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Pop! Goes The Culture Relevant/irreverent commentary for modern times
Pack a Picnic Lunch and Take out a Loan for Gasoline, We’re Going to See Elvis
by Therra Cathryn Gwyn
In Europe the "road trip", even if you were hitchhiking (“back in the day”, as they say) is an honored rite of passage. That is, as long as you stay on the correct side of the road (otherwise, it's the end of the passage). Along the way, it's hip to touch on the many available pop culture landmarks, to drink where Dylan Thomas drank, to read poetry to Jim Morrison in Du Pere-Lachaise cemetery in Paris. It’s fascinating to wander different countries, take in the local cuisine, peruse sites where kings were kinged and people were beheaded (so fond they were of that once upon a time). Every year Americans head to Europa in droves to make these special treks. But why spend hours in airports having strangers rummage through your underwear in order to secure borders? Why learn a whole new language just so you can order snails? Who wants to get up early to see stuff like the Mona Lisa when you can see it on the internet in your underwear? And the cost of international travel? Dang!You can spend that $2200 here in the U.S.A. on two tanks of gas and happy meal and you don’t need a passport to cross state lines. Yet.
You think Georgia doesn't afford you the same road trip possibilities of a Paris or Amsterdam? I say to you: “Votre burro se tient sur mon pied!” Well, actually, that means “Your burro is standing on my foot", but it's one of the few French phrases I can remember on a daily basis and only then because I heard it in a movie. So, grab a Coke and bring something to blog on. You may not be able to pay homage to Jim Morrison or Edith Piaf in the Deep South, but you can certainly go give your respects to Miss Baker, Space Monkey. For those of you who don’t remember (of which I am one), Miss Baker and Miss Able, a squirrel monkey and rhesus monkey, respectively, were shot 300 miles into space as America’s first astronauts in 1959. After returning safely to earth, Miss Able died during the surgery to remove her electrodes. Miss Baker lived long and apparently prospered, until she died in Huntsville, Alabama, in 1984. She is buried and memorialiized at the Space and Rocket Center there.
Just in case it is dead rocks stars you seek, do go to Macon, Georgia, where two members of the Allman Brothers band are buried, both rock n’ blues testimony to excess. Believe it or not, even as long as these dudes have been gone, people are still stopping by to party with them. One bleak late winter morning I wandered into Rose Hill cemetery to locate the graves of Duane Allman and Berry Oakley. I didn't have to look far, just far enough to find a young girl and her boyfriend, propped on the side-by-side graves, smoking a joint. As I got closer, I could see many mellow revelers had come before them. There were remnants of party substances covering the ground around graves. Some were, no doubt, left as offerings, rather like taking a fried banana and bacon sandwich to Graceland. Which brings us to our next stop.
Follow all the tourists from other countries and go immediately to Memphis and directly to Graceland. The fashionable King of Rock and Roll had very interesting taste in home decor, hence the "Jungle Room". I can't quite describe it but suffice it to say that when my friend Ted told me he once threw up in every room in Graceland I didn't automatically attribute it to too much beer. (Disclaimer: this statement is in no way meant to diminish the contributions Elvis made to popular culture. Elvis remains The King. He was good to his mama, he bought new cars for strangers and if we ever have to vote, collectively, to clone one human, please God, let it be Elvis). It's certainly very affecting in some ways, spending time in Elvis' home. Seeing all the flowers received every day from around the world at the graves behind the house is a rather startling reminder that people still think about him on a daily basis. The fact that his middle name is spelled incorrectly on his gravestone lends credibility - in the minds of the hopeful - that he’s still alive because you don’t tempt fate in the superstitious South by putting your full real name on a gravestone if you are still with us, thankyouverymuch. I personally think that if Elvis didn’t die that fateful August night in Memphis that he would have come charging out of that Burger King in Michigan the day his only daughter married Michael Jackson, but I could be wrong.
I often wonder what the youth of today think when they get to roam the home of the King of Rock. By the standards of the early 21st century it’s hardly opulent, just barely making “mansion” status. Oh, it’s quite nice, but when you grow up on a diet of MTV “Cribs” and see the impossibly luxurious dwellings of the current batch of pop and sports millionaires (retractable ceilings anyone?), Graceland just seems like a nice big house with a few extras, a home with a modest pool that you might find in any upper class neighborhood. It’s hard to remember that for the time, this was very swanky digs indeed.
If you are looking for more culture than pop, you can head 80 miles SE of Atlanta to Eatonton, Georgia, to the Uncle Remus Museum. Journalist Joel Chandler Harris was transfixed by stories told to him by former slave George Terrell. Harris eventually retold these stories, using the black dialect of the original tales and created a character named Uncle Remus. Harris was an advocate of the "new South" and spoke out often in public for better treatment of blacks. Sadly, the Uncle Remus stories had the effect of perpetuating stereotypes that many people deplored. Eatonton, Georgia is also the home of Pulitzer-Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker.
Also in our southern backyard are those specialty places that scream “Americana”. If fast cars are your thing, hurry to the Museum of Drag Racing in Ocala, Florida. If it’s fast food you like, try the Colonel Sanders Museum in Louisville, Kentucky. The African Queen boat from the film of the same name is berthed in Key Largo. Florida also has its own thriving Amish community in Sarasota. In Gibsland, Louisiana you can see where Bonnie and Clyde were killed, riddled with bullets from lawmen laying in wait. Bonnie was then buried in Dallas, wearing a blue negligee (there's something to bring up when the conversation lags at a family reunion). Also of note is the National Infantry Museum at Fort Benning, Georgia, where resides an upside-down bronze “head” of Adolph Hitler -- taken from the veranda of Hitler's mountain retreat by an infantryman as Germany fell. The head/bust was later welded to a metal plate and used as a trash can for many years. Appropriate, one might say. There are many Hitler, SS and WWII artifacts and anomalies scattered in musuems throughout the southern states.
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So you see, my globe-trotting friends, the south is not all peaches, pick-up trucks and pork rinds. There's a lot to see and experience in Dixie. Just don't stand near my friend Ted when you go to Graceland.
Copyright © 2008, The Daily Panic
The walls of Graceland - Photo: Therra C. Gwyn
