Our final destination

was Memphis for two more days before we left for home. When we arrived the weather had changed from clear and bright in Nashville to grey and overcast, and downtown Memphis was as grim as ever. We checked back into the King's Court (crack whores or not, you can't argue with $40 a night plus tax) and, with the weather clearing up in the evening, walked over to Beale Street to look for some food and drink. Asking the Tap Room's friendly barman where we could find some cheap and cheerful food, he pointed us in the direction of a place called Ernestine & Hazel's. "I've only ever been there once, and I went there just for the burgers. It's over on South Main."

So off we traipsed, taking our time to walk the few deserted blocks along Main Street with the trolley clanking past every now and again for company. A neon sign signalled the bar, and in we went. The three customers swivelled towards us from their allotted bar places and chairs and then went back to drinking. Behind the grimy bar was a hotplate tended by the barman/cook, and I ordered us a couple of beers as Ash took a table and tried to look inconspicuous.

"What kind of burgers do you do?" I asked.
"With cheese or without," he replied. We were dealing with a sort of down-home In-n-Out Burger then.
"Right. With, please."

We sat down and drank our beers, politely fending off the drunk, middle-aged divorcee who was persistently trying to draw us into conversation from the bar and tried to ignore his story of a recent shooting in the lounge upstairs. Our burgers arrived; we ate them (and were pleasantly impressed by how good they were*), downed the rest of our beers and exited stage left. I can heartily recommend Ernestine & Hazel's, with the added caveat that it should be enjoyed only by packs of people.

We had a few more drinks in the Tap Room - this place I can recommend without any reservations - and called it a night.**

The next (last!) day we decided to visit the Civil Rights Museum. On our way to our burger adventure the previous night we'd seen some signs for it and so we made our way back there through the chilly side streets of the city centre. I didn't know what to expect; I knew it was partly built within the old Lorraine Motel but that was all. By the time we finished, I was really glad we'd made the effort to go. There's days worth of material in there and we just skimmed the surface of it because we arrived relatively late in the afternoon, Most affecting is the motel room exhibit, where the room habitually rented by Martin Luther King is preserved more or less as it was in 1968, and the boarding house building across the road, where it's possible to look down through the window from which he was shot. Similarly to Graceland but in an entirely different way, the museum was an incredible time capsule of its era.

For our last night we headed back to Beale Street to hunt down some good old rock & roll. (It sounds repetitive and touristy to visit the same area so often, but we'd singularly failed to find any other areas of interest. As a case in point, a friend of Ash's had recommended an allegedly interesting neighbourhood about fifteen blocks east of the downtown area and through which we passed on the way in to the city. We duly stopped off to look around and found it crumbling, grey and more or less uninhabited. With only a couple of days left, and bereft of the car from the next morning, we took the safe/boring option!) Ending up in B.B. King's, we ordered some food and sat down to watch the show.

I wasn't overly impressed. The food was expensive and mostly fried; the music was run-of-the-mill, even if it was being played by a rising guitar genius, and the atmosphere was more office party than authentic juke joint. Maybe I missed the point, but I couldn't escape the general feeling that we were in a tourist-trap chain bar. Down, dirty and slightly dangerous it might have been, I much preferred the previous night's grungy combo of greasy burger and pool-room bar. There's still a bit of bit of my imagined Memphis to be had, but it ain't in B.B. King's.

We caught a cab for the airport the next morning to begin the three-flight marathon home. I was sad to leave, Ash was moping and despite all of the grimness that comes with inner-city deprivation and hurricane-struck coastal towns, I think I'd seen why most Americans are proud of their country.

* I have finally realised what makes American burgers taste so good. It's the cheese, pure and simple. Your humble Kraft single, both evolved and devolved from its more natural relatives (roquefort, for example) provides the necessary injection of sweetness into an otherwise savoury snack and elevates it from merely an instance of burger to its Platonic ideal. I am depressed that a foodstuff so processed as to be indistinguishable from its plastic wrapper is responsible for such a transformation, but simultaneously elated that I have divined the true nature of burger perfection.
** One thing that only struck me that night, near the end of the trip, was how expensive alcohol is in the States. Accommodation, petrol, food and cars are cheap, but beer is expensive. Factor in a tip of a buck or two per round and it's at least as expensive as the UK.