so, lefty and i are abandoned at a gas station in germantown, memphis, tennessee. it’s 8:30pm. i have fifteen pounds of fresh gulf shrimp in a cooler in the backseat of my dead car, along with camping equipment, a guitar, about fifty cds and fifty baseballs, two gloves, three pairs of shoes, and clean underwear. we approach the service station.

me:
‘hey, my car died, that’s it over there, do you know a place where my dog and i can go for about four hours?’

joe:
‘i get off in fifteen minutes. i’ll take you where you need to go.’

sorted.

stacey then gave lefty some water, unplugged the vending machine so i could get a quick charge, and had me fill out a paper explaining what happened. when i wrote, ‘a little smoke came out of the hood,’ she says, ‘i’ll bet you wish you had a little smoke right now, huh?’ i had visions of her taking me home with her, which might well have changed everything …

we said goodbye to stacey and climbed into joe’s mitsubishi. joe was a nervous, musclebound communications major who was home for the summer. he’s going to be a senior at some school in knoxville this year, but didn’t like knoxville at all and didn’t really seem like he had any idea what he was going to do with his life. i could relate … his father is tom prestigiacomo, a veteran radio disc jockey in the memphis area. joe got into communications because his dad was on the radio. joe was a sweet guy, and really did me a solid, but i could in no way imagine this kid on the radio. i hope he figures shit out.

he drove me about two miles and pulled up in front of a big bar with a front porch. before the car even stopped, joe was yelling out the window, ‘this guy’s stranded and waiting for his friends and he needs a place to sit for a few hours with his dog.’ the door guy responds, ‘it’s fine as long as it’s not a cat.’ strange … but we were in. i invited joe in for a beer but he said he had to go work out and so we shook hands and lefty and i watched him speed off, zero to sixty in five seconds in a 35 mph zone.

through the doors of newby’s … a band was setting up to the right. good sign. cute college girls and bikers co-mingling. check. we sat next to a coupla nice looking kids and got clued into the three cans of natural light for a dollar special. like most humans, i hate natural light, but you can’t beat it at that price, and i kinda wanted to fit in. they open them all at once and set them in front of you. drink fast …

as is often the case, after that first beer, everything just opened up. i mean the night was going great so far all things considering, but it opened up just fine. the kinda night i mighta gotten laid if i had closed the place down. a good night …

i met paul bishop and his shit hot girlfriend (leigh ann? i can’t remember) and we played a competitive game of darts. nobody bothered lefty, and he made many friends as is his way. everyone in the bar was walking around with three cans of natural light. there were beers everywhere. you just kinda reached for the closest can and took a belt. there was initially a lot of, ‘is this yours? i think i set mine over there …’ but we quickly threw into the group model; we drank from the communal natty light. beautiful … natty light should be public domain, anyway. free to anyone who wants it in limitless quantities. and it damn near is on thursdays at newby’s, memphis, tennessee.

after darts (i lost to paul on a heroic twin double bulls-eye turn – quite a performance – his girl was turned on i could tell) we retired out back to this huge patio where more of paul and his girl’s friends showed up. joints were quickly passed, and joe davies, a spirited lad, tried to guess lefty’s name:

‘what’s your dog’s name? no wait … let me guess. his name is old el paso.’

‘close …’

‘no wait … thunder box!’

thunder box. that’s my cell phone’s new name, and the eternally generalized term for the big vagina in the sky …

after getting incredibly high, i lost the dog. i thought the area was fenced in and it wasn’t. i’m walking around in all this high grass in the pitch black, going into kitchen back doors, calling out like an idiot. paul’s girl was helping me, and even though i was completely freaked out i amazingly kept it together. we got back to the table and she tells everybody that i lost the dog. joe davies goes, ‘i just saw him, like, four minutes ago.’ i’m thinking, ‘dude, you’re high, you saw the dog twenty minutes ago,’ but sure enough, joe stands up, walks into the back, gets on his hands and knees, crawls under a bunch of broken tables, and pulls out lefty. incredible. as he walks past me he goes, ‘thunder box! seriously, whadya think?’

good man that joe davies … actually, they were all stellar people.

after i found the dog, todd called and informed me that i might have to drive back. a sobering moment. ‘no, i’m fine. yep. i’ve barely had anything. i’ll be fine.’ so i stopped drinking and sat at a table doing a little writing to calm down from the dog debacle. paul came back and we chatted for a good while. great fucking guy. kindred spirit. seriously, this guy was a brother, and his girl was solid as hell, too. i felt so good after a while that i ordered another beer.

but before it was delivered, i got the call. hooch and todd were out front. i said, ‘gimme a minute. i have to say goodbye to some people who were nice to me.’

then i walked out into the warm memphis night into the tired, loving arms of hooch and todd. i can’t remember being happier in recent memory. if your life really does flash before your eyes before you die, that moment will surely be an image i’ll remember. todd had already driven down to hooch’s from peoria, an easy six hour drive. hooch has been planning and preparing the party for a week. they both have two kids. not to mention wives … they were tired as hell, without a doubt. but they came and got me. three and a half hours down and three and a half hours back. picking up crazy fucking kevin and his dog and his fresh shrimp and guitar and baseballs in memphis, wasted on a thursday night. you think you got good friends? i got you beat … and we haven’t even gotten home yet.

climbing into the cab of the truck with lefty and william was one of the most freeing feelings in recent memory. william was from sonny’s auto body out of durant and was a 53 year old with a wife and six dogs who has lived in durant his whole life. durant is pronounced like do-rag and not like kevin durant, the small forward for the oklahoma city thunder. once we hit the road, i suddenly wasn’t just driving north to hooch’s anymore. i was traveling again. i turned my life over to a series of unfolding moments that i could no longer predict. there was no howard stern, no thinking about the next time i would pull over for gas or to let the dog pee or to eat something cheap and deep fried. there was just a late afternoon drive with an unknown tow truck driver from mississippi going to an unknown location in memphis with an unknown agenda before us once we got there.

william was a damn good guy. he had a joint tattoo running down his left forearm that said ‘brother,’ which was presumably from when he went to jail a few times as a kid for ‘DUIs and what not,’ but he hadn’t had a drink in twelve years, and when i asked him whether or not he missed it he said emphatically, ‘not one bit.’ he didn’t cuss at all, although he did refer to the cash for clunkers program as ‘for the niggers’ once, but we never returned to those topics (government or race relations) and continued to get along fine.

from the sounds of it, he had a lot of used cars that he liked to fix up and try to sell. one of them was an old impala that he loved, but the economy has been so bad that he hasn’t had the money to get the cars running. william claimed he could put a new engine in a car in two or three days and was proud of that fact. ‘that’s how good i am,’ he said. his wife fell at her job at the gas station three years ago and hasn’t worked since, and william just recently got rehired at the service station after being laid off for a year cause there wasn’t any work. he drives a tow truck for ‘the boss man’ in the evening to make extra money. that’s been slow lately, too, but luckily for him, lefty and i came along. a drive to memphis was a pretty long haul.

we drove and talked about all kinds of shit, but cars and dogs, mostly. after about two hours of driving, william asked ‘are you hungry? you want to eat? i like mcdonald’s.’ i said, ‘i do too,’ which is a half truth in that i do enjoy the taste of mcdonald’s now and again but never eat it for an actual meal as it leaves me feeling weird, empty, and kinda sick. mcdonald’s is more of an occasional protein snack for me. like warm beef jerky. but i was along for the ride in all ways and threw my support behind mcdonald’s. when we ordered, i offered to pay (big spender) and william tried to resist, but i said it was the least i could do for him rescuing us off the side of the road. we each got the two cheeseburger value meals with dr. pepper and took them outside to eat by the truck because william thought there were ‘too many flies’ in the restaurant. i thought that might have been another reference to the blacks that i wasn’t familiar with – i didn’t see any flies in the restaurant – but then again i wasn’t really looking either.

we went out and sat on the bed of the truck and ate our dinner out of a white paper bag. william gave lefty a french fry and then asked, ‘do you feed him food like this?’ to which i responded ‘sometimes,’ which was a blatant lie. the sun was going down and it was turning into a beautiful night. ‘probably cooling off at home by now,’ william said. the a/c at his place went out months ago and he doesn’t have the $1200 to fix it, so evenings are extra special in the summer months. after we ate, william lit a couple marlboro reds off the cigarette lighter in my dead car before we continued on.

when we got to memphis, we still didn’t really know where we were going. we had an address, and william had called a friend of his who gave us a general idea of where we were going, but we still had no concrete directions. i had noticed a gps on the seat when we climbed in and asked william if it worked. ‘i don’t know how to operate that thing. are you smart? see if you can get it to work.’ i said i’m not sure how smart i am, but i’d see if it worked and of course it did. took us right to the shell station in german town on the corner of perkins and poplar.

william dropped the car in an empty spot in the parking lot and told me he, ‘sincerely wished the best for me.’ i told him the same and we shook hands. he invited me out to his place in mississippi and gave me some directions from 55 that i don’t remember. i showed him how to get back to the freeway and wished him a safe trip before heading into the gas station with lefty to see where the rest of the night would lead.

my car …

is dead.

it died at exit 208 in 55 in the middle of mississippi, about 100 miles south of memphis. lefty and i had just stopped to take a leak at a ‘parking area.’ mississippi has a lot of these ‘parking areas.’ a ‘parking area’ is similar to a rest area, except there are no services at all provided. by no services, i mean no restrooms, no vending machines, nothing. in fact, the sign on the highway says ‘no security provided,’ which seemed weird, like it was boasting, ‘if you want to go do something really fucked up to someone, this is the place to do it as the authorities will not be bothering you.’

mississippi …

i pull over and the ‘parking area’ is in disarray. the grass was at least six feet high, and the few garbage cans that where there were overflowing. if you, for some twisted reason, were looking to get raped, this would be your spot. there were only three cars in the parking lot. they were all parked a good distance from each other, and inside each car was a single, lonely looking man. here’s where it gets really weird: as i was walking the dog, i noticed that there were these trails heading off into the woods. like fifteen or twenty trails just heading off into the dense timber. walking back to the car, i see a big fat guy in flowered shorts and a camouflaged t-shirt disappear into the woods. i can only hope he was meeting a cross-country trucker back there for some loving mutual blow jobs and not heading off to bury a body …

at any rate, we didn’t hang out long.

right after i merged into traffic on the highway, i looked up and saw smoke pouring out of the top of the hood. temp gauge buried in the red. i pull over at the next exit. by the time i got to the stop sign at the top of the incline, the car died. when i tried to turn it over, it made the most tired, gaspy, sad sound i’ve ever head. i said aloud to lefty, ‘this does not look good.’

i pushed the car across the road and coasted down the on ramp and pulled over. opened the hood. no coolant in the overflow reservoir. fuck. i left the hood up and walked down the freeway a bit with lefty to see what exit we were at. exit 208. i called hooch. i called todd. i thought about calling AAA immediately, but thought i’d give the car a bit to gather itself and start back up so we could continue on down the road.

never happened.

at about 4:30, i started the ball in motion to get towed somewhere. after countless calls (on a dying cell phone) to AAA, hooch, service stations in memphis (one place told me that they regularly get cars stolen out of the inside of the shop, so i shouldn’t leave my car there overnight), todd, AAA, hooch, et cetera, i sat down with lefty in the shade of my dead car and played a little guitar. i gave lefty the last bit of water from out canteen, and i drank the last diet coke in the cooler. we had a nice view of a small cotton field and little pond. there was a relatively cool breeze. i wrote a nice chorus to a song, but the verses were too ‘i’m broken down on the highway with my dog waiting for a tow truck,’ so i scrapped them.

all in all, we was quite comfortable sitting there in the late afternoon. so comfortable, in fact, that i almost forgot i was waiting for a tow truck when the phone rang …

***stay tuned for the next installment, where we meet william, the tow truck driver from durant, mississippi and i lose lefty in a beer garden by the university of mississippi.***

you drive right past graceland on 55. i almost stopped on a whim heading up to hooch’s, but then i realized a) i was in the middle of a nine hour drive with my dog and b) i was driving through on december 25th. so i postponed it for the drive back down. break up the journey a bit, check out memphis, pay my respects to the king (or at least see what the all the fuss is about).

memphis seems pretty fucking cool (although, from what i hear, it’s a pretty good place to get pistol whipped while being robbed). 

beale street has your drink and your grub covered, the grizzly’s stadium is right around the corner from bb king’s place, the gibson guitar factory is right around the corner from that, and the AAA baseball stadium is right in there as well.  my two favorite sports, guitars, blues, beer, dry rubbed ribs.  sorted.  i’ll take my chances with the pistol whippings.

i’ve never been an elvis fan. nothing against elvis, never disliked his music, but i don’t think i have ever directly initiated the playing of his music in any circumstance. never owned an elvis record, never played a song of his on the jukebox. i’ve got a bit of that white liberal guilt, i suppose, where my elvis was always chuck berry. chuck berry was so cool, i never knew why anyone would ever need elvis.

i figured it out pretty quick.

so graceland, without a doubt, is one of the most compelling museums i’ve ever visited. it should be a required pilgrimage for all americans to make at least once during their lives. you shouldn’t be allowed to invest in the stock market or have children or vote until you’ve been to graceland.

i was there on a wednesday at noon. not crowded at all (even though the next day was elvis’ b-day). got the premier tour (including the army years museum, the car museum, the private jets, and the extended wardrobe tour). well worth the extra scratch.

just so we’re clear, here’s a taste of the flavor that this place has been marinating in for the last 35 years or so:

the first thing they do is drive you across the street, through the gates, up to the house.

i was smiling like a fucking idiot the instant i entered the front door.

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it’s hard to explain what the place feels like other than just really fucking good. it’s tastefully garish, comfortably decadent, and really, really homey. they do a really great job of making you feel like you’re actually in someone’s home. phones are still plugged in and sitting on little tables in the corners of rooms. clothes are still in closets. the christmas trees had presents under them. i didn’t want to leave. for all the shit elvis gets for being over the top in his later life, i thought graceland was classy as hell. you just want to waltz up to one of the many bars, grab a cocktail, find a piano and an ashtray and get down to having a great fucking time.

rock-n-roll, baby.

family style.

here’s some planes and automobiles:

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the wardrobes were incredible. blissful. belly laughs, again and again. anybody who could rock these outfits has something special going for them …

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after all this, it was straight to the gift shop for me. i hate gift shops in general, but you just get caught up in it. bought up everything that said “tcb” on it that i could get my hands on. helped an elderly northern european woman (danish?) try on and purchase a black leather jacket. she looked hot.

i never wanted to leave.

if you don’t cry at the meditation garden, you’ve got no heart and no soul and are probably a worthless piece of shit.

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if you’ve never been, gotta go. i’ll go with you.