came home from a hunting trip and after a few drinks decided it would be funny to put their live decoy ducks into the lobby fountain. The result was so popular that it became a tradition and is still a popular attraction as the resident Duckmaster oversees the rolling out of a red carpet along which he then leads the ducks in the (apparently) famous Peabody Duck March to the lift. We very much enjoyed watching the spectacle and were glad that we had time to make this small diversion. (Note: I tried to take a video but the light level was too low; if you want to see one there are several good ones on YouTube if you just search for Peabody ducks)

The 5 Peabody Ducks swimming in the fountain	Children from the watching crowd are chosen to roll out the red carpet	The Duckmaster prepares for the ceremonial Peabody Duck March	The ducks are on their way to the lift back to their rooftop Duck Palace

We checked into our hotel (the Hampton Inn in Peabody Place). The hotel itself was fine, but the Reception staff were the rudest that I have ever known, threatening to throw us out to the street because we dared to ask for more coffee creamer for the room (adding 'we don't like your sort of people around here') even though we later discovered that there was a big box of creamers on the table just 10ft away from the reception desk.

That evening we all went to a local barbecue restaurant for dinner. The food portions were simply enormous, and we felt quite guilty for leaving so much on our plates after we had eaten as much as we possibly could; this in fact set a benchmark for the rest of the trip, as every restaurant that we visited throughout the rest of the trip served huge portions of food. The next evening, for example, at a wonderful honky-tonk style bar on Beale Street (the 'Home of the Blues' and the 'Birthplace of Rock and Roll') where the music was wonderful, Debbie ordered a single portion of breaded chicken pieces - and the plateful that was delivered was as big as a Family Bucket meal would have been at home (as you can see in the photo here). My own portion was huge too, so I had a real struggle to finish it - at least I had a simply amazing cocktail, served in a leg-shaped glass, with which to help wash it down. From then onwards we generally ordered a single food portion to share between us, and even then we sometimes struggled to eat it all!

Wonderful food, but such enormous portions	My delicious cocktail (whisky and Curacao) was served to me in a leg!	Fairytale carriages ply the area around Beale Street

The next day was one of the highlights of the trip, with a visit to Graceland. We toured the house, we explored the grounds, we saw the Memorial Garden with Elvis's grave, we saw his cars and his outfits, and we bought far too many souvenirs at the gift shop! I have put just a couple photos on this page, but I have created separately a page filled with my Graceland photos here.

Debbie stands outside the Mansion at Graceland	One of Elvis's more restrained outfits	Inside the Mansion, the famous Jungle Room

Our busy day in Memphis was by no means over! After leaving Graceland, we immediately headed directly to the Sun recording studio. In the early 1950s this studio was renowned for giving new and unknown artists, both black and white, a start in the recording industry. These unknown artists included such names as Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Roy Orbison, Carl Perkins, Charlie Rich, B B King, Rufus Thomas, and Howlin' Wolf. We were given a simply excellent tour of the studio by a very enthusiastic, highly talented guide; she even played to us to demonstrate how Johnny Cash would create his distinctive rhythmic guitar sound by folding a Dollar bill into the strings so that they sounded as if there was a snare-drum in the background.

	Some of the original 1950's recording equipment
Radio Station WREC studio where the idea of Sun Records was born	A group broke their loud-speaker on the way to the studio; they padded it with paper and carried on	Some of the original guitars	The original studio area	A cardboard cutout of one of their better-known artists

The next morning we had a very early start to be certain of catching the famous 'City of New Orleans' train (as immortalised in song by Arlo Guthrie) to - yes you've guessed it - New Orleans. This train is operated by Amtrak but they don't own the tracks in this part of the world and so, like all other passenger trains in the Deep South, it has a low priority and therefore must give way whenever a freight train wishes to pass. Now an American freight train can be a mile long and can take half an hour to pass, which means that the timetables are just an optimistic guide rather than the absolute which they are in the rest of the world. Trains such as ours will sometimes depart up to 30 minutes early if that means that they will beat an oncoming freight train, and so it is essential to arrive at the station some 30-45 minutes early to be certain of catching your train, but equally the delays in travel can easily mean that the train will arrive up to 3 hours late! Luckily we were in time to catch our train and were soon on our way to New Orleans itself.

Our Amtrak train 'City of New Orleans' waits to take us to the city New Orleans

All pictures on this site are © Allan Jones unless otherwise stated.