An ongoing adventure of travel and living while using a wheelchair. Tim has been disabled from birth. Darryl is his father and caregiver who travels with him.
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Showing posts with label martin luther king. Show all posts
Showing posts with label martin luther king. Show all posts
(Please read our Covid 19 Statement first - Ed) Previously on our Tennesse tour...Part 1 and Part 2 It's another trolley ride south on Main Street in Memphis Tennessee. After a run at the breakfast bar at the Springhill Suites, we're off to see the National Civil Rights Museum.
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Built around the Lorraine Motel, a Black-friendly lodging back in the Jim Crow days, the complex includes the motel where Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated on April 4, 1968 while standing in front of his room, and the building across the street where James Earl Ray stuck his rifle through the bathroom window to get a clear shot. It's another sad, depressing...but important...stop travelers need to make. After years of oppression, bigotry, and prejudice, Dr. King's efforts at equality led to some remarkable remaking of southern and American society. His death here in Memphis only made the movement stronger.
Entering through a underground tunnel, you are ushered into a theater for a 10 minute introduction to Dr. King and his legacy that runs on a loop. Once you're done with that, you head upstairs for exhibits and a timeline of the events of that April 4th. At the end of the timeline, you find yourself standing at a reproduction of Ray's bedroom and bathroom. Only it isn't a reproduction.
Once you read the signs and get your bearings, you realize that tunnel led you into the old boarding house and you are looking at the actual bedroom and bathroom, sealed in glass, as they were left that day.
After some more exhibits about the investigation, the trial, and other assassinations, you wander back outside and visit the motel itself where you can walk up to room 306, look in, and stand in the spot where Dr. King fell, marked by a wreath.
It's sad but whenever we visit somber monuments like this, we have to focus on the good things that resulted from it. Another trolley takes us to a happier historic site, the birthplace of rock 'n roll.
It's on the corner of Union and Myrtle, on the western edge of downtown Memphis. This small, brick building holds Sam Phillips' Memphis Recording Service, also the home of his record label, Sun Studios. A DJ in the early fifties, Phillips would hire himself out to record things...birthday parties, weddings, funerals...much like videographers do today. You could also come to his studio and rent time or even cut a quick demo record. Many Black groups in the day would come in because they new Phillips loved the sound of African American blues. Ike Turner and Jackie Brenston came up from Mississippi to record. One of their amps fell off the car, damaging it a bit, on the way. Recording with the amp gave the guitar a slightly fuzzy sound and guitar distortion was discovered that day.
The song they recorded, "Rocket 88," is considered the first rock 'n roll song. It wouldn't be long before a local teenage truck driver named Elvis Presley would come in to record and hang around which, eventually, led Sam Phillips to invite him in. Not moved by Presley's slow, melodic gospels songs, a frustrated Phillips called for a break during which Elvis, playing around with his band mates, knocked out a killer version of "That's Alright," which Sam came back in to immediately put to vinyl.
The rest, as they say, is history. Today, the studio is still in business. Mostly for tourists during the day and for musicians at night. The tour itself is half accessible. The first half goes upstairs. Wheelchair users will have to wait in the lounge for that part but are not charged admission.
Upstairs, you get to see that broken guitar amp that Ike Turner used, numerous Elvis memorabilia, and some ancient recording gear.
Downstairs, the second half of the tour is exclusively a one-room shot, but what a room it is. In the studio, outtakes are played from 50's recording sessions, the tour guide points out where Elvis stood when he was recording, the "dollar in the guitar string" trick Johnny Cash used to get his unique sound, how the Million Dollar Quartet came to be, and much more. A pickup band made up of tourists are put together to re-enact Elvis recording "That's Alright"...Tim got to be the King for that one (see it in the video, above).
At the end, the microphone used by Elvis is brought out and everybody gets their chance to pose with it. You do really feel the history here, both at Sun Studios and the Lorraine Motel. One is a celebration of uninhibitedness, while the other is more somber but it led to some great and hopeful changes to our nation. It's been a long day and we've been on our feet for all of it. To get a rest and relax a bit, we head to the Peabody Hotel to sit, have a cup of coffee in the lobby, and check out a real duck dynasty.
In the 1930's, the hotel's manager...after a little imbibing...thought it'd be funny to leave some live ducks in the lobby fountain. The next morning, probably with a bit of a headache, he thought better of it and went to the lobby to retrieve the ducks. A crowd had formed and he knew he had a hit on his hands.
A bellman who used to be a circus trainer volunteered to train the birds and, ever since, they have lived on the roof of the hotel. Each morning, they take a private elevator and are marched to the fountain. At 5:00pm, the duckmaster...with an honored hotel guest...retrieves the fowl, marches them back to the elevator to the tunes of a Souza march, and back to the roof. This is known as the Peabody March of the Ducks and we're here just in time for it.
If you get a table in the lobby like we did, the staff make sure to keep your view clear. Other, less fortunate visitors have to squeeze in by the elevator behind velvet ropes. Children are allowed to sit in front on the floor. People in wheelchairs, like Tim, are ushered to their own privileged front row viewing area. It doesn't last long but it's still a hoot to see. As the ducks go, so do we. Next time, we'll have some great barbecue and continue our journey along the Elvis Trail. Darryl Copyright 2013 - Darryl Musick All Rights Reserved
There's a show on the NBC Sports network called Caffeine and Octane which is a car lovers dream. Each week, it visits the largest car show in North America. In addition to showing some of the best car porn on TV, it profiles some of those machines and owners.
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We watch it from time to time. Then, I found out that it happens just down the street from our hotel at the Perimeter Mall in Dunwoody, Georgia. On the first Sunday of the month, which is today, and it's free.
Guess what we're starting this day off with...
We wander around the large, mostly empty mall lot (early Sunday morning) and then we find it. Thousands and thousands of cars and truck. Mostly organized around type, make, or model. For example, there were a lot of Jeeps parked together as were Jaguars and Mustangs. Mostly because car clubs would show up early and park together.
This is just the outer edges. More and more vehicles make up the rings as we head towards the center. When the cars show up in the morning, the show organizers are there to cherry pick the best of the bunch. A few hundred are redirected in the center corral of the mass to be featured on the TV show.
It's both an honor and a curse to be selected...if you outside of the center, you can go whenever you want. If you're selected, you have to stay the entire show because the producers want to have a 'full' look to the proceedings and don't want cars leaving early to show empty spots.
We see many mint-condition classics, oddballs, and custom restorations. It's great fun but around the edges of the show, there a few douchebags that have to do burnouts, loud revs, and speed runs. It doesn't seem safe to be walking around out there. After getting our fill, we leave and head back into the city for some more history lessons.
East of downtown Atlanta, in the Sweet Auburn neighborhood, is Martin Luther King, Jr. National Historic Park. It was here the civil rights leader was born, where he attended church, school, and is now interred. There's a large parking lot on the north side of the park, across the street from the visitor's center and the current edition of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, the church he and his family were heavily involved with.
We start off in the visitor's center where a film on Dr. King's life is shown, along with exhibits of his efforts to secure rights for all Americans, his death, and...finally...his burial. The rustic wooden wagon that served to carry his coffin is also on display here.
Afterward, we make our way down the block to the fire station that became Atlanta's first integrated station then on to the house, a half block away, where he was born. Tickets for the fully accessible tour are free at the visitor's center but they had already given out that day's quota.
For us, we had to be content with the exterior, walking around the porch, and into the backyard. On the way back, we go through the pools and fountains of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Dr. King was passionate that his cause would not be violent, at the beginning of each march, hundreds of knives and other weapons were taken from marchers so that they would not be the catalyst for fighting.
This center, adjacent to the national park, is also where Dr. King and his wife are buried in a marble tomb at the center of the pond.
An eternal flame burns nearby. Next door is the original Ebenezer Baptist Church, now part of the park. A docent deploys a portable ramp for Tim. Inside, a lift takes him up to the second floor sanctuary.
We wander around the space where King and his father preached from the pulpit. Much of the support and planning for Dr. King's efforts came from this building and this room.
Across the street, Sunday services are in full swing at the current church. You're welcome to attend but in our touring clothes of shorts and t-shirts, we limit ourselves to watching the vigorously spiritual service from the foyer where large glass windows and speakers allow visitors like us to watch from just beyond the back pew. This visit makes a good counterpoint to a visit to the Civil Rights Museum at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, where Dr. King was assassinated. Here, there is more of a celebration of his life than a focus on his death like there is there. It makes for an inspirational finale to our time in Atlanta. Darryl Musick Copyright 2018 All Rights Reserved Photos by Letty Musick Copyright 2018 All Rights Reserved
You wouldn't think so, but there's a hotel in Nashville that is a tourist destination unto itself. Really.
It's so popular that other hotels in the area run shuttles to it just so their guests can go and see it for themselves.
The Gaylord Opryland sits on 40 acres of land. Almost 30 of those are covered by the massive building itself. It is the largest non-casino hotel in America outside of Las Vegas. There are just under 3,000 rooms, a navigable indoor river, three massive atriums, the studios of one of the most powerful radio stations in the country (WSM), 17 restaurants and bars, a golf course, and 600,000 square feet of meeting space.
The Musick family decided to tackle the Gaylord one day and, it might not have quite been "a three hour cruise...," it did turn into a three hour adventure just to make it through the incredible amount of lobby and atrium space here during the frigid Thanksgiving week while getting lost at seemingly every turn.
Did they ever make it back out alive? (SPOILER HINT: I am typing this...)
Watch our last Tennessee video as we hunt for food, hack through jungle, brave the frigid wilds of the Cumberland valley, all while trying to find our way through...it's "The Gaylord Expedition."
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After you've watched that, you may want to browse through the collection of reports and videos that make up our complete, Grand Tennessee Tour, by clicking on the links below...
...and that's a wrap for the Grand Tennessee Tour. Hope to see you back for our next new adventure soon. Darryl Copyright 2014 - Darryl Musick All Rights Reserved
