It’s a Long Road to BubbalandPart I: MemphisWhen I grew up in northern Illinois, just over the Wisconsin border, we children called anyone with a southern accent a “hillbilly.” While living in Central Illinois, where the Mason-Dixon line actually is culturally, and an 8-year stint in the Deep South has substantially altered my perception, I had the pleasure this past month to travel through the South, and I am here to tell you, it’s a different world.
We leave Central Illinois early in the morning, heading south on Interstate 55 to Memphis. By the time we pass St. Louis, there’s been a fundamental sea change: Billboards read JESUS in large letters, and there are right-to-life graveyards dotting the highways. The non-smoking area of the Cracker Barrel in Cape Girardeau is separated from the smoking area by a single lattice-work divider between two doorways, plexiglass between the lattice caked with yellow residue. All these things, in the state just south of my own, are just indicators of what is to come.
In Memphis, the Peabody Hotel, around the corner from our own more modest digs, is opulent beyond belief, the entire block taken up with boutique shops, a cotton museum, and high-end restaurants, one of them having made the top ten on Fromers last year and sporting a wine menu that would make a sommelier blush. Prixe Fixe meals begin at $100 and I grab my spendthrift husband by the back of the collar and insist that we eat ribs on Beale Street. On this bastion of blues music, a scant three blocks from the opulent lobby and chic shops of the Peabody hotel, tourists, many of them in Elvis sweatshirts, wander aimlessly, trying to decide whether to buy plastic bracelets that let merrymakers into three bars for ten dollars, Given the seven and eight-dollar cover charges, it seems like a good idea.
The ribs at the Blues City café are good, and the bathrooms are immaculate and attended by women who will provide you with a paper towel and thank you politely for a tip. The BB King Blues Bar, across the street, is our first stop. One does not drink wine in such places. When available, it is bad. Usually, it is not available. I opt instead for a beer which, on top of the day’s drive and the heavy meal, would have put me to sleep were it not for the show on the dance floor. Young couples, older tourists in groups of four or five (these are the Elvi sweatshirt folks) and a number of bachelorette parties are drinking and dancing simultaneously, along with a local in a pair of overalls with one strap undone who keeps grabbing the most unattractive women he can find from the tables around the bar to dance. The women, sitting with their bored and probably boring husbands, seem grateful. I only hope I don’t look bored enough that he will come after me.
One of The Brides sports a veil with her jeans and t-shirt, apparently pro forma for bachelorette parties, as I have seen this before in Chicago. The Bride is quite drunk, although it’s not yet nine o’clock, and the bachelorettes are encouraging her to dance with a guy she has just met and dragged on to the dance floor. She is so drunk that at one point she holds herself up by leaning on the edge of the stage. (She rallies, however, and we see her later at another club)
The beer is filling and lukewarm, the music after the first set less than spectacular, and I’m ready to walk back to the hotel and catch some sleep.
Part Two: Going to GracelandI insist that we go. We’re there, it’s there, and it should be visited. My husband comes along kicking and screaming and muttering under his breath. We are directed from the parking lot by signs that say “Maroon Awning to ticketing” and walk under a canopy lined with silkscreened images of The King. The Graceland ticketing area is as sophisticated as any at any site I’ve ever seen. There are an array of ticket windows and packages, including the “Premier” package which gets you a private tour of Graceland and costs $55 per person. Elvis music blasts over the loudspeakers, TV screens show continuous-loop scenes from Elvis movies, and all signs direct visitors to the museum or the gift shop while they wait for their buses. There are roped-off corridors leading to the buses, and buses are announced every ten minutes. We are on tour #7 of the 10 AM run, never mind that it’s 11:15 and no one seems to be in a hurry. We’re issued headphones for the tour and stand in line with the rest of the !0 AM tour # 7 group. Elvis music still blares, “And I can’t help falling in looove with you…” while my husband mutters over and over like a mantra, “you owe me, you owe me, you owe me, you so owe m…) as we wait for the bus.
Behind us is a young family with the woman’s mother. The couple appears to be in their late twenties or early thirties, and mother about our age. I can’t quite nail the accent, but the lexicon is distinctly Southern. The eight-year-old girl with them, referred to only as BabyGirl, accent on “Baby,” keeps asking in a shrill voice, “Now can I turn on the tape? When do I turn on the tape?” “Not yet, BabyGirl, “ her daddy drawls, “we’ll tell ya’ll when.” By the time we get on the bus we’re ready to kill BabyGirl and her daddy. We pause briefly during embarkment to have our picture taken in front of the Graceland photo backdrop strategically placed at the bus entrance. Having your picture taken is mandatory, and I suspect it might be part of the NSA’s plan to data mine us all: Surely “they” would want to know who has been to Graceland.
We cross Elvis Presley Boulevard and climb the driveway to Graceland while our driver gives us the history of the mansion and Elvis’s occupation of it. The driver clearly does this twenty times a day and recites the history in a monotone, but the mood of the crowd is respectful and hushed, except for a few people like us who are laughing behind their hands. Daddy and BabyGirl chatter the whole way up the driveway: “This here’s the driveway, BabyGirl. Mama, take my pitcher with BabyGirl …” “Now can I push the button, Daddy?” “Not yet, BabyGirl. Mama, take that pitcher now, we’re almost there!”
The Mansion itself is a seventies nightmare. From the chandeliered entry way, thirty-foot living room with stained glass windows with peacock images on them, to the assault of the royal blue dining room, it’s hideous. Elvis’s Mama’s bedroom, on the lower level next to the kitchen is done all in purpose “’cause that was his mamma’s favorite color.”
The tours pass each other in the narrow hallways, elbowing each other to snap pictures (no flash allowed) of the life-sized oil painting of Elvis in the foyer and mamma’s bed. We’re unable to shake Daddy and BabyGirl, who halt suddenly every five minutes:
“Mama, take me ‘n’ BabyGirl’s pitcher here in front of Elvis’s mama’s bedroom! C’mon BabyGirl, smile, honey!” Descending the stairs to the Den, which are completely covered in green shag carpeting, including the ceiling, my husband tries to drop-kick Daddy and BabyGirl as they pause on the stairs for yet another picture, as Daddy says, “Are we goin’ downstairs now?” I manage to distract him long enough to avoid violence, but he’s still muttering, “you owe me, you owe me, you owe me” under his breath.
The tour continues: The jungle room, also covered in green shag carpeting, the gold record corridor with all Elvis’ gold records lining the walls; the museums, with the infamous white, round bed covered in fur, the outfits, and Lisa Marie’s baby bed. Daddy and BabyGirl stop to take a pitcher and I begin wondering how serious whatever is wrong with this family really is….
The final segment of the tour, before visitors pause respectfully at the Memorial Garden, where not only Elvis, but his Momma and Daddy are buried and there are memorial stones for his baby brother and his granny, tactfully leaves out the fact that Elvis died of an overdose, and refers delicately to his “heart condition.” The condition is that his heart stopped because he had so many prescription drugs in his system. Visitors file respectfully by the memorial garden with its eternal flame, and a small sign tells us that all flowers sent to the memorial garden by fans are left there ‘til dead, even on Elvis’s birthday, when there’s overflow.
We have been to Graceland. We can cross it off our list. My husband still says I owe him, but we stop after our tour long enough to purchase the 5 x 7 picture of us in front of the Graceland backdrop as we embark on the tour, along with the two refrigerator magnets and the three wallet-sized photo’s. I plan to give one of the photo’s to my mother. She doesn’t like Elvis either.
Part Three: Rowan OakOxford, Mississippi is not thirty miles from Memphis, as we believe, but seventy. We drive in the pouring rain, or rather my husband, who is a control freak and will not allow anyone else to drive, does, at about 85 miles an hour as if he were about to murder someone. I would like to think this was the Graceland hangover, but in truth, he always drives like that. I have learned to read a book or doze to keep from getting motion sickness. I have done very little preparation for this trip, which is unusual for me. I generally have a folder full of Mapquest or Michelin directions, but have not had time to put them together. Leaving Graceland, we stop for gas and buy a small but adequate map. My husband has a meltdown because the gas station is out of windshield wiper fluid, and I gently guide him to a Walgreens to buy some, then make sure he gets something to eat, something I should have done before Graceland. Reminder to self: Never get in car with husband when he has not eaten.
Even in the rain, Oxford is lovely, small cottages everywhere and now, in late April, lush and green with things blooming everywhere. The streets are narrow, which makes negotiating our way downtown to the Visitors Center hazardous. There’s an event on the town square, and cars are parked every whichway. I smugly pull out the small fold-up umbrellas I stuck in my bag, and we only get wet from the knee down on the pouring rain. There is, indeed, two polite but clueless teenage boys mans a visitor’s center among the food booths and craft displays lining the streets, and it. They give us incomplete but not exactly inaccurate directions to Rowan Oak, and after circumnavigating the downtown area, which is blocked off to traffic, we find the street we want and wind our way through the parked cars. I look to my right, and there it is: Rowan Oak. Rowan Oaks lining the front walk: check. Two shuttered windows upstairs: check. Latticework balcony: check. Sign…no sign. No admission sign, no identifier, no indication of hours. This could be a private home for all the signage. And indeed it is. As we walk across the lawn, having found a parking spot, it occurs to us that this could not possibly be Faulkner’s home, and although no one has come out to the porch to shoo us off or, worse case scenario, shoot us, I’m pretty sure we’d better beat it. Right street, looks like the picture, wrong house. A Rowan Oak wannabe.
By now it’s 3:30, and the brochure we picked up at the Visitors Center says that the house closes at four. We meander around a bit more, and finally find Rowan Oak. It is identifical to the house we just left, but on far more land. The house itself is sparsely furnished, the grounds beautiful. Faulkner purchased the large primitive Greek Revival house, which was built in the 1840’s, in 1930. It was his home until his death in 1962. The brochure we carry with us from the visitors center says, “Rowan Oak was William Faulkner’s private world, in reality and imagination.” As we tour the house, sparsely furnished, and the outbuildings, pausing between the Oaks that line the front walkway, Faulkner’s stories, with their the runaway slaves, southern ladies, old soldiers come alive. It was here that Faulkner lived when he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1950.
The name Faulkner chose for the property, Rowan Oak, was taken from a Celtic legend about the powers of the wood from the Rowan Tree. Indeed, the Rowan Tree has been known in many cultures for its protective qualities: Consider this entry from Wikipedia:
“Many traditions have evolved from the belief common among many Celtic people that the Rowan tree could offer protection from evil spirits. On Beltane (the night before May Day, which in some places was called Rowan Tree Day), sprigs of Rowan were often tied with string dyed red from the Rowan berries to cows' tails and horses' halters to protect them, and sheep were made to jump through hoops made from Rowan. Crossed branches of Rowan were often placed in cowsheds and stables for the same purpose, and milking stools and pails were sometimes made of Rowan wood. Rowan trees were commonly planted near the doors of houses, or Rowan twigs placed over the door or under a bed, to ward off evil spirits. Necklaces of Rowan berries with red thread were often worn for protection by Highland women. Rowan trees was often planted in churchyards to send away evil spirits and to keep the unquiet dead from leaving their graves. In Wales, it was common for people to wear a cross carved from Rowan. Corpses prior to burial and coffins in transit to graveyards were often placed under Rowan trees to protect the souls from evil spirits. “
Perhaps the magic of Rowan Oak for Faulkner was that he was protected, and could write freely about what he referred to as “my own little postage stamp of earth.” We leave Oxford in the rain, contemplating the huge literary life of a diminutive man who at his tallest was only 5’6”. According to the brochure, “Faulkner remains today the most-studied author in the world, with more books, articles, and papers written about his work than any other writer besides Shakespeare.” Who am I to argue?
Part IV: Duck-Gazing in Little RockIt’s the capital of Arkansas, and is a somewhat schizophrenic mix of old South and nouveau style. We pull up to the Peabody Hotel, not as opulent or as old as that in Memphis, but nonetheless elegant with hospitable porters and front desk attendants. Most importantly, the Peabody has the signature lobby pond, in which the Peabody Ducks swim every day.
At 10:30 each day, the lobby of the hotel is taken over by a flurry of activity. A red carpet is laid before the lobby pool, and an elevator reserved with the sign: “Reserved for the Peabody Ducks.” People begin to gather in the lobby, most of them conventioneers in name tags, towing their briefcases. They have broken out of their educational sessions to see the Peabody Ducks.
It’s a time-honored tradition. At 11 AM each day, the Duckmaster, in his red and gold-braided uniform, ascends to the ballroom level of the hotel to retrieve the four Peabody ducks – three females and a mallard, from their glass penthouse on the deck outside the ballroom. They quack obediently as they waddle from the penthouse to a brass-barred, peaked cage on wheels, topped by a brass duck, and with much pomp are lowered in the glass elevator to the lobby. Those standing below, ears assaulted by the martial music on the lobby loudspeakers, watch as the ducks eagerly descent for their day in the pond. The crowd parts for the Duckmaster, who draws the Duckmobile behind him to the red carpet. The ducks require very little urging, and march obediently to the pond to the music of The Stars and Stripes Forever.” John Philip Sousa and four little ducks, applauded by a horde of adults and a couple of stray children. At 5PM the routine is reversed. Up in the penthouse, fresh bowls of lettuce await the ducks, and they are tucked in for the night.
Supposing one does not get enough of the ducks while staying at the Peabody: The gift shop is full of rubber ducks for purchase, and their costumes are varied: pirate ducks, princess ducks, captain ducks. And the $10 apeice Celebreducks, including Bill Clinton with his Clarinet, James Brown, and Aretha Franklin. I purchase a Bill Clinton Celebreduck for a friend, and watch the ducks each day. The routine never varies, which is part of its appeal.
Part V: The Arkansas Health Freedom CoalitionThe irony of the picketing group outside the Peabody Hotel cannot be missed: While 600 of the world’s finest minds in dental public health gather inside, a small group gathers outside in the rising heat: They are only four strong, but they have spread about thirty hand-printed poster boards out across the front of the walkway between the convention center and the hotel. They are there to protest fluoride – yes, the stuff that communities put in their waters to help offset tooth decay, especially in children. Fluoride has been used for sixty years with no ill effects, but these people are convinced that fluoride creates osteosarcoma, a charge the Centers for Disease Control are currently revisiting, but one that seems unlike and is not supported by science.
They are led by Crystal, a beautician from Hot Springs who is the coordinator of the coalition, and her husband, sporting a large western belt-buckle and a little girl who looks like BabyGirl’s evil twin, moon-like face and all. Crystal herself is unspectacular in appearance, messy, unlikely-to-be natural red hair wound back into a French twist and sporting several piercings in each ear. She’s enveloped in a lavendar mu-mu and several necklaces of what appear to be crystals and healing stones. Two more women join them later, one who appears to be sweltering in a wool beret with a cowboy hat over it, wool socks, and a vest covered with medals and campaign pins that reminds me of my Girl Scout badge scarf. Their flyer, which they hand out to me several times as I come and go from the convention center, says that they support The Healthcare Freedom Act, which in their words, "allows noninvasive, alternative and complementary health care providers that are not required to be licensed by the state to provide their services without fear of prosecution. The legislation includes but is not limited to traditional naturopaths, homeopaths, clinical nutritionists, iridologists, Native American shamans, aromatherapists, ayurveda providers, hypnotists, religious providers," etc. etc. etc. PS: These people are also creationists.
While I personally have no problem with alternative medicine, these folks appear to cater to those least qualified to make decisions about their own health care, the uneducated and disenfranched. They buttonhole people on the streets outside the conference center, proselytizing about the danger of fluoride. I pray that their number will swell large enough to attract TV cameras, which I have been unable to do with my legitimate media event within, hoping that I can buttonhole the television guys inside to shoot some footage of Joycelyn Elders, the former US Surgeon General under Clinton who advocated for sex education, condoms, and the endorsement of masturbation in the school and who was run out on a rail before Clinton himself neglected to use a condom and thus incriminated himself.
The last time I see Crystal, she is pleading passionately with a Little Rock cop as he attempts to move her off the premises. The conference goes on, and a luncheon that day honors states that have reached benchmarks with fluoridated water, some as long as sixty years. It appears the Health Freedom Coalition may be losing their battle, and that Crystal’s little girl will have to head back to Hot Springs with her newly crafted sign, which asks plaintively, “You care about my teeth. What about my body???”
