Walking in Memphis

Now maybe this is the type of car we should have gone for on this trip - a Cadillac seen parked today outside the legendary Sun Studio in Memphis, Tennessee - rather than messing around with shipping a vehicle from the West Coast (how ridiculous!) or a series (yes, series) of car rentals ... Oh, how I wish!

So here we are in Memphis, obviously, but I better back up and just fill you in on the latest of our sorry saga with "The Car" - it's a bit boring, I have to confess, so I'll try to be brief so as not to bore you before I get to the interesting stuff. Turns out it was a BIG mistake to return to Toronto just because we were informed the car had arrived and was awaiting off-loading, but we were told that the car should be available within 72 hours of arrival - that would have been yesterday (Friday) - so, after spending much of Thursday in a coffee shop on Queen Street East (The Second Cup - great place BTW), reading and sleeping, and after a fantastic meal of Atlantic salmon and red wine with Wade & Susan (Olivia was ill in bed), and up-dating my iTunes, we woke on Friday with much anticipation - having been told the day before that the car was on a "list" to be off-loaded and would be available for us Friday between 9-11am. By 10:15am I could stand the wait no longer and decided that we'd head over to the airport anyway, phoning beforehand to see what the latest was. They were still waiting to hear a definite time, and suggested we go straight to the rail yard to impress upon CN Rail the urgency of the situation. It was en route to the rail yard that we got the "bad news" that not only was the car still on the train, the train had not even pulled into the unloading bay yet and nothing would be moving before Monday at the earliest.... So that's where we were up to: in Toronto (still) - and no disrespect to a great city - without our car.

There's no way we were going to stay put any longer, so back to the car rental place to rent another vehicle - the cruise control on the Avenger wasn't working, and we needed something bigger so we could sort out all our "stuff" that so far has remained packed in the bags we'd separately flown in with. Result: brand new burgandy (of course) Jeep Cherokee with only 1946km on the clock. Not without some tension on the part of Sean and myself, separately and between us, we headed out west from Toronto down the 401 bound for Memphis, driving pretty much in silence, brooding on our own thoughts as far as Detroit, crossing the border once more at about 5pm. I was conscious of two families who I know who each lost loved ones to cancer within the past few days, thinking of their loss and how this week must seem to them made my own frustrations with the car seem trivial and pathetic in comparison.

After stopping at Denny's south of Detroit for Meatloaf, vegetables and mashed potatoes, all washed down with copious amounts of coffee, we headed south into the darkness following the signs for Cincinnati passing through Toledo on the way; then Louisville (where we shall return on Monday to go to Gethsemani), Nashville name shining in the night and onto Memphis, over 1500km, listening along the way to Elvis, Roy Orbison, Johnny Cash, Madeline Peyroux, Dylan and the entire reading of On the Road (abridged) by David Carradine, stopping a couple of times to grab some sleep and arriving at dawn in time for breakfast at the Arcade - Memphis' oldest restaurant, where I'd began my visit here with breakfast back in 1991 arriving on the night train from Chicago, but that's another story...

Then on to the main business of the day - Sun Studio - standing once more on hallowed ground and trying to hear the faint echo still reverberate from those blessed walls, seeing the three X's taped to the floor which according to Sam Phillips marked the spot for where Elvis, Scotty and Bill stood when they recorded "That's Alright, Mama," and listening to DJ Dewey Phillips introduce the new record on his show that very night. An emotional moment for both Sean and I: hearing those first bars of "That's Alright" played in the studio and almost feeling brushed by the three ghosts standing right there on the three taped X's; emotion earlier too when we heard the first demo recording "My Happiness" sung right here by an eighteen year old Elvis in 1953 who had no clue of where it would all lead, good and bad - but of course, "nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old" (On the Road).

And here is, for me, the picture of the day - life-dreams reflected in chrome: