Route 96

“No beer is needed here!” –anyone remember what this is from? anyone? Thirty beers (or “thirty beer,” as we say in Canada) for under thirteen dollars (or “thirteen dollar,” as we say in movies about the Vietnam war) is pretty astounding to us Canadian boys, but better yet is the fact that you can buy [...]

Eureka Springs redeemed itself, in a manner of speaking, with Miles’ Music Museum. We pulled in on a whim, Derek hoping we might see some nifty old guitars or tube amps or something. But Floyd Miles, a Southern patriarch who bore a remarkable resemblance to a (more) evil Colonel Sanders, proved to be something other [...]

Seems to me like you can’t throw a dead armadillo in the Upper South without hitting some Grand Ole Opry-style country music jamboree. And for some reason, every single one features a sad chinless old drunk named “Gummy Joe” or “Cheaplaughs Johnson” or “Gurner Pete”* as comic relief. Pictured here are “Stinky Willie” and Ida [...]

(Some jokes have to be made, regardless of quality.) Eureka Springs is a bizarrely upscale little town nestled in a steep Ozark valley. We had dinner there at an Arkansian-Greek restaurant (tsatsiki n’ grits, squirrel souvlaki, that sort of thing) and were serenaded by a buskin’ banjo-iste whose $100 hiking boots belied his Cletus the [...]

Front row: Pete. Middle row: Rob. Back row: Christ. Stop me if you’ve heard this one: Gerald and Elna Smith were two normal, religious Arkansans until the night that Gerald awoke in a cold sweat (cue James Brown) from a terrible vision that strife and warfare in the Middle East would destroy the historic shrines [...]

Somewhere in the hill country between Pickles Gap (“home of barbecue fudge”), Dogpatch (of Li’l Abner “fame”), and St. Joe, we saw a little wooden sign on the side of the road that said “THINGS: Museum of Science Fiction and Movie Memorabilia,” with a bunch of tentacles coming off the word “THINGS.” Weirdness radar pinging, [...]

We toyed with the idea of doing a Bill Clinton tour of Little Rock’s seamier bordellos and fast food restaurants, but the city just didn’t grab us. Sorry, Bubba, Democrats just aren’t as kitschy as Republicans (see our visit to Bob Dole’s home town of Russell, Kansas, still ahead). Besides, we were already hearing the [...]

When the excitement of standing in an sweltering parking lot looking at a big featureless triangle began to pale, we shuffled off towards Beale Street, helpfully designated by the Tennessee State Legislature as the Official Home of the Blues. En route we passed a black Baptist church that was having some kind of outdoor gospel [...]

Memphis’ other star attraction is the Great Pyramid of Memphis–a mammoth pyramidal -shaped object in the city’s downtown core. I guess the idea of the Great Pyramid was to link Memphis on the Mississippi with Memphis on the Nile, ancient capital of Pharaonic Egypt. Memphis on a sweltering Sunday afternoon did a passable impersonation of [...]

Elvissian Artifacts and Relics All these items were available at the Elvis gift stores across the street from Graceland. If you wanted the really awful stuff, like vials of his sweat or X-rays of his sinuses (I’m serious) you had to go to the unauthorized dealers downtown. 01-13 Elvis Records (Duh.) 14-21 Elvis Silverware and [...]