Going to Jackson

Going to Graceland

I got to Graceland late and left early, so no tour for me. It was a pity, because I was staying at the Graceland RV park, which is right across the parking lot from all the museums and shops, and about 1/4 mile to Graceland. I got to walk around the Graceland GigantoMegaplex™ and take photos, but skedaddled in the morning because it was supposed to rain all week and the Mississippi river was ready to flood.

I wasn’t down to experience Memphis in a flood, because the infrastructure there is already on the shaky side. The people, though, were so beautiful and the city is built on a foundation of pure soul, so I want to return some day soon.

Gladys was Elvis’s mom’s name. Gladis is my RV’s name. 

Going to Jackson

Heading down the road, I ended up in Jackson, Tennessee, a place I had never heard of and had never anticipated going. I always had assumed the Johnny and June Carter Cash song was about Jackson, Mississippi, but now I think it is probably about Jackson, TN.

Wanna Talk?

Jackson is home to the friendliest people on earth. People there will talk to you for an hour with little prompting. They just stop down and converse.

I was staying in a very odd, very pretty park. It was a mobile home park that converted empty mobile home spaces to RV spaces, so the two were intermingled. The only disadvantage was that you had to back up onto two long strips of concrete – the former mobile home foundation – very carefully to avoid being all catywampus and unlevel. This only took me about 10 attempts. It was a good learning experience.

The park was pretty, though, full of trees and flowers, and I got to know the residents and their dogs and cats through my walks around the place because, like I said, Tennesseans will talk to anyone. A group of the ladies had a feral cat spaying and feeding operation going and they gave me the lowdown about the cats and their personalities.

I had super-friendly neighbors, Dixie Lee and her son Marcus, who both loved the Lord and lived to tell about it. I had to watch out on my trips back from the pool, because I would be caught listening out there as the sun set and would end up getting absolutely eaten by mosquitoes. They were great, friendly people; the mosquitoes were jerks.

Abundant Life Temple

Downtown

Jackson is home to a pretty little, somewhat decaying downtown that will probably gentrify in the next 10 years. I could see little spots of it beginning already – the organic grocery with the 74 brands of CBD oil, some fancy brewpub type places.

Rockabilly Hall of Fame Mural

It’s also home to the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, to which my old high-school friend Benton Owsley is due to be inducted for his longtime internet radio station, Rockit Radio.

This is the best part of this trip – finding people I never thought I would meet and places that I had never even thought I was going to.

Rockabilly Hall of Fame Stage