Chapter Four

The drive to Memphis took little more than three hours. We arrived at my grandmother’s “high rise” mid-afternoon. The Parkview Apartments are in the Evergreen District and at ten stories, towered above the genteel homes in the area. We made our entrance, apologized for our BO, then quickly retreated to our guest room downstairs to get cleaned up.

The hot shower felt nice.

Cocktails with Miss Lillian in Memphis.

My grandmother’s building maintained a handful of rooms on the first floor for residents’ visitors. If there was a cost to her for our accommodations, she was too polite to mention it.

We joined my grandmother and my great aunt, Polly, for cocktails. Then dinner. She fried us up some hamburgers.

“The secret, dahling, is to only turn them once. Keeps them juicy…”

In spite of the decades she lived in South Orange, New Jersey, Miss Lillian was forever a Southern Belle. A kind, generous, resilient woman. She’d survived two world wars, prohibition, the Great Depression, and the death of her beloved husband, Floyd, twenty years prior.

I wouldn’t be here without her.

Before leaving Memphis, we drove down Elvis Presley Boulevard and stopped in at Graceland. We paid our respects to The King, staring down at the massive bronze grave marker next to the pool, surrounded by potted flowers of all kinds.

I whispered to John, “Do anything that you wanna do, just lay off my blue suede shoes.”

(My blue suede Adidas. I had been wearing them non-stop — without socks — since the start of the trip and they had begun to emit a powerful funk. John threatened to tie them to the rear bumper. He eventually would.)

This was not my first visit to Graceland. I’d been there five years earlier when Elvis was still alive. While waiting in line on the sidewalk for our turn to tour the property, we chuckled over the love notes scribbled on the flagstone wall that supported the eight-foot wrought iron fence.

Several decades later, I’d see the very same thing on another wall. Along another sidewalk. In front of another rock n roll Mecca.

Abbey Road Studios in London. But I digress.

John and I jumped back in the truck and hopped on I-40 in West Memphis and were soon on the Hernando DeSoto Bridge. About two-thirds of the way across the Mississippi River, we passed a sign that welcomed us to Arkansas.

We only put in about four hours of driving this day, swapping off every hour or so. Outside Little Rock, we took a more southerly tack. A few scenic backroads delivered us to Hot Springs where we stopped for lunch and did a little sightseeing.

Hot Springs is famous for, well, hot springs…and a whole lot more.

Over a million gallons of 143ºF water bubbles up from the Earth’s core there, feeding 47 natural springs. People have been flocking to Bathhouse Row for over a century, to enjoy the healing benefits of its many luxury spas.

Hot Springs was also the Las Vegas of its day. During the 20s and 30s, folks like Al Capone often visited its notorious illegal gambling dens, which went hand-in-hand with the city’s bootlegging and prostitution operations. The city has a rich baseball heritage, too. “Spring training” got its start here. Babe Ruth allegedly spent his off time in the spas and at the local racetrack betting on the ponies. 

Oh, and actor Billy Bob Thornton is a Hot Springs native!

But the real stars of the show in this region are the Ouachita and Ozark mountains.

John uncovered a gem of a campsite just north of there. River Road Campground sits along the shores of Fourche LaFave River and Nimrod Lake. This was definitely one of the most beautiful, obscure, places we camped.

The next morning, we toured Nimrod Dam and hiked a bit. The dam is the product of an Army Corp of Engineers flood control project passed by FDR in 1938. Took over four years to complete. Nimrod Lake is technically a reservoir, formed by the dam, which in turn spawned abundant recreational riches. Like camping. Hiking. Boating. Fishing.

The Fourche LaFave River snakes across Arkansas like spaghetti. It’s a tributary of the Arkansas River, which is a tributary of the Mississippi.

It was such a pretty place! I seem to recall we waited until the next morning before packing up. We headed northwest, crossing the Arkansas River to re-connect to I-40 west. Less than two hours later, everything was OK in Oklahoma.