Unicycle Loves You • Hamwow!

Memphis offers impressive breakfasts every day.  Today we selected the Barksdale Restaurant, an unassuming brick box of Southern comforts.  To our surprise, retired sergeant Bunny Colvin sat alone at a four-top, while in a booth detective Auggie Polk slurped down coffee before working “wet”.

Auggie Polk & Bunny Colvin endorse the Barksdale Restaurant

“Sit anywhere you like,” said Ziggy, who we were glad to see is out of prison and making an honest living at the Barksdale.

Wire bits aside, the Barksdale proved most excellent.  We all ordered some form of eggs, ham, and grits.  The ham was the star, clinging to a big fat bone, and cooked to a crispness one step before it could be considered bacon.

Ham! Wow!

“Wow!” exclaimed Nicole, as heard on the single “Wow Wave Cinema”.  From here on out, she would channel ham when we performing that song.

Austin is a long way from Memphis.  Too long really.  Obama should do something about that.  Arkansas happened for several hours, and we finally saw another band on the road to SXSW.  We gave each other the bike messenger nod, and continued on the road to fame, fortune, and bubble baths.

Champanties!

At a Texas truck stop, Nicole spotted a plastic bottle filled with lacey underwear.  Champanties.  It was covered in dust and showing signs of jaundice.  Along the highway, we passed Gun Zone, which is like a Lazer Tag but with real bullets.  And at a rural gas station, Jim and I were ceremoniously announced as faggots by a couple of mouth breathers sitting in the bed of a pick up truck.  Nicole didn’t fare much better, getting immediately whistled at from an unknown source.  The name of the town was Cumby, which is Texan for “cum-stained Gumby”.

Cumby blockheads vanish into a giant Guns ‘n’ Ammo Magazine

We stopped in Dallas to find the grassy knoll.  It’s still there, along with the book depository building.  The knoll was a bit spooky, and a little rapey after dark.  I thought we would see lots of people posing with umbrellas, like walking across Abbey Road.  But no, just joggers, strollers, and the morbidly curious.  Jim documented it with his 90’s Super8 camcorder, which has been catching random video snippets of the tour.

Photo by Nikki V

Sonny Bryan’s was on the list for dinner, but when we arrived the sign said CLOSED OUT OF FOOD.  Bummer.  That shack smelled like BBQ crack.  We opted for a Cracker Barrel between Dallas and Waco.  When in Rome.

For the final leg of the twelve-hour drive, Jim played a virtual reality video game called Anxiety Driving Battle 2012.  The goal is to get to Austin as fast as possible.  All other motorists and mosquitoes are your enemies, and Mr. Bungle provides the soundtrack.  But we made it to Austin in one piece, and our gracious hosts Dimitri and Cassandra welcomed us into their peaceful abode, where cold Lone Stars and warm 312’s were inhaled with relief.

Unicycle Loves You Are Gonna Be (500 Miles)

Wife goodbyes aren’t fun.  In recent years we’ve learned not to bum out about them until the very last minute.  For this tour I coped by immersing myself in a book about 70′s baseball and wearing 4D glasses.  It enhanced the chapter about Dock Ellis’s (“Ellis, D” in the box score) acid-assisted no-hitter.

I’m always up for an excuse to visit Cairo, Illinois.  I first discovered Cairo (pronounced Kay-ro or Care-o, but not Ky-ro) in 1993 while looking for a place to light off firecrackers.  Like a lot of middle class white kids, I was hypnotized by its apocalyptic serenity, a snapshot of calm after an unknown violence.  Cairo was the inspiration for an unfinished story I started a few years back.  And when I first heard The Bitter Tears perform the song “Cairo”, it confirmed their status as my favorite band.

At Shemwell’s Barbecue, we noshed on beef, pork, catfish, corn nuggets, and Texas toothpicks, which are fried strips of green peppers and onions.  Unfortunately the Ace of Cups, a cafe/book & record store/community center/punk venue is gone.  Bummer.  Cairo continues being Cairo.  I’m still rooting for the Cairo Egyptians in the 1903 in the Kentucky-Illinois-Tennessee minor league baseball playoffs.

We arrived in Memphis and all its mosquitos around 9.  The motel was a five-story fleabag reminiscent of the famous five-story tower in New Rochelle, New York.  The low hums and high squeals of the nearby freight trains would serve as a white noise maker, bullying us to sleep.  But sleep was not a priority.

It was Jim and Nicole’s first time in Memphis, so naturally we had to do Beale Street.  I got us there by memory, and we stepped into its mandatory madness, albeit on a Monday night.  As we all know, the blues has long since vacated Beale Street, replaced by gift shops, daiquiri bars, and endless terrible music.  I like to frequent the place that calls itself a “juke joint”, but is closer to a Bennigan’s.  Here’s what I wrote about this place when I visited it on a solo road trip in the fall of 2004:

Drank a beer on Beale Street.  I hadn’t been there in over a decade.  The band seemed authentic.  The bass player looked like a cross between my grandfather and Run DMC.  The drummer sported a gerry curl mullet.  They covered “The Sky is Crying” and bowed their heads in memory of Stevie Ray Vaughn.  The all-white crowd approved.  Bleagh.  I wonder what that band really thinks of the Beale Street thing.  I wonder what they really want to play.

We ordered three Beale Big Ass Beers, and caught the band just in time for their hit song “Tip The Band”.  I recognized the bass player from the last time I was here in 2007.  A tiny woman in a large hat, staring blankly while joylessly executing perfect scales.  Maybe the blues is alive after all.

It was time to go to Coyote Ugly.  It’s a bar invented by nonsense where ordinary girls stand on top of the bar and move strangely.  The bartenders have microphones and talk along to new country and 90′s alterna-rock.  The doorman made his carnival pitch.

“326 Beale Street.  Coyote Ugly.  It’s a Monday night.  Get drunk with us.  What else are you going to do?”

We admired his honesty and decided he was right.  The bar consisted of a sloppy stumbler with a big purse, a 40-year-old with an emo Elvis haircut, and various generic men.  Jim asked the bartender to make change for the pool tables.  She answered using the microphone.
“THE CHANGE MACHINE IS OVER THERE!”

Jim defeated me in pool, while generic dudes goaded Nicole to join the women on the bar moving awkwardly to Bon Jon Bovi.  She declined.  One woman thought we were The Proclaimers.  So we performed “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” with pool cue guitars and the place exploded.  No it didn’t.

But Nicole did get a pair of “Money Maker” hot shorts, and modeled them for us back at the motel, to the delight of grown men all over the world.