Wild!

Welcome to day 11 of our travel blog. I must apologize for not keeping up, but it was a busy day as you will see. There are a lot of pictures. After breakfast at our hotel, the first item on the agenda was to go see the birthplace of Elvis. Now, neither Lindy or I are big Elvis fans, but since we were in Tupelo we thought we had to go.

A park was adjacent to where his house was. First the marker:

His dad paid 180.00 for the materials.

Next, we were trying to figure out a way to get to Memphis without taking the freeway. As I was looking at the map, I noticed we could go through Oxford which is where the University of Mississippi is located. So we decided to check it out.

The first thing we saw was the baseball field. 

We kept driving around what seemed like a huge campus. We saw a cool sculpture of musicians.

And another of a teacher.

We kept driving around. This place was huge! We saw this neat bell tower so drove in this long parking lot with magnolia trees along both sides to get a picture.

When we got to the end of it, we realized the significance of the trees.

Although the blooming season is over, we managed to find one flower that was still open. Lindy smelled it and it was heavenly. 

The trees were huge and I took a picture looking up into one.

Next we came upon the football stadium. This is the front of it.

Here is a peek of the stadium. In case you didn't know, their team name is the Rebels.

We went to the pro shop and asked if there was anything we had to see. The girl asked if we had seen the Lyceum. She gave us directions and we started off. When we got out to the parking lot, a guy who had been in the shop said to follow us as he was headed that way. He said to be sure and look behind the building also because we would find it interesting. 
It was an impressive building.

We decided to check out behind the building. 

This was an amazing monument.

I loved the statue as he looked so confident in his stride.

After all that had happened to him, what he had to say was the mark of a great man.

When we drove up to the Lyceum, a park with huge old trees was in front of it.  We realized this was what they called The Grove. It was an amazing space. 

Right in front was that old reminder of the South.

Yup, the ole Confederate soldier.

But there was also a historical marker to take us back to the present. Notice it took until 2008 to have this marker placed here.

It was time to leave this magnificent, yet disturbing place. We decided to find the downtown. We came upon another lovely square with a beautiful courthouse and that same old statue. But I decided I had taken enough pictures of that and instead took one of this interesting bookstore. It was three stories high and had a coffee shop on the top floor. We decided to have some ice cream-praline pecan, of course. It was nice to sit and enjoy the efficient air conditioning. The weather has been in the high 90's so we escaped from the heat whenever we could find it. We continued on our way to Memphis taking the lesser traveled highways when we could. Our hotel was on the east side of the city, so we made our way to our hotel. It was another Hyatt Place and it looked the same as our room in Louisville, so I won't bore you with those pictures. We had plans for the evening, but the real fun wouldn't start 'til 11:00 so we just relazed (no this is not a typo, I created a new word).

The first thing on our list for the evening was to have ribs at the Rendezvous in downtown Memphis. Once we got there, there was a 60 to 90 minute wait.

The actual restaurant is in the basement but there is a three level holding area for people to wait. There was a bar that you stood in line for to get your drinks. It was very busy, but Lindy managed to find a table to sit at. We had brought corn nuts and almonds along to snack on so we were just sitting there enjoying the sights. I guess this lady was having a real problem with us bringing our snacks along because she kept staring at us. We had been sitting about 50 minutes hoping that the 60 minutes would be more realistic than the 90 when I heard what I thought was: "Blake, party of 2". Lindy thought they said Flake, but I said let's go for it and if it is we'll just say that I am hard of hearing. So we made our way downstairs. 

Linda went up to the blonde lady and she barked: "hour and a half!" Well this pissed Lindy off so she said "No, my name was called-Blake." Whether she couldn't hear because of the noise or she truly had said Blake instead of Flake, we'll never know but we got seated and nobody came and threw us out. 

It was not fancy, 

but then, it was all about the food. It was really good. The ribs are dry-rubbed with spices and smoked slowly. The beans and coleslaw were delicious too! So dinner at Rendezvous was definitely worth the wait.

By this time, it was 9:30 and we still had an hour and a half to kill before our final destination for the night, but we thought we might as well mosey on over. 

Right in the middle of a run down strip was Wild Bill's the juke joint we had been looking for. 

It was everything you would expect and more. There were a few people there and we found a  place to sit by one of the three long rows of tables put together.

I made my way to the bar 

and got a couple of Heinekens.

It was kinda dark so it was hard to take decent pictures. But I think you get the idea. We waited (AGAIN) for the band to start. We were told they usually start at 11:00. By this time it was 9:45. So we just took in the atmosphere. It was a mix of black locals and white tourists, mostly college age. The locals were all dressed up. There was this one old man who had a tan suit and hat on. His wife was all dressed up too. He must have been local royalty because the waitress was really taking care of him. The minutes slowly turned to 11:00, but still no band. The bass player had set up about 10:30 already. Finally, about 11:30 the band started playing. There was this old guy on the bass who was amazing, a younger guy on the drums, also amazing, and a younger guy on rhythm guitar-beyond amazing! The leader was this older white guy with a Flying V Guitar-he wasn't that great-no Johnny Winter for sure. He also sang, but he didn't have that blues growl-kinda wimpy. 

Meanwhile, I needed another beer. 4 bucks for a 40 ouncer!

Eventually, the rhythm guitar player got to sing and play some lead-he was so much better. He was really getting into it and then he came over to a table by us and was playing with his guitar behind his back. Check out the chick in the teal dress. She was really annoying. There were a couple of these that really put a damper on the whole experience, but I guess you just have to put up with it. Most people were pretty cool and some of the locals were amazing dancers. This one girl danced all around the room, just feeling the music and oblivious to the rest of the world. The white people-not so much. I think the difference is that black people feel the music, hence they look cool. White people are more worried just about what they look like.
Watch the video to see the old guy dancing. He would just do a jerk every once in awhile. He would come pick out a young girl to dance with. His wife never danced. Watch at the end for a flash to go off and you can see for a split-second how dapper he looked.

Wild Bill's was a great experience. We would have stayed longer, but between the immature college girls and the white guy trying to play the guitar with his treble turned up way too high, it was time to go after their first break. We got back to our room after 1:00 which is pretty late for old farts like us. As you can see, this was a busy day-sorry for the delay.