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Memphis, the one destination on my itinerary not equipped with hostels (ie dorm accommodation under $30 a night; the 15% hotel tax there doesn’t help). They do have camping grounds, and that’s the optimal solution for some backpackers, but they only become worthwhile with both a tent and a car to hand. So while I was frantically browsing the web in New Orleans to work out what I would do, an opportunity presented itself on Monday night, a day and a half before my bus north.

It was actually already early morning Tuesday—I had been finally finishing off a blog entry that had been in the pipline for days, when suddenly the internet connection died (along with the cable TV at the hostel), and I managed to lose some of my changes. Fed up, it finally forced me to become sociable. I went out to the backyard table covered with beer cans and met an Englishman named James. He, too, was going to Memphis as his next stop. He was travelling with a friend (the more organised one who had actually worked out the transportation and accommodation) and would be leaving on Tuesday to stay in some cheapish motel in Memphis. I suggested we share a room and make it cheaper for all and passed him my phone number.

It was soon enough Wednesday morning and I got on my first bus to Baton Rouge, LA, before changing to another out to Memphis, TN. I had researched the motels a little more and found that of the two cheap motels there was one I wouldn’t mind staying in (Red Roof Inn), and one I would keep away from (Super 8). But I wasn’t going to call either until the day was late enough to be assured that James & friend had forgotten I exist. There was another phonecall that needed to be made, too, concerning the fact that I would be fasting for 25 hours from Wednesday evening and wanted a place to eat more than bagels and avocados before the fast started. So I had the number of Baron Hirsch Synagogue and spent most of the day considering calling.

For some reason I made no phonecalls until I received one at 4pm, when I was just about to give in. “Hi, this is Andrew. You met my friend James in New Orleans. We’ve got a motel room in Memphis and we can get in an extra bed for you. It’s called Super 8. It’s sort of out of town, but there’s a shuttle to downtown ($4 [plus tip]), it’s the cheapest we could find.” I took up the offer. At least if the motel was as bad as it had sounded, the three of us could suffer together.

The motel was in Memphis, but barely in the state of Tennessee. It was right on the border of Arkansas, and some distance from anything, except for, it turns out, a metal museum (which I never visited). The shuttle basically worked by asking at the desk, and when someone was available he’d drive us downtown in his car for a fee of $4 per person (plus tip). Seeing as this service stopped at 11pm, we soon discovered that we could get a taxi back at $12 including tip. Either way, a couple of trips downtown per day added up to Red Roof Inn being cheaper and right downtown. Oh well. And supposedly the swimming pool was as horrid as the online reviews described; the “continental breakfast” consisted of oversweeet orange cordial stuff, doughnuts covered in chocolate, and bagels with little packets of margarine, apple and apple-grape jam. Just a little strange. At least the plain bagels weren’t as horribly sweet as some of the ones I’d bought in packets at supermarkets.

So what’s there to do in Memphis? Not too much, really. It’s got a few things it’s famous for: Elvis, Elvis, Elvis; blues & Sun Studios (which recorded the likes of Johnny Cash); the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr; pulled pork sandwiches; Beale St, which is just its take on New Orleans’s Bourbon St (standard touristy strip with music clubs).

So we went out on Wednesday night and experienced a little Beale St. None of us had pulled pork sandwiches. The first club we sat in (for them to find a dinner) played some classics but no blues, and in the end we landed in Pat O’Brien’s which is a late copy of the New Orleans one, featuring piano duets of, again, classics (Elton John in particular). Again, during the Three Weeks, it wasn’t such an appropriate time for me to be going out to live music; here that wasn’t really my aim, it just ended being what I did with Andrew and James while out on the town. Oh well. It did sell two beers for the price of one on Tuesdays.

We did get to know each other a little. Jamie studied English and Philosophy, while Andrew is completing American Literature. “As in, what about American literature?” asked I. I eventually summed his response in “multiculturalism and the American dream”, but it led onto a discussion of how successfully each of our countries managed to be multicultural. I noted the under-representation of Hispanics in Hollywood, among other American stereotypes. Andrew reflected on a short period volunteering to help the homeless in Birmingham, AL, a city which has the highest number of churches per capita, but very few of them will actually let in anyone who walks in its door: there are lower class churches, and middle class churches, etc. He considers the idea that civil rights and non-racism as predominant views have come to America. Discrimination is no longer about race, but merely about social class.

I think he has a point. Saying that, a large portion of the lower class is black, and a large portion of the black population is struggling in an American acheivers’ economy. On the New Orleans streetcar, I noticed that the typically African-American solidarity of calling each other “brother” was extended to someone clearly of a lower class but white. The class division is also highly noticable in the fact that a number of people have been shocked at the idea of me “Greyhounding” around the country, or even catching buses within the city. These people have often been members of a Jewish middle class who are well trained in booking a flight when they need one, but I think even Greyhound here portrays itself as the lower-class option, with poor quality unknown in the Australian version of the transport company. Of three buses I have taken in the past three weeks, three have arrived late by at least half an hour (and not as a result of traffic). Three have had no curtains to block out scorching sun. Two have had failing air-conditioners. One has been filled over capacity, while the other may have left people at the station because it was too full. On both my southern trips (New Orleans to Memphis; Memphis to Chicago), I was one of under, say, 6 non African-Americans. The other one, from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, had a larger Hispanic share, and a number of others who were very excited to spend their wages on the mouths of hungry poker machines. No, no allocated seating (unlike a ride from Sydney to Melbourne, or even Canberra), and in some cases you may be lucky to get a seat not in the aisle. The drivers seem to be trained to have an attitude, to push off the complaints that come flying down the aisles to the front “there’s no air!”, “why we going so slow?”, “why aren’t we stopping at 95th St?”, of course all deserved, but not really the driver’s fault. The stations are disorganised and the lines long… Anyway. From now on I’m mostly flying.

Back to the narrative.

Thursday we decided (in opposition to Andrew’s dad’s anti-Elvis suggestions/threats) to head out to Gracelands (on a free shuttle [with tip]), the King’s home in life and death. It was another expensive, Hollywood-worshipping museum, but at least it was a little more interesting than Hollywood’s own Wax Museum. If nothing else, some of the decor and outfits on display were quite remarkable. I think the cape thing was probably going a bit overboard. The free shuttle that took us there we hoped to take us back downtown, but it threw us off at Sun Studios and wouldn’t let us get back on unless we spent an hour there. The Londoners had already been there the day before, so we went searching for the nearest bus station. And the guy on the desk at the Studios also saved me a taxi ride by giving me a bus number that would get me out west towards the Jewish community and the synagogue.

Yes, I did eventually call Baron Hirsch up from the bus on Wednesday afternoon and they had sorted me out with a family. I was meant to get to Mincha services at the shul at 6 (but had another address for contingency). It only cost me $1.55 to take a streetcar to the station, and then a bus down Poplar Ave for an hour while chatting with a girl called Christine, who would show me where to get off. (While she had brought a book, I hadn’t. But she claims the reason she likes taking buses is that she can meet people, and if not, read books. Friendly enough, and through studying at Barnard in New York she had had a fair Jewish encounter, and through having travelled alone while studying in Africa, she was able to nearly understand the travails of being Jewish and travelling alone.) So I got off the bus, crossed the road, and started walking. And kept walking, and crossed to the other side of the road where I realised there was more chance of me being saved in footsteps by someone heading to shul with a car. And there he was, stopped a few metres ahead of me and rolling his windows down—Menashe, a bearded Israeli-accented man. So I hitched a ride up the street with a stranger, made it for the last their minutes of the service, and then managed to find my host, Gary (and Dina) Makowsky.

Gary took me back from the large synagogue car park to their very lovely, very close-by place, where four of us (including Ofer, an Israeli who was already staying with them) ate a great meal to start the fast on. Ofer recommended two personal traditions to make the fast work: a spoonful of honey, and a cup of coffee; I suggested complex carbs and no diuretics. With a few introductions (it turned out Ofer was also an amateur chazan) and a boiled egg, the fast was begun, and we returned to the synagogue (by car, of course) for some literary weeping.

After a couple of hours (including an interesting shiur on the tragedies of the day and a theme of selfishness), the four of us were driving back to my motel. I had actually been warned in New Orleans that the Memphis community was nice and hospitable (although they’re only a Jewish population of 8000 in total, they are very active), but I didn’t know that I could be convinced quite so easily to spend my second night at the Makowsky’s. Ofer came up to the motel and helped me pack, I left my share of the bill for Andrew, and we were on our way back east. It was a little ironic that on a night where it is custom to sleep less comfortably, I was on a nice, springy, queen-size bed, albeit with no pillow by common custom.

They had a nice late 8am start in the morning at Baron Hirsch, although with explanations the kinot only finished a few hours later. My only plan for the day was to go see the National Civil Rights Museum, but I knew that if I left then, I would miss mincha, which is a pretty big event on Tisha B’Av. So I stayed. Mincha came I (after a nap) at 1:45pm, but by the time it was over, I would have missed the next bus and only made it to the museum for 4:15, and me being a slow museum-goer, that wouldn’t leave me long enough till the 6pm closing time.

So I went to a talk. There were three on at the time and I followed Gary to one he thought would be good. And it was. A very good speaker (not necessarily to say that he was a good person, but that he spoke well), speaking on the topic of “are we really waiting for mashiach?”. Messianism is always a tricky topic. After all, it’s very easy to remain happy with one’s lot and not see the need for some reprieve and salvation. He challenged that we should be waiting for a messiah like we wait for the cashier at the supermarket when the person in front has a full trolley and needs a price-check. On the other hand, many people have been dangerously led astray through overanticipation. On a day of commemoration like Tisha B’Av, especially with the current situation facing us on the televisions and newspapers daily, it is easy to see that our world could do with a lot of change for the better.

After the talks finished, the synagogue’s programme for the day continued with some video (sent by the OU) which, frankly, seemed boring, and not only to me. So I stood out in the corridoors and was accosted by people asking “so, who are you anyway?” They’re a very warm and welcoming community (I had been warned so in New Orleans), and before long, I had been convinced to take a ride downtown to the Museum (although late) with the daughter of one of the people I was talking to. Supposedly it would help alleviate her noticing how empty her stomach was. So Franny arrived and dragged me all the way from the synagogue to the civil rights museum (with Yair in the back for the ride). There she introduced me to a woman outside who had been living on the street there for 18 years of protest since the museum was built.

The National Civil Rights Museum, built in the motel at which Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated, was in her opinion the antithesis of what MLK Jr would have liked: a refuge for the homeless and the underpriveleged. Remaining a resident of the motel until she was evacuated by the new owners, Jacqueline then moved (two couches; a table; a shopping trolley; some signs and papers) to the street corner outside in boycott. Frany described her as “a crazy woman”… Enough people support her for her to be fed every day, but from the time I spent out there after my visit to the museum, it seemed to me that she had had too much sun. She rarely let her eyes open, but would push forward an article when approached, and suggest a web site. With a tour bus passing, she would look up and wave until the guide had completed his rehearsed speech. Otherwise, her eyelids rested over her eyes and some large novels remained closed on her table, as her radio discussed the latest from the Middle East.

It was 4:30 when I got to the museum, and I knew this would leave me about half as much time as I would have liked to make it through the museum. In dense displays of photos, quotations, texts and chronologies, the museum presents a history of a fight for the civil rights of primarily African-Americans, through slave society, segregation in transport, services and education, and the fight for voting rights. It allows you to sit in a bus where the driver coerces you to move to the back, and reconstructs the scene of a classic sit-in. I did get through most of the museum (albeit very rushed), and found it enlightening as to the history and politics of some of these race issues in America, while it also included a small exhibit on Mahatma Gandhi sponsored by Memphis’s Indian community. Nonetheless, it seems very limited in scope: if it aimed to focus on civil rights, there are other civil rights that were fought for, not just for the American black population; if it aimed to look at racism and prejudice in America then it failed to make significant note of other disadvantaged populations.

Arriving back east (by way of another lift from Franny), I got a few moments’ rest before soon being able to take out the fast with another nice meal with the Makowskys. Having been welcomed so warmly by the community, I was upset to be leaving so soon, but Gary took me down the the Greyhound station and (after nearly an hour awaiting enough buses to arrive for the crowds that had gathered) I climbed onto a night bus to Chicago.