~ The Americana Kitsch and Culture Tour
~ originally posted 11 Jul 2011
Aloha MM’s,
Well, her we are at ‘Ye olde
state park’ in the middle of nowhere. You’ve seen that program The Middle,
where they show you NOTHING but corn fields… Yes—right there! The most
interesting things in these parts so far, has been a woman on the back of a
motor-trike happily reading her book on Kindle as they barreled down the
freeway. LOL. Oh, and we crossed a state line, so when I started this, we
were in
Changing direction, we were
in the Mid-East,
The man himself—Elvis!!!
And another King, who made an equally big impact on the world in a different
way in
This last week has reminded
me that dreamers are often shot down for their beliefs, for their dreams.
That while some people admire dreamers—dreamers often push peoples buttons
and make people feel angry on some level. In their rigid, narrow minded
world, governed by the head, rules, and practical ways, there is no room for
dreamers or people who do not do things by the book. They scare people for
reasons I can’t fathom.
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was
a dreamer. Elvis Presley was a dreamer. People like Sam Phillips of Sun
Studios was a dreamer. And in a world that values using your head, above your
heart—this is not always appreciated.
I am also a dreamer. Perhaps
I relate to Dr. King on a soul level because in 1963, the year I was born, he
delivered his timeless speech, “I have a dream…” Then on my 5th
birthday on
As we spent time in
We drove into
We wondered why people had
said this. I wondered if it was because
Perhaps they were feeling
the energy there, blood embedded into the streets of places like Memphis and
all over the South, as people fought for basic human rights back in the
fifties and sixties in a racially segregated America.
And while that may sound
‘overly’ dramatic. I cannot really express how seeing the Civil Rights Museum
made us feel. We came away from there shell shocked on a soul level at the
way people were treated. It is quite horrific that human beings can do that
to other human beings.
The museum at the old
Lorraine Motel in downtown
What made someone so angry that they would shoot a fellow human being?
In a so called ‘civilized’
Western country, only a short 50 to 60 years back down the road, we have
perhaps forgotten the fight that went on here for what were BASIC human
rights. The first slaves came out in 1619 and it took until 1960 to get some
basic civil rights. How does that work? Shame on you white
Dr. King came to support the
garbage workers here in the city of
Part of his speech:
I have a dream that one
day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of
injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into
an oasis of freedom and justice.
I have a dream that my
four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be
judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.
And this fight was not a new
fight. It had been going on for hundreds of years. And for more than a
decade, the people had started to rise up and have a strong voice. In 1955,
Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on a
Buses, like many places,
were segregated. Whites on the front, blacks or coloreds (I use the
derogatory colored to show the impact here) on the back. They had signs for
this. When the bus pulled up, a black person would walk onto the front of the
bus, pay the fare, THEN have to get off the bus again, and walk to the doors
at the back to board. Sometimes, they bus would depart before they had made
it to the back doors.
The seats were 4 across the
bus—2 on either side of the aisle. The bus driver had the discretion to
move the card denoting the line between black and white. But the LAW required
that a black person give up his seat to a white person.
On this day, a white man
entered the bus and there were no white seats left. There was one white man
with no seat and 4 colored people occupying 4 seats. When the white man got
on, 2 of the colored people got up and left their seats and stood. Black
people were not allowed to sit across the aisle from white people. The person
next to Rosa Parks did the same thing. But
Rosa Parks refused. She
said, I paid my fare, I am not getting up. They arrested her.
This led to the Montgomery
Bus Boycott which lasted for 13 months and nobody rode the buses. When I say
nobody…I mean the African-American community. 40,000 black commuters, 75% of
the people who used the buses. The buses for the most part, sat idle. People
walked, carpooled (even when a law was enacted that made it illegal for them
to do that,) they rode with friends, they taxied. Black taxis charged people
the 10 cent fare they would have had to pay on the buses. Can you imagine
what this must have cost people? Imagine walking miles to work in the
stifling soup kitchen heat. It was like a sauna. For 13 months, they held out
in protest. Eventually, it crippled the bus system and segregation was
outlawed on the buses. Thank god.
This fight and many others
went on all over the South of the
We cringed when we saw this
museum, when we realized how much the people had gone through.
This was a very somber part
of
This was the dark side of
The first day of
sightseeing, we had our first stop at the Peabody Hotel. This hotel is a
grand old hotel in
  
They started as a bit of a
joke, when someone brought back some ducks from duck hunting (bleuch) and set
them loose in the fountain at the hotel. Since then, no duck has EVER
frequented the menu and never will!
These ducks are superstars.
(Obviously a few generations of ducks have come and gone since then) But
these guys live on the rooftop of the Peabody Hotel in the
You have to keep your camera
on speed mode because when that door opens, they SPRINT…really, they charge
down the red carpet at warp speed and plop straight into the fountain, where
they paddle around all day to their hearts content. At
  
This daily rituals has been
going on since 1938.
It’s a hoot. We asked the
Duck Master how he became a Duck Master? “Oh, years and years of being
in the right place, at the right time,” he said. It’s a VERY serious job at
the
From there, we wandered not
too far down the road to another star making place in
 
About a year later, Elvis
was hanging around the recording studio and Sam got him to sing with Bill
Black and Scotty More. After hours of mucking around and not much happening,
Elvis started to muck around with an old blues song and sung ‘That’s All
Right,’ ‘like no blues song had ever been heard before.’ This time Sam was
wowed and as they say, the rest is history! Sam signed Elvis and Elvis went
on to be THE KING.
 
Now, you can cringe all you
like about Elvis, (he has become so clichéd) but he was a great entertainer
and as we saw going around
At Sun we got a great wee
tour on how rock and roll started out. We got to stand in the recording
studio where it all happened. Still pretty much as it was back in Elvis and
Jerry Lee Lewis made their recordings! Very authentic, right down to the
grungy falling apart acoustic ceiling tiles. You can still cut a ‘record’
there today if you have a mind too! It was great!
After that, we went to the
King of Attractions in
    
Despite what you hear about
His kitchen was pretty
normal for that period. A big typical American kitchen with all the gear in
it. His parent’s room was very tastefully done downstairs. The Jungle Room
was not THAT out there. No monkeys hanging off the ceiling or boa
constrictors curled around a chair leg. Gee, I would have done that! I didn’t
much like his taste in ‘jungle’ furniture but I can see why it appealed to
him. It was too masculine for me. But it was his house; he was entitled to
anything he wanted! The yellow bar and TV room downstairs was gorgeous. The
pool table room has
The main family
room was lovely. Very nice sofas and chairs and quite elegant
decorations. Sure his dining room had an ENORMOUS chandelier in it, but hey,
if you can’t have something a bit flashy, what the hey. You can see his home
was fun. It has great energy to it. And you can see that he would have loved
entertaining with family and friends. I would have liked living here! It was
homely...
We toured the whole estate
and it was fabulous. What you got the most about Elvis was that he was just a
very nice young man, who had a great voice and a lot of charm. Stan Walker
reminds me greatly of him. He was a NICE man. If people needed anything, he
gave it to them. He was shy and used to get stage fright. He was very close
to his mama. He loved his family. He was a bit of a sweetie I suspect. I like
that.
 
We saw his gravesite and
everyone was a bit teary. A few times, I was a bit teary actually. I LOVED
Elvis. I came home once and had a record I’d found.
I said to mum, “Wait til you
hear this guy mum, you’ve never heard anything like it!”
I put the record on and the
music started and my mum started to laugh, REALLY laugh… rolling around
laughing.
“What!” I said.
Mum said, “That’s Elvis.”
‘Do you know him?” I
innocently said.
Ah… yeah… :-)
I thought I'd discovered the
holy grail...
We wished we had brought something for the grave. Many people had left things there. I suspect they clear things off periodically and it gets filled up again pretty fast.
We saw his planes and cars,
his wardrobe. But most of all, we saw this lovely man who became a superstar
and had a dream…
 
What I know about dreams is
that it’s not that a dream is too big. It’s that you make a dream too small.
If you scale down a dream to
fit a budget or a belief system or because other people are offended by it or
think you are silly or impractical or just plain stupid—you have killed the
dream.
You have shot yourself in
the foot, before you have even began to live.
It’s thanks to dreamers that
the world is what it is today. If all the cynical people had a free hand in
the world, the world would get nowhere. There was an inventors club in the
1800’s which closed down, because they thought there were no more things to
invent.
But thank god for the
dreamers of this world.
The people who believe in
making the impossible, possible.
And go out and do it.
THANK YOU for your visions
and your perseverance!
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