I found an old notebook -- one of those steno ones with the red line down the middle of each page -- containing some entries from a trip Bryan and I took to Memphis the first weekend in February 1998.

I enter it now into the archives.

February 6, 1998
We headed out for Memphis before 10 on a gray Friday morning. It's mainly a trip to the National Civil Rights Museum that I've been considering since last summer when I read a column in the Asbury Park Press. That period and that site -- the museum is the Lorraine Motel where Martinl Luther King was assassinated in 1968 -- are a dark but important time in America's history.

And this trip, coming as it does after my first reading of On The Road, a book that is now one of my favorites, is all the more exciting. I'm eagerly anticipating it, not knowing what it'll bring or what I'll see.

Route 31 shoots straight south from South Bend to Indianapolis with nothing but open farmland and Kokomo in between. The two-hour, 120-mile drive is not pleasant and I drove the whole stretch, knowing Bryan can't stand all the traffic lights along the way. We pass through Plymouth and Kokomo, past signs for Denver and Peru and Mexico, wondering if Indiana has any original town names. After lunch at a Steak-n-Shake, we're west of Indy heading for Illinois on I-70. Bryan's driving and pushing 90 (downhill) as we pass the trucks -- M.S. CARRIERS, SCHNEIDER, OTRX, BUSKE along with other names that mean nothing to us but a livelihood for the men behind the names and the wheel. We pass one minivan in need of a wash with words written on the rear window -- "I love you Mom," rather than a play on the standard "Wash me."

Southwestern Indiana -- where the flat farmland of the northern part of the state gives way to moderate rolling hills and fewer towns, the names of which are unfamiliar anyway: Linton, Marshall, Vigo County, Riley. Judging by the billboards, the food down here must be limited too: McDonald's, Burger King, Arby's. Another suggests, "Troubled? Try prayer. The family that prays together stays together." We'll have driven 250 miles, more than four hours since we left home, and still be in Indiana before we reach Terre Haute and the Central Time Zone. For two guys who grew up on the East Coast, a stretch like that drags the trip out, producing a helpless feeling of little progress.

But we're on the road. Reading Kerouac sparked that bug in me that comes alive anytime I strap that seat belt on and push the needle past 60. What Kerouac had in that respect, I have to a point. The road calls me and I'm opened up to areas and lifestyles I've never seen. It's a teacher and America is the classroom, making any trip a potential educational life experience.

Into Illinois, a turn south and down through the Land of Lincoln (and past his log cabin site) acrosst the mighty Mississippi into Missouri. Here the speed limit reached 70, and going 82 I was passed by a state trooper. A stop in Arkansas for some strawberry milkshakes showed us how poorly the roads are laid out and how bad the drivers are. The off ramp of exit 67 is one way to the left side of a two-way street -- heading right into oncoming traffic (after a stop sign, of course). Down through Arkansas and the road bends east as the neon lights of suburbia sprout out of the farmland. Suddenly, around a bend as the trees open up, Memphis appears. Night has fallen and the lights shine through a clearing sky across the Mississippi. We've been listening and belting along with Springsteen (and "Thunder Road"), Matchbox 20 and the original cast of "Rent," but now, on the Hernando de Soto Bridge over the muddy waters of the Mississippi, we switch to Mark Cohn's "Walking In Memphis" as we enter Tennessee and one of the best music cities in the world.

We checked into our hotel on Union Ave. and walked down to Beale for dinner. Beale Street: as famous in Memphis as 5th Avenue in New York, Bourbon in New Orleans, Sunset in L.A. We came out on the west end of Beale. Elvis Presley's Memphis restaurant is behind us, toward the river. B.B. King's is across Beale on the south side. Before us lie the bars and blues clubs of Beale: quiet still at only 8 on a Friday, but the potential is there. The quiet before the storm. The tension is there, soon to be replaced with the bustling excitement of Friday night in Memphis. The clubs will soon be blasting their bands to the potential patrons outside, luring them with the intrigue of the blues. Down on the east end of Beale excitement the Hard Rock Cafe marks the turning point for the weekend revellers. It stands sentinel with W.C. Handy across the street. Turning around, the look back up Beale is a sea of neon guitars over blues clubs and taverns. The street is blocked off and soon will be swarming with the new Memphis crowd, made up of young and old fans sharing the music and the moment.

After dinner at the Hard Rock, Bryan and I turned into the Beale Street Tap Room, still empty before 10, for a couple of beers and to discuss where we were. A couple played several games of pool at the bar's only table. When the man accidentally tapped the the cue ball while setting up his shot, he saw that she didn't notice and hit it again, this time connecting harder and knocking his striped ball into a corner pocket. Obviously in the early part of their relationship, they often clung to each other exchanging kisses when not setting up their shots during a tandem game against two other guys in the bar. After our drinks, we head back to the hotel, tired from the 10-hour drive and anticipating the next day when we'd be seeing the city's two greatest attractions: the Civil Rights Museum and Elvis's Graceland.

Yeah, we may have come under the guise of seeing the museum (and having the school paper pay for it since I will be writing an article about it), but we're here for Elvis too.

February 7, 1998
After breakfast at the hotel cafe, we walked the half-mile to the old Lorraine Motel in the southern part of the city. In 1982 it became the National Civil Rights Museum. The facade of the motel remains as it was in the 60s, 70s and 80s. The room doors are an aqua-green with black numbers in the center at eye level. Two old cars -- a Cadillac and a Dodge -- sit below room 306, in front of which Martin Luther King was assassinated the evening of April 4, 1968. In the early-morning quiet of a Memphis February, a few birds chirped as we looked around us at the hotel, its flourecent sign and the buildings across the street from where the fatal shot came. The courtyard we stand in was once the hotel's parking lot, and on the balcony railing in front of where King fell is a red-and-white floral wreath, a continuing reminder of what America lost that night nearly 30 years ago.

Inside, the motel is a modern museum bringing visitors on a journey from 1619 up to that night King died. The exhibit winds through the motel and up a ramp to the second floor, where it all ends with a detailed account of King's last two days, spent in Memphis. The exhibit ends in room 307, looking into room 308 on one side, out to the rooming house where the shot came from at the front window, and into room 306 on the other side. More powerful than the Holocaust museums, Bryan said.

At the end you turn around to look at the museum from a balcony of sorts -- the landmark events of the civil rights movement are laid out -- Birmingham, Chicago, Ole Miss, Washington, Little Rock. It's a look into our dark, shameful, ignorant past -- somewhere we are reluctant to go and hesitant to talk about. Lest we forget ...

Graceland. Elvis's castle -- the mansion on the hill. It sits, stately, above Route 51 -- now renamed (in his lifetime, it was) Elvis Presley Blvd. -- a monument to one of America's cult figures. The gates are there -- and the wall, with the messages of fans from everywhere. Walking through the house, I sensed him, not that he was actually there, but that he left something -- a part of himself, maybe -- in every part of that house. In Graceland, I saw not the Elvis I knew from TV or books, but Elvis as he lived, an Elvis few people actually saw with their own eyes. I pictured him there, in those rooms and out in the yard, aided by Priscilla's voice helping guide us through the grounds on the tape-recorded tour. I walked through the house of perhaps the most-recognized single performer in the world -- certainly in the U.S. He was -- and is -- in eveyr sense of the word, a LEGEND.

That's where my short journal ends. The pictures I still have from that trip remind me of our walk through the museum built across the street from Graceland -- of Elvis's cars, his 747 and the smaller jet (one of which is named after Lisa Marie), and oh so much of that Elvis memorabilia.

Back in downtown Memphis, Bryan and I ate lunch at the Elvis Presley's Memphis restaurant, which features the pool table from Graceland on which Elvis played pool with the Beatles and serves his famous favorite, the fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches (which we both ordered). For dinner, we ate at B.B. King's (see the above link for a short entry about that) and listened to live music, though I have no idea the name of the band. Likely some local Memphis bar band.

Driving back on Sunday, we saw a small airplane -- probably a Cessna -- dismantled and being towed on a trailer. I have a photograph of that. Bryan also got a ticket driving my Volvo -- he was close to 100, and the trooper was heading south on the interstate when he clocked Bryan, then made an immediate U-turn through the grass ditch separating the roadway, and ticketed Bryan for only just over 90.

While searching for my registration and insurance information, I discovered that the inside of the door to my glove compartment featured two indentations meant for drinks (though apparently not while in motion) and one was on a panel that lifted up to reveal a mirror for the passenger -- a year and a half with that car to that point, and it was the first I'd known of it.

Bryan and I recall that trip every now and then when we're together, particularly the part about the state trooper diving into the ditch to come after us. I think of Beale every now and then, especially when I hear the blues played live, and I look forward to a return trip in slightly warmer weather to enjoy the music, revisit Elvis, and raise a glass in the Beale Street Tap Room.