A Living Magazine - Day 141 - Day City Pictures and a Violent Night

I remembered no dreams from the night's slumber. The night before had been enough for a while and there were too many things to do and think about. I was happy to not have other concerns, especially such esoteric and enigmatic ones. I packed up, and headed in town. I got to Starbuck's and worked on the post about the incredible experiences of the day before.

When I was done in the late afternoon I was tired and left having forgotten to buy my bus ticket. I only wanted to have a beer, listen to the blues and relax. I remembered my oversight partway down BBKing, but decided to get some pictures of the city outside the Beale Street area. There had been so much to do in the last few days that I'd not even explored the rest of the downtown area.

Banks are nearly always the tallest buildings in every city. I guess that is a big fat DUH, but it does bear mentioning, so that there is no ambiguity about who actually owns everything in America and the world...and...that I have truly seen this...

Memphis has a very small skyline compared to all of the cities to which I've been. Portland, Maine's Old Port section dwarfs the Beale Street area. And that is really saying something, since many folks I've met on these Journeys can't even locate Maine on a map...

Some excellent murals in the northern part of town...

I like this architecture. It seems to be a mixture of Greek revival and Victorian, and as I am slowly realizing, it is a very Southern thing...

I love the ornate almost Baroque styles of the monuments I've seen ever since Indianapolis.

This fountain is a similar representative.

I love the: "In-case-you're-wondering-I'm-waiting-for-a-snack-from-you!" pose.

Relics from the naval Battle of Memphis.

It was a major defeat for the Confederacy, virtually eliminating its naval presence.

Tesselations.

Except for this night. But that was still to come...

I finally got the the walkway over to Mud Island...

Huh? Oh, well.

Yes, another pyramid.

This reminded me of Hieronymus Bosch's Ascent of the Blessed.

The M Bridge.

I would reword this: Trust YOURSELF, and if you believe in Jesus, he will be with you.

These locks are turning into an iconic part of my travels. I began to notice them in Salem, Oregon.

They have shown up in nearly every place since. This is just a bike lock, not a love lock...Still...

The tangled roots of Memphis.

I may have already posted this. But it was worth another view.

I rushed back to Starbucks, skipping my beer. Sitting outside, I went to Greyhound's new "improved" website, and went through several error page hoops, finally making my purchase. Then, I waited for my email receipt, and waited and waited and waited... No receipt.

I had to leave on Wednesday and this was Monday. The price of the fare to Nashville had already gone up by five dollars since Sunday. Now I had to deal with what I'd experienced in the past as Greyhound's insanely convoluted customer non-service. Taking a deep breath, I got on the Google Voice phone and called in.

I won't go into the thirty-six minute wait on hold, nor the poor rep who also tried and failed to fix the problem with me, nor the fourteen more minutes I waited for her supervisor, a patient woman named Hariel.

but I will say that we figured out that we needed to go to the old site to accomplish even seeing my ticket. Eventually, after getting special permission to give me the four digit code after my zip code - the only thing preventing us from possibly seeing the ticket - she got the job of the eTicket image completed--and only after an hour. Phew! That meant I could go somewhere and print it. [To this day, I have not received my receipt from them--and I write this from Nashville! Ha!]

A positive frame of mind receded, as I checked out how late the "Central Library" (which was located six miles from the center of Memphis) was open. I tried to wait for the bus at Poplar, but Memphis buses (which are supposed to hit stops every 20-30 minutes) never came, even after an hour.

Giving up, and knowing I had the next day to get out there and walked back up BBKing and toward my sleep spot.

I stopped into the Hop-In (a regional gas station/store) to get a juice, and was begged by a guy who I'd watched put a roll of bills in his pocket the night before. I gave him nothing, and he became irate with me. I stopped turned around and walked up to his face, stared deeply into his eyes and said, "You DO NOT intimidate me." He stepped back, looked away, waved me off, and went back to sitting on the curb right in front of the store (loitering is not enforced in Memphis).

At that point things in Memphis turned dark and nasty.

I walked further on and another guy across the street said, "Give me a dollar, man!"

I looked at him and said, "I'm sorry," then kept walking.

He angrily barked, "Motherfucker!" behind me, but I did not turn around.

Even further down the road, two guys drinking (also across the street) started laughing and pointing at me. One of them said, "Hey look it's Santy Claus!" (no doubt because of my big pack), then they knocked knuckles and gave a couple of hoots. I kept walking and put my hand down into my leg pocket, grasping my knife, just in case.

As I approached the grassy area and was about to climb down to the woods, I heard a pickup engine racing up behind me. I stepped off of the road and turned to see the truck barrelling up the breakdown lane directly toward me. I side-stepped further on to the grass. A white guy (the others had been black) stuck his head out of the speeding truck, and right before passing me, he threw a glass bottle toward me. The wind caught and diverted it, slamming it into the metal power pole about 5 feet away. It blew up into a cloud of red glass, with some shards striking my back pack. After they had passed over the bridge and could no longer see me, I half-skated down the grassy hill and jogged to the edge of my trail into the woods.

Standing in my little temporary chunk of land, I set the pack down, wiped the sweat from my brow, and did what I usually only do on a first night: stood--without setting up the tent; listening extremely carefully to everything around me. Because it was a Monday the trains that passed within fifty feet of me came more frequently, and one stopped right there next to the site.

This was good and bad. It meant that curious local guys would probably be turned off from venturing in, but also disallowed any other sound to be recognized--the train's brakes hissed, the giant diesel pistons pounded out their song in the Key of Idle, and every now and then the engines (there were two) pulled it up a few feet; causing a very distinctive effect to take place. When trains stop, go, or travel over uneven ground an immense shutter will take place (caused by the filling of small spaces between each car) that travels at about 90 mph down the hundred or more cars, from the point of origin to the end. It is fascinating just how quickly momentum can be transferred. After an hour or so, another train passed on tracks that curved away from the one parked beside me. That is what they were waiting for, and the closer train moved on its way west and out of sight.

After that, I stood there until I was fairly sure that I was not going to be visited. Cautiously, I pulled out the poles and the tent bag, assembled the tent, carefully placed the pack inside, then removed my new multitool - with its ample blade and probably-very-effective-for-self-defense hammer end, extending the blade and placed it beside my sleeping bag, with my other, smaller knife, remaining in the leg pocket as a secondary weapon, if needed.

I was not frightened, but I my senses were heightened, should the moment come during the night when I would need to fight. (I love the unintentional rhyming in that last sentence.) I no long posses a "fight or flight" response. My only instinct now is to fight (as a last resort).

Surprisingly, I fell asleep immediately.