Illinois through Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and Mississippi to Alabama

September 18

We awoke in time for our free (meager) breakfast, and I noticed that no other guests had arrived after us, so we still were the only guests in Cairo. It was a Sunday morning – a weekend – yet Cairo remained no one's destination. Razelle swore we were in an unreal place because the same unmarked white boxy truck passed by on the interstate at regular intervals, as if we were in a movie loop. 

We returned to Cairo to discover a preserved but abandoned historic district. Beyond it were block after block of partially collapsed buildings facing sunken streets. It looked like the devastating aftermath of a war; I cannot adequately describe the sadness and disbelief we felt as we drove through this district. We reached a gap in the levee that protected Cairo to view the Ohio River beyond it. The main thoroughfare of Cairo seemed to have many churches but few businesses. Hard times had befallen this place and Razelle and I were absolutely stunned to see the magnitude of their tragic effect.

We drove to the point where the Ohio River and the Mississippi River merge. This was at the tip of Illinois, in Fort Defiance State Park. It was overgrown; dry mud partly covered the access road and narrowed it to a single lane; crumbling playground equipment stood abandoned in tall grass. I climbed to the top of an observation deck at the tip of this peninsula to gaze at the confluence of these rivers. 

I had been to the source of the Ohio River in Pittsburgh many years ago when I visited my cousin Lori there, now I have been to its end in Cairo. This is what I had come to see. A man was fishing at the exact point were their waters merged. Large vessels plied their waters. This post-card perfect vista belied the poverty and neglect that was behind me as I photographed it.

Returning to Razelle and the van, I met an elderly couple from Georgia; he was dependent upon his portable oxygen tank to breathe. They had come to collect driftwood (they found what they'd come for) on their way to Branson, MO. The US-60 bridge into MO was closed for repairs, so now a different route would be necessary. The man had been to Israel in 1967 and in 1973 (he joked that he was to blame for the wars that were fought those years). He had been a labor organizer and his visits to Israel were connected to the Histadrut (Israel labor union). It surprises me how many such non-Jews I have met during this journey who have been to Israel. This man had been to this park in the past and he lamented how rundown it looked now, compared to how lovely and well visited it had been previously.

Leaving Cairo to get to Memphis meant driving back to the motel once more to enter I-57 there, then crossing the Mississippi River once more to re-enter Missouri, and then driving south on I-55, beyond New Madrid, MO to enter Arkansas before crossing the Mississippi River one last time to arrive in Memphis. About New Madrid: this place's greatest distinction is the devastating mid-continent earthquakes that occurred here in the past. I understand that similar quakes are overdue and I am pleased that they held themselves in check until we passed by. Mark Twain also referred to this place in his writings. We saw signs guiding traffic to the Museum in New Madrid. I asked Razelle if she felt like stopping there, but she answered that she was not, so we drove on into Arkansas, our 23rd state.

In Blytheville, AR we went into a Verizon Wireless store to top-up my cell-phone account before it ran out. This was at a Walmart Superstore complex. We saw a recreational vehicle parked in the far corner of the vast lot here and conjectured that it had spent the night here because of where it had parked. We went into this Walmart and bought a few needed items and used the restrooms. I found it intriguing how much Spanish we heard spoken here. I wondered why this corner of Arkansas had so many Spanish speakers, and imagined it had to do with migrant agricultural workers settling here to live. We drove on and intermittent rain helped clear the bugs from our windshield. Razelle's cousin Jeanne, in southern Florida, called while we were driving through Arkansas. She had ambitious plans for us when we reached her part of the country. Razelle and I needed to discuss the logistics of these plans before we could promise Jeanne anything. Arkansas looked pretty much the same as the Bootheel of Missouri had looked, so we occupied ourselves with this discussion during this Arkansas segment of our journey until we reached the approaches to Memphis. The concrete slabs used to pave this section of I-55 had been warped by the elements to such an extent that we found ourselves bouncing over them with motion-sickness inducing oscillations. They led to an old truss bridge we had to trust was more durable than the pavement leading to it. On the far side of this bridge we entered Tennessee, our 24th state, on the south side of Memphis.

We entered Memphis here because I had programmed our GPS to take us past key landmarks. We entered a part of the historic downtown area where we could hear music coming from bars and from a pedestrian mall where an historic street had been closed to vehicular traffic. I sent Razelle into the Peabody Hotel to look for a restaurant David had told me about while I circled block, but there were no restaurant or eateries in there anymore. They'd moved out, Razelle was told; all she found inside the building were exclusive clothing stores and the hotel lobby.

Next we made our way to Graceland. It was farther out of town than I had expected. Today it is such a magnet for pilgrims that an entire tourism complex has grown up across the road from Elvis's mansion. 

The only access to the mansion is by tour bus, which costs an exorbitant amount to ride where I so easily could walk. I crossed the road on foot to the gates of the mansion and asked if I could simply walk to Elvis's grave to pay my respects, but I was told that I would have to pay for the tour bus first. Entrance on foot to the Graceland grounds is free, but only between 7:30 – 8:30 AM, after which you can only come in if you ride in on one of the buses. I imagine this arrangement became necessary to protect the grounds from being overwhelmed, rather than from profit motivation. I wasn't interested in taking the tour so I found Razelle at the restaurant she'd gone to while she waited for me to get Elvis out of my system. She had no taste for this place at all.

We drove a short distance further south and entered Mississippi, our 25th state. The highway was first rate. Although it was marked US-78, at intervals we saw signs stating that this highway would be I-22 in the near future. We drove past occasional stretches of construction (probably to bring this road up to interstate standards) and through intermittent rain. We crossed a bridge over the Tallahatchie River on the way to Tupelo, MS and I remembered a reference to a Tallahatchie Bridge and to Tupelo in a popular song from my youth entitled "Ode to Billy Joe." We couldn't remember who the woman was who sang it (I'll look it up later), but seeing these landmarks and recalling her voice reminded us how deep into the South we were now. 

We reached Tupelo during the last light of the day and drove directly to Elvis's birthplace. There is a small parking lot and a museum/gift shop here (closed at this hour) and no more than a few visitors. The tiny one-room home Elvis's father built here is nicely preserved and sits in a space tastefully surrounded by story boards displaying tributes from teachers and classmates who remembered him as a child. The church his family prayed in and where he sang as a youngster had been moved to the same piece of land. An outhouse (locked up) completed the setting. So, in one day we had visited the place where Elvis was born and where he had died (in reverse order). I found his birthplace and the environment of his formative years more meaningful than the place of his undoing and ultimate death. When we left Tupelo, that's when I had gotten Elvis out of my system. I'm glad we made this "pilgrimage" – although I didn't feel that it was – to his birthplace.

Before leaving Tupelo we went to a gas station to use their facilities. Razelle couldn't find any tuna sandwiches here – again! – so she made her own sandwiches in the van. A man with a small commercial truck (tender) bearing Alabama plates was taking off a wheel and putting it back on again. We chatted briefly about the problem he was trying to fix; then I saw the decal in his back window. It said, "Beware of Liberals posing as Americans." I couldn't help him.

We drove the last part of Mississippi in waning light and entered Alabama, our 26th state, after dark. I programmed our GPS to look for Walmarts along our route and the one it found in Jasper, AL was just the right distance ahead. We had our GPS take us there. Rather than park in a distant corner of its parking lot, we picked a parking spot that was more convenient for Razelle to go into the store whenever she needed to. This turned out to be a bad idea, (though this is how one learns) because the traffic that went in and out of that lot during the night kept disturbing us in that position. This included delivery trucks, employees and customers. We will know better the next time we "camp out" at a Walmart. 

During the night I went into this Walmart and saw a sales display of the same scarecrow people that Jan and Marvin's neighbors had used to decorate their home in Columbia, MO for Thanksgiving. The aggregate of their smiling cheerful faces stopped me in my tracks. Then, in this nearly empty and nearly silent store, so close to midnight, I heard the music that someone in charge of this display had thoughtfully added for effect: spooky classical organ music came from a speaker above them; it was JS Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor. I stood a long while, enthralled, listening to this touch of culture – here in a Walmart – here in Jasper, Alabama. The organ music played in a repeating loop. It touched me with all its resonance each time it played those striking chords. I returned to the van uplifted by having experienced this moment on my round-the-world trip.