ON THE ROAD – SO MUCH TO CATCH UP ON

I’m leaving Memphis in about 45 minutes and headed south to the Mississippi Delta. There will undoubtedly be much to blog about from there, so I’d best try to catch you up on the past week or so in the meantime.

Norman, OK to St. Louis: It poured rain pretty much the entire way, visibility was limited and photography non-existent. At nearly every other off-ramp there was some sort of "Adult Super Store" or "Men's Spa." Apparently people driving Interstate 44 to St. Louis through the Ozarks require some extra attention. They also require catfish, and I stopped at a place called Dowd's Catfish House in Lebanon, MO. It was awfully good. The fried okra was also especially good. And also, apparently, they need to be on the look out for escaped hogs. There were a number of billboards exhorting those of us driving by to "Report Feral Hogs."

St. Louis, Bouchercon: What is there to say about a writers and readers conference? It was a lot of fun. Hanging out with old and new writer pals is the very best of water cooler time – something you don’t usually get when you work at home in front of your computer day after day. Meeting readers, both those who have heard of you and read your books and those who haven’t but who are interested, is always incredibly gratifying and humbling. Conferences like this remind me both that I really enjoy hanging out with my fellow writers and we are all incredibly privileged to have people interested in what we write and have to say.

And yes, we do drink too much. I did actually get back to my hotel room from the bar one night by about 1am – but I still couldn’t go to sleep until 3. In any event, the people whose company I enjoyed, who I shared that wonderful heady mix of silliness, seriousness and wonderment with, are almost too numerous to mention by name. So I’m not going to. You know who you are.http://www2.blogger.com/img/blank.gif

I was having far too much fun to take any pictures during the conference. I did take some walking around St. Louis though. (I had the usual fun conference walk – becoming something of a tradition – with my pal SJ Rozan. SJ used to be an architect and there is always some building or another that has caught her eye. In this case we went to see the War Memorial Building which was truly elegant, simple and very beautiful. Click on her name to go to her blog where you will sooner or later find some photos, no doubt. Actually, right click on her name and go there in another window or tab so that you can easily get back here.)




Road to Memphis: Colin Cotterill and I headed south from St. Louis, trying to take old Highway 61 – do a Google search, you’ll see how many songs there are about it, probably the second most after Route 66 – for as much of the trip as we could. It was, as you can see from the pictures, a somewhat religious experience. (It was Sunday after all.)


This is what we could only think of to call Road Kill Jesus. Look at it straight on and all you see is the cross, move to the side and the flattened out Jesus shows up. It was actually kind of cool.



Memphis: Graceland, the National Civil Rights Museum (built into the Lorraine Hotel where Martin Luther King was assassinated), Beale St., Gus’s Fried Chicken (some of the world’s very best fried chicken) – fun was had, much walking was done.

Graceland was not quite as remarkably garish, tacky and overblown as we'd hoped, smaller, too. But still, it had its moments.






The National Civil Rights Museum is very well done. It's built into the shell of the Lorraine Motel, where Martin Luther King was assassinated. Standing, essentially, in the room, looking out at the balcony where the bloodstained concrete has been patched over and across the street at window where the shot came from, is frightening and very moving.

Across the street from it, however, Jacqueline Smith has inhabited a street corner for more than 23 years to protest the museum. She used to live in the Lorraine when it was a transient hotel, before she and the other residents were kicked out to make the museum. She wants people to boycott it. She thinks the money would be far better spent helping the poor and building low income housing by way of honoring the vision of Dr. King, rather than simply memorializing him. I'm still not sure how I feel about what she has to say, but she does make a strong, rational case. Check out her website.


Gus's on Front Street is the home of my new very favorite restaurant fried chicken in the country:

And far too much beer was drunk, all over town. Luckily we had a very knowledgeable "beer goddess" in one place to steer us in the right direction.

And Beale Street is very touristy, cacophonous with dueling blues bands of varying quality and many languages and accents that aren't usually associated with the South. Luckily for everyone, they do not permit reptiles:

We had much more civilized beers at Ernestine & Hazel's down on Front Street in a gentrifying area that some people are still fearful of going to at night. Their loss. Great bar, run by a very nice guy, with a truly superb jukebox. And it used to be a brothel upstairs - though no longer:

I am now in Clarksdale in the Mississippi Delta and shall blog about it later, or tomorrow. Right now it's the time of day when I ought to be out and about taking pictures.

WHAT I LOVE ABOUT DRIVING ACROSS AMERICA

Yesterday morning I woke up in Amarillo, Texas having spent a surreal evening at the Big Texan Steak Ranch and decided to go for breakfast. I went to the Stockyard Cafe, which had been recommended to me by a local and several websites. Great huevos rancheros. When my waitress came by to see if I wanted more coffee, she asked if I was there for the auction, the cattle auction. Well, why not?

So I stuck around and went to the cattle auction. Everybody there was about as friendly as could be and happy to explain to me what was going on. Then I sat down next to a group of Amish people and chatted with them. Turns out, they were on a road trip, too. They were on their way back to their home in Indiana from California and thought they'd stop at the Stockyard Cafe for breakfast and to take in the cattle auction. We talked for a bit and it was interesting and fun - and yes, some Amish do drive cars, not only horses and buggies.

Then I headed east and stopped at Bug Ranch - the Volkswagon Beetle answer to Cadillac Ranch farther west down the road. Then I stopped at "the largest cross in the Northern Hemisphere." I had lunch in a place that would have been a burger joint if the guy who founded it hadn't decided he wanted to do something other than burgers, so he opened a steak sandwich place to stand out from the crowd.

Then I spent the evening visiting writer pals in Norman, Oklahoma.

A lot of what I drove through was hours of grain silos in the flat distance, and cattle crowded around water wheels and I loved every single moment of it.

There are undoubtedly those of you out there reading this who are thinking - so what? Who cares? All that empty space.

I feel sorry for you. This is the country you miss when you simply fly over it to get where you're going. This is the country that is interesting and human and hard working and honest and fun - the place that makes me very happy to be an American. You can find this America in Los Angeles and New York and Chicago if you try hard enough, if you get out of your neighborhood and your comfort zone, but it's very much in your face when you drive across the country.

The great thing about this country has always been the journey, not the destination - the big, wide in-between spaces and the people who inhabit them. I feel most connected to it when I'm in those places, the vast midlands that people on the coasts wonder what the hell I'm there for, or the places that "nice" people are afraid to go, where they think menace lies around each bend - which is what some of my friends seem to think about the South, where I'm headed next.

Anyhow, just wanted to get that off my chest. Now I'm in St. Louis, at Bouchercon, surrounded by mystery writers and readers and staying put until Sunday when the road trip resumes. Here's some pics from yesterday:

HAVE HIT THE ROAD - 3

AMARILLO, TX: The Big Texan Steak Ranch is not the place to go if you want to eat a great steak. The t-bone I ordered was okay, but no more than that. There was, however, too much of it, which is what the place is known for.

A good hundred miles or so before Amarillo along Interstate 40 you begin to see billboards advertising a Free 72 oz Steak.

Well, not free exactly. You have to eat the 4-1/2 lbs of meat, along with a large and loaded with stuff baked potato, and three breaded and fried jumbo shrimp, and a salad, and a dinner roll, and you have to do it in an hour or less. (If you fail in the attempt, it costs $72.)

They once fed one of the steaks to a 500 lb Siberian tiger. He ate it in 90 seconds. The current human record, held by Joey "Jaws" Chestnut - who is also the World Hot Dog Eating Champion - is 8 minutes, 52 seconds. Klondike Bill, a professional wrestler once ate two of the meals in the allotted time.

Four people were attempting the feat when I was there tonight. I am sorry to say that I have failed all of you in the reporting department as I was too queasy to stick around and see if any of them succeeded. When I left they had 20 some odd minutes to go and it didn't look like any of them were going to make it. A conversation had broken out among the four as to whether or not it might have been better to order the steak super well done - as that would probably burn some of the extra fat out of it. (The 72 oz is the cooked weight.) From the look of it, it was a fairly chewy steak at any temperature.

Earlier in the day I went to Cadillac Ranch, which isn't quite Stonehenge, but it's not bad. On the way out of town tomorrow I plan to stop in at Bug Ranch - the VW equivalent.

Here's some pics:








This guy came from France to test his mettle against Texas-sized portions. It is, apparently, not the way that Frenchmen usually eat.

Tomorrow it is off across the Panhandle to beautiful Norman, Oklahoma.

HAVE HIT THE ROAD AGAIN - 2

Albuquerque, NM: A relatively short, but scenic, drive today through the Painted Desert, past Shiprock and the Petrified Forest and at least 338,442 "Indian Trading Posts" selling blankets and pottery and fry bread and what have you.

Just as I was leaving my room at La Posada, however, I noticed a framed clip from an old magazine that was hanging in the room. Remember, I was in the Carole Lombard Room. Well, here is one mighty strange photo of Carole Lombard smoking a cigarette:
I waited until Gallup, New Mexico to eat anything. That's because New Mexico has some of the very finest food to be had in the country. In the restaurant at El Rancho, a very funky, old movie stars of the 30s and 40s hotel, I had delicious huevos rancheros Christmas style - half red / half green chile. I have stayed in the hotel once before - in the Ronald Reagan Presidential Suite. It isn't expensive. I recommend it. Although I'm not really sure what the part of their slogan that says - "Convenience of Tomorrow" means.
Not far beyond Gallup, I crossed the Continental Divide. All the water that falls on on the east side of this sign flows out to the Gulf of Mexico and then the Atlantic Ocean. Water on the west side flows to the Pacific. I was thinking I might pee on the side of the sign - it was about six inches wide - and spend some time speculating as to where my pee would end up, but there was a woman tending her garden nearby so I didn't. Yet another missed opportunity to imagine conducting a scientific experiment.
One of my favorite things about driving across America is that the weather becomes a significant feature of the landscape. There are some much more dramatic examples of what I mean in an earlier blog. This one. But there was some pretty attractive weather today.
Before dinner - chicken enchiladas Christmas style (it's the only form of Christmas that I like at all, otherwise I'm a total Scrooge) - I cruised around Albuquerque. Like a lot of places along the remnants of old Route 66 it really plays up the connection. I sort of prefer the ghost town parts.

Tomorrow it's into the Texas Panhandle, stopping in Amarillo to admire the stockyards.

HAVE HIT THE ROAD AGAIN - 1

Winslow, AZ: I'm in the Carole Lombard room of one of my favorite hotels in the world, listening to a mile or more long freight train rumble past outside my window. Earlier I was in a rocking chair in the garden, good scotch in hand, watching the sunset and the trains roll by. (Not to worry, if you don't like the sound of trains all night, they provide you with earplugs in the guest rooms.

La Posada was built in 1930 by the Harvey Company as a railroad hotel. The architect and designer was Mary Colter, the most famous (maybe the only famous) woman architect and designer of her time. It was her favorite building and when you stay here it is obvious why. Colter was one of the first architects to truly appreciate that there was such a thing as a unique American architecture and she made fantastic use of it. She took regional archetypes and developed them into modern (for their time) buildings. One of her first was the Hopi House gift center at the Grand Canyon.

In 1997, La Posada was falling down. It was bought by a guy named Allen Affeldt along with an artist named Tina Mion. They have restored it and done an astounding job. It is also filled with an eclectic wonderful art collection, much of it the paintings of Mion - who is a quirky, amusing and very arresting painter. They also have a great restaurant. I have a reservation for dinner in 40 minutes so I'd best crank out this blog.

In any event, this is one of the reasons why I love road trips even if at times the day's drive seems endless and dull. I took I-40 today, which roughly parallels old Route 66. There are parts of old 66 that are pretty fun and entertaining, a lot of it has become buried under enormous piles of nostalgic kitsch. Funny, it's all '50s Corvettes and crap like that, you don't see much about the Okies and Arkies fleeing the Dust Bowl desperate to find work in the promised land of California. Oh well.

Here's a few pictures. The first is one of the remnants of old 66. The rest are all at or around La Posada.

WRITING SUCKS, BUT WHAT ELSE AM I GOING TO DO

You can't read this post here but you can read it on Murderati - a very fine blog indeed - where I am guest blogging today. Click on this paragraph to get there.

IT'S COUNTY FAIR TIME AGAIN

And of course I went, as I do every year that I can, with my standing County Fair Companion, the multitalented juggler who wears numerous hats - writer, save-the-worlder (or at least improve it), crazed long-distance runner, bunny lover, etc. - Ashley Ream.

And, as I also do every year, I took some pictures. They can tell you more about my experience of the Los Angeles County Fair than I can. So here goes:

There were a lot of people at the Fair other than us:




And of course there were other sorts of animals, too:


And I mentioned that Ashley loves the bunnies. The real ones were out of reach in pens, so I made her pose with this poor young woman who was no doubt sweltering inside of her bunny suit:

And what would a county fair be without stuff to judge and award ribbons to? Here are some pie contest judges, pie contest entrants anxiously awaiting judgement, and a previous cake winner.


People waited for rides and then went on rides.


And people ate stuff, lots of stuff, most of it really bad for them (and me.) The best thing I ate at the Fair was the porkchop on a stick ("A delight like no other.") It was indeed a delight, excellent even, but really, it was very similar to many other porkchops I have had, only on a stick. The Fair seemed the wrong place for sushi. Neither of us was tempted by Buster's 2 lb Belly Buster burger. But other people were.


But the Fair doesn't want to leave its patrons without ways in which to improve themselves as well, physically (and even spiritually but I didn't take pictures of the Christian, Muslim, Scientology or other such booths.) I don't know how long you'd have to stand on the Magic Fit to work off one of those 2 lb burgers, but I imagine it would take quite a while. And if something you ate stained your teeth, well, you could have that taken care of, too. And lastly, if it was all just too much, you could relax in a massage chair.

NOW FOR A BIT OF FAIR WARNING - I MIGHT BE HEADED YOUR WAY

I'm leaving Saturday for one of my road trips. I shall attempt to blog at least once from every place that I spend time. Here's where it looks like I'm going:

Winslow, AZ - overnight stop
Albuquerque, NM - overnight stop
Amarillo, TX - overnight stop
Norman, OK - overnight stop
St. Louis, MO - Bouchercon, 4 nights
Memphis, TN - 2 nights
Clarksdale, MS (Mississippi Delta) - 5 nights
Dallas, TX - overnight stop
Van Horn, TX - overnight stop
Tucson, AZ - overnight stop
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