Author: Jake (Page 3 of 12)

In Memphis, stopping at a red light is optional. I have never seen such blatant disregard for the laws of traffic as I did today. I have a shellshocked sort of respect for them; just as New Englanders jaywalk with impunity, so too do Memphis residents live dangerously.

I stopped at the Cupboard Restaurant, which the Food Bible refers to as one of the country’s best “meat and three” stops. The meat is your choice of southern staples like ham, fried chicken, or chicken-fried chicken. The “three” means you get three choices from a shockingly long list of vegetables. Some were simple—sliced tomatoes and buttered squash. Some were fancy—eggplant casserole and carrot/raisin salad. Some weren’t vegetables—stuffing, French fries, and mac and cheese. Those would be the three sides my dad would order here. I tried to be healthier with my meal. The food was tasty, but more importantly, it tasted fresh and robust. It was as close to a home-cooked meal as I’ll get out here.

I checked out the facades of the legendary Sun and Stax Records buildings. Sun Records is responsible for breaking musicians like Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, and Elvis Presley; Stax recorded the Staple Singers, Wilson Pickett, and Otis Redding. I’ve been spending too much money to indulge fully in the Memphis Blues experience, so I enjoyed what I could see and returned to Mississippi on Highway 61. This is the big one, folks: the road where blues was born, in the heart of the Mississippi Delta.

The most important spot on US-61 is where it intersects US-49. This is where Robert Johnson, one of the first great bluesmen, sold his soul to the devil. This is the crossroads in Crossroads Blues, and the place where Ralph Macchio beat Steve Vai in a guitar duel. It’s a little different now in that there is no crossroads. There’s an interchange instead. Maybe that’s why I didn’t feel any thinning of reality.

I drove on until an hour past sundown, arriving in the capital city of Jackson. I had secured a very reasonable rate at the Hilton, so I decided to book two nights instead of one. I tried to find somewhere to eat dinner, but everywhere within two miles was closed by 7:30. Weird. I grabbed a soda and a frozen burrito from the hotel store and slumped back to my room. Not quite home-cooked.

I didn’t wake up until 10:30 today. I must have been more exhausted than I thought. I scrambled to make checkout and bounced into the car, then set off parallel to I-30 into Little Rock. Along the way, I stopped for a bagel and a Mayan latte (chocolate and cayenne). I also filled up my tank for $2.94 a gallon, which is currently a record. Arkansas has its points.

My activity of the day was to visit the Little Rock Central High School. In 1957, the Little Rock Nine, a group of Black students, enrolled in this all-white high school and endured bitter, nationally publicized opposition. The site is now a museum, like Monroe Elementary in Topeka, but my visit here was pedestrian. The staff were polite but busy, and the exhibits were passive instead of dynamic. The mood was definitely more “visitor center” than “ground zero”. I still learned from my trip, but I didn’t feel nearly as much.

I kept driving east, stopping in an isolated field to practice the saxophone. I was in the Mississippi Delta now, in a bottomland hardwood forest. The trees were tall, straight, and orderly. As the country flattened out and opened up, I started to appreciate it more. It felt better and healthier. Those good feelings continued into lunch, where I stopped at the chipper but awkward Craig’s Barbecue. The building is a small white shack, like the annex of a government building. The front door is undersized and scrapes along the ground, and the dining room was an odd mixture of barebones functionality and youth-birthday-party charm. There was no menu. I needed to trust the Food Bible on this one—and I was rewarded with a cheap, reasonably portioned pork sandwich that blew up my mouth with flavor. Deeply smoked meat, furious sauce and sweet crunch slaw—absolutely perfect.

After another hour and a half, I saw the Mississippi River again, fifty times larger than in Minnesota. I’ve stopped among the riverside casinos for the night. I considered going to Graceland tomorrow, but I’m not enough of an Elvis fanatic to justify the $80 tour. Instead, I’ll peek at a couple other spots in Memphis and start down Mississippi.

During my ceaseless observation of human nature, I have identified a peculiar phenomenon that occurs in restaurants. Let’s use last night as an example. I was in line to order, right behind a woman who told her husband she wanted the pork tenderloin sandwich. Not what I would get at a barbecue restaurant, but so far, so normal. She then flagged down a member of the staff and asked him which meal he recommended. He listed a few of his favorites: the slaw burger, the catfish plate, the chopped brisket. The customer’s brow wrinkled. What about the pork tenderloin sandwich? she asked. The employee gave a diplomatic answer, she thanked him, and she ordered the sandwich. 

Why do people do this? It breaks my brain. If you know what you want, that’s great! You’re happy, and it saves everyone else time. If you want to check if your preferred meal/restaurant/hike/whatever is any good, ask about it directly. That makes sense too! Yet people instead ask broadly and get upset when the employee doesn’t recommend the thing they already know they want. Douglas Adams would have a field day with this. Alas, this is not satire; this is my reality, and I grow more confused by the week.

Back to the trip! I didn’t sleep especially well, thanks to the lingering effects of the shot, so I rested for a while and left the hotel around 10. Fifteen minutes later, I had crossed into Arkansas, home of great musicians like Levon Helm and Bill Clinton. Some parts of the Ozark region are quite lovely—the fall foliage, the rolling hills, the long and winding roads. The manmade additions are less enjoyable. The rural houses are crumbling, shambly creations, and there’s more Confederate flags here than anywhere else I’ve been.

The weather was chilly, and I didn’t feel like doing much besides driving, so I stopped for lunch in Russellville and hightailed it into the Little Rock suburbs, where I found a cheap hotel. I spent the rest of the day playing music and recovering. I’m feeling much better now, and should be ready for a more rigorous tomorrow. 

At the grocery store, I felt the holiday season rear its head for the first time. The coffee cups had garlands and ornaments printed on the side; wreaths were hung on the walls; the store radio played Rudolph (B-tier carol). And, of course, it was chilly. I love this part of the year, even the days shortening. I think it forces us inside to reflect and regroup. I have been reflecting for the past three months, however, and worry about overreflection. I distracted myself with coffee. This tends to work.

Some highways in Missouri aren’t numbered, but rather are lettered. On my way toward the Ozark Plateau, as the plains gradually became hillier, I passed routes K, Z, N, F, CC, and O. These are supplemental highways, connecting larger and more “important” roads. It took the entire trip to Clinton to get used to them. Once I was in town, I pulled into the CVS to use the restroom and realized I should get my COVID booster. I trotted back to the car to get my vaccine card from the safe, which is hidden in the car’s [REDACTED]. I was perturbed to find I could not remember the three-digit combination to open the safe. I tried numbers with meaning, abbreviations of my normal PIN, and the funny numbers. Nothing. I suppose I’ll have to brute-force it once I get home.

I’ve been relatively fine after past vaccinations, but I figured I ought to have a full stomach just in case. I went to a Mexican restaurant down the street and was disappointed. The Southwest has spoiled me. I hit the road grumpily, in search of a better meal. I darted through Springfield and soon pulled into Branson, the Tacky Roadside Nexus of America. Branson is confident in its tastelessness, which I suppose is an asset. But the roadside attractions lack charm or genuine weirdness, instead catering to the lowest common denominator that is the American tourist. The Hollywood Wax Museum! Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Vaguely-themed attractions offering vague entertainment! Meh. I could just be too young for the town—at the barbecue restaurant where I picked up dinner, the average age was seventy-three. 

The benefit of Branson is that its hotels are cheap in the off-season. I booked a very serviceable room for fifty dollars. I’ll sleep off the vaccine and head somewhere more to my liking tomorrow.

CW: Racial slurs

Staying in hotels is ruining my sleep schedule. I stayed up until 12:30 last night and got up at 9:15, missing the free breakfast in the process. Starting today, I am publicly announcing my commitment to a 10pm bedtime (barring extenuating circumstances). Keep me honest, everyone.

My first and only stop in Topeka was the Brown v. Board of Education museum, located inside the old elementary school where Brown et al. went to school. Wow. This museum may be the best museum I have ever attended. It’s small, and only takes an hour or two to tour. But every moment is crafted to pose hard questions and demand answers. Thank you to Preston, the ranger who gave me a dynamic off-the-cuff talk that detailed the case’s history. There’s far too much to go into here, so here are some highlights:

• The NAACP, which sponsored and led all arguments for these cases, couldn’t break through the “separate but equal” barrier by focusing on economic injustice. So they turned to the Topeka school system, where black and white schools were logistically and economically similar, and instead focused on the psychology of the students. This is a summary of the heartbreaking research of Drs. Kenneth and Mamie Clark that was included in the case.
• One wall displayed this poem.

• Occasionally, visitors were encouraged to answer questions on sticky notes and post them to the wall. The toughest: “If your child were selected to integrate a school, would you allow them to go?” The best answer: “Our auntie was one of the first students to integrate. She is our HERO. We want to be just like her.”

Still processing, I made the hour-long drive to Kansas City in search of barbecue. I was expecting this to be an in-and-out, surgical procedure, but found myself shocked at how vibrant and cool the Arts District was. Psychedelic murals covered the buildings, and the architecture was a mix of repurposed brick and flashy new construction. Throw in the nearby jazz and Negro League museums, and I think I’ll make a return trip here at some point. For now, I enjoyed the barbecue (good, but not life-changing) and, after the tough morning, enjoyed the simplicity of the afternoon.

A television in the hotel lobby was set to the local news. A local school board had unanimously voted to begin restricting graphic novels, and to remove language promoting diverse authors and free library access. Time to go! I booked it to the northeast. 

Everywhere I looked, I saw Cherokee Nation license plates. I hadn’t realized it, but I had stayed overnight in the reservation. It seemed exactly the same as the rest of the Tulsa suburbs. I wondered if that’s a good thing, or a bad thing, or if it just is. I drove down Route 66, out of the Cherokee reservation, and was promptly pulled over by a sheriff’s deputy. He very politely informed me that I was going 60 in a 55 and issued me a warning. I straddled the speed limit all the way into Kansas.

I stopped in Pittsburg for lunch, hoping to go to one of several fried chicken restaurants the Food Bible refers to as “legendary”. In true small-town fashion, they were all closed until dinnertime, so I found a brunch restaurant instead. To my surprise, the decor and the staff were very, very progressive—and the food wasn’t bad, either. I was inspired to further investigate the town.

Pittsburg was already decked out for Christmas, and banners hung from the  streetlamps in support of the local state college. The shops on the main drag were fascinating. In addition to the dentist, the contractor, and the mattress store, there were trendy boutiques, yoga studios, and upscale pet groomers. But two in every five storefronts were empty or filled with construction machinery. The streets were clean and the buildings were in good repair. I left town with more questions than answers.

Another long chunk of driving took me past sundown and up to the edge of Topeka, where I’m staying the night. As an added bonus, I’ll leave a puzzle I solved earlier today, which I found delightful.

• English is filled with words that start with one letter, then have that letter as a double letter later in the word. Examples include “nanny”, “tattle”, “pepper”, and “sassafras”. The puzzle is: find three words that fit this condition and start with, respectively, the letters c, h, and k. All of these are things you could pick up on a road trip. I have seen all of them, picked up many of one, and thought about picking up another. The third is a no-no.

I said goodbye to the Spears and set off to the northeast. One of the more refined qualities of Oklahoma is their concentration of Dunkin’ Donuts (you can take the kid out of New England, etc.). I stopped for a coffee and was astounded to find they offer kolaches. I had one in Utah, which was a glorified bagel bite filled with eggs and cream cheese. The Dunkin version was a gigantic pig in a blanket. Research indicates this may actually be a klobasnek, and the higher-ups got the name wrong. I chickened out on it today; maybe I’ll give it a go tomorrow.

I spent the next two hours on Route 66. Getting my kicks, I suppose. I like the Oklahoman November. Even though the trees are stripped of leaves and the tall grass has browned, it’s still naturally beautiful. You can imagine the future blossoms and greens, and sometimes imagining is even better than seeing the real thing. Finally the suburbs emerged around the highway, and I arrived in Tulsa.

As previously mentioned, one of the classic Oklahoman dishes is the Coney dog. The toppings out here are no-bean chili, onions, and lots of powdery sprinkle cheese. I tried a pair at a local shack, and my experience was similar to when Zack and I tried Chicago-style hot dogs. They’re good! But they’re still hot dogs. I have never had a Coney dog from New York, so I cannot compare the two. My stomach grumbled for a few minutes afterward, which means I’ve grown weaker in my healthiness.

I checked into a hotel shortly thereafter and began my slate of Monday phone calls. I enjoyed catching up with my friends, but I’m also ready to do some more exploring. We’ll see what I find tomorrow.

The hotel breakfast was pretty bad, but it was free. I sat and enjoyed the conversation of the nearby Christian conference. The subject of the summit: how Christian views should be influenced by Jesus’s Judaism. The topic seemed quite interesting, but I wanted to see Oklahoma and not the Hampton Inn. I promptly checked out.

There are two “famous” dishes from El Reno, Oklahoma: the coney and the onion burger. We will discuss the coney tomorrow. Today, I stopped at Robert’s Grill on Route 66 and ordered an onion burger. The burger is grilled with a near-equal amount of onions on top—simple but delicious. I do enjoy the cheap, simple hamburgers that pop up from time to time. 

The rest of the day was a treat. My cousin Madi is in school at Oklahoma City University, so I swung by her junior voice recital and caught up with the rest of the Spear family. They graciously took me out to dinner, then dropped me back off at the OKC campus, where Madi snuck me into a practice room. I blew the dust off my piano chops and settled in for a long practice session. Life was good.

I’m staying with the Spears tonight. Tomorrow, I will try the mysterious coney.

Last night, I sketched out a route for the rest of the trip. If I combine those places with the places I’ve already visited throughout my life, I’ll have visited all forty-eight contiguous US states. Except Iowa. Shoot. Will I add 500 miles to sneak into Iowa? Probably not. Will I be miffed about it? Absolutely.

I loaded the car back up, then set off to breakfast. The diner was spacious and packed with characters. I noted at least a half-dozen ten-gallon hats; a boy, no older than eight, sporting a tank top and a sweet Def Leppard flatbrim; a party of eight uniformed in camo; and a guy my age rocking the Ziggy Stardust mullet. The food was good, if simple, and incredibly cheap. I munched on a biscuit while staring at the shrine to John Wayne in front of me. 

I stopped at the hardware store for a can of spray paint, then drove a few miles out of town to the oddball roadside stop Cadillac Ranch. The namesake cars are anchored in the ground, and have long since been stripped down to their frames. Everything at Cadillac Ranch is spray-painted: the cars, the trash cans, the access road, the walkway to the access road, the dumpsters, the barrier that holds off traffic from I-40. The Cadillacs are bumpy and warped from thousands of layers of paint. The wind was intense, so I couldn’t show off my well-developed tagging skills. I made some minimal contributions and admired the absurdity of it all.

It was time to leave Texas. I set off down Route 66, the Texan stretch of which has been subsumed by I-40, and was in Oklahoma an hour later. Route 66 is its own road here, its magic slightly spoiled by the interstate in the background. I passed the Joads and admired the scenery. I was fully out of the desert and into the plains. Trees stood in small groups, the kind under which you could imagine a farmer sleeping, hat over head. So far, I like Oklahoma better than the Texan Panhandle.

North it is! I struck out into the desolate oil fields under gray skies, with the strange chicken-like oil rigs pecking at the ground. Within half an hour, I was in tiny Wink, Texas, where Roy Orbison grew up. He said that life in Wink was “football, oil fields, oil, grease, and sand.” Doesn’t look like much has changed. I continued through Kermit and Andrews; the towns became more developed and modern, but the gloominess remained. It wasn’t just the weather. I rebuked the feeling with puzzle podcasts.

It’s been a while since I felt I was just driving to get somewhere. If I don’t count my time on the interstate, I might have to think all the way back to the carbon-copy Indianapolis suburbs. There’s not a lot to note here; while my listicle yesterday reminded me that every place I go is filled with detail, I failed to find many details worth detailing. 

While the plains stayed the same, the temperature was falling, and I resigned myself to the first of what I presume will be many hotel rooms. I pulled into Amarillo around 4pm with a roaringly hungry stomach. The Food Bible recommended the brisket at Tyler’s Barbecue, which was an absolute winner. The meat was intensely flavorful, the green beans were crisp and full of umami, and the sauce had some kick to it. Without question. This was the highlight of the day.

I’m in my room now, luxuriating in a real bed. Tomorrow I set out for some legal vandalism.