Waiting to move
MEMPHIS, TN.—Many of the travel books I have written and the notes I have taken have been about getting there.
What about the art of being there?
I’m being there in my 2015 camper van right now. What is around me? Not many people. I’m at the rugged Graceland RV Park and Campground, across Elvis Presley Boulevard from the fancy hotel Guest House at Graceland.
The campground is about 30 percent full. My refrigerator has a six-pack of Diet Mountain Dew and a six- pack of Memphis High Cotton IPA. Being there is being prepared for fun.
I have trouble getting the heat going on my first trip of the 2019 winter. A simple switch of the outdoor electrical outlets does the trick, but in the problem-solving process, I meet Carmine, a friendly Graceland RV park neighbor. He is from Indiana. His son C.M. Humphries writes horror mysteries like “EXCLUDED”.
I’m assigned a parking space on “Heartbreak Lane.” The RV park street signs are named after Elvis hits: there’s also “Teddy Bear Lane,” “Lonely Street” and “Don’t Be Cruel Lane.”
When I was younger I’d drive down to Memphis on a whim and a heart full of suspense. I’d talk a girlfriend into coming with me with the promised glories of the Rendezvous, the Lamplighter and great thrift stores. Some of the road signs along I-55 haven’t changed: Heaven or Hell/Lion’s Den Adult Super Store/Lady Luck RV Park; a mystic Morse code from the middle of America.
I bring along an eight-CD set of Bobbie Gentry music. To be honest, I do this because now I know of no one who would drive with me in my camper van on the seven-hour drive from Chicago to Memphis.
But Gentry’s “The Girl From Chickasaw County” is a fine companion and the best country music box set since Merle Haggard’s Capitol stuff. Gentry’s voice is as husky as a brisk wind and her spacious arrangements are the perfect metaphor for what I am trying to hear. Her stark take of the Lenny Welch R&B hit “Since I Fell For You” (with tasty Wes Montgomery inspired guitar) is alone worth the price of this collection. The song is all new again:
“When you just give love, and never get love
you better let love depart…”
Bobbie Gentry was a co-owner of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns.
I’m being here, where there is no tomorrow and there is no past. Yet we only get here because our lives are an accumulation of past moments. They are like stacks of old ’45s. Some songs you choose, others choose you. I still struggle to make every moment count. These are moments of truth.
The campers next to me are a courtesy and a promise. The guy and girl appear to be in their mid-twenties. They have parked a large station wagon in the spot next to mine. Together they pitch a car-top tent on the roof of their car and they deploy a small ladder to get to their tent.
The early evening weather is dreary, but they are smiling brightly as they gather their needs for the evening. Twilight is a metaphor if you look it in the eye.
The couple is close at this moment. I don’t wander over with questions and a camera as if I am doing a book or a newspaper article. I completely embrace my observation.
Perhaps I transfer my loneliness on them which embellishes their togetherness. I do not know who they are and where they are going but I won’t soon forget them.
We all want someone to remember us when we’re gone.
I look towards the Graceland visitor’s center and wonder about the visions of the bus drivers who transport tourists from all over the world to Elvis’s Graceland Mansion. What a gig. Life becomes larger in small spaces.
During the height of tourist season, I’m guessing these drivers will make about 30 round trips a day from the visitor’s center, across Elvis Presley Boulevard, and up the hill to the mansion entrance. They drop off the passengers and do it all over again. The world is at the fingertips of these drivers and for just a few minutes they are the captains of this circle game.
Where does the specter of Presley register with these fans? If Elvis is from the past, it’s becoming a distant past. This summer will mark 42 years since he died, matching the same number of years he lived. Is his rags-to-riches story a metaphor for getting there? I know this to be true with some struggling Elvis fans I have talked to. Or has Graceland Enterprises marketed him into a Disney World figure that will forever exist in an alternate reality? Being 42 forever is not a bad idea.
I try to maintain a youthful sense of humility. I never will know all the answers. But when focusing on myself I must remember all the components that create us: listening, helping a neighbor, smiling at a stranger walking a small dog in a Memphis RV park. There are still candles to be seen in a land of flashing neon signs.
I’ve spent more than 30 years on and off the road. The search was always about finding a good story and then becoming a respectful vessel for the human heart. When I strip that motivation away the search becomes about me.
What am I waiting for?
My June 2016 solo stop at the KOA Kampground, Great Falls, Montana for “The Camper Book (A Celebration of a Moveable American Dream).”
My daughter and I visited Graceland during a college tour in Memphis last fall. My prior visit was back in the 1980s with Charley Krebs. That was a road trip poorly planned while drunk and even more poorly executed while hung over. Nonetheless it was a fabulous success and became a story told and retold. Graceland was much simpler then. The house was still across the street from a strip mall. All surrounding land was since acquired and developed into the current Elvis-style Disneyland. Yet somehow his charm comes through. When we returned to the highway my daughter launched an Elvis Spotify playlist unprompted by me. I smiled at my parenting fortune through eyes misty at the memory of my departed friend Charley. Everything is on its way to somewhere else.
Thanks, Paul for reading and the nice note. Charley is often the North Star of my little radio show. See you soon, Dave