Here is another trip me and my parents took! My brother goes to school (at the time of this writing) at Notre Dame, Indiana for Chemistry. Working for the school, he was sent St. Louis to some special lab work that is over my head. But he wanted mom and dad to meet up with him. I needed a vacation so I volunteered to drive under the circumstances they didn’t tell him I was coming.

The plan was after I get off of work to drive through the night while my parents slept in the car. I had a book (I listen to audio books the majority of time I’m driving) loaded on my phone and my headphones ready to go. For some reason, mom thought that was dangerous so she wouldn’t let me do it. Fine, mom. I stop at a gas station just inside Mississippi and grab a Red Bull, snack, and some water. We get to heading out. We take a different route than what Pops is used to and he about has a heart attack because he thinks we’re taking a longer route or we’re getting lost. I play some classic rock to spare them from my book but I got tired of it so I forced them to listen anyway. Blink by Malcom Gladwell was what I had loaded and dad fell asleep as soon as it came on. Mom, on the other hand, enjoyed it. Joke’s on me, I guess. It’s approaching 2AM, we are almost to our hotel. Mom calls Jeff to let him know we’re almost there. Now, when we left Louisiana, it was probably in the mid 70’s or low 80’s temperature wise. We see SNOW! Us southerners aren’t used to snow and coldness. I love it. So there is snow all around the hotel, it’s 40 degrees, and I have on a T-Shirt, some basketball shorts, and flip flops. I stepped out the car and it was a shock to me. Looking for the room, which wasn’t the easiest to find, there were kids running around outside yelling and screaming and I think I smelled a faint smell of weed. I could see mom and dad getting uncomfortable. We find the door and we execute our master plan. Since Jeff didn’t know I was accompanying mom and dad on the trip, I walk up to the door and knock as obnoxiously as I possibly can. Jeff opens the door, and with a silly, as-a-matter-of-factly tone, I say, “Hey, Jeff.” His face lights up and he hugs me with excitement. “I didn’t know you were coming!” We all burst in laughter. We get situated in the room and Jeff puts two and two together. “You guys drove through the night because Blaine had to get off of work first. It all makes sense!” We have a laugh and get to sleep. Tomorrow is our touristy day.

Being goofy at Miss Pollys (Memphis, 2017) Mom makes us take weird pictures. (Memphis, 2017)

We wake up early and it’s cold. Colder than back at home in Louisiana, at least. I would still be wearing basketball shorts and flip-flops back at home to put this in perspective. But, we get up pretty early after getting there so late, and get ready for breakfast. Dad is DETERMINED to get some chicken and waffles so he heard about Miss Polly’s Sould Food Cafe that was famous for their chicken and waffles. We drive downtown and park to get to Beale Street and start walking to the restaurant. We finally get in and its a quaint little hole in the wall and we order. They go for the chicken and waffles. I just order two waffles, not as hungry. We sit there for a while and we wait on our food. It’s taking abnormally long to get to us. Me and Jeff are enjoying visiting with each other while mom tries to calm dad down because he gets antsy when his food doesn’t arrive. Finally, after about 45 minutes, we get our food and chow down. It’s fantastic. The waffles are huge, so I have to fight to scarf them down. Dad, Mom, and Jeff take their time. I don’t eat slowly so I was done before them, just sipping on my water I had. We got done with everything and decided to see what Memphis was all about. Dad saw Sun Studios and really wanted to go see that. It wasn’t quite opened up at ten in the morning so we decide to walk around Beale Street. Mom takes her regular candid pictures. Me and Jeff goof off. Dad just enjoys the company of his son that lives 1,000 miles away. We pass by the FedExForum, where the Memphis Grizzlies play basketball and I get pretty excited. I check to see if the Grizzlies were playing that night. I sure would have grabbed an Uber and ditched everyone to go see a basketball game. Don’t judge me. As we’re walking, I come to the conclusion that I need caffeine. I hadn’t gotten any in my system at Miss Polly’s and I need it to function properly. We walk up and down the street and I find a shop that has Cokes there. I grab a Dr. Pepper and the guy rings me up. As I pull out my card, he apologetically says, “We can’t swipe a card unless its for $5.” I say, “Okay, ring me up for two.” That did the trick. It was $5.02. I grab the second one and give it to the guy behind the counter. “Here you go!” I say. He’s surprised but thanks me. Pretty sure I made that dude’s day.

Another shot of Beale Street. (Memphis, 2017) At the Gibson Factory. Jeff had to take a picture with the giant guitar (Memphis, 2017)

It’s now 10AM and places finally open up. We walk around a bit and see the Gibson guitar factory. Me and Dad both play, along with Jeff having played drums. We HAVE to go, so we drag Mom along. They’re offering tours of the actual factory, but because it’s Sunday, nobody is actually in the shop working. We go in and the first of two tours were sold out so we buy our ticket for the second tour which was in about an hour. We leave for a while and walk around Beale Street a little more and head back to the factory to begin our tour. We get there a few minutes early and there is store in there that sells guitars. People play them all the time waiting on a tour so I fiddle around on a couple of the nice Gibsons and wait our turn. The first tour is running a little late so we get started about 20 minutes late. It’s a machine shop, so we put our safety glasses on and get our tour started. I am first in line! We go through the tour and they show us step by step the process of making a Gibson guitar. We all enjoyed it, even mom! After the tour is done, Dad insists we go to Sun Studio.

We begin our walk to the studio and leave the downtown area of Memphis. On Beale Street, everything is pretty clean, but as we walk, it gets less and less nice and we start to worry that we are heading the wrong way. It was a mile and half walk. We eventually get there after figuring out that we actually were heading the right way and get our tickets. The first tour, which was in about 10 minutes, was sold out so we got the next in 45 minutes. It’s a bit of a walk so me and Jeff volunteer to get the car for mom and dad while they wait for the tour. We get back to the car and drive back the 30 minute walk in 5 minutes, and park at the studio. We get in line for the tour and they lead us up stairs to the museum portion of the studio. It goes through the history of Sun Records, from Dewey Phillips, a radio DJ, starting the studio, to the first hit from Big Mama Thorton, Hound Dog, to Elvis being downright rejected for not being the “right fit” for the studio. There was tons of memorabilia and old records from the years when the studio first started. The tour guide is absolutely fantastic and knows all of his trivia and facts about the studio. We head down stairs to the recording room where the actual music was recorded. There, we stood where all the greats stood and listened to music recorded by them there. We learned about the “Million Dollar Quartet,” which was a hangout session of Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash. As musicians, they all played together and fooled around jamming out while the owner of the studio, Sam Phillips, recorded them secretly. Another cool part was going over how Johnny Cash did the drum track for “I Walk The Line” on the guitar because drums weren’t allowed in the theater he would be performing at. Well, while demonstrating how he did it, a simple fix for Cash, the tour guide must have saw me strumming along and offered me the guitar. I tried to pass because, admittedly, I was a bit intimidated with the setting, but he persisted and handed me the guitar. He restarted the track and I strummed along to the song and once the song was done everyone clapped. Easily one of the coolest moments of my life hands down. I played music in the same room as Elvis, Johnny Cash, and a laundry list of others. After the tour was finished, he pulled out a microphone. It was the exact mic that Elvis used to record. Before Phillips, the aforementioned owner of the Studio died, he requested that the mic not be put behind a glass wall, but for people to actually get to touch and feel it. So, yes, I had to get a selfie with Elvis’ mic. There was also a drum set that U2 had recorded with and left at the studio in the room. We had such a good time and the studio was definitely the highlight of the trip.

We had a late breakfast, so we essentially skipped lunch. But we did have an early supper. We went to Central BBQ, a highly touted restaurant in Memphis, which is a city known for it’s BBQ. I’ve eaten a lot of BBQ in my life, and this is probably some of the best I’ve ever had. After we get done eating, Dad wants to ride out to the church Paw, his dad, used to preach at, outside of Memphis. It’s about a 30-45 minute drive so we hop in and ride down there. We get there and Dad gets so excited to be back somewhere he hasn’t been in years. He starts to tell us stories of how he used to jump down the hills as a kid and ride his sled down as well. We look around for a couple minutes and on the way out, dad wants to see some of the people he used to go to church with down there still lived in the same house. After some searching his mind and trying to remember where they lived, we pull up to this house and dad says that he thought this was it. He gets out, and we wait in the car. He knocks on the door and Mr. Finley answers the door. He didn’t recognize him at first, but Dad recognized him and told him who he was and they hugged. We get out and they invite us in. Mr. and Mrs. Finley still go to the church that my grandfather preached at. It’s been years since they saw dad but they talked for about an hour catching up. It was dark now, and it was time to go. Dad was glowing when we left and we got back to the hotel and passed right out. We had a long drive back home ahead of us so we turned in, plus we were still tired from the overnight drive the day before. It was a very fantastic day. Action packed and sentimental at the same time!

The next morning comes and we go down stairs to grab some breakfast. It’s not nearly as packed as the day before and we bring the food back upstairs to pack. Mom wants to go down and I decide I wanted a waffle too. So we eat and then check out of the hotel. We pack our bags and tell Jeff bye, he has to go back to Notre Dame for school/work. Those goodbyes are not always easy, especially for Mom and Dad. We drop him off by his car and we get heading out. About thirty minutes into our drive, I ask mom if Jeff grabbed his project out the fridge in the hotel room, that was the whole reason he was in St. Louis and made the ride to Memphis. We call Jeff up and ask him and he realize he didn’t. He gets pretty frustrated and turns around to go get it. I swap with dad for about an hour and a half because I was super tired and was having a hard time staying awake. At breakfast, we swap back and I take over the car for good. No books this time, only because I didn’t load a second one on my phone. We didn’t stop anywhere special on the way back, we were all pretty ready to just get home. We make it back that evening and settle in for the day.

Over all, it was real fun to tour a city, even if it was just for a day. Memphis had more in it than I thought. It was also good to see Jeff, who can’t come down as much because of work/school. I passed through Memphis again on my Chicago/South Bend trip but didn’t get to stop for any of that sweet sweet BBQ. I’ll have to make that ride again!

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